A Day Called Way Back When

I never know what people remember. I don’t know how memories feel or arise to someone else.
These things are beyond me.
I can’t say I know the feelings within someone else’s heart.
And another thing. . .

I don’t know what other people see or if we see the same things.
I think about this sometimes.

I think about how two people can experience the same things and walk away with different interpretations, which also causes me to wonder more.

I say more the way I yearn for life and yearn to live for more. When I mean I wonder more, I wonder about this because I do not know how I appear or look in someone else’s eyes.
I know I want to be beautiful. I know that I want to be cool and I know that I want to be wanted or desirable. I want to be admirable.
I want to be seen, and noticed, and picked first.
Not last.

At the same time, I can say that I understand and live with the drastic fear that I don’t know what you see when you look at me. I can say that I relate to hearing the words, “I love you,” and while said gently and sweetly, I can understand why people choose or refuse to fully believe this.
I understand the reflection of self.
I don’t know what anyone sees. Even if someone would tell me what they see from a positive or helpful standpoint, or if someone looked to disprove my fears which come from the emotional government of “self,” I often wonder if I would believe them.

I wonder if this would help us trust people more. I wonder if knowing how someone sees us, and I mean how someone truly sees us, I wonder if this might help put our fears at ease or make them worse.

I am someone who has grown from a small boy into a man. And every man or so-called man can say the same thing. However, I used to be painfully small and young looking. I was as thin as a needle. I was weak and helpless and awkward too. I assumed that this was how everyone saw me. I assumed that I was ugly or unsightly or unwantable and that no one would ever “choose” me.
At least, not first. If someone did choose me, I would question this and assume that they had a defect or a lapse in judgment and eventually they would say, “I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”
I can say there was a time in my life when the person I loved most told me this. Thus, I allowed these words to have me love myself the least.

I always thought that I appeared as weak and afraid.
I always I assumed I was “the loser.”
In my eyes, at best, I was weak and afraid.
Petrified is more like it . . .

It is funny though.
The world works in funny ways and as maturity sets in, you find yourself faced with opportunities to hear from someone who knew you way back when.
They tell you things like, “No one else thought that way about you.”
No one else looked at me and took issue with the fact that I was puny or unsightly, weak, or vulnerable.
No one looked at me like this. No one thought that I was stupid.
But I did.
No one looked at me and thought that I was a loser.
Except for me, of course. Therefore, the reasons why the fires burned inside my insecurity is because I fanned the flames and kept them alive.

I never knew how to walk away or change the narrative in my head.
I believed in my thoughts which is why my thoughts became real, or at least they were real to me.

I remember speaking with a man before one of my presentations.
He asked how I was feeling.
So, I told him.
I told him about my anxiety. I told him about the nausea I experienced. I told him about the fears I have which come before I am about to perform.
I told him about the assumptions that everyone is going to think that I am a fool or that I am not professional enough to be in my position.
Everyone hates me. In fact, someone I loved often told me this.
I told him about my insecurities and as I explained this, it is important to offer that I explained this to a man who lives with highly functional but very real autism.

I would never know, he told me.
You don’t seem uncomfortable when you speak, he said.
I like hearing your presentations. . .
I explained that I had to learn how to allow these feelings “to be.”
I had let them surface and pass because the more I interact with them, or try to deny them, the more chances I face the emotional stutter that disallows my authentic self.

I do not hide who I am or what I think or feel.
I own this. To me, this is the only way that I can be free. I say this not as a prisoner of war or a prisoner of the state.
I say this to keep from being enslaved by my own ideas, which keep me in fear and causes me to quit before I start.

I remember a day called way back when.
I remember the distortions of self and the misleading ideas that caused me to turn inwards instead of going out and allowing myself the right to move, or to go, be, or do.

I realize how I see myself is how I assume everyone else sees me.
And, so, if I need to work on being happy or being comfortable or being satisfied with my home life, my love life, my work life and my social life, then I need to work on being happy with my reflection in the mirror.
Otherwise, I can lose myself to the distracting distortions that I see in my reflection, or elsewise, I will believe that I am ugly, or that I am unsightly, or worse… unwantable.

The truth is, I have always wanted to be beautiful.
Do you want another truth?
Okay. . .
Another truth is the view that distorted my reflection in the mirror also ruined my love, my life, and the opportunity of a lifetime.
But there is no rule that says this has to happen again.

Unthink yourself, son.

You and me?
We have work to do.

Move, go, be, and do.
Live, love, laugh and learn.

So be it.