I Am Not Who I Imagine

Living and learning can be really painful. Acceptance is so humbling. Everything depends upon a human’s ability to learn from his/ or her mistakes. But when such learning reveals how off one’s self-image is, then another ice shelf breaks off, and the climate grows even more uncertain. Life is full of these kinds of de-stabilizing revelations. There is no movement toward the light, that isn’t presaged by another movement into the dark.

I’ve come to acknowledge the dark. I’m in it now, confronted by my own ignorance and arrogance. I played out a game, a narrative of specialness, that has turned out to be another indication that I don’t know myself. I’m not who I imagine myself to be. 

I once took pride in having learned a lot by surviving an unbelievable ordeal. But, now I see how inflated that is, the truth is that Life spared me, and I don’t know why. But, I didn’t let that bit of ignorance stop me. Instead I assumed I knew something. I separated myself, with that wrong-headed assumption. That is always a mistake. But, it was one I was eager to make, to try to offset the nakedness, the sheer vulnerable exposure of being human. So eager, so blind, so utterly lost. I now know something about how much hurt I inflicted. 

I am so deeply ashamed of myself. I have broken my own heart. I am not who I imagined. And yet, I’m still alive. Life is not done teaching me. Can I open this broken piece of heart tissue, and offer it up again, knowing I am not who I imagine? Can I risk creating so much heartache and pain, in myself and others, to become someone again? I don’t really know. All I know now, is that I am not who I imagined myself to be.