I’ve lived the vast majority of my life hiding from people. When I was a wee lad, I had it rather solidly drilled into my head that there was a world outside and that that world had nothing to do with me. People out there were happy and they interacted and they had a great time. It was just like the Cosby show every Thursday night. But those people didn’t want anything to do with me. Or at least that’s the idea I had growing up because it was very clear to me that my mother didn’t want anything to do with me so why on earth would anyone else? So as the years went by I just formed this hard and crusty shell around my soul and on it was inscribed in big bold letters that everyone could see: UNWANTED.
I went along in life like that for quite a while. Every relationship I had with anyone was prefixed with the question of, “What could this person ever want with me?” I had the self-esteem of a small undercooked potato because I fundamentally believed that I didn’t really have much to offer the world and that I would better off just keeping well and good away from it. Since I can’t contribute anything, I wouldn’t want to intrude on the off chance that I might accidentally get something from somebody else I didn’t really deserve, right?
In the past five years I’ve finally begun to tear myself away from this sort of thinking. It’s funny, in a rather perverse way, the depth of the things that happen to a person during their childhood. You can have all the benefits of good genetics and affluent lifestyle but ultimately if your mother thinks you’re a piece of shit… well, in the mind of a small child you’re a piece of shit, plain and simple.
Today as I wandered my way home from work I had this rather odd feeling. I realized that I’d spent absolutely the entire day interacting with people. I’m hopeful that my work world doesn’t come crashing down in some terrible way because I haven’t actually managed to get much of anything else done lately but nevertheless it felt good to look back and realize that in the course of a day I’d mentored a fellow employee at length about their career direction, interacted with sales and customers to make sure their projects went smoothly and efficiently, and done a dozen other things that had a real positive impact on the company I work for. I am doing Good in the little sphere of my world and today driving home I had perfect clarity on the truth of that. There is more Good in the world today because I was around.
Sometimes the small frightened child who is nothing but a piece of shit still lives inside me. Sometimes he urges me to be suspicious or to withdraw or reminds me of the pain felt so long ago. Today that child is happy in the realization of a Good day’s life lived.
The Tattered Thread 