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| MIRAGES "40 Years In The Desert" |
We have all seen movies where someone is traveling in the desert and they
are in desperate need of water. The traveler feels the dryness of their throat,
the burning of their skin and the gradual dehydration of their bodies. In the
distance they spot an oasis-a patch of water in the middle of all of that
sand-just waiting for the traveler to get there and quench their thirst. The
traveler continues on and on, plodding on towards that oasis and the water it
offers. Often in these same movies the traveler finds that the oasis was nothing
more than a mirage. The heat of the sand is so intense that it makes the air
above it 'bend." That bent air causes the reflection of the blue sky to appear
on the desert sand. There was no water after all, simply an illusion. The
traveler then collapses and either dies of thirst or is rescued by someone else.
My readers, I have been fooled by mirages in my own life all too often. Or
rather, what has happened to me is that I travel on towards the next oasis, find
that it is nothing but a mirage, look around to spot another oasis and travel
towards that one only to discover that it too, is nothing but an illusion. It seems
that for nearly 40 years I have been fooling myself into believing my constant
walking will find that cool patch of water that will quench my thirst.
You all know my writings enough by now to know that this is yet another
analogy of mine, a metaphor for a hard-learned life lesson. You all should
know the personal demons I have been fighting have made me face some cold,
hard truth about my own personality. I have shared and been sharing them
here because the feedback I get from some of you is so very wonderful. If my
personal revelations can help you all, as it seems they do, I am more than glad
to share them. I know what it is like to be out there with no guidance or hope. I
also know what it is like to have psychobabble spewn at you by so-called
experts. I am not an expert on psychology, only my own life. I hope that these
experiences and revelations I share can help some of you. If it only helps one
person, then it is worth sharing my pain and growth with all of you.
The personal oasis I am referring to is unconditional love. I have used that
phrase a great deal as of late, so perhaps I should explain what I mean by
unconditional love. I made reference to it once in a much older essay, but I
think I need to go a bit deeper here. Unconditional love is what we hear about
in fairy tales and in the Bible. According to the New Testament, Christ loved us
so much he died for our sins. He loves us no matter what we have done or will
do in the future. We can commit horrible sins, yet Christ's love for us is so
intense we can still enter heaven if we just accept that gift of salvation. We are
told that the gift stems from grace, meaning there is nothing we can do to earn
that gift of love. We are told that no matter how saintly a lifestyle life we might
lead, how much philanthropy we do, we can not earn our way into heaven.
Faith and acceptance of the gift are all it takes.
Many Christians, especially those of us with dysfunctional families cannot grasp
this concept. It is very difficult to believe that someone loves us not because of
who we are, but because we simple "are." We are told that Christ loves us
because we exist, nothing more. This is the concept of unconditional love.
When someone loves us simply because we breathe, that is unconditional love.
When we do bad things that hurt their feelings, they may be hurt, but they still
love us.
Some of you do not share my faith, or have difficulty understanding love since
you cannot really see Christian love in your every day life. Therefore I will use
a different example. Those of you with pets will understand what I am referring
to here. My little mutt D.J. loves me unconditionally. No matter how late I have
been out bowling or doing other things, he never gives me grief when I get
home. Even though he is ten years old he gets so excited when I walk in the
door he does his little dance and sometimes pees himself he is so happy to see
me. It might be five in the morning and I reek of the beer some drunk spilled on
me, he wants to jump in my lap and be close to me. I might be in one of my
grumpy moods and pushing him away, but he still wants to lick my face and
show me affection. He might be feeling the ache in his bones, but he still wants
to bring me one of his stuffed animals as a welcome home present. He sits
there as I complain about the pain in my body and the look in those big brown
eyes says it all, "I'm so happy you are with me again" seems to be what D. J. is
telling me. Days that I am very sick and cannot get out of bed, D.J. never asks
me to take him outside. He will lay next to me or at my feet just offering me
comfort. I might be vomiting or have my own crap all over me, but my mutt just
wants to have my company.
Why does my dog do that? Why is it that on days I cannot play with him or do
things just for him he still wags his tail for me and tries to make me happy?
Because he has a dog's unconditional love for his human. Those of you with
dogs can relate to what I mean here. Take a look at those big brown eyes and
tell me what you see when your dog looks at you. That is adoration.
In my family and social life I never really knew unconditional love before. Love
was a word that was rarely used in our home when I was a child. Not only that,
my experience taught me that even if someone says they love you, you had
better do exactly as they say or you will experience physical or emotional pain.
My parents fought almost daily and the threat of their splitting up always hung
over our home like a dark cloud. The effect this had on a young mind was
pretty severe. I learned to do things to keep the peace so that there would be
no yelling, no violence, and no abandonment. My heart was trained at keeping
everyone happy, satisfying the needs of others in my home so that we would
be one happy family.
Sadly my young mind did not learn the exercise in futility. No matter what I did,
these people would not be happy. I did learn that if I kept the peace, things
would be calm and stable. I also learned that if I did not do exactly as they
asked, that stability and "love" would be gone and ugly things would take its
place.
Once I set out on my own, I started searching for that love I had heard so much
about. Of course, my concept of love was warped, so my quest was futile to
begin with. I seemed to think that if I kept someone happy, they would stay with
me, and love me. I made this mistake in my first marriage. Kim was a good
woman, for the most part. She had her flaws just as I did. I thought that as
long as I saw to all of her needs, she would be happy and never leave. So I did
not complain about her not doing any housework or anything "domestic." In the
early weeks of our union I was working 60 hours a week and going to college
full time. She had dropped out of school and was unemployed. I would come
home to a messy house and make my own dinner and wash my dishes before
heading back out to class or to close the store I managed. I did this without
complaint for a long time because I thought as long as she was happy, I could
have the love filled home I always wanted. I even forgave what some men
would not, just so that she would stay with me. I learned the cold hard truth 8
years later when she left me. Her reason, she just could not handle my illness
anymore. All of that effort to keep her love was wasted because of the illness I
have. I had plodded on towards yet another oasis only to find a mirage. Love
was never there to begin with. So what did I do? I went chasing the next oasis.
My second marriage to Raine was even stranger, and once again the ghosts
from my past seemed to creep in. We had difficulties before she went into the
coma. I thought afterwards things would be different, and they were. I thought
things would be better, and for a time, they were. But she had a tendency to
use my abandonment issues against me. When something difficult happened,
she would threaten to leave me-heck she even said she would leave after she
had set the stove on fire. So what did yours truly do then? I of course told her
to go take a break and I would clean up the mess and take care of the smoke
damage. To keep her happy and keep her around, I stayed up late washing
walls and cleaning an oven. Not because of love, but because of fear, just as
in my youth. Over time I saw how this threat of abandonment was used to
manipulate me, and I learned to resent it. I dropped back on my "puppet
dancing" and eventually things got even worse. I am not sure of the exact
moment I realized that this oasis too, was a mirage, but I did. Perhaps the night
the doctor wanted me to go to the hospital due to chest pains and I was yelled
at for it may have been the last straw, I do not know. I do know that very night I
sat and cried realizing that her love was an illusion (one that i helped create)
and hoped that my heart would simply stop beating. I looked around at the
sand that used to seem like an oasis and I wanted to choke on it. At the time I
thought there was no oasis of romantic love for me.
As of late I have come to realize how this chasing of mirages has affected my
professional life and my social (non-romantic) life. There are some I work with
who I have exhausted myself for. I have worked to the point of collapse
numerous times. Part of this stems from the "chains" I referred to months ago,
but it also relates to the chasing of mirages. I thought that by doing all of these
things I have done for my boss (off the clock) would be good karma and
bounce back at me. I had not had a true day off from the bowling alley since
my hospitalization last year. I had given and given for my boss lady and the
center itself. However, when I had pneumonia a few weeks ago and was
ordered by the doctor not to work, I was still asked to work. When I asked for a
day off to attend an event, things got ugly. I was told that she was the boss
and I would work whatever she told me to. So after being the disk jockey for a
high school dance last weekend, yours truly had to come and close the bowling
alley, getting home at 5 in the morning. Mind you my boss knows that I am
having serious health issues, yet she still expects me to keep doing all of the
free things I have done.
On top of that occurrence, I was clearing out the answering machine at work
and heard a phone call between Jessica and her fiancé that had been
recorded accidentally. My heart broke when I heard what she actually thinks
about me-that to her I am to just an expendable asset. But who is to blame for
this mess? Not just her, but myself. I let it happen.
I sat in my office asking myself why I keep chasing these mirages. I searched
online and read some stuff about co-dependency and other problems. Those
scared me, but they really do not explain my "problem." The problem is I have
been chasing mirages. Whether they are a boss, a family member, or a
romantic partner, I cannot make them love me.
And there it is, the root of it all. I have been unconsciously deluding myself into
thinking that I could be such a wonderful person that I can make someone love
me and make them worry about my needs. I cannot make someone love me. I
cannot make them care about my health, emotions, or needs. I am an arrogant
fool for thinking that by being "Superman" I can make people care. People will
care or they won't. People love you, or they do not. Just as God's love is there
no matter what we do, just as my dog adores me no matter what, emotions of
others cannot be changed. Just as my emotions belong to me, theirs belong to
them. The blame for my dry throat is mine. I have been killing myself trying to
earn what is not able to be earned. In doing so I have let people use and
abuse me. Some still try. Some make threats if I do not make them happy,
mother still talks at me through clenched teeth when I do not do the puppet
dance. But I will not let them control me any more. They cannot make me do
anything I choose not to do. Just as no matter what I do I cannot stop them
from being self-centered jerks.
I can however, stop chasing mirages. I do have an oasis of love now, and will
talk about that in the near future. I have plenty to drink right here in front of
me, I can stop searching for more. I have so much love now I can bathe in it. I
think I am going to. Outside of this oasis the mirages can be seen for what
they are. The people in my life that have turned out to be those mirages can
go pound that dry, hard sand up their asses. Someone is drawing me a bubble
bath.
Be well,
Sponge
03/26/2007
are in desperate need of water. The traveler feels the dryness of their throat,
the burning of their skin and the gradual dehydration of their bodies. In the
distance they spot an oasis-a patch of water in the middle of all of that
sand-just waiting for the traveler to get there and quench their thirst. The
traveler continues on and on, plodding on towards that oasis and the water it
offers. Often in these same movies the traveler finds that the oasis was nothing
more than a mirage. The heat of the sand is so intense that it makes the air
above it 'bend." That bent air causes the reflection of the blue sky to appear
on the desert sand. There was no water after all, simply an illusion. The
traveler then collapses and either dies of thirst or is rescued by someone else.
My readers, I have been fooled by mirages in my own life all too often. Or
rather, what has happened to me is that I travel on towards the next oasis, find
that it is nothing but a mirage, look around to spot another oasis and travel
towards that one only to discover that it too, is nothing but an illusion. It seems
that for nearly 40 years I have been fooling myself into believing my constant
walking will find that cool patch of water that will quench my thirst.
You all know my writings enough by now to know that this is yet another
analogy of mine, a metaphor for a hard-learned life lesson. You all should
know the personal demons I have been fighting have made me face some cold,
hard truth about my own personality. I have shared and been sharing them
here because the feedback I get from some of you is so very wonderful. If my
personal revelations can help you all, as it seems they do, I am more than glad
to share them. I know what it is like to be out there with no guidance or hope. I
also know what it is like to have psychobabble spewn at you by so-called
experts. I am not an expert on psychology, only my own life. I hope that these
experiences and revelations I share can help some of you. If it only helps one
person, then it is worth sharing my pain and growth with all of you.
The personal oasis I am referring to is unconditional love. I have used that
phrase a great deal as of late, so perhaps I should explain what I mean by
unconditional love. I made reference to it once in a much older essay, but I
think I need to go a bit deeper here. Unconditional love is what we hear about
in fairy tales and in the Bible. According to the New Testament, Christ loved us
so much he died for our sins. He loves us no matter what we have done or will
do in the future. We can commit horrible sins, yet Christ's love for us is so
intense we can still enter heaven if we just accept that gift of salvation. We are
told that the gift stems from grace, meaning there is nothing we can do to earn
that gift of love. We are told that no matter how saintly a lifestyle life we might
lead, how much philanthropy we do, we can not earn our way into heaven.
Faith and acceptance of the gift are all it takes.
Many Christians, especially those of us with dysfunctional families cannot grasp
this concept. It is very difficult to believe that someone loves us not because of
who we are, but because we simple "are." We are told that Christ loves us
because we exist, nothing more. This is the concept of unconditional love.
When someone loves us simply because we breathe, that is unconditional love.
When we do bad things that hurt their feelings, they may be hurt, but they still
love us.
Some of you do not share my faith, or have difficulty understanding love since
you cannot really see Christian love in your every day life. Therefore I will use
a different example. Those of you with pets will understand what I am referring
to here. My little mutt D.J. loves me unconditionally. No matter how late I have
been out bowling or doing other things, he never gives me grief when I get
home. Even though he is ten years old he gets so excited when I walk in the
door he does his little dance and sometimes pees himself he is so happy to see
me. It might be five in the morning and I reek of the beer some drunk spilled on
me, he wants to jump in my lap and be close to me. I might be in one of my
grumpy moods and pushing him away, but he still wants to lick my face and
show me affection. He might be feeling the ache in his bones, but he still wants
to bring me one of his stuffed animals as a welcome home present. He sits
there as I complain about the pain in my body and the look in those big brown
eyes says it all, "I'm so happy you are with me again" seems to be what D. J. is
telling me. Days that I am very sick and cannot get out of bed, D.J. never asks
me to take him outside. He will lay next to me or at my feet just offering me
comfort. I might be vomiting or have my own crap all over me, but my mutt just
wants to have my company.
Why does my dog do that? Why is it that on days I cannot play with him or do
things just for him he still wags his tail for me and tries to make me happy?
Because he has a dog's unconditional love for his human. Those of you with
dogs can relate to what I mean here. Take a look at those big brown eyes and
tell me what you see when your dog looks at you. That is adoration.
In my family and social life I never really knew unconditional love before. Love
was a word that was rarely used in our home when I was a child. Not only that,
my experience taught me that even if someone says they love you, you had
better do exactly as they say or you will experience physical or emotional pain.
My parents fought almost daily and the threat of their splitting up always hung
over our home like a dark cloud. The effect this had on a young mind was
pretty severe. I learned to do things to keep the peace so that there would be
no yelling, no violence, and no abandonment. My heart was trained at keeping
everyone happy, satisfying the needs of others in my home so that we would
be one happy family.
Sadly my young mind did not learn the exercise in futility. No matter what I did,
these people would not be happy. I did learn that if I kept the peace, things
would be calm and stable. I also learned that if I did not do exactly as they
asked, that stability and "love" would be gone and ugly things would take its
place.
Once I set out on my own, I started searching for that love I had heard so much
about. Of course, my concept of love was warped, so my quest was futile to
begin with. I seemed to think that if I kept someone happy, they would stay with
me, and love me. I made this mistake in my first marriage. Kim was a good
woman, for the most part. She had her flaws just as I did. I thought that as
long as I saw to all of her needs, she would be happy and never leave. So I did
not complain about her not doing any housework or anything "domestic." In the
early weeks of our union I was working 60 hours a week and going to college
full time. She had dropped out of school and was unemployed. I would come
home to a messy house and make my own dinner and wash my dishes before
heading back out to class or to close the store I managed. I did this without
complaint for a long time because I thought as long as she was happy, I could
have the love filled home I always wanted. I even forgave what some men
would not, just so that she would stay with me. I learned the cold hard truth 8
years later when she left me. Her reason, she just could not handle my illness
anymore. All of that effort to keep her love was wasted because of the illness I
have. I had plodded on towards yet another oasis only to find a mirage. Love
was never there to begin with. So what did I do? I went chasing the next oasis.
My second marriage to Raine was even stranger, and once again the ghosts
from my past seemed to creep in. We had difficulties before she went into the
coma. I thought afterwards things would be different, and they were. I thought
things would be better, and for a time, they were. But she had a tendency to
use my abandonment issues against me. When something difficult happened,
she would threaten to leave me-heck she even said she would leave after she
had set the stove on fire. So what did yours truly do then? I of course told her
to go take a break and I would clean up the mess and take care of the smoke
damage. To keep her happy and keep her around, I stayed up late washing
walls and cleaning an oven. Not because of love, but because of fear, just as
in my youth. Over time I saw how this threat of abandonment was used to
manipulate me, and I learned to resent it. I dropped back on my "puppet
dancing" and eventually things got even worse. I am not sure of the exact
moment I realized that this oasis too, was a mirage, but I did. Perhaps the night
the doctor wanted me to go to the hospital due to chest pains and I was yelled
at for it may have been the last straw, I do not know. I do know that very night I
sat and cried realizing that her love was an illusion (one that i helped create)
and hoped that my heart would simply stop beating. I looked around at the
sand that used to seem like an oasis and I wanted to choke on it. At the time I
thought there was no oasis of romantic love for me.
As of late I have come to realize how this chasing of mirages has affected my
professional life and my social (non-romantic) life. There are some I work with
who I have exhausted myself for. I have worked to the point of collapse
numerous times. Part of this stems from the "chains" I referred to months ago,
but it also relates to the chasing of mirages. I thought that by doing all of these
things I have done for my boss (off the clock) would be good karma and
bounce back at me. I had not had a true day off from the bowling alley since
my hospitalization last year. I had given and given for my boss lady and the
center itself. However, when I had pneumonia a few weeks ago and was
ordered by the doctor not to work, I was still asked to work. When I asked for a
day off to attend an event, things got ugly. I was told that she was the boss
and I would work whatever she told me to. So after being the disk jockey for a
high school dance last weekend, yours truly had to come and close the bowling
alley, getting home at 5 in the morning. Mind you my boss knows that I am
having serious health issues, yet she still expects me to keep doing all of the
free things I have done.
On top of that occurrence, I was clearing out the answering machine at work
and heard a phone call between Jessica and her fiancé that had been
recorded accidentally. My heart broke when I heard what she actually thinks
about me-that to her I am to just an expendable asset. But who is to blame for
this mess? Not just her, but myself. I let it happen.
I sat in my office asking myself why I keep chasing these mirages. I searched
online and read some stuff about co-dependency and other problems. Those
scared me, but they really do not explain my "problem." The problem is I have
been chasing mirages. Whether they are a boss, a family member, or a
romantic partner, I cannot make them love me.
And there it is, the root of it all. I have been unconsciously deluding myself into
thinking that I could be such a wonderful person that I can make someone love
me and make them worry about my needs. I cannot make someone love me. I
cannot make them care about my health, emotions, or needs. I am an arrogant
fool for thinking that by being "Superman" I can make people care. People will
care or they won't. People love you, or they do not. Just as God's love is there
no matter what we do, just as my dog adores me no matter what, emotions of
others cannot be changed. Just as my emotions belong to me, theirs belong to
them. The blame for my dry throat is mine. I have been killing myself trying to
earn what is not able to be earned. In doing so I have let people use and
abuse me. Some still try. Some make threats if I do not make them happy,
mother still talks at me through clenched teeth when I do not do the puppet
dance. But I will not let them control me any more. They cannot make me do
anything I choose not to do. Just as no matter what I do I cannot stop them
from being self-centered jerks.
I can however, stop chasing mirages. I do have an oasis of love now, and will
talk about that in the near future. I have plenty to drink right here in front of
me, I can stop searching for more. I have so much love now I can bathe in it. I
think I am going to. Outside of this oasis the mirages can be seen for what
they are. The people in my life that have turned out to be those mirages can
go pound that dry, hard sand up their asses. Someone is drawing me a bubble
bath.
Be well,
Sponge
03/26/2007
