There are times when I try to establish as much distance between myself and reality as humanly possible.  “I don’t want to end up here, again.”  I exhaled with passionate resolve.  The clarity of a dysfunctional life pattern having materialized with startling exactness.  “My work is to figure out how and why I end up, despite my best and most intentional efforts, here again…to do an autopsy on this thing.”  He grimaced that an autopsy sounded too morbid a reference of it. We agreed to reframe the verbiage and look again at the relational prototype.  “I stopped believing in myself, again.”  “Surrendered the truth that was in my heart and soul for something…someone who seemed more credible.”  So I exchanged again my truth for lies, because I wanted to believe in them; because reality is raw and callous and uncomfortable.

 

He pointed as his brows furrowed quickly, “that’s it.”  “Not to oversimplify things, but there is your autopsy.”  “always telling yourself the truth.”  

 

 

I sat for a moment.  “Denial is a place I have often arrived at.”  “It is a space proverbial and dysfunctionally comforting.”  I thought further…” It is because, I think…reality is sometimes almost too painful, and so I fold back into the place of aligning fabricated storylines to construe my own reality.”  Denial

 

I am almost exhausted just thinking of the work it entails to stay truthfully in a healthy mental environment.  “Don’t we all have some form of dysfunction at the end of the day, am I over thinking this?”  “Should I just resolve to accept that I am imperfect and make peace with those actualities?”

 

He explained the purpose of our work as being the opportunity to learn from ourselves in order to grow and become more whole; evolved and informed in our choices and living.  “Just because the world is covered in shit, doesn’t mean I want the shit all over me.”  I nodded, grinned a tiny bit.  That was truth; life covered in shit; the notion of going through it while attempting to not be drowned in excrement. 

 

Having the courage to not merely face, but to summon and furthermore remain present with the pain and the fear and the brutal realities.  The courage to learn what they have to teach us about ourselves.  To rightly make peace with the truth.

 

…and nothing but.