A Suit of Armor...

So, I've known for a long time that I'm more than a little weird. I have shared that already, yes? Okay, good. I thought so...

Apparently my therapist and my wife's therapist are in cahoots, because they've both determined without collaborating that I live inside a very robust suit of armor. Heck, I guess even my older Sis' therapist figured that out a long time ago, although in reference to my father - the tree from which I didn't fall too far. I've never questioned him on how he came to be the way he is, and am not at all certain that particular analysis might be true. I always felt him to be warm and caring toward me. Can a suit of armor be semi-permeable? Hmmm...

Anyway, this is all something of a revelation for me that I'm having to deal with, and its not easy. Only a short while ago, if you had asked me whether I was open and warm and caring, I'd have said yes without hesitation. I really do have a deep sense of empathy, feel the pain of others, am not ashamed to shed a tear. Just shed one this morning, in fact, over a story a Facebook friend wrote for a national magazine.

I fret over the fate of mankind - constantly. I hurt for victims of war and pestilence and natural disaster. If I come across an accident, I am the first out of my car trying to render aid. If a co-worker suffers a loss, the destruction of a relationship, some personal pain or suffering - I'm the first to lend comfort. Hell, I've been known to cry when shipping a puppy off to a good home. So, I'm a warm caring softie, yes? Well, maybe not so much...

I first came to realize some disturbing facets of my character back around the time of my initial semi-breakdown in the spring of '08. I had run myself a bit too ragged in the early grass-roots stages of the Obama campaign - keeping too long hours juggling campaign obligations and work, drinking too much, eating too little and too poorly, carrying more of a burden than was perhaps prudent. Most critically, I had let my energy reserves run so low that I found myself huddled in almost a ball in my bedroom, crying inconsolably, feeling lost and confused and afraid, and I'm pretty sure I was most afraid of me. Energy reserves, I know now, are very important - just to get through life and maintain some sort of mental and spiritual balance, and even more so if you have the added task of generating and maintaining an impregnable suit of psychic armor. Of course, when you don't know you have this armor thing going on, its kind of hard to focus on maintaining it...

So, what was my epiphany? Which I didn't recognize as an epiphany at the time? That I love mankind as a whole, but have little patience for individual human beings. I apparently make exceptions for strangers in pain, but these exceptions are temporary and only for strangers. And, if you're someone I really should care about - someone who loves me and truly cares for me, in whose life I play a central role and who should be able to rely on me for support? Look somewhere else. I'm too busy emoting about the world to care about you. Besides, you've been around me enough you should have picked up my strength. You should be resilient and strong and self-reliant, not some simpering weakling looking to me for support. I've got more important concerns to address. Hmmm... Can you say, "Asshole?"

Mahatma Gandhi famously said, "Be the change you want to see." I've always described myself as a "forest person" rather than a "tree person," and I think that remains largely true. However, I'm slowly coming to realize that I'm not God. Quite a letdown, let me tell you. In the end, I'm just another tree in the forest, and a pretty fucked up one at that. I may stand taller than the trees around me, and I may have developed the ability to generate some really lush foliage, but at the end of the day, I'm just another tree, and one with some really severe structural issues that need to be addressed. I'm working on them...

And, while my first responsibility is to be as strong and healthy a tree as I can be, I need to be considerate of the trees around me, the saplings below me, the soil in which we all grow. And I need to remind myself constantly that the health of the forest, to the slight degree I can affect it, depends on me being the best steward I can be of the gifts I've been given, and to do everything that I can to ensure the health and growth of those trees nearest me. My sphere of influence is very finite, but strongest right where I stand and nearby. And how brilliant was it for me to think I could ensure the health of the forest while my own spot was rotten and withering?

So, my lesson of the week is to remember that I'm not God, which I have to tell you is a real letdown. Oh, I mentioned that already? Yes, but still...

And so I have to take off this armor, this ego, this cloying fear-filled sense of self that won't let others near me and won't let me share of myself. And I need to set it aside. I've known this, conceptually and intellectually, for some time, and have been working on it sporadically and rationally. And half-heartedly. But it takes quite a bit more than this. Actually, a lot more than this. It takes the full focus of the body, mind, and spirit. It is an intense emotional and spiritual exercise, but one I know I can do. If I can just figure out how to get these buckles undone on this damn heavy sweltering constraining suit of armor. Hey, not as easy as it sounds, smart ass. We trees don't have opposable thumbs, you know?