There are so many things going on in my mind lately...but I'll just try to share a few. I am more conscious now of the fact that my memory doesn't work very well and at least one day if I should forget what this was like I have documented it in some way.
After much deliberation I think I have finally made the commitment to ink myself. I used to be afraid ... afraid that I would choose something that later would mean nothing... or that my skin and its unpredictable sensitivities would react abnormally. All the fear has gone out the window recently. One of my brothers has a tattoo that I've loved since I saw it. Yes, it's religious...but I think that the older I get the more I believe in the things that I believed when I was growing up- the more life throws at me that I NEED to believe it for my own sanity. I have known a lot of people in my life who I admired- they were smarter and wiser than I was and they were avid believers that any belief such as mine was for the weak minded. So I hid it. Years later I care less and less what people think of me and I don't feel the need to put on a mask and pretend that I don't but I don't feel the need to advertise either. In the past, a lot of things happened that made me question it. But I think that happens to everyone- life is meant to make you question. And no, this does not mean that I don't believe in science or evolution. Let's not be ridiculous... but do I believe in energy? connection beyond chemistry? sure.
I think within families and groups of friends there are always some that you identify with more and although age separates us by more than 10 years, I see myself in my brother and him in me. And now after the last week I need a reminder of why we are still here. I want something tangible to remind me and I want some kind of way to honor it in a visible way. Do I need it? No. But I think that it will help me to accept things... to realize how far I have come and that some of us don't make it. I need to believe that they are forgiven, as well as myself. I have to believe that regardless of the mistakes we make, the love that we give is stronger than error. And more importantly,that I am not one to judge what is an error and what is not.
I have also been thinking a lot about masks. The disguises we put on that make us strangers to each other. They way that we hide parts of ourselves and show the parts that we either want people to see or are comfortable showing. It's a concept that has long been a part of our vernacular and mythology. We write novels about it... songs. Camus, Joel, Cohen. It's everywhere. But how often do you think about how well you know the people that are closest to you? Is that closeness something real, or an imagined one-sided connection? It used to really piss me off when I was younger and my mother told me that 'perception is reality'- although she was using that as leverage for an entirely different argument. But it's true for entirely different reasons. We create our own reality and the impressions we have of people are sometimes only that.
Maybe that is not who they really are. It often isn't and sometimes we find out in ways that shock or disappoint us. Last night my husband reminded me that I'm not always the most observant of the obvious things about a person. I think that is mostly because I accept people as they are without immediately attributing it to something underlying. It takes time for me to make those assumptions. But maybe our impressions of ourselves are wrong as well. Who I see when I look at myself is likely someone quite different than my husband sees in me- or perhaps not. In our mind is a private little island. Your lips are moving and saying something but your mind is somewhere else. I don't put anything past myself and I never assume that I would do or not do something in someone else's shoes. That's just dumb and reminds me of a mind-set that sits on the right. Perhaps naive and impossible, I try to wear as few masks as possible in my life. I think that I am often honest to a fault, but I feel more comfortable exposing these things than hiding them. It just makes me feel more human.
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