« Leave me here, alright! », cried out C. « I don’t need you, I don’t need you ... » and then resumed to crying again. Sobs were the only comfort she got from staying alone in her bedroom. It wasn’t even her bedroom, it was someone else’s. Why was she crying? Since she’d come to this place ... no even before then ... since she’d left the other place, she’d sought a new self. Striving to find that other, more mature and confident self, she’d actually sacrificed her real self, in some way, because all the dark things she despised about herself, everything that prompted her to find that ‘other self’ came back in a more forceful way. Some days she’d feel free, liberated, she felt she could surrender everything to Him. Other days, she’d run away far from Him, feeling deep down inside that her dark side was too vast to be able to receive any of His light. In those days she just plunged head first into things she loathed the most. It was bad, she knew it, but she also knew that she wasn’t strong enough to walk away from it all, and therefore suicidely went in as a Kamikaze. She’d grown to realize that with her, it was either all or nothing, which made her a very difficult person to be with. In these few months of ‘independence’, as some would call it, or ‘loneliness’, as she would sometimes be tempted to call it, she’d actually started to subconsciously analyze her behavior. Was she playing her own psychologist? No, she didn’t know, all she was sure of was that somewhere in this silence, she was growing into someone else, someone she didn’t want to be. She looked around to see people who, for some, seem to have a life that was going all for the best, when others, those for whom life wasn’t so much of a blessing, either hid, or went along smiling with the rest of the crowd, too ashamed to admit that they had problems in there life.
Someone had locked her in this place. For what? She didn’t know. To learn what? Only God knew. Indeed. The more she thought about it, the clearer the answer seemed. It was the first step into the waters of her cloudy life, and it already looked like her life was going to be paved with trials, you know, spiritual trials. She felt guilty when she realized that she was fumbling with her ‘existential’ dilemmas, as the crowd would call it, and fellow peers around the world were in the worst possible ‘survival’ problems she could ever imagine! Some were on the verge of dying from hunger, others were in the constant fear of being sexually, drug, or other physically abused ... None of these victims had any choice in their problems, she had a whole panel of opportunities and decisions to make with her own free will, she was just ‘too lost’ for the moment in figuring out at which crossroads she’d come to. Last year she could only have dreamt of being where she was now, but as routine, life and other synonyms waltzed her down the road, she came to realize how vulnerable she really was in deciding what she would become in the future. Oh, there were so many models out there to base one’s every move on! Flip through a magazine and you’d find people galore to model your life on, but where would the ‘genetic uniqueness’ have space to develop itself, if everyone was to copy someone else, we’d all become ‘behavioral clones’! She had dreams as anyone has. She dreamt she could be fashionable; she would have that slim silhouette every girl had. She dreamt that she could fit in and buy all the clothes she thought looked fanciful. She dreamt that a charming prince would step up to her and ask her to date him. But when she came back down to earth, there was always something very unlawful about the whole enterprise. Why was her world, her society putting all this materialistic pressure on its citizens? It was just yesterday, that walking in the streets, she’d seen a 6 or 7 year old girl running around in clothes that were more womanly than what she wore herself! The six year old even had a posh looking handbag over her shoulder! When she thought about it, this society was stealing these children’s youth away, because of models it thought should determine what a person looks like. On one hand she desperately wanted to look more fashionable, and on the other she wanted to run as far away as possible from these fashion clichés who were ruling life in the ‘developed’ world. What was balance? To her, every new day was unclear and therefore a potential threat. She knew to Whom she’d should go to ‘in times of trouble’, but it seem to all come down to something else, something that only she could deal with, something that grabbed her identity, confidence and ‘true’ self away. She felt committed to find out what it was. A beam of sunshine fell at that point on her face. She sighed as she took in the pure warmth of the sun. Why was life not as pure and simple? Every step she now took seemed to require thought and responsibility. It was frightening and when fear prevails, then spontaneity recedes into the shadow of the targeted person. Amongst all these confusing questions arose a passage from a book she once had. The passage was entitled ‘Do You Believe In Yourself? The title itself sounded like the opening to a self-centered scientology meeting. But this was in a Christian book, so what was behind this?
‘Buried away underneath all your imperfections lays your ideal self, the successful, healthy, efficient, charming and attractive self that you could be if all your powers and possibilities were fully developed’. She had to stop and think after this first sentence. It was mind blowing. What she’d started to realize as she lived through these last months, was there, on paper, in letters. She cautiously looked round her empty bedroom. Was she the victim of another ‘Truman Show’ film? But she went back to the text, anxious to know ‘The Recipe’ to finding that imprisoned self.
‘That hidden self waits within you as surely as the oak lies potential within the acorn. It is not an imaginary being. It is you at your highest level, you as God wants you to be’, she lay back. Wasn’t this being a bit pretentious? She gave up her obsessing thoughts and went back to the text.
‘How can this ideal self be realized ?’, she breathed deeply as if in the middle of a thriller, ‘this’ was it, her questions would be answered within a few words.
‘The first essential is to believe in it.’ Oh, no! Her questions were answered by another of her problems.
‘You may have ability, but if you lack faith you surround yourself in a negative atmosphere which is sensed immediately by all with whom you come into contact. The faith that brings results is not the swaggering self-confidence of the egoist, but a quiet plodding faith in your capabilities. If you do not believe in yourself you cannot expect others to have confidence in you, for confidence is infectious, but this is a dangerous doctrine unless it is balanced on the spiritual side by an awareness of your utter dependence upon God. Believe in yourself; not the imperfect self, but the ideal self with all its potentialities, all that you might be, all that you could be’. C. had no more thoughts, no more comments to add to this one. She failed to understand the depth of this message and knew that the meaning would only come to her after a good night’s sleep. So she closed her book, puffed up her pillow and ... melted into a refreshing doziness, which cradled her to sleep. One day she might figure this out, but for the moment she felt too helpless to do anything what so ever, and just receded into her Kamikaze state of mind.
C.R 11.10.2004
