Saturday, February 04, 2006

Staring Crazy in the Face

Have you ever stared crazy in the face and had it yell back at you? I had the pleasure of that last year, and in my boss' office, no less, with someone who worked under me making bizarre accusations of physical abuse. For those who have no idea what I look like, I'm not even 5 feet 2 inches and a man in his mid-thirties claimed I struck him and constantly intimidated him in a domineering, physical manner. Anyone who is physically intimidated by me really needs to get on some medication and apparently this guy desperately needed some chemical balancing.

I spent two months in a pretty bad emotional state. This was someone I had tried to help and I just couldn't make sense of how things got out of control so quickly and how every one of my actions had been misinterpreted in the worst possible manner. Unfortunately I think he was just one of those people that was so down on himself he saw negativity in everything. He would always believe that he was the victim and people were out to get him. He definitely had a personality disorder that distorted his view of himself and of others.

I was mad, sad, a bit scared and just completely baffled by this whole experience. One night I sat down at my computer and all of a sudden this odd style of writing came out of me. I hate to say it, but it almost has a rap kind of flow. It's like it's someone else's voice and I found it intriguing how quickly it came. It doesn't have a name or anything, but here it is:


So you think the world’s out to get you?
Yeah let’s believe that's true for a second.
It has nothing to do with the choices you choose,
It’s someone else who’s left this mess for you.

Maybe Jesus hates you and has set you up to fail
miserably at life, so when the rest of us prevail
we have something to compare our lives to, something
to measure against…a ruler, a yardstick to say “Yeah,
we’re definitely better than you.”

That’s what you think, that every time we laugh it’s at you,
and not with you. Like that would make a difference. There
are a lot of worse things in life than being laughed at, like cancer,
rape and pedophilia… You think we really spend that much time
thinking about ya, dealing with ya? Please, everybody’s so self absorbed
we’re sponges that can’t soak anything else up…but you gotta be strong like
the quicker, thicker picker upper…Brawny towels that don’t split open under the
weight of a bowling ball or some other unbelievable shit you see on tv.

You see everything as chaotic, but once you take a moment and let
it all slow down you see there’s a pattern and at the center there’s always
You. You’re the constant, you’re the thing that remains the same. Did you ever think
that if you change for a second, you’ll break the chain…like a dog on a leash begging to be free? You can run from yourself, run from the police but nothing's gonna change if you don’t stop…don’t stop and own what you create, what you fake, and know what makes you shake.

You find that thing that scares you and you stare it in the face. I promise
nothing is as scary as you believe it is if you knock on its door. It’ll crumble as soon as you kick it to the floor because you gotta want peace of mind and peace of heart so much more than whatever has been holding you back.

2 Comments:

At 10:33 PM, Blogger Duke_of_Earle said...

Pretty powerful stuff, T. I hope it's cathartic as well, and hope you're over that bizarre episode.

Don't let his problem(s) become yours.

John

 
At 9:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow, T, I didn't realized you had posted recently. I almost gave up on you for a while there. I liked this post. I do know the background and some of the details of the incident you allude to, but it's more than that. Very good writing, raw but inspired. I'll check back more frequently!

 

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