Forts

1.31.08

Its 3:41pm. After a big lunch. The computer screen’s getting a little blurry. Words are running into each other. The caffeine from my third diet coke of the day is hardly having any affect.

Now, as tempting as curling up beneath my desk sounds, I look at the mangy area beneath my laptop and my phone and I realize that logistically, that this would never be possible. As I look down at my cavernous stomach that just consumed a bacon double cheeseburger and a bacon, cheese hot dog (look, I was hungry and I got confused), I wish back for those days when I was nimble, flexible and small and could make an enclosed area my personal fort. Armed with a blanket and imagination, I was secure from the dangers around me, invisible to only those who chose to see me. Underneath my bed was my own private bunker that not even the most power nuclear weapon could penetrate.

And then I grew. Taller, initially, and eventually wider as my love for double bacon cheeseburgers caught up to me.

As a look the chair across the from me in my office or my desk, I wish for the days that I could nimbly climb into the smallest of spaces and hide away with a security of a warm blanket and lights and sounds of the world would seem like a distant hum lulling me to sleep.

4:14 pm. Caffeine’s kicking in.

white space

As a kid, I remember the thing I used to love the most of was a blank sheet of white paper. It was fuel for my imagination. I could draw worlds on it; planes that could only fly in the wind blown skies of my mind, swords and knights defending castles from cloudy dreams from the night before. I remember as the years went past, I craved for my life to be like a blank piece of paper; I viewed every beginning of every semester as a new chance, a new blank page, a clean slate for me to begin my trek anew and right the academic wrongs from months past.

Strange now that I am intimidated most by that blank sheet. Whether it is the pad of paper in front of me or the white sheet shown on my computer screen, I listlessly look at it with haunted eyes. I wonder where the days of my childhood have gone when I relished the potential creation in the pristine whiteness of a page. Now, I dread the potential ensuing failures that marking it will most surely follow.

Silly, I know. But insecurities and fears are rarely ever founded on sturdy foundations of logic and truth. And a blank page still intimidates me.

The lies we tell ourselves

1/22/08

Lately, I’ve been thinking that my sanity literally hinges on the lie that my mind subconsciously maintains between my self-perception and reality. Like my daily refusal to weigh myself in the morning and my self-evaluation as I walk out of the shower and look at myself in the mirror. You’re not that fat, Nate. Look you can still see some definition. Look at that gun show. Of course, this self examination is always more convincing with a well fogged mirror and my contacts conveniently in a case with solution. Blurry, hazy images always leave much for the imagination to define.

Never mind that my jeans are a little snug. You just left them in the dryer too long and they shrank a little. Or that with certain tee shirt, there are bulges in areas that weren’t quite as bulgey before. These damn European cuts. Today’s XL’s are yesterday’s mediums. Yes, these are the little lies that I tell myself to keep myself sane.

These lies translate to work as well. I lie to my employer daily to seem more productive than I actually am. I’m sure he lies to me in that he acts like he knows exactly what he’s doing and that everything is completely fine even with this economy headed down a one way road for a messy shit can.

Now the question that must be asked is, would we want to live in a world without these lies?

The reason I’ve been thinking about this is the one relationship in my life that I know is completely based upon a lie. My relationship with my parents.

Now I pause for a second for those who are completely shocked by this revelation. Appalled by it. But to these fine, upstanding folk, I simply ask the question, if you’re parents knew everything that you did on a daily basis, do you think your relationship would change?

Mine certainly would. Who can blame them? Your parents, if they love you and typically, they do, have this best case scenario view of you, untainted by your failures, your flaws, or by the fact that you grew up and you are your own sentient, self aware being now. They view you as these beautiful, in shape, successful individuals.

And in reality you are an unattractive, overweight, overworked person that is still scrambling to figure out if the dreams you had once can be reality or if this hell-based nine to five desk job is the best that life can offer you.

And yet we still maintain this lie. We maintain this lie with more lies, blanket statements, avoidance, old pictures, gym memberships, smiles and I love you’s said in half hearted geniunism and such.

Oh. And these lies are much easier to maintain over the phone. Calls once a week. More than that and this act that we put on strains a little.

My point is I enjoy that my parents have a perfect vision of me that I will never nor want to achieve. It’s endearing. It shows that they love me. But in order to maintain this vision of their successful baby child, they must not pursue the truth of the matter. Don’t be a doubting Thomas; searching for evidence for circumstances that might or might not be possible. We’ve lived with this lie so long; and just as I have accepted the fact that my parents are not my god-like figures that I once perceived them as, and I acknowledge that lie that I once told myself, I venerate that. I don’t try to destroy it.

Thus, in conclusion, this is the reason that I do not enjoy having my mother stay at my residence for a month at a time. The lies we live cannot exist in the sun and the air of reality and must be fostered in the dark, damp and warm places like our minds and our hearts.