The stories we tell ourselves
“I am a failure” I silently hear in the most-deep parts of my mind. In the beginning,
it wasn’t this soft. The sound reverberated and echoed in my cavernous cranium.
And then. I started believing it. It came from the air, I think. Or I think I remember.
Then, it went into my breath. It floated around a bit and then it got tilled by my
conscious into my subconscious.
Crunch, scrunch, till and mill.
Air became breath and breath became belief.
I think that’s how it went. (Or how it goes.)
The ideas manifested and sat inside for years and years and became an
unconscious algorithm; a loose pearl-string of simple commands that informed
everything I did, an unholy trinity in the self-chastising chapel.
“Not enough. Not perfect” the whispers blew from the carbonised regions of my
mental soil.
Truth.
Or was it?
Or is it?
Truth!
What was it?
What is it?
Be careful what you listen to. What you allow inside your brain. Ideas are
dangerous, like a toxin-filled air we breathe that kills us slowly, ideas are the
same, no wait, they can be the same. We breathe them in through our ears and
we integrate them into our un-integrated wholes. We think that we are impervious
and those little things don’t make any difference. But they do. Look at water and
rock. Look at sun and sea. Look at mother and child. Small things make a
difference. They matter to people like you and me.
“You’re over-reacting, I was just teasing!” but wait your teases are meant to
erode and evade, your teases are subtle manipulations that change my
behaviours and beliefs. Your teases are drops, your teases are rays, your teases
are the motherly words spoken in un-motherly ways.
Truth?
Or are the soft voices just made up by me?
Or; were they originated from the big bang of my conception, were they instilled
from the beginning by my DNA stringing together in double-edged double-helixed
unnatural selection.
Or what?
The past is the past.
No.
Actually, it isn’t, the past is the present is the future is the past is the present and
is the future again. In a never-ending ocean that crashes on a shore. The past
and present and the future are the triangle that informs our lives, to the core. One
is the other. And another is the other but just, again, once more.
Be careful who you listen to, of the words that float on air.
Be careful what you believe in, because breath, you know, comes from air.
Choose what you believe in, dig deep and divulge the root.
Build watchtowers and gates in front of eager ears that gulp the words and
wishes that surround you, and then kick the rest with an unrelenting unflinching
boot.
There, that feels good.
“But, but, but” no, but no, your time is up, burn the beliefs that hold you back,
build the walls so they won’t come back; turn your back, turn, your back, back.
There.
Hold your breath, from the air, just a little, hold it back.
Crack.
The sound of a snapping root, the vision of diamonds that were once soil, that
was once air, that was once breath, that was once mother, that was once
thought, that was once other, and that was once other’s … .
Truth!
So, think twice before you suffer, and hold your breath, before it too, becomes
another’s root.