Fever Dream

 

After a night of raw seventies-style fever dream, I woke up disturbed again by the whole thing, struggling to make any sense out of it, considering that’s not the way I grew up. I mean, I didn’t grow up in a low-income trailer park or surrounded by desperate people who always stay in trouble with the law. That was to come much later with the people I associated with after my first wife. But who knows, maybe that’s where the dream came from?

Now, I’m sitting here some 40 years older and a lifetime away from that world. Still a stranger in a strange land, tiptoeing his way through the landmines laid by the natives. But even when I do make it home, I’m a stranger there myself. For time still affects us, whether we know it or not. And like most humans, we take the path of least resistance just to make it through, even if it means abandoning the moral values we once held true.

So I sit in my “cone of silence,” creating my own world, surrounding myself with like-minded people. People who I never have to see face-to-face. People who don’t know the inflection of my accent or the intensity of my blue eyes. People who can only guess at my laughter and wit through the words they see on the page. I tell many of them, if you were to see me face-to-face, you’d be so disappointed. Much like my own family, who doesn’t take me with any degree of seriousness or respect.

So I hide behind the characters I created through the different phases of my life. The half-sophisticated businessman who’s seen and experienced it all. Or the family man buried under so much obligation that he doesn’t know himself, only the job he’s got to do. Or the listener, who offers an ear to listen—who may not have all the answers, but at least gives you room to vent. Or that little boy, afraid in the shadows of a stronger-than-life family, tortured by his own inadequacies and fears.

Those are the things I see, those are the stories I tell.

#Reflections #WhoWeAre #Masks #ImposterSyndrome #You