What is it that gives you your perception of yourself? How do you know you?
My earliest memory:
As I awake I can’t see the familiar, not my bedroom, Mom’s not near, nothing I know. Everything is foggy, distorted, even distant. I scream and scream again. Eventually, I become aware of something just out of reach. I continue screaming as this unknown form reaches into my presence and speaks with a voice that makes no sense in my distress. As It moves closer, I make out a hag approaching, trying to quiet me but I only scream louder. Escape – If Only…
First Memory. Powerful feeling.
Years later, knowing that I awoke in an oxygen tent hundreds of miles away from where I had my first (number one of two) asthma attack does not remove the feeling of aloneness and abandonment. The feeling remains of stark terror, unspeakable fear that could only be expressed with screams. But I am three-years-old, cannot make sense out of the distortion of the world through the clouded, oxygen tent – who was this hag trying to silence me, why my Mother was not with me. If Only she was there. Of course I did not know she was out in the Lobby, that in 1953 hospital protocol disallowed her in the intensive care unit, that she could hear me hundreds of feet away but couldn’t get passed the nurses. Or that I would soon be reunited once I could breathe more clearly.
Fear, the unknown, the incomprehensible, the overwhelming is like that. If Only…
I live forward another three years.
Peering down from out of the darkness before me is the Glowing. Higher than I and shrouded in shadows, just a few feet away. Alone and disoriented, not knowing where I am, how I got here or most important, how to escape the Presence hovering just beyond. Screaming in terror again.
One of the neighbors alerts Mom to screaming coming from carport, Mom rushes out to bring me into the house where she had just put away the goods of grocery trip. I had gone to sleep in the back seat of the car and she had left me for only a few minutes in a safe and secure place – to her – not me. A six-year-old awakens – almost – and perceives the phantom in the rafters through the open garage doors a few feet away – lurking, menacing, threatening, blocking the way to safety – so real, real enough to teach me fear. If Only…
Remember the Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving? How about the cartoon animation by Disney in 1949 which was in theaters repeatedly through my childhood? I remember the night I woke up with legs throbbing after running for hours in my dream as the Headless Horseman pursued by and I could not escape.
Remember the old Norwegian fairy tale of Three Billy Goats Gruff? That bridge with the Troll living under it was on the path I had to take daily walking home from grade school. The Troll waiting, unseen, every day, for me instead of the billy goats. Any other way but no, the one path home. If Only…
Being sent to bed early…
In bed, under the covers, in the dark, muffled sounds, argument, beyond the wall, closed door separating from my parents. Knowing sent to bed early because I was Wrong. While I cringe under the covers in my darkness, they are arguing, probably about how bad I am and what to do. It sounds like Father may leave because of Mom’s anger. And I don’t even know what I did to cause this chaos. Despair. How can I fix, be better, measure up when I don’t even know what I did. I must figure it out because the turmoil, the guilt for the possible consequences is causing an ache in my soul. I make promises to myself to be better, to not cause chaos, but I fail. If Only…
Do you have Acceptance baggage? More correctly, Rejection baggage?
That was most of seventy years ago but it would be over fifty years before I began to remember the craving I had for Acceptance at any price. The feelings of fear, rejection, failure to be acceptable hid under the surface of my life, subjugated, until another series of events reminded me of the feelings I had denied for so long. That denial was not intentional for I was totally unremembering events which I long ago learned to bury beyond my awareness. I had very effectively learned to cope with pain first by denying it existed and also denying the traumas which nurtured those feelings.
Life is like that. Almost everyone has trauma or crisis or pain in their life whether mental perception, physical abuse, relational or even medically symptomatic. Fortunately many have nurturing circumstances which help them to recognize, adjust, go through with or support in edifying ways. The rest of us quite often become addicts – yes, maybe with alcohol or drugs – but just as likely with coping mechanisms. Coping gives us a sense, a feeling, of normalcy – that everything is good enough, that the pain isn’t as great as the escape. I’m thankful for all my acquaintances that have no experience worthy of escape or who learned healthy coping in the formative years but I’m from that other population that has always sought to be normal, acceptable, but never quite knew the way.
Some of you “normal” folks would be surprised at how many of your highly functional, highly productive, highly successful and, yes, highly profitable acquaintances do life out of an intense desire to measure up, to become acceptable. The image of the down-and-out addict quite possibly is someone who has become so good at coping that they have ceased to be functional. But, they didn’t start that way.
Do you see yourself through filters? In digital photography, we have the capability to shoot in RAW format and then in the digital applications change the image in all the ways we used to have to do with the film camera before we took the photo. Now we can change the depth, contrast, brightness, tints, even perspective after the image has been captured. Acceptance can be like that if we learn to apply the proper filters to ourselves. We all have a RAW image of ourselves but the filters we apply may or may not be accurate to reality. In ourselves, we have a series of filters either that others have given us or that we have created. Social media has done a disservice to followers by giving influencers the power to create the image that you should live up to which seldom has any connection to reality. Television, movies and celebrities for sports and media all create an image filter that many then use to measure their life against.
It is a worthwhile pursuit to take a meaningful visit to the image lab and see where our image processing filters are coming from and what is the likeness we are applying to ourselves to mold our development. Back in the photo film days, pre-digital, development took place in a darkroom where time, light and chemicals were used to draw the image out of the film. Curiously, film was always a negative image while the print that you received was a positive image – just the opposite. Too often, the filters and processing we use upon our RAW image takes the positive and ends up creating a negative self-image.
What filters are you bringing to your image and do they create an accurate image of you?
