Some journeys, you gotta take alone

A bit over 3 years ago, I begun something that would turn out to be the most life-changing journey I could have ever chosen for myself. It has made me lie to my friends and push them out of my life, keep things from people I would normally gladly tell anything they’d want to know, only to stop them from stopping me finish what I started.

Some things you have to finish and to do so, you have to push away everyone you know cares about you.

But at the same time, you learn who respects you. You learn who take you seriously and trusts your judgement even when you do not make much sense, and who might look at you with their head tilted to the side, but they simply say: “You do what you got to, and I’ll be here if you need me.” Those kinds of friends are hard to find. I have one. My ex-husband Brett. And no, I didn’t burden him with all the details, either, but since he is the closest friend I’ve got, he picked up more than his share of worrying signs of growing obsession and worrying behaviour, and he was there to laugh with me when I got a diagnosis for psychosis… “Oh is that the only thing he picked up on?

You learn who will politely agree with you to your face, but who grow distant because they don’t know how to stop you from destroying yourself – unsure of whether what you are doing is sane or not, and whether, if this is who you’ve become, is someone they could respect in the future. Some decide they cannot.

Some want to rescue you from who you are becoming and turn you back to what they thought you always were – kind, silent, patient, meek… Even though inside you were screaming at everyone to shut the fuck up because you are simply sick of hearing the same old bullshit over and over and over again. They think you have changed, even though in reality, they are meeting you for the very first time without a mask.

And you learn what love is:

“That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending – performing. You get to love your pretence. It’s true, we’re locked in an image, an act – and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you’re trying to steal their most precious possession.”
― Jim Morrison

And what it isn’t.

“The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.”
― Jim Morrison

And it is that murder of your authentic self that you want to stop from completion, you bring yourself back from the brink of death at the final moment… And then they think you are exaggerating.

People fall into silence when talking becomes obsolete. When nobody hears you anyway, even if you spoke. Or they listen to the words and then twist them into meaning something that they are happier with. They may even laugh at the most bitter of your insults, thinking “Oh how cute she is saying stuff like that like she meant it.”

And you let them live out their days in the reality that they have built for themselves, comfortable, safe… Small.

You look at them and you do no longer see God in them but in yourself, and in them… You see the species that will finally define the final draft of Homo Sapiens as you are ready to evolve with those who do not know fear.

And now you understand why my friends slowly backed away.

(Do you have any idea what it is like to talk to someone, knowing that in the back of their head they are trying to evaluate exactly how insane you are while you try and reach them, so you could actually communicate two-way messages?)

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