Defining I

I stare out into the parking lot at my apartment. Watch the mechanics move around, the service writers come in and out the office. I sit there in my van, ignition off, watching them all move about. I get this feeling, like nothing would miss a beat if I was gone from this world. Ya’ know, like all the cogs would still turn, the heads would bob, the feet would walk, the lives mill about all over the world and no one would blink an eye at my absence. Like if I just suddenly turned to dust. I get to feeling like a grain of sand in this world, so small and insignificant. It helps remind me my choices are just choices and what I have in my life today is not permanent. I get to thinking of how I would survive without all these people, this place, the money. My world pigeon holed in 13 square miles, forgetting I was something before I was this and before I was that, I was something else.

We’ve always been something or someone; one in the same are they not? We think of ourselves and become that thing, something our mind has created. I am grate, I am a painter, I am a dancer, I am a mother, a father, I am kind, I am crazy. All the labels making us something, someone. We are born into life and circumstances navigate us, our desires move us. We walk down paths we think are meant for us to walk down, we give meaning to them which produce understanding. Whether it be a positive or negative meaning, we find understanding. We make ourselves into who we need to be for these happenings, these circumstances in our lives. Like dog’s, we know how to nurture and survive, we are born with this instinct. We are not born dancers, we learn movement, we are not born painters, we learn the trade. We are not born mean and selfish; we learn these things.

I have been many things in my lifetime, maybe not as many as others, but I have lived different lives. It’s odd how memory works when it comes to that, memory is very selective and ego filled. It’s either remembering what I got or what I didn’t get, what I did or what I didn’t do. I think mainly when it comes to my daughter is when I remember nothing of me if that makes sense. Her happiness, her smiles, her victories and defeats, there is nothing about me in those memories. I’ve learned to love her unconditionally, no, I’ve always loved her unconditionally. I learned to love my ex-wife unconditionally. They are so much alike I confuse them once in a while. I was a husband, a dad, a drug addict, a liar, a cheat and a thief. I have been many things, made myself into many people. But my memory will only allow me to see who I was and not the change. Even though I can logically see the transformations in my life I still think this present one I am living is the only one, the permanent one. Holding close to all that brings security and safety.

Maybe that’s why we don’t let go of lovers, it’s not that we are still in love with them but that have created the security we have longed for ever since we were weened from our mothers. We build these lives around these people and they define us, comfort us, give reason to us. We forget we were someone before them and we will be someone after them. I’ve been a partner many times over, but only a few times have I had someone define me, having been that close that they were me. I know no one likes to see this perception of a relationship but I feel it true. We want to be individuals, independent, autonomous, but we are not when in love, when deeply committed. If we were, we could leave with no backlash to our mind. Of course our hearts will be hurt but we wouldn’t feel the loss in our heads, we would be able to be who we were and not need to change so much after the break.

I have been many people, but I only remember who I was like it’s a history lesson about someone else, it is no longer me. I can disconnect from it, like I know I lived that life, but that life was not me, this is me, this is my life, this moment and there is no other existence. This is good for staying centered in the now but leads to some difficulty when growing and changing. Some of us live the reoccurring life, namely habitual criminals who are kept by the state, drug addicts, someone caught in a dysfunctional relationship. Letting these circumstances define them, letting a past choose their fate. How many times have I heard, I go to jail that’s what I do, I’m an addict I can’t stop, I’m in love.

Maybe it’s not just lovers that define us and give us the security that we lost as we grew, maybe it’s whatever captures us. Being a drug addict defined me, when I was using and when I got clean. It was who I was, my only identity. Even when in love or staring my business or raising my daughter, being a drug addict defined me along with everything else. It was my comforting factor, it was my security, it defined me and how I interacted with the world around me. It was cumbersome at times, unruly, self obsessed, negative and filled with ego. As much as being an addict saved me it harmed me just as much, it confined me to a persona. I was young, 23 when I arrived in the program and I was lost, I needed to be an addict, I needed definition cause I felt I was nothing.

I’ll never not be an addict, I will never be able to use anything successfully but being an addict no longer defines me, it is no longer what I hold on to for security. Truth is today I’ve nothing to hold on to, no definition of who I am. Addiction, woman, business owner, dad – these are the things that defined me, maybe gave me worth, gave me a life? But these things have run their course. Yes I will always be a dad but my daughter is grown and not needing me as much as she did at one time. I haven’t attached myself to a woman in over 3 years, my business hangs on cause of a good reputation not because I work at making it thrive and we already discussed the addict part. This thought has been bouncing around in my head for quite some years now, coming and going like the seasons, I tend to get to feeling like a bedsheet hanging on a clothesline and blowing in the wind. I’m not really tethered to anything and barely hanging on to what’s around me, as freeing as it may feel at times, it is as scary and lonely just the same.

So where’s the conclusion to all this? Do I need something to define me, do I need to be defined? Do I need to be something or someone? Ego says I do, ego says I and I need’s definition. I need’s purpose, I needs attention, recognition, definition. But what if I don’t seek that out, what if I just blow around in the wind and watch life around me, unattached, just being. All my years have trained me otherwise,, it’s difficult to go against the grain. My physical life does not depend on a definition, my spiritual practice goes in the exact opposite direction of an I, but my mind, that kooky thing between my ears, that need’s a whole hell of a lot of things. Mind needs me to be something or someone, it needs to define me.

Maybe there is no definition of me, maybe there is just my existence and nothing more. Maybe no matter if I’m here or there, no matter my choices – maybe none of this matters, maybe I only exist cause I think it exists. Maybe I could be gone in the blink of an eye and it wouldn’t matter, like in the grand scheme of things. So maybe if I stop thinking of me and forging this life, I will let go of the idea of trying to be something or someone, of who I think I should be and where I should be.