The recognition that my primary mode of existence is to be a mask of courtesy that protects the gentle flowing depths within myself; the soft and gently moving currents of self below.
It is because of society, because of capitalism, pushing us to be a smooth and digestible commodity to be sold, that fits into expectations. I hate that I have defined myself as this part of myself that has to manage the world. I have always striven towards authenticity, but until now my authenticity has been so frozen that I couldn't see it under all the ice.
It is a deep and intense survival mechanism, to have manufactured a self that can survive and can protect the gooey center and preserve my faculties.
The worst part of that peeling away of that layer of the self is understanding that everyone has been packaged into the same commoditized smoothness, that everyone is suffering, distant from their selves in a way that they can't conceptualize.
Intellectually, I have understood this for a long time. The difference is the stance. Now I Feel it, see it from an inch of distance.
I want desperately to be more but most days I'm so beaten down that those parts of myself barely exist, like atrophied muscles. I'm pushing on them to expand them, to exist as much as possible.
