Flywheel Society - Assignment Three (Honesty)

I’m judging you right now.   Sizing you up.   Trying to find a weakness; anticipating you determining my own.   I’m already sparring with you in my mind, rehearsing arguments and claiming victory.  Years spent as an undersized and out-of-touch kid took a sense of humor and weaponized it.  You’re sleeping right now?  That’s cute.   Sleep is for people who don’t have a vicious mental theatre to attend.  While you’re sailing through some nameless weekday, I’m building alliances around you.   I’m ensuring my survival.

I’ve known people for 20 years or more, my dearest friends, who have never really seen the dark side of me.   The really ugly stuff seems to be saved for those who are closest of all.   Somewhere inside of me, my defensiveness and fear fester together into a thick, black poison.  Strangely, the more I fear losing you – the more awful I will be if I perceive a slight.   That’s right – it needn’t be real, it only has to feel real to me.  The wrath will be real enough for both of us.

It used to drive my mom crazy when my friend’s parents would tell her how wonderful I was.   It was no act – they simply hadn’t done anything to trigger me; to set me off.   But she knew about the me they would never see, the me who was so ruthless and awful.   For many years, that part of me seemed reserved almost exclusively for her.  Don’t question me, Mom.   Don’t you dare try to parent me.   I have these moments where I picture my own kids, my flesh and blood, speaking to my wife that way.  That won’t go well.   It won’t do to have any replicants of me face off with the prime.   I think the fabric of the universe would tear if something like that happened.   Best to hope that I can continue to change, or, perhaps the easier path: that they got their mom’s genes in this matter.    There’s something about children, though.   It’s like taking some of your ugly faults and stretching them over the 4’ tall frame of a kindergartener.   Suddenly your faults have a voice; and thin skin; and they operate completely independent of you.

My wife has a well of patience so deep that I have yet to plumb it in 10 years time.  She holds a mirror to me, showing me the ugliness of my very tone.   She is calmly refining me, enduring me along the way.  She treads so lightly on my weakness, testing the earth there to see if it is yet ready to bear weight.  She is a signpost to a better place.  Alas, my stubbornness prevents the asking of directions.