I've always thought of myself as an artist. I am not an artist. I have always, in my mind, thought that I was creative and artistic and yes, smart. Egotistical as it may seem, this is how I've always viewed myself. I've always thought I was different than the average man. Unique. Somehow this has given me comfort and made me feel like making all the choices I've made in my life, normal choices, common choices, those every day choices, were special. I wasn't doing it as a average man, I was doing these things as an outsider secretly posing as an average man. This frame of mind has always allowed me to live the way I've lived without regrets.
It's all another lie.
What isn't a lie, is my depression. My self loathing. My lack of self confidence. The perpetual quiet hum of sadness that murmurs inside my head like a tiny machine that never turns off. Being an "artist" somehow makes that all have purpose, admitting otherwise just means I'm mentally ill.
So now, at 41, I have to consider how long I allow myself to continue to wrap myself in the warm comforting blanket of this lie I've been telling myself. This self-sustaining fabrication that makes me feel like I haven't somehow given in to the drudgery of normal life that every other man I know has given in to.
A trick I like to play on myself is to joke about how average my life is. To offhandedly remark how much I like my Subaru and my Polo shirts and my dinner parties. I'm only doing these things and making these decisions ironically. It's me being sarcastic at my on existence.
Yet another lie.
It's safe to say we all thought we would be someone when we grew up, we had an idea in our minds of how our lives would wind and turn and where they'd end up. It's also safe to say that aside from the very few, lucky individuals, no one gets to be exactly who they thought they'd be. Often, Life takes over as we slide over into the passenger seat and stare out the window at the view.
I have this theory. You know how sometimes when someone suffers a traumatic physical event, a horrible accident or something and their friends and family ask them what they remember and they respond with, "I remember getting into the car, turning onto the road...and then...waking up here in the hospital". Our brains remove that tremendously stressful memory from our heads and simply skip ahead. What if that's what happens when we die? What if our all powerful mind simply erases our memory of dying and our sub-conscience just caries on with life, creating our future based on our life before dying? We just continue to live, forever, within our own consciousness.
One final lie, to last throughout eternity.
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