If Wishes Were Changes....

My last post, the one about the big, good thing, was post 1,111.  That is somehow auspicious.  When the clock lines up at 11:11 (or any time when all the numbers are the same),  we used to say that you can make a wish when we were children.  I still catch myself making quick wishes in those 60 brief seconds of time when I look up and it's 4:44 or 2:22 or whatever.  

Silly what chances we take to call out for the things our hearts yearn for, isn't it?  We see a sudden streak of light in a night-dark summer sky, and we throw our desires after it.  We blow out candles on a cake, and mingle our wishes in the streamers of smoke.  We catch an eyelash on the tip of a finger, breathe out a  little prayer with the puff of air it takes to send the tiny lash away.  A thanksgiving wishbone, a turned necklace clasp, a thousand folded origami cranes, three "pop-eyed" cars as we drive home on lonely roads in the night, we look for divine messengers everywhere.

I know what I'm wishing for, know what I want.  I don't know that any shooting star or brightfolded paper crane is going to facilitate those things coming to me, actually.  I have to reach for them myself.  Some of them I know how to reach for, know how to be bold in achieving.  And it feels good that I finally have come to a point where I feel like reaching for something again.  For so long I've been down, really, really down or sick, and I haven't felt like reaching for anything.  I've been in some places that I can't even talk about, some places I don't ever want to go back to this past year, a combination of stress, sick, and, I think, wrong medication dose.

But then are are the things that I don't know how to reach for, too.  I try to be totally honest with myself, at least as much as anybody is capable of doing with him/herself, because let's face it, we all lie to ourselves without meaning to do so.  It's...something of a survival mechanism, I suppose.  Growth comes when we are able to cut through those lies, confront them, look at the ugly truth, and move on.  I'm trying to figure out how to stop standing in my own way to get something, somebody that I need in my life.  If it were just an intellectual thing, I could whip it.  Games of the mind, unless they involve math, are things that I can handle.  Unfortunately, this particular issue is not and never has been for me.  It's something that involves allowing myself to trust another person, that they are sincere, that they can be sincere, and stepping out of so many comfort zones that I'm not sure I can do it.

To open myself up enough to start to show the real me instead of one of the slick masks I usually show to the world is hard, hard, especially after the last couple of messes. Very, very few people see the me that exists under the masks. Some just don't take the time to look; some I don't care to show for some reason; some I run like hell away from because they get too close. (And right now, if you know me as something more than a set of blog entries, you might be asking yourself into which of those four categories you fall....)  I have so many evasions.  Some of them are exceptionally competent and off-putting, some are quite quiet and unnoticeable, some rather humorous and bumbling, and I suppose at least a couple might be even a little bit charming. Put me in a public place, and I can fade into the background at a moment's notice.  Put a book in my hand, and I can put up a wall of silence and separation at any time.  Put me in any situation, be it online or in the physical word where I suddenly do not know what to do, and I always have the option simply to run.   But why?  Why do I keep doing that?  It has to stop.  This behavior, these masks are not truth.  It doesn't make me happy.   In fact, it just makes me feel lonely, like crap.  God, how I wish this were a problem I could solve with logic and intellect alone.....

I guess if I were wishing for anything now, could get anything from shooting stars or paper cranes or birthday candles, I would use the magic for this, then.  It's the thing I understand least about myself and the thing I need to change the most.  It's the thing I feel most helpless with, fight the hardest, lose the most often against.  I will have to try to make a conscious effort not to be so...I don't even know what the right word for it is....   I suppose as I continue working on it, though, it can't hurt to catch the clock as 11:11 rolls around and ask for a little help....