Wednesday, October 17, 2018

The Problem with Illusions -- my confessional

This is a companion piece to the blog post I wrote on disillusionment. I believe we weave illusions to try to fulfill needs that our hungry inner children need to believe in.

I suppose I could start with Santa Claus. Children need to be loved and cherished and to have their hungry tummies fed. Santa Claus reads children's lists and metes out justice and fairness to the deserving and undeserving, answering for all the childish fears of abandonment, hunger, inadequacy. And adults have created a narrative about Santa and, deep down, believe the illusion is precious enough that they lament when their children are too old to believe. If their children are too old to believe, so are they themselves.

The illusions I have clung to have a lot to do with having meaning to someone, especially a male, for symbolic reasons I will explain. I was let down by the men around me growing up. I was sexually abused by a few people, not believed, not protected. My illusion grew -- that if I were important to someone, the abuse would never have happened. I would have been protected. Someone would have believed me. If I was important to someone now, it would be a magic spell that would make the damage in my past heal into inconsequentiality.

The problem with illusions is that they don't feed the hungry parts of our souls. They carry the seeds for their own destruction by our doubts and feelings of unworthiness. They wither when held up against the light of reality.

I have a friend out there that I owe an apology to -- friend, I wanted to be important to you because in the belief that it would heal something in me.

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