I’m watching myself “gaming” another.
Yes, I play games.
Here’s this one: When I was a young child, I was the youngest in my family. And the only way I could get anyone to pay attention to me was by putting a stick in the wheel.
Over the years I developed being a stick-in-the-mud, a game-changer and an obstructionist to a very fine degree. One university prof kicked me out of his class when I didn’t do anything. He didn’t care. That was for all the times I did.
One of its offshoots was a pattern of rejecting someone while saying, “I’m in here. Please come and get me.” This is how a stick-in-the-mud does relationship. Third-Dimensional, from stem to stern.
Like Marcel Marceaux, who put a mask on only to have it stick, my act had stuck to me. I was a prisoner of it, not like I knew it consciously.
My sister-in-law would probably say to me something like, “It’s OK, Steve. You can stay in there. We know you’re in there and we love you.”
That would about meet me where I’m at: Deeply hiding, meaning the opposite of what I’m saying, angry, confused.
The kid in me went into hiding at age seven – when my Dad’s violence became unbearable – and graduated from hiding to guerrilla warfare, where a part of him has been ever since.
The benefit of awareness is that what I see I can let go of.
I therefore let go of needing to be a stick in the mud. I let go of the thought that people don’t listen to me. I let go of the hopelessness and cynicism I so often feel.
I let go of feeling the need to stand on guard forever, to ward off the blow I didn’t see was coming.
I let go of mistrusting love, because the same one who was supposed to love me was also hitting me and kicking me. I let go of not being able to stand violence without meeting it with equal violence. I let go of hating my Dad.
I let go of holding back the tears that come now. I let go of holding on, for all these years.
I let go. I let go. I let go.