The real me
The Truth Inside Me
(How to Become Real)
Layers.
I’ve tried to peel them off of me. All my life, I’ve tried.
I’ve tried and tried.
I’ve spent my entire life trying…
I always knew it was the only way to heal, to become real. I knew this instinctively, without hesitation. That’s why I always tried to remove them, those layers, to get down to the core of me, the bottom of me.
So I could find the real me, who’s on the inside.
And I preached to others to do the same.
And yet…here I am, realizing the crushing truth:
That STILL, after all these years, after all the fires I’ve burned in, the battles I’ve fought in – and won – after all the changes I’ve made to remove all falsehood from within – STILL – my words aren’t true.
No. Not entirely.
I’ve cheated.
I’m just a little bit of a liar.
I set out to write my story honestly and to tell my truth, but now I understand why I couldn’t move forward with it, why the story didn’t work no matter what I did or how hard I tried, and why I always felt stuck.
I was trying to edit out the unacceptable parts—the true words!
Because the true words…Oh God, if I said them out loud, the outrageous, true words…
How can I say them? How can I even dream of saying them?
I never, never, never say them out loud!
I sometimes refer to them sideways, camouflage them, dress them up as something else, put makeup on them, sugarcoat them, minimize them, mask them as props on a stage where I think they could pass as normal… as “art” …
But here we are, and once again, it hits me: I’m STILL hiding behind a mask, STILL not real, STILL not speaking my truth, because when the mask comes off, oh God…
I do not doubt the chilling impact the true words will have on my life.
It makes me retreat in horror.
But Truth doesn’t care. It’s made of steel; it won’t budge.
No, no, Truth says. Don’t sugarcoat it. Tell it how it is – inside you.
Inside me?
“Tell the story exactly the way it looks like inside me? But You don’t mean ALL of it?”
ALL of it!
“No, no, no, no…”
And I begin to plead. I beg:
“Do I need to go down in flames? Is there no other way? Any other way? Do I have to become a laughingstock to the world? Lose every friend I ever had? Even the few? Do I need to burn down every bridge and carry my embarrassment for the rest of my life?”
But the Truth, the Wind of Truth, only meets my questions with silence.
That’s my answer.
So, I answer myself:
Yes…I think I do.
I really think I do!
Because each time it comes near, the wind, the feeling, it comes with NO COMPROMISE.
It won’t let me veer to the left or right; it has ONE path and one alone, and that path takes me straight through the fire.
It’s fire or nothing.
Kick the door open!
Want to become real? The wind says. Then speak the truth!
“My version of the truth?”
No. THE Truth!
That’s how it talks to me.
It’s the only way to step into real life, it says.
It’s like when the Velveteen Rabbit stopped running from the pain and became real:
Or when Pinocchio finally stopped lying and turned from wood into a real boy, flesh and blood:
Come, Velveteen Rabbit, it says to me.
Come now. Don’t run away from the pain anymore.
Don’t run away from Me.
It’s the price we all have to pay.
I will say this with my mouth.
I will say the unspeakable, embarrassing, horrific, scandalous, concerning, and confusing truth that I have stomped so deep down into my soul that half the time, I don’t even realize it’s there.
The truth of me.
I will say it with my mouth.
The same truth I swallowed as a child. It hasn’t changed.
Nothing has changed!
The universe waits patiently behind my window, hiding its cosmic winds. Most of the time, it’s quiet, and I forget it’s there; numbness takes over me amid daily routines. It isn’t fair what it does to me. It does as it pleases and doesn’t ask me questions or seek my input on matters concerning me. The curtains open, and the curtains close. The wind comes in, and then it leaves.
“Yeah! You want me to bare my soul and speak out these things, and then You’ll leave me here all alone, looking like a fool because the things You spoke didn’t come true!”
“What do you want from me...?”
But I understand now. I keep forgetting, but each time the wind returns, it reminds me of it. And I know now. I get it!
I understand that if everything else I write here turns out to be a figment of my imagination and something false, and if everything turns out differently than I thought in the end, proving me wrong, it doesn’t make me a liar!
I didn’t lie!
I still told the truth!
Because I was HONEST and TRUTHFUL about what was inside of me!
Because, REGARDLESS of what happens, the truth of the words the wind speaks into me STILL remains:
You have to live according to the truth inside you. Come what may. There’s no other way to enter into life.
That’s the gate that leads in.
So here it comes:
I thought I was Elijah.
Elijah, the prophet from the Bible.
The one who was supposed to return to Earth and turn the fathers’ hearts toward their children and the children's hearts toward their fathers before the great and dreadful day of the Lord (Malachi 4:5-6). That’s right. That’s what was in my brain for all those years, back in the day when I met the prophet. And even before that. Much before that.
And it STILL is!