Selfhood is not complete without special “others” who listen, accept, guide, support, or hurt us. If these relationships do not exist, the mind will imagine their existence, attaching them to whomever seems to fit the illusions – good or bad. We create the relations and dramas that confirm our current self-image.
© 2021 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
Following a decade of failed relationships and hostile confrontations, you begin wondering if something is wrong with you, or whether everyone you choose to associate with has a collective mental health issue. So, you go to a shrink – referred to you on Reddit – who blankets you with his, her, or their personal countertransference issues, while trying to determine whether your portrayal of the real you, or what you thought was the real you, is authentic or a subterfuge serving to hide some rather unsavory aspects of an “unconscious” real you, otherwise known as the shadow.
I had no reason for being there so late, not a legitimate one. The school day had ended two hours earlier, and the hallways were cleared by now, not even one student dragging his or her feet. Bus #253 – the late bus – was already gone, and so I was on my own. Home was close, but too far to walk.
Miss Dupre – my French teacher – spotted me in the corridor after locking her office door. She’d already driven me home countless times in previous weeks, and I was positioning myself for yet another late day ride with her.
Break the mold, she told me. Do something adventurous and bold. And so I broke with her that day. Just like that!
Told her I was off to being exciting, provocative, and bold. And for a moment, she just stared: open-mouthed, eyes dilated, and face in a flush.
The dreaming writer and his muse enter the garden, leaving their fig leaves at the gate. Now alone and denuded of all manner of covering, they are happier beyond belief, for there are no longer the obstacles of shame and separation, nor the judgments of others. There is only the writer with his imagined muse, dwelling and playing within God’s heavenly garden, where every tangible need is provided for.
Notes from David 