Sanitized for Your Protection

I’ve been up and down this highway

far as my eyes can see.

No matter how fast I run

I can never seem to get away from me…

~ Jackson Brown, “Your Bright Baby Blues”

 

“Sanitized for Your Protection”

Yesterday I was thinking about the slippery slope of reconnecting with old friends. On one hand, you’ve got the perk of having already established WHO YOU ARE with the old friend: your character, your natural tendencies… known and accepted. On the other hand, there’s all that… history: decades of assumed personal growth and success. You don’t expect people to devolve over the course of their lives, but sometimes that’s exactly what happens. Maybe that’s what we all do in some ways.

So my old friends and I reconnect, and the first question is something along the lines of “How have you been?” Considering the multitude of mistakes and circumstantial dramas I’ve experienced over the last three decades I always feel I need to sanitize my answer. I can’t stand that feeling, that urge to justify my lifestyle, although it makes perfect sense in my own head. When people ask how I’ve been, I have to slap myself into hearing the words “How have you been?” instead of “Are you still married? (Nope, two divorces.) Do you own a house? (Never!) Where are your kids going to college? (Nowhere I can afford.) When will you be out this way? (Uh…)”

In acknowledging the fact that I’ve not attained my own preconceived notion of balanced success, I fail to give credit to the things I have done well.  Did I leave home 25 years ago to prove something?  I guess so. Old friends are like stark reminders of how much I HAVEN’T changed. But then again, we’ve all learned hard, but worthy lessons; we all grew up in spite of ourselves; we’ve acquired confident abilities to offset the insecurities. Maybe it’s unfair to sanitize. It’s dishonest.

I go around identifying myself, as Channy said this morning, as “an island” of misunderstood angst. Self-preservation leads to isolation. Where functioning as part of a larger community goes, I’m a little out of practice. I don’t know how to act, where to stand, what to say or how much (or little) to reveal.

To that end, Channy underestimates the power of his presence in my life. Relatively new on the Chris scene, he FEELS like an old friend. Nothing is sanitized when I speak with him.  He doesn’t realize how stable I feel in his love, and how grounded I am by his simple words of reassurance. I spend so much time focused on personal survival, I fail to let him know that when his hand touches my back, steadying me or just letting me know he’s there, I am immediately calmed.  It’s as if Channy is one of many old friends who stand on a wall holding out their hands to me, reaching out to pull me out of the tall grass… up and over.

Take my hand and lead me

to the hole in your garden wall

and pull me through.

 

 

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