The unknown is the most terrifying aspect of a person’s life. It can grip you with a fear so intense that everything else in the world stops. You lose all track of time. These unknowns can be major events in one’s life-college, marriage, parenthood, or simple everyday moments. The unknown can sneak up on you and catch you off guard, knocking the wind right out of you. When the unknown is looming out there, it is simply better to stay put. In your house. Hiding.
Many days in my life I have spent hiding in my home. My lovely, cluttered, book-filled home where lots of safe escape options exist (remember it’s book-filled). When I haven’t been up for dealing with the real world, I travel to the safety of a book. Or to those wonderful delusions of grandeur. Many thoughts have been drifting to the idea of intelligence and the application of one’s intelligence. I truthfully do not use all of mine in any given day. That surely sounds like the cockiest statement ever written and makes it seem that I need a piece of humble pie. But I don’t like to think as much as I can, I don’t like to climb Bloom’s ladder if you will, or rise up through Maslow’s hierarchy, because then I find myself knee-deep in the quagmire of thought, longing for Walden’s Pond to live deliberately.
To sit and truly think deeply about motherhood and the awesomeness of it would blow my mind away and probably send me to the padded room where I would no my sons no good whatsoever. I examine it in small pieces, snapshots. Marriage is the same way-to think about the power of that bond too much makes my mind and heart fill to the point of bursting. These two particular topics also bring up the worst-case scenario-ist as I then start to worry.
And there are so many other things I would love to learn. I don’t want to go for my PhD…I don’t need the pretty piece of paper. Though I wouldn’t mind processing each year at commencement with the PhD hat-it’s much nicer than the mortar board-plus the velvet on the sleeves! But choosing to pursue a degree simply for fashion is more Elle Woods than I can muster. Besides, if I don’t earn a PhD in a related field, it really does me no good in my professional life. I like where I am in my job. My plateau is far and wide with many caves, paths, and tributaries to explore. No, if I ever go for another degree, it will be in something like science. Still too afraid of the great unknown of mathematics, but science is intriguing. Perhaps neuroscience or biology…not chemistry, I fear there may be too much math in that as well. But some type of science that enables me to better understand how people work. Physics could also be fun, but again the bloody math. To face an unknown like neuroscience would be fun.
Other unknowns are less fun to fathom. The boys decided to creep themselves out tonight when we got home. They swore they saw a person hiding next to the house. I allowed myself to get sucked right in and stared at the yard a little more closely. They are exploring their limits for fear. I feel like my limits for fear (on the fictional level) are neverending. My real life fears relate back to those unknowns. What will my sons grow up to be? Healthy and happy, I hope. But what will they do, what will they contribute to the world? Am I teaching them what they need to know to be a compassionate human being? Am I teaching what they need to know to navigate their way? Will they know how to respond to different situations that they will inevitably face throughout their lives? Those situations when I can’t be there with them? Will they feel my support, love, even if I’m not standing next to them?
Other unknowns linger in my past. What mistakes have I made that have had an impact on others in ways that I can’t see? What may I have done or not done that altered something…in my life or possibly others? Then I start that circle of knowing that you can’t worry about the past, present, or future unknowns because they are exactly that. Unknown.
The known is a safe place to linger. But I try to carry the past, present, and future with me in the known. I hope with those three moments in time with me at all times I make the smartest choice I can in any given moment. The world looks a bit differently to me in certain ways and the skewed perception sometimes creates problems, but I have known safety checks in place to help balance that when necessary. I wrote of the moment when my thinking becomes straight again during an episode. Until I that moment happens during an episode, the unknown is known. Anything is possible and reality blurs with the creations in my mind. During those times, I was always deep in exploration of the unknowns, but those alternate worlds were real. I could, in those times, know the unknown.
That reality was a known. And then that was the safety of the known. It was a beautiful place. No pain, no mistakes. You could redo anything you needed to when it didn’t work out quite the right way. You could fix injustices. It felt quite like being a superhero. A mythological creature.
Truth be known, sometimes I miss that unknown. It was far more easy to exist.
ohbloodyhell8 