The social challenge

If you don’t know who you are

everything is a challenge.

If you don’t know who you are

people seem to know you better

than you know yourself.

This is an illusion that

for most people

is deeply frightening.

 

And so it was for me.

 

I was wronged for all I was

and

for all that I gave.

And what I gave and who I was

was One

and the same.

 

I gave of me

and my innocent four (billion) year old heart.

 

They took and left

I gave more and followed.

 

I had to,

I was four.

 

I was wronged to feel

and see things

others did not seem to see

as I did.

 

And I was challenged to remain sane

and alive

in the face of such wrong doing

– wrong seeing –

on my part.

 

I knew what was right and wrong

my body told me.

 

Everything I did

did not seem to fit into this world.

This world and its people

seemed to have entirely different

rules than the ones I was made of

and was made to live by.

Their rules?

No one could explain to me

not really.

 

I think one was along these lines:

What you have to do or be

needs to be what we want.

We never know what we want

but we don’t want to give

back.

 

And so innocently

I gave more of me

and my big, innocent four (billion) year old heart.

 

More was taken

so more I gave

and more was taken

and more I gave

and more was taken.

 

You can imagine

the day came where it seemed

I had nothing more to give.

What did I do? What did you do on that day?

 

I gave so much of “Myself”

that “Me”

seized to be an actuality.

 

As myself I knew so much,

I believed,

but not how to explain the very things

I knew.

 

I gave as the ancient rules

in me told me.

My rules didn’t consider

the rules they set.

 

I gave

until I knew no more

where I was and

who.

 

In the beginning

I knew how to act as myself

but didn’t know

how to remain

myself.

 

This was and still is

the social challenge.

 

I lost the challenge.

When I was four years old.

And since then a million times more.

 

I am right here laying down my old story.
A story you’re not hearing for the first time.

 

As I am writing these words

I took on a new challenge.

Which is not to look for familiarity

But for the opposite.

 

When family means

burden

drain

emotional cracks

taking not giving

miscommunication

you do not want the familiar.

You want the opposite.

That is the new challenge.

 

And as I stop giving myself challenges

in which I force their rules on me

in which I re-act the old

to prove that I am not wrong

but whole

within another person.

 

Skilled in giving more than I have

to people who take more than they need.

 

I start giving myself care and love

and attention.

I start giving myself

what I gave to everyone else.

 

I absorb myself

instead of others.

 

And my being expands.

I am riding the challenge

real challenge

and I still give.

 

But this time I give up

what was never meant to be

picked up.

 

I give up.

 

The life of another as my own.

The state of another as my responsibility.

The demands of another as my obligation.

The upset of another as my call to clown

their sorrows away.

 

For people who don’t know themselves

everything is a challenge.

 

I am not sure if I know enough of me

and myself yet.

But one thing I know for sure

I am not any bodies clown.

 

I am not not myself any longer

I am not looking for their challenge

any longer.

 

I am not a socially challenged any longer

because I give up.

I still don’t know their rules

I don’t want to.

 

This time around

I make my own and pass them on

because

well

my rules make sense

to me.

 

I am looking at myself

from a place of knowing now

that all I am and all I gave

finally is received

and returned.

 

There is one rule in my world.

 

Which is

“A challenge is only a challenge

if you pick it up.”

 

I won my challenge.

I gave up theirs.