Dawn Is Me

Every now and then, I spend a bit of time exploring myself.

I find that this is a somewhat unusual hobby and I can sort of understand that. When things aren’t going the way you want them to, the natural human impulse is to look around to see who’s at fault (and, of course, the culprit is never YOU) or, alternatively, to wallow in an orgy of self-loathing that can easily consume you without actually getting anything done.

If you want to avoid all that time-wasting stuff, you’re probably in for some discomfort. Denial is not only natural, it has the advantage of being easy.

Self exploration is not for the feint of heart.

So, yeah … my current foray into mental health maintenance is the ongoing quest to figure out what’s holding me back.

It’s fairly important because, right now, I’m in a way to accomplish some rather amazing stuff — as long as I don’t toss a pie in my own face.

It’d be fairly easy for me to look around me and see a bunch of people dragging me down into the mire. And, I’ll be honest, it can be pretty difficult to go where you’re going when you are surrounded by passive people who do things that make it difficult for you to get ahead.

The problem with that kind of thinking, though, is that it puts my fate in other people’s hands. That doesn’t sit too well with me. I don’t want to hang around here being silently resentful of the people I live with, because it doesn’t accomplish a single thing.

And the odds are that, whatever is holding me back, it’s probably not them. They are just convenient.

No, this is about me and the odd dichotomy I live with, where there’s Me the Performer and there’s Me the Recluse.

Me the Performer is the gal who started learning ballet at age two, who has been performing dance and acting and singing practically all her life and who is a lot more comfortable on the stage, under the spotlight, than most of the people who know me now would be able to believe.

I wonder where she went?

Me the Recluse is pretty much in the driver’s seat these days. My impulse is to hide, which is tough to do when you are doing stuff which would be greatly aided by achieving a certain degree of notoriety (not to say fame).

So, there’s my Push-Me-Pull-Me, in a nutshell. Part of my person says “Look at me!” while the other part of my person says “Don’t look at me!”

Well, okay, Dawn. Why do you suppose you don’t want people to look at you?

The easy answer is that I don’t like how I look. Over the years, life and stuff have turned me (in my own head) from the femme fatale I was as a 25 year old into the middle-aged, fat hausfrau you don’t see before you today.

Intellectually, I tell myself that it’s unreasonable for me to expect to have the face and body I had 25 years and four kids ago. When I speak more emotionally, I’m pretty hard on myself.

Besides, that, too, is way too easy. If you don’t like how you look, Dawn, then change how you look. If you don’t, then maybe you’re setting yourself up with reasons to hide. What are you really afraid of?

And that is the key. I am afraid.

So, what am I afraid of? At the moment, I have no clue. Well … that’s not true. I probably have a clue or two. I’m still working on it.

But I’ll say this: it’s kind of amazing the sorts of things we humans don’t do — things that could make our lives and the lives of our loved ones (if not the world) a whole lot better — just because we’re afraid of something.