The above term was coined by my good friend R. She was relating it to her agoraphobia; i.e. that she is afraid to be in the world because it would mean that she was manifest, that she entirely existed. This is the most terrifying thing. To deny the fact of your existence is easier than accepting it.
Perhaps by finally starting a blog, I am throwing myself out of the metaphorical plane. Since the conversation with R, I realise that in so many ways - different from her - I too have a manifestation phobia.
Fear stalks us all. We react in different ways. The "why" of my failings, is entirely bound up in fear. I am afraid to do in case I am misrepresented by that act. I am afraid to try because failure rebounds with a herculean force. I am afraid to be myself in case I am disliked. I am afraid to be because life is fragile and tenuous and I may just disappear.
So ultimately I avoid everything that may require me to reveal myself and languish in the fall-out. A painted face and a character fail me; I know in my heart I cannot be anything well that I do not fully subscribe to. I am not a perfectionist, and I know that I cannot submit for the world anything that is not perfect, so I can't submit anything. I watch myself bristle with tension and watch others react to that tension and find myself rejected. I pretend I know the reason for that rejection - the tension I project - but I also know it is a pretense and the reason is me.
I used to be much better at doing and much worse at living. I used to ricochet from lover to lover, pub to pub, drunken hysteria to drunken hysteria. This was a time when I cared nothing what people thought of me. I was prolific. I still am prolific, but now I am prolific for myself only and back then I offered it up to the world.
Perhaps age sinks you into a pit of fear. Your 20s are for exploration, your 30s are for knowing yourself and deciding what to do with that knowledge. If exploration and knowledge seed you in a negative reality, you can revolve and revolve in that reality for an eternity and go nowhere. I am not afraid of anything rationally. Irrationally, I am afraid of everything. I care and worry that the pavement will give way as i walk upon it. I care and worry that the people who work in the supermarket will think ill of me. I care and worry about the expressions of people as I walk down the street. How can i give anything to the world when I am confounded with these ludicrous emotions?
And why would I? Why offer anything but smiles to people who seem out-of-sorts? Why offer anything but money to people who have none? This world is very ill. By putting up my creations for examination, I can't help 1 person, I can't help 10s, I can't help 100's, I can't help 1000's. I am entirely useless. I have no desire to churn the corporate cream: I would rather languish in no-man's land than be uselessly profitable to someone else.
I justify my existence - and my belief in my existence is very tenuous (I'm not sure i haven't slipped between the cracks) - by the fact that one day I may change 1 person, and that person may possess greater potency than I. Otherwise, I would surrender to the pavement and give up.
1 comment:
I still belief, and silly enough, I cannot make this belief workable..that that feeling of uselessnes is there to provoke a feeling of: "hey...there is one person...waiting to be helped here all along! and it's me!"
With me it sometimes comes to a feeling of failing myself. I feel I am better in trying to help any other mortal soul than face my own screaming anima. And when that also fails..I belief that that bliss of being useless is followed after being gone trough the agony of the absence of usefulness.
and that merely BEING would be enough. aw..how I wish to be enlightened.;)
Existing is scary, manifesting your existance is like walking to your deathpenalty at times. yes..im struggling lots of days now because I had the audacity to go against this fear and I am realizing, that living means risking to be alive, knowing that life goes hand in hand with it's other half death.
Manifesting yourself, is like dying to the defenses you have build so carefully and for all the right reasons. Now this reasons seem some what pale, in comparisson of our full human potential that feels frustrated for not being able to be here fully.
aw well..existential problems...who doesnt have them in the end...:P
lots of love,
R.
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