To Thine Own Self Be True

To thine own self be true

“This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. “ Polonius Hamlet Act 1, scene 3

Most people are familiar with the quote above. My mom had a more colorful was of putting it. “Lie to the world, but don't lie to yourself.”

Though not as poetic as the Bard, the thought is the same. And so from an early age I have been very introspective, reflecting on my thoughts feelings, actions, motivations.

From a very early age I put a wall up and wouldn't let anyone in. I know how it started. I was beaten with a belt by my mom who was punishing me for something I didn't do (well actually, I did do it, but the girl did ask me to chase her). I was horrified at the evil I saw on my mom's face. I guess in a way, it broke my spirit. From that time on, when I would get out of the door in elementary school, there would be a group of kids waiting there to hit, kick, punch, or spit at me. I am pretty sure this is why I never allowed anyone in. In junior high school, I had one friend, Scott Thomas. I would go over his house every day before school (the school was in his back yard) and after school we would go back to his house and hang out in his bedroom. We would discuss Tolkien and just basically have a good time together.

Fast forward to present day...

Since I decided to pull my walls down and let people see the real me, to open myself up to love, friendship, hurt, and the like, I find that I am more intense than is “normal,” and that that might scare people. It is not that I'm a scary person, it is just I am so excited about getting to know new people and to find out their hopes, fears, problems, joys, struggles, that I find that I am taking things too fast for most people's comfort.

The other day I had such a sense of love well up inside of me that I thought it was a different kind of love. It was in the sense that it was not a sensual or erotic, or “you have to be mine” kind of love. What it really was was love, and I haven't felt that for a long, long time. I am pretty sure that I shut down to that feeling in 1992, and it has just now come back. That is sixteen years of living in an emotional desert. So feeling love well up inside me again was like a resurrection plant finally getting the water it needs. A resurrection plant looks dead. It is dry and lifeless. It often times is like a tumbleweed. But it is not really dead—it is just in hibernation until it gets water again. Then it appears to come back to life, turning green and beautiful again (hence, resurrection). Then when it no longer has water, it shrivels back up again, pulls up its roots, and stays sleeping until the next water.

I really felt for a long time that I was dead inside. It did not help that I was diagnosed with major depression in 1999, my wife almost dying that year on 9/9/99, and a host of other things.

I write this down and blog it more for my own sense of straightening out my own thoughts within my head, than to inform anybody of what is happening in my life. I know no one reads my blog. I think I am the only one who has ever read it. That is okay, though. Since my wife could not have children, I have no children. Now that our marriage has ended and then been remade in a new shape, I really don't have hope of every having any offspring. What young woman of child-bearing years would want on old fart like me?

My hope is that maybe someday, someone will come across a stone that says, “Here lies Mark R. Myers” and wonder, “I wonder who he was, what his thoughts were, what he was like.” By that time this record would instantly come up in his heads up display that is projected in his mind, and then he will know that I was a person, just like him. Who had hopes and dreams and fears. Maybe, just maybe, my words will live past me, into the future. I don't have anything my father ever wrote. My mother wrote me a poem for my twelfth birthday. At the time I didn't think a whole lot of it. Now I would give nearly anything to have that back, to read her handwriting one more time. I can remember her face, but I don't remember her voice any more. I have very few pictures since I moved around so much. I believe many of my pictures are in storage at my brother-in-law's house in Ohio. I used to love photography. That was until our house was broken into in Phoenix and both of my cameras were stolen. They were conveniently in a camera bag, which made for easy removal. In 1999 my wife bought me a 1.3 megapixel camera for my birthday. I believe it was $199, an HP Photosmart camera. It eats AA batteries for lunch. It burns through them like they were M&Ms at a children's party even when the camera is switch off. It takes pictures at 1280x1024 resolution, but then they don't look very good until they are scrunched down to 1024x768. I learned photography with 35mm film and single lens reflex cameras. My good friend, Ted Black, wants to be a professional photographer. He does some nice work. He keeps encouraging me to get back into it, but 1.3 megapixels is nothing now a-days. I think my webcam on my computer does that. I've known Ted since high school (he used to bum cigarettes off of me) and we became good friends in college. I've know Ted for 28 years now, and we are still good friends. I am fortunate that he works the night shift as a manager of a hotel in St. Ignace, Michigan. He works Friday thru Tuseday, so we share about the same schedule, so we talk in the middle of the night when everyone is sleeping.

In closing, I realize that I have been starting new relationships with people at too high of a temperature, as it were. I don't want people to get burned. I met one of my neighbors at the nudist sim where I live. I was tired when we met. We sat down and talked in her hot tub, she and I on either side of it on the edge. We had a good time but because I was tired I didn't have the normal intensity that I have had recently. I think that friendship may develop. I guess I just need to slow down a little. My landlord literally dropped in (he was 500 meters above us on a skypad) and get gave she and I a lesson on building things in Second Life. I want to be more creative. I am hoping I haven't scared my good friend away who is a designer and I promised to work with her to help with her designs and marketing. If I did, then I lost something very special.

Well young man looking at my grave in 2110, that is all for now.