who am i?

so, while falling asleep last night brandie told me that i really do seem to feel better, like i'm happier. nice to hear. then she said something that completely spun me off of my axis, not for its sadness or cruelty or any such thing but simply because it's me we're talking about here and i can't let something be simple. she said it's like the real me is being let out, being allowed to emerge, something along those lines. you'll have to forgive me for not remembering her exact turn of phrase - i've slept since then.

all i could think of was how disturbing a thought that is, that the real me has somehow been subsumed by this disease of the brain and mind. but has it been? was the real me that which has been buried under mountains of sadness? or is it more accurate to say that is the real me, and we are now in the process of creating a new me, chris v2.0? after all, it's my brain that is miswired, my patterns of thought which are twisted into self-defeating and self-loathing spirals of doubt and fear. it's my emotions that have driven me into slow, dark doldrums of sadness and sparked off into fits of irritable anger. it's my own analytical ability and emotional sensitivities that have allowed me to fight with others by finding the thing which will hurt most to hear in the course of an argument and using it against them. i am, to some degree anyway, the very thing which i have set out to defeat.

i don't mean to suggest that depression and anxiety completely define who i am, but to a point they are part of who i am. the real me is indeed sad, is indeed a miserable sack of excuses and mental boobytraps designed to preserve my own self image of someone undeserving of what he has or might have. we are, in part, not only the 'good person down inside there'. we are, to some degree, defined by our behavior, or no one would ever be accountable for his actions because someone will always believe 'there's a good person in there, he's just hurting'. there very well be a good person in here, and i'll be working very hard in the years to come to make that person who i am, but for now i'm not certain at all that who i really am is being uncovered so much as reborn.

i do believe in a soul. i believe unquestionably that there is some fundamental particle of our consciousness that is a piece of the eternal everything, and so in that regard i believe that each and every person is capable of good because at our core each is grown from the same seed. but i also cannot see how that seed is all that defines us in each life (in case there is more than one - a topic for another day, but suffice it to say that i have had experience and recent revelations that suggest that there is more to our existence than this one spin through the solid world).

let's look at it using the seed as an analogy. a seed grow into a tree, yes? now, each tree is grown from the same thing, built of the same stuff. we see an elm, we see it is grown from an elm seed. we see it is built of xylem and phloem, woody fiber and bark, leaves and chlorophyll, cellulose, cell walls and membrane layered on one another, nuclei, mitochondria and all the other building blocks common between them. now then, when we see the elm, we also take into account its location and its form, its general health and its effect on its surroundings. if our elm stands on a riverbank, healthy and strong, evenly formed and branches spread out to the sun, leaves wide and green, gathering sunlight and providing a home for a squirrel and countless insects, giving shade to lesser plants and acting as it should to filter carbon dioxide into oxygen for the mammals in the neighborhood, we see its magnificent beauty, accept the miracle that is the tree and praise its wonderful design and say to ourselves 'that is a good tree'. but if our elm grows too close to our house, growing unevenly and with its roots upsetting our foundation, causing thousands of dollars in damage and costing hours of cost or effort to remove the offending part, or even the entire tree, in order to preserve that which it is destroying, we no longer see the beauty and wonder of the tree and say to ourselves 'damn tree buggered up my house and cost me a fortune'. the elm is still an elm. it is still made of the same stuff. but the effect it has on its surroundings has changed what it is. its role is not 'beautiful tree', but 'destroyer of sanctuary'. not 'good tree' but 'bad tree'.

is it not likely that we as humans are like this? whether speaking literally or metaphysically, we are all built of the same stuff. we are, each of us, a conglomeration of not only that fundamental bit of the divine that we call the soul, but also of our neuroses and behaviors and beliefs and loves and hates and fears and joys. those things are as much a part of who we are as the spark of life itself, and if those things are negative then our true self is, for that time, a negative self. my chemistry has made me sad. my thoughts have made me sad and fearful. these things are part and parcel of who i am, and i accept that. my true self for most of my life has been unhappy and afraid. but i can move the tree, uproot my elm gently and with care and move it to the riverbank where it can flourish and do what a tree is capable of doing. i can turn 'bad tree' into 'good tree' by changing the things that define 'bad tree'. there is nothing other than that sad person to uncover or resurrect, but the building blocks are the same as those of a happy person. it is simply their assembly which is off, and design flaws can be worked around and compensated for. so while i may not believe that my true self is coming to the fore, i do believe that i am redefining who i am, and while daunting that is also one hell of an exciting prospect.