Life in your own words

I marvel at the stories you tell. Your upbringing, you're overcoming, your trials, and failures. It's all so beautiful, it's all so powerful. I just want to be a part of it. But they're all just words.

There's no room for me in your life. By the stories you tell, there is no room for anyone's life in your life.

I remember sitting in the front row. Sometimes hanging on every word from every story. Waiting to feel the power or the punchline. Knowing that through it all one could persevere. One could rise above. But I never noticed the other church members turning a deaf ear, drifting off into their own thoughts of what to do when this sermon was over. I never learned they were all just words.

I'm a believer. Not a follower. I learned long ago that to be a follower is to not have a mind of one's own. But to be a believer is to sometimes be a dreamer who's dreams sometimes drift into nightmare.

I recall sitting in class. Every lesson I was told was most important. Everything I learned would lead to another tool in my toolbox. From the intricate workings of a frog's leg. To the paper mache mobiles of the solar system with one planet too many. Then math and social studies. "The Civil War was all about slavery!" No it wasn't. So many more words.

The intellect I was given was disdained by the people I came across in life. Until even my family cast me out for the practice of such witchcraft.

I sat in wide-eyed wonder watching the Sci-Fi movies of my time. Each one telling a story of a future to pray for. One in which people would be gauged by their actions and held up by their fellows when they fell. A sneaky kind of progressive utopia. I didn't understand that the fiction in science fiction are the words.

It's perfectly good logic. It could be reasoned out mathematically. The visuals on the screen we're always stunning. I remember the lines of the actors so well. "Make it so." What a life!

How does a person go back? Go back to when you can hear about life in someone's words and have their words reflect life? Where was the fork in the road that I missed? When did I wander off the trail to Grandma's house and find myself lost in the forest of reality? How did I manage to wander off it alone? Why didn't anyone callout to find me?

How do I make it how it used to be? In that time where everyone passes the crucible into their own little fantasy world and lye blissfully in ignorance? Blue pill? Red pill? Geannie out of the bottle? Pandora's Box? Slippery slope? How can I get back to a time of plausible deniability?

If I got there would you take me in your arms while we lie to each other about our indiscretions? Would my devotion mean as little to me as yours does to you? Would I see anything wrong in my life as someone else's fault and never mine? Could I then too have the eyes and intellect of a dead cow? Would I have what amounts to happiness in this reality? For ignorance truly is bliss.

I must have been there before. I was born the same way as everyone else. I went to the same schools as everyone else. I hugged and kissed much like everyone else. I sat in the same church. When did I get left behind? When did I wake, asleep and miss the dream with everyone else? How do I make it like it must have been before?

The words on the screen tell me I'm doing just fine. They're just words and I'm not. Life in my own words... 

The Devil at the gates. Jesus at the door. To Gods office I implore, make it how it used to be. Life in your own words make it be.