WHO AM I?

There is a point of reflection. A point of looking back. Of wondering, "How did I get here?". Enquiring, "What next?"

I look over the terrain of my life up till this point. Basically, you may call it my past. Strictly speaking, every moment before this is my past, anyway.

I see a terrain akin to the war-fested metallic jungle that was the battlefield in the Tom Cruise Sci-fi movie, 'Edge of Tomorrow' - metallic robots called companions, even more metal in firepower and an actor repeatedly racing against time- and death, in cycle after cycle of failed missions. Whew, the story of my life! 

Tom had found his own companion, though. Not a metallic, cold, death threat but a living breathing human of like mind and purpose. She was his helper. I don't recall that they went on to anything romantic but I digress. Their purpose was single - get him alive long enough to fulfill his mission. If I remember that movie well enough, she was experienced in what she was to see him through.

Now, in this story of my life, I am Tom. I look at my life and I wonder at the metallic companions, victims of war strewn over the landscape of my past. Practically all, were metallic and if there had been any of flesh and blood or remotely even deigning to be, I had shown them the path to metal factory where they needed to be encapsulated in cold, hard, metallic grey. 

The story of all my 'helpers'. Male or female, my relationships rarely survived the span of the initial spurts of the first kick of a manual car to life, after months of inactivity. Why? I really couldn't handle flesh and blood. The story of romance was definitely, like a friend would say, "Dead on arrival". But then again, I digress. The thing is, too bad I couldn't even answer the question of "Why their presence?" in my life. 

And how could I? I don't even know why ME?

Through the slime-pits and mud-holes I had divvied into and scurried out of, through the dark tunnels that had become my familiar and singular route, through the catalogue of unsavouries and through misguided hopes in even more unsavoury mirages, one truth stood very often dim, even more often out, now flaming bright perhaps once or twice in twenty, thirty years against the dark, putrid visage of my past, the truth of absence, the absence of me, myself. Hence, the query, "Who am I?"

The 'goods' you are not proud to claim, as you now behold them like with the eyes of a newborn babe, fluttering open now, and then shut, only to open finally to the truth of your sensibilities aghast at the choices you have made. The 'bads' you can claim but fill you with shame as you comprehend the truth about the lies you have conjured up for your own benefit. Alas! They cannot be claimed either. 

The wrong 'goods' you could or might have claimed that were never yours but you'd claimed them anyway just because you could not identify what was yours... who you are! 

The tears you cannot cry, the pain you cannot feel, the lies you can neither swallow nor spew, the truth you cannot hear, the victories you cannot celebrate, the defeats you are not certain were, the life you cannot live... All simply because you didn't take the time to know who you were... and now you must.