Facade

I was cleaning the bathroom the other day (shocking, I know) and was looking out the window at our neighbor's back yard. Then I looked at ours. Both of them were in pretty bad shape. Tall grass overrun with weeds. Sticks every where. Dry, dirt patches where there should be grass. Dirty swing sets. I kind of laughed about it because earlier in the day I was admiring both of our front yards when I went out to get the mail.

It got me thinking about the show we put on for others. The facade we build around our lives to look put together in front of others when, in fact, we may be falling apart inside. I'm just as guilty of it as anyone else, and the older I get the more it bothers me that so much of my life is spent pretending. Pretending that I'm okay. Pretending that I'm happy. Pretending that I'm put together and that my life is in order. Pretending that I don't miss my dead family members. Pretending that I'm not worried. Pretending that all of this pretending doesn't hurt.

I had a friend say to me recently, "I have to play this role, Rachel. I HAVE to." The role of happy husband, father, son, brother, neighbor, friend - when in truth, he's pretty unhappy. The life he lives day-to-day is not what he would choose for himself if he felt like he had the power to choose. I knew in that moment that he just needed to say it and just needed me to listen and not judge or even respond. But I wanted to scream at him, "YOU'RE 50! IS THIS HOW YOU REALLY WANT TO SPEND YOUR LIFE??? AND FOR WHAT? WHY? WHAT'S IT WORTH IF IT'S NOT REAL???" But I didn't. It's not what he needed from me in that moment so I just continued to listen.

I realized later that I was smart to withhold verbal judgment because I'm playing a role too, every bit as much as my friend is. Every single day I am. I smile when I should and laugh when I should and shut up when I should and get serious when I should and DO and BE and LIVE like I should - when the truth of the matter is that if I was being completely honest with myself and others, I would be a MUCH different person leading a MUCH different life.

That makes me so sad. I'm not living in a genuine, honest way and it's an exhausting, heavy load. But how do we get out of it? How does a person pursue a life that is more authentic to be who they really are and who they really want to be, when they have a marriage and children and a job and mortgages? How do so many of us end up sitting on our couches one night somewhere in our mid-40s and wonder, HOW IN THE HELL DID I END UP HERE??
 
And then, HOW IN THE HELL DO I GET OUT??

I've felt guilty for feeling that way. I've felt like a bad person. What kind of good, decent human being wants out of their lives? Wants to run away on a fairly regular basis? I've come to the conclusion that feeling way doesn't mean we don't love our spouses/children/homes/careers. But it may mean that we don't love our lives. I know that seems counter-intuitive and contradictory on the surface, but I believe we human beings are complex and can feel more than one emotion about the same thing, at the same time. Individually, there are many things that I love about my life, but as a whole, I really hate my life.

One of the things that I'm wondering is if maybe I love some of the key components of my life but that I feel like so much is missing from it? That I'm not experiencing and achieving and LIVING all that I want in the way that I want. Maybe I don't need to run away thereby eliminating things from my life, but simply need to add more things to my life that are more meaningful to me.

I really don't have an answer. I guess it's good that I'm at least mulling it over though. Right?