Going in Depths to find a Panther

I sit every day and ponder so much.

I really try to find ways for me to escape myself.

People are such funny creatures, I sometimes get so easily aggravated by them that half the time I spend thinking I am concerned and angry at them for their own oblivious thoughts and actions.

I know who I am, I honestly can say that I do, there are many levels and layers to me, I put up many guards and barriers for a number of reasons yet I still know who I am.

Do you?

Many people if they were being honest would say no, they don't, probably wouldn't know where to start, that doesn't mean that they are unsure of their current life path, or that they are constantly battling with the concept within themselves, they could quite happily be living their lives, with things that make them happy, but this could still leave them to be undecided and unsure of who they truly are. Yet ultimately living in the now, the moment.

People often assume so much when it comes to me, assume that because I act a certain way, talk a certain way, my walking, my health my faith and my religion that they can make such big assumptions. They think that it is right that they should act and treat me a certain way. Why do we do this? Why don't we just sit and learn about the person that is in front of us rather than being a society that relies on first impressions, which ultimately annoy us and to top it off we are brought up against such things with phrases such as "Don't judge a book by its cover".

I know I have harped on so many times about knowing people that are in front of you, I know that I talk about the one to one relationships, but I know for me that these relationships are what keep me alive, literally sometimes. Do we assume that we know a famous artist because we have stared at his painting for half an hour, or do we admire the work that has been set before us, only hoping for a brief glance at a moment in this artists life.

I hear the sentence "I can never imagine what you go through with your health Martyn" an awful lot, yet this sentence will often follow with " But I have a....." and I will find that there is a related story, aliment, illness that this person is trying to help build a connective bridge to me with. I love that they do this, they are trying, trying to build an opening to me, to share, but at exactly the same time this sentence gets my back straight up and defencive, I would love to scream at times "NO! No you can never imagine what it is like", but I don't, I sit and smile at the attempt at relating. But is that right? I wonder what other scenarios would play out like, a man and women; man " yeah I understand what childbirth is like, I once had this splinter that had to be extracted!" How would that be taken? Or to a member of a different race: "I once went to school with someone like you and they were really funny because.." Would that go down well? We don't do this because it is wrong. We shouldn't list a mountain of reasons to find a connective rather than actually create one itself by learning about the person not by just assuming you know them. Bea blank page,and just talk and learn.

No one can really tell me what my life is like, what makes me so openly depressed and suicidal, or what makes my so happy and excited, because of the truth be known no one apart from me and God truly knows who I am. People have come close, some know the next words, thoughts and actions and enjoy the intense relationship that truly knowing a person can be like. Some people will truly love me and see the strength inside me and want to attach themselves to it, making the relationship so strong but in the balance so vulnerable to the opposing person. It is people like this that I try and strive to have in my life, people who I would go to the depths of hell for and they would do the same, your personal saints and angels always looking after you.

If you want to know me ask, but the truth is I can tell you right now. I am trapped within myself, trapped within a body that doesn't work, however much I pick myself up and dust myself off and get "on" with life. My mind being frustrated at the continual loss that I suffer.

People who know loss, who have lost someone will know the feeling, the incapable feeling that they can't seem to do what they want because for some strange moment they seem restricted because of a thought, trapped within loss. And the people who don't know this feeling, it isn't your fault because it only occurs when you realise that you love something more than you love yourself. I love the fact that God gave me life, I love my boys and the life that I have with them. But yet I sit everyday fighting the battle where some ground of mine is lost, mentally or physically.

People may look at me and see a confident disabled man, who gets on with his life, who greets you with a smile, who laughs and makes light of the things in his life. Who will run around for everyone else, trying to make them realise that he is "normal" and making them realise that they are loved. When in truth, I feel trapped and scared, childlike and incredibly lonely. Yet people who do see this side, suddenly become scared and confused themselves and this is where the above mentioned vulnerability comes in. It is an horrendous feeling, because this person is a person with a certain amount of connective love and power over and for you. This is a person who looks directly at you and can rip your entire world apart. It can be hard to cope with that responsibility. But I am willing to take that risk, for someone, for lots to come in and take that risk with me. I always feel that my life is like the poem by Rainer M. Rilke, The Panther. Caught and trapped, a daily battle and only ever having people come in and out of my life, some that touch my heart, but often when they do they are then gone:

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

How many others feel like I feel? Either let yourself open up or try and build the close relationship and bond with the people around you. Don't become a  fleeting image that touches someones heart and is later gone. Help maintain your friends.