NOTES FROM A GROUNDHOG

....................by Stanley

....I am trapped in my story. Every day I tell the same tale. Oh yes, things change outwardly, superficially. But me – I never change. I am the same me as yesterday, and the day before. I know. I can remember myself. Each day defines the next one; each day the only day of my life.
.....What is this ‘me’ that keeps repeating? Who am I that I can’t escape and tell a different story? My efforts to escape, to change, are all part of the eternal repetition.
.....I come home to myself and have to admit that I am not a very nice person. I am ungrateful, disloyal and self-centred. I always have been. I try to shift the responsibility, but it doesn’t work. Even though my mother never showed affection I always knew she was on my side. I was three months old when she was widowed and later married a horrible man just to give us a roof over our heads. She never had any more children. I was the only one; and how did I repay her? I left home as soon as it suited me, never to return, abandoning her to her fate. I know who I am: I am ungrateful, disloyal and self-centred. I never change. That’s me; and Groundhog Day is every day.
......I try, and have always tried, to alter the story, to paint myself in a better light. But inflating one’s ego doesn’t work. Nothing beats coming up against the truth. But it is a strange and disturbing paradox to step outside your story, look at it, and know it’s true; to remember my dead mother and wished I could have stood by her, wished that I could have been the kind of son that she would have wanted – as loyal a son as she was a mum. But I couldn’t, didn’t – didn’t want to. I had to kill her and be sorry; and for the rest of my life know that I am ungrateful, disloyal and self-centred.
......I never knew I was that guilty; but there is nothing better than knowing what you really and deeply believe. It’s such a relief.
......Knowing the full strength of what you believe about yourself, however bad, is better that struggling against what you didn’t know you believed. The struggle against the unknown is problem.
.......For some people the situation can be the opposite of mine. If you had a family that made you no good, you might struggle against the unacceptable truth that you are OK. You don’t get guilty for being a bad person; you get guilty for feeling good. Self depreciation keeps you belonging to those who defined you. You might be angry with them, but you stay in their space. To really get that you are OK would mean rejecting the family – loss and alienation. Better to be the black sheep of the family, than to have no family at all.