The Continuum

As a child I was completely consumed with building and inventing things. Building an impenetrable fortress of protection for myself surrounded by a city of bridges and tunnels was nothing more than a pathetic delusion I had that would ultimately implode on itself as the realization came that anything that connects would eventually disconnect, like internet when I'm lost in a desert.  My world would fall every time.


I started early.

Without fail, however, there was always an older cousin or an angry sheriff to come along and knock down everything I spent time building.

This is a common phenomenon among the evil.  Tear down. Destroy. I began to feel trapped in this permanent state of uneasiness as I flailed helplessly in my own sea of self-doubt and sadness.  I just wanted my bridges built.  I wanted them to stand.  Why were people so determined to knock down everything I built?

I would always rebuild.

The cycle would start over again.  

Then, eventually, I would need some type of cake and a nap.


Some of you know that I was an above average student.  I was reading at a college level by the age of eight.  However, as skilled as I was at reading and building bridges, I could never figure out how to keep other people from knocking them down.

Once, though, I was so consumed in building cities with trading cards (I had thousands of them) that the child I was supposed to be watching fell and hit her head in a place she wasn't supposed to be.  She was only a year old and blood gushed out of an open wound on her forehead.


I panicked.  I wanted to frantically take off at lightning speed for help, but that would have been so obvious.


I casually went into another room where the adults were, which happened to be in the kitchen.  I slowly opened the freezer, peered in and started to speak in my Sesame Street voice.

I may as well have been standing there wearing a wife-beater shirt holding a machete covered in child blood.

That did not go as well as I had planned it would.  The baby did end up going to the Emergency Room, but do you know that nobody thought to bring back ice-cream?


I have to admit that my heart is in the right place, but my mind is always somewhere special.


Over the years, my bridge building techniques extended far beyond blocks and trading cards.  I wanted people to be my bridges.  That became very important to me. Sometimes I look back and wish that I hadn't "burned a bridge or two" quite so quickly.  


Even at 40 years old, there are still people who are out to destroy what I have worked so hard at achieving.  Ironically, the people destroying my bridges are supposed to be building their own.   I noticed that pattern a while back.  


They don't want to connect.  They want to disconnect and then take what they can from me.  Then destroy.


After an entire lifetime of building bridges, I wanted to stop.  I had lost faith. 


Some have spread malicious lies about me.  I have wanted desperately to defend myself and have often thought of what I can do.  I can't just run up to every person with my wife-beater shirt on clinging to a can of hydrogen bomb and force them to listen to my side.


Then, a friend said something to me that set off that little lightbulb in my head.

If you really want to know who I am, then watch me.  

I realized that anyone who truly knows me will not participate in all of that drama and if they do then I really don't want those bridges in my beautiful fortress I am building.  My bridges are a little more narrow now and maybe a little longer, but if you want in my fortress of protection and to be a part of my world domination, you have to do me good enough to at least watch my walk.  Don't judge me.


I admit that I don't have a cookie cutter life. My life is a seamless continuum of abstract craziness and I often find myself turning back to extend my hand to those who have done me wrong.  Every bridge deserves a second chance at being a bridge in my world of paradise.


Ok, it is that time again where I need some type of pastry and a nap.