The Pictures We Have Painted…

It’s interesting to see how sometimes we have an overall view or feel for something and it ends up that isn’t how it is at all. Many times it just may be that we want it to be that way, when it really isn’t or it can be due to shear ignorance or lack of information.

I know you’re thinking what is the difference between ignorance and lack of information and while I suppose to an extent they are really similar, to me I feel as if a lack of information could be less of a person’s own fault in the sense that they weren’t given all the necessary pieces of the puzzle. Ignorance on the other hand might be that lack of investigation in an area. I think you’ll be able to distinguish between my differing more as I proceed…

So recently (being over the past 1 to 1.5 years, I suppose) I’ve begun to see that the true picture isn’t exactly as I’ve had it painted in my mind over the previous years of my life. There is a part of me that feels like I’ve reached this point in my life where I’m viewed as “old enough” to be told some things apparently, or like I’m an “adult” now apparently, so I’m apparently more open to adult topic discussions. And by that I’m not meaning let’s talk sex, I’m talking, let her know about all the “drama” in a sense. You know, the stuff “the kids don’t have to know about.”

Like family for instance. I suppose in a sense I’ve just always had this picture painted in my mind of what a “perfect” family I come from. Not just immediate, but extended. I mean we have our one or two folks that have gotten a divorce or the aunts and uncles that have a speeding ticket here and there and the relatives here and there that aren’t religious, and so on and so forth. Whatever the case, I felt as though I came from a “good” family background.

So like all of a sudden apparently when I turned some age that I was never told about was the “you are now old enough” age, I find out things I never knew growing up. So and so has been a druggie all their life. So and so was bad into alcohol. So and so was sexually abused growing up. So and so has an eating disorder. So on and so forth.

So now the picture that I had painted of my family is being rearranged in a sense. It’s like the paint is being chipped away—the paint in which I painted there mind you; and the “real” portrait beneath, in a sense, is being revealed.

I’m not saying what is found necessarily is better or worse than the original painting, but it’s just different. You begin to look at the portrait differently. You begin to question more, as well as begin to understand more (all at the same time, which is kind of funny).

But what’s even more intriguing is when this issue is brought more home per say. When the picture in which you had painted, that is beginning to be chipped away, is the picture for which you had painted of yourself.

We all think we know who we are. Many times we do know to a pretty decent extent, but when the parts that you thought you knew begin to be questioned, especially when the questioning is coming from none-other-than yourself, things get a little more intense—to the point of truly “hitting-home.”

In our own defense, many times the pictures for which we have painted are acting as just that, a defense. It is our defense mechanism for what we want everything to look like. This is especially pertinent to remember when considering the picture we have painted for our self. It is not uncommon for us to view our self in one manner in efforts to avoid the truth about our self for which we are not satisfied with. And whether that is healthy or not, that is for another blog another time…HA! What I want to point out is how hard it is to realize sometimes that the picture for which we have painted of our self might not be the true picture to the core; something else very well might lie beneath.

I’m now at the point of this blog where I would normally relate this blog to an example, such as how I have found this situation to have come about in my own life, but at this very moment I just decided that, though all along I planned to go into my example to wrap this blog up, I’m not going to. I think this blog has much more meaning if I leave it out there as is and let you think about it not detour from this route into a more narrow perspective of relating it specifically to my situation. And, as much as I’ve shared topics pertaining specifically to myself lately, I feel as though I want to get back on the route of my FAVORITE type of blogs to write, as well as to read; those in which they just make you think in a general sense about whatever way you want to interpret the topic, rather than this is about me.