Seems To Was

In the summer of 2014, an idea that I had labeled my life ceased to exist. This idea had grown within me like cancer, wrapping itself around a seminal thought like a parasitic host, just as a tumor begins within a single cell and then grows until the sarcoma exceeds the limitations of the body. There were only two choices: Let the tumor destroy me, or separate myself from the swelling lump and let it die. Reluctantly, and in desperation, I chose to live instead of allowing my life to kill me. 

What ended--what I had thought at the time, at least--was my life. But as I watched as my life ended, it occurred to me that I was still living. What continued was not what I had thought that I was, but what I must have been all along. In retrospect, I can see more clearly, or at least communicate with greater conviction, that it was not until I allowed my life to end that I understood what my life had been all along. I know, too, that the disease that had been my life required a certain amount of nourishment, care, and maintenance. It was a beast that I had nurtured into existence, and it required my constant attention. Each day it grew into a monster more odious, more powerful. It grew and it grew until it threatened to destroy its host.

The beast outgrew the temple in which it had lived and died like a snail extracted from its shell. 

My life ended. The life that I had called my life ended. At the end of all things, I could no longer pretend that my life was what I had wanted myself and others to think that it was. Surely some of those closest to me would say that they had always seen more clearly the differences between what was my life and what I pretended my life to be, and perhaps they did. It is probably true that some saw the truth and that others did not. Most people are too self-absorbed to think very critically about the differences between appearance and reality of those who surround them anyway. None of that really matters. The point is that there do exist two things: I shall call the first the Is. I shall call the second the Seems. What is and what seems are two different things with two different qualities. One exists as an external reality, and the other exists as an internal construct. One can be objectively and honestly measured, the other exists only within the vapors of obfuscation and deception. It would be tempting to say that one exists and the other does not, but that is not entirely true. Both exist. There are forces that exist that we cannot see, and the Seems is one of those forces. It has the power to destroy--and it will destroy--if it is not destroyed first. 

As a free gift to me--I did not ask for it, at least not that I remember--the Seems in me was destroyed, and the Is was allowed to continue. When the Seems died, I thought that I would die along with it. Five years later, I am still living. Though it is humiliating to admit, I have no choice to admit that five years ago, everything that I thought to be true about myself had actually been false. The Seems that had been born in me decades earlier had become a monster that controlled me like a puppet, and I was powerless to do anything but what it forced me to do. I was helpless even to think anything but what it had told me to think. I performed its bidding like a hapless slave, unable to free myself from the demon that had convinced me that if I were to kill it, that I would also have to kill myself, for we had become one. This, after all, is the end game of the Seems. It is given to destroy. At last, when my knights, rooks, and pawns had vanished from the board, and I was backed into a corner surrounded by black bishops and a deadly queen, I acknowledged defeat and surrendered my king. The board vanished, and my Seems fell into nothingness.