Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years

I’m guessing we’ve all done it: I typed this title with a clear idea of what I wanted to say, got distracted, wandered off and drifted back half an hour later with coffee and chocolate and absolutely no idea of what my intentions were.  I think it unlikely that I actually intended to tell you the things I have been telling myself for years: they are nonsensical, inconsequential, and almost certainly totally refutable, and… oh, hang on, isn’t that the very definition of this entire little fol-de-rol?  Maybe that was what was on my mind.  The problem is that these things must have been  all roosting quite peaceably between my ears until I threw the stone of thinking about them into the tree because now they’ve all flown off into somebody else’s tree and all I’m left with things I’ve been telling myself for the last thirty seconds.  The things I’ve been telling myself for years have become things I just can’t quite put my finger on. 

I suppose I have been telling myself for years that I am better than I am – at pretty much everything if I’m honest.  Adequate should probably be my middle name.  I just about get by in most things, but I have to admit that, here and there, I thought I might be better than that.  I told myself that I had some kind of innate understanding of people, but now I have begun to realise that they are all bloody aliens to me.  I do not understand a single thing.  I have always told myself that, come what may, I would be alright and, I suppose, I was right – I have been alright, but the alright I have been telling myself about is quite unlike the alright I have.  That is far more dreary.  It doesn’t have any of the things I have spent my whole life telling myself that I could happily live without.

I have always told myself that, if the chips were down, I would do the right thing.  Not necessarily the heroic thing, but not the running away thing.  These days I’m not so sure.  I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t leave anybody else in trouble and, if I’m honest, I probably wouldn’t be able to run too far anyway, but would I stand up to be counted?  I think squat is more likely, and hope that I am not called upon.  In one respect I am lucky, whilst not technically a dwarf (although Grumpy is a possibility), it is not hard to surround myself with people that are much taller than me.  Despite having red hair, I can blend into the background surprisingly well at times.

And, based I think, on having a head full of useless half-remembered facts, I have a tendency to think of myself as bright, but the more I think about it, the less I think it’s true.  Bright people invent things, bright people discover things, bright people do not believe that everything will be alright without them doing something about it.  One day I will do something about all sorts of things: I’ve been telling myself that for years…

I can read people
Blushing peccadilloes, twisted bents and buried fears
Things I’ve been telling myself for years… Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years – Elbow