shipwrecked

He looked into his glass, and watched the shadow of his head swim in the ruby below. Hadn’t he always cast himself as a martyr, as an outcast? Perhaps it was nothing more than that – a role he had been playing. Perhaps he was no different than anyone else. He shook his head. No – no. It couldn’t be. He had been an outcast. Hell, he’d even had stones thrown at him for being a foreigner. He hadn’t made it all up. But it was true that he had latched unto his otherness, he had worn it as a badge of pride. Over the years he had instilled his life with a rich tragic motif. His otherness had been – still was – a crutch he could lean on in times of crisis. But it wasn’t his real identity. It wasn’t his true self. It had begun by being the persona he slipped on when he hurt. Now it had become much more, it was the thing around which he was building his whole identity. And that couldn’t be healthy.
He remembered something he had heard a preacher say about finding one’s identity in God. He remembered coming across something Emerson and Steinbeck had written about an “Oversoul”. Yes, people were connected with something wider than themselves, yes, they were connected with one another somehow, and perhaps in a deeper sense that they thought. But that didn’t help resolve the question of his identity. It just made things more complicated.
He sighed, ran his fingers through his hair, and lifted the glass to his lips.

by shamrock