a heart i know by heart

Feeling Small

The first time I really remember having the feeling I was pretty young. When my family lived in Azusa for the longest time we had HBO without paying for it. Showtime too. It was back in the day when having cable was really something special. And having those premium channels was something to brag about. I was sitting on our couch watching 'The Empire Strikes Back' and it got pretty close to the end right before Luke's hand gets cut off. It was kind of dim I remember and all the sudden everything felt farther away. I was a lot smaller in relation to everything else than I remembered being just minutes before. Nothing really changed of course but my perception of this place I was living in did. It was similar to television shows when someone may be looking a great distance down below them and the camera pans back a bit to attempt to give more depth to image. That's a similar feeling but not quite. Everything was the same size but it wasn't at the same time. Intellectually I know nothing changed but it all seemed so much farther away, so much farther to grasp, like I was much smaller than I perceived myself.
I'm not sure if this makes sense at all to anyone else but me, so to put it another way I felt everything had more depth than it did before. This happened frequently during my childhood and sporadically nowadays, but it happened tonight again after quite a long absence. It typically happened during the evening but happened during day as well, but always indoors. I can probably have it traced back to lighting/diet/anxiety/etc., but I feel it has a deeper meaning than what I currently understand. I probably have never thought about it before tonight, but it might be one more of those little clues that God has programmed into me to keep me in perspective. I live in such a two dimensional world and get so caught up in it (I totally put myself there to begin with) I lose myself. Television is a two dimensional story and when I'm not carefull I live my life in the same way a tv show unfolds. I put myself in a story that has no depth and my character probably gets shot if it was an action film or is just the wacky neighbor who delivers a couple of good one-liners if it's a sitcom. I'm just so un-present in what's going on I'm alarmed by it when I realize it. Or when it's pointed out to me. I've only got about one real friend in whom I can confide in and connect with on a semi regular basis, and here I am being a pretty terrible friend not even calling him on my days off like I said I was going to. Even the stupid sitcom neighbor is more present in his life than I am.
So what am I trying to say? I'm not sure either. I guess I'm still working it out myself. Maybe I'll have some sort of answer my next post if you're really interested, which will be in about 6 months.