As a child, I would play for hours and stay up late nights until the wee hours of the morning trying to learn the rules and master the skills required to move me to the next level of the game of my choosing, at which once accomplished, the next time I played I would eagerly challenge my opponent to a game that I’ve already mastered. But, again, that was when I was just a child. No longer do I participate in such innocent games. I’m all grown up now, and apparently so are the games.
These games are new and vast in scope and size, and there is no telling when they’ve begun or when they’re going to end. The results of losing such games can be paralyzing, ego-bruising, life-altering and life-ending. The rewards of winning can be life-changing, ego-boosting, and can propel one beyond limits and into other dimensions. These games are without rules. Yet, the only way to win is to play.
However, I often find myself an unwilling pawn in someone’s devious game, acting and reacting without rhyme or reason and moving in directions I didn’t know I was headed — a puppet on invisible strings, being pushed, pulled, maneuvered and manipulated by an omnipresent puppet master with his/her own master plan, hidden agenda, and army of puppets and puppeteers. Oh how I wish I could cut those strings, but first I would have to know that they are there. Alas, another hitch in the games of life.
How am I to win when I didn’t even know I was playing? How am I to know that I’m ahead when someone else is behind me? I don’t know, and I don’t know. Maybe that is another component of this game, for me not to know. Imagine that, another game.
It’s exhausting being an unwilling opponent in ”bored” games that adults like to play, and it’s extremely painful being a victim of such psychotic mind games. I’ve grown weary, wary, and distrusting of everyone. Paranoia wants to make an impression on my psyche and jeopardize everything that I am; it wants my mind to play tricks on me. Games. More games.
In life, they say you create your own rules and play according to the game that you’ve created. They say you can change the rules of your own game. But I often wonder who is playing my game? Who decided to come in and change the rules and move around my pieces? When did my game become hers, his, or even theirs? When did this all take place? Where is my game? What is the name of this game? I don’t like it. I really don’t. I don’t want to play anymore. I want to scream, “You can keep the damn game and play it by yourself!” But I don’t scream, yell, talk, or even whisper; I just stop playing.
It’s your game now. Enjoy.
