Hi Chasers,

I recently had a series of unfortunate events where something I had only seen in one way, for a long time, shifted. Rather, a collective of someone’s. What do I mean - it would be like believing the sky is brown your whole life, you take these goggles off only to discover it is a beautiful blue.  

It was in this realisation that my goggles were taken off and their cloak of invisibility was banished. I very much struggled seeing them for who they truly were, for when my goggles were removed, reality seeped through faster then I could fill a glass of water. 

It is quite remarkable how well people hide their true self. Their identity. That they are so uneasy with themselves they feel the need to lie, cheat, belittle, sneak and scheme. Human’s are disjointed, often (but not always) horrible creatures at the best of times. Simply look at our past and you get a sense of why our future is in such flux.

When you discover a person isn’t who you thought they were, you feel entirely bamboozled.

*Bamboozle - To deceive or get the better of (someone) by trickery, flattery, or the like; humbug; hoodwink - to perplex; mystify.

You begin to wrack your brain, slowly unravelling all the small signs that you overlooked and simply accepted. Instead of further investigating, you take the good with the bad and stop following your intuitive nose that is saying loud and clear - you smell a rat!

I am often told I am too nice. I am often told I am extremely honest. I have also been told these are both a strength and a weakness I possess. You see, as mentioned earlier, human’s can be horrible. And many will take advantage of a nice, honest person given the opportunity to further their own agendas. In due time a nice, honest person can become exposed to those a little more fractured then the mind can conceive. You never believe stories of such circumstances until you have witnessed it first hand or been subjected to it.

Through this epiphany, I now understand crazy. And that is simply that you cannot understand crazy. You cannot reason with it, you cannot befriend it and it cannot befriend you. It will pretend, masking it’s identity, putting goggles on you and blurring your 20:20 vision. Crazy is simply a game, or perhaps a rollercoaster. You so badly want to get off this ride but you’re strapped in and can’t escape it for some time. And then the ride stops and you have a very small window to escape and save yourself. I’m rambling…. point is - these people are toxic and dangerous. They know no limits or boundaries and will do whatever necessary to break you - figuratively speaking (hopefully).

I’ve learnt very early on that people cannot be helped. That some people love to sit in the drama and chaos and hateful things of this world. Some people allow themselves to become internally ugly and you cannot do a thing about it. People rarely change, but if they do, it will be their choice and on their time. Sometimes it’s a matter of identifying this quickly so you don’t hang around and invest in someone longer than you need too. This is the lesson I have just learnt the very hard and brutal way.

Have you experienced a similar feeling or experience, where someone you thought you knew, one day, you discovered they were nothing like they were projecting?

Please, share your stories with me.