Might do a linkpost after this one. But for now, angst.

Therapy day. We talked about my relationship with my father, and it become apparent that I actually had a lot more of a relationship with him than I thought.

It started with me talking about how I would try to intervene between my father and my sibling when he was getting abusive at the dinner table when I was a kid.

What an absurd sight that must have been, me not even into double digits yet, convinced that this was all just a misunderstanding and if I just tried hard enough, I could smooth it all over and everyone would be happy and getting along again.

Absurd, but touching. I was so earnest and I tried so hard. But this was no misunderstanding, it was abuse. My father is a verbally abusive man. And abusers need to abuse. It is how they cope. If you shut down one excuse for them to abuse, they will just find another, because they are addicts desperate for the hit of rage that will make them feel better.

And eventually I figured that out. The problem was not a misunderstanding, it was him. He’s a broken man whose anger issues drive everyone away from him. The man is diseased.

So far, this is all stuff that loyal readers of my blog already know. But I have not, AFAIK, talked about what happened after I figured out that he was the problem.

I turned on him. Instead of mediating, I started tackling him myself, verbally speaking. If he started being abusive, I would interpose myself and reflect it all right back at him. Eventually it would be like war between him and me, a war of words, and every time we battled, I would remember the arguments he had used to justify his atrocious behavior, and the next time, I would have highly effective counterarguments.

I can’t give a direct reason why I took on this role. I can only say that some people are interventionists by nature. When I see a problem like that, I throw myself into it and try and stop it. I can’t do anything else. It would take a huge act of will and a very good reason why intervening is a bad idea in order to keep me on the sidelines.

I cannot sit idly by while bad things happen. I have to intervene. I have to interpose myself betwixt the innocent and the vulnerable and the cold and uncaring hand of fate, or in this case, the forces of evil.

To some that would make me a hero, to others, just a control freak. I don’t know. It’s just how I am.

As our battles continued, my attacks on him grew more pointed and personal. I told him he was a sad, pathetic, tiny man who took out his frustrations on those he loved the most and that he didn’t deserve to eat with civilized people.

And it only occurred to me today, while talking to my shrink, that I won. Eventually, he started taking meals separately from us. My mom would make up a plate for him and stick it in the fridge, and he’d eat it after the rest of us were gone.

And you know what? I am proud of that. I was someone he simply could not bully. He certainly was no threat to me physically. By this point, I was twice his size, and full of teenage hormones too. He was never physically abusive in the first place, but once I grew into my Bubba-ness, that was less of a choice and more like simple self-preservation.

We mutants LOVE puberty.

And I rapidly overtook him mentally too. He could not out-think me, out-argue me, or intimidate me. I was protecting the rest of the family from him and when I am in that mode, I am unstoppable. I was sick and tired of his abuse of my sister Anne and my brother Dave, and I was determined to never let him get away with it. Ever. Period.

It was not long before I had him completely overpowered. And then it was I who chased him away. Because, all else being equal, it’s the offender who should have to leave. Don’t you think?

And even though I fought this fight alone, and sometimes got quite traitorously blamed for the trouble, everybody got to enjoy the peace I created when I chased that bastard away.

I had not thought about that period for a long time before today. And it had never occurred to me just how unusual it was that I took on that role and that I fought so hard, without fear or hesitation.

My therapist asked me, basically, what happened after that? Where did that tireless warrior go? And all I can say is, I was not trying to prove anything, I was just coping. I didn’t see myself as heroic or think of this as some major thing at the time. So it never occurred to me that this was some sort of sign that I had a gift that I should pursue.

See, I am not an angry person. My default mode is laid back and friendly. I don’t actually want to be that warrior most of the time. It was the enemy, in this case my father, who brought it out in me, and afterwards, I just… went back to being me.

I was such a clueless teen!

I should have been a lawyer. I had all the skills. I would have made a phenomenal lawyer for the cause of good, like representing Greenpeace, or even better, the little guy (or gal) who has been stepped on by the big dogs and needs to be able to fight back.

If they don’t suffer, they’ll never learn. And I could have really enjoyed teaching them.

But know, I thought law school would turn me into a bad person, and so I never pursued it.

How I wish I could go back in time and smack myself for that.

Oh well, I yam what I sweet potato.

Talk to you tomorrow, folks!

Today, I am going to talk about inner conflict, because I have a hell of a fight going on inside me lately.

It is the old energy versus inertia problem that I have always had and that is probably at the root of most of my problems. After all, all that anxiety and fear and craziness in my head has to gets its energy somewhere.

And for a long time now, I have figured that “somewhere” to be all the energy that my powerful mind puts out but which doesn’t go anywhere. It gets stuck at the enormous depressive clog made of ice and fear in my soul and instead of pouring out into the world in the form of action and expression, it just backs up back into my mind and produces this massive electrical charge that expresses itself as mental chaos.

For a long time, that was simply the way things were. I stayed all wrapped up in myself, trying to shut out the world and disappear into my toys, and thought that because my mind was free, I was free.

Like hell. I was more a slave in a cage than any pig-ignorant bumpkin who thinks Obama is a gay Muslim socialist fascist. It does not matter if your mind can fly as free as a bird if said bird has a sixteen ton weight tied to its tail.

And so it went for far too many years of my life. After I moved out of Angela’s place and into the apartment I live in now, it became all too easy not to have to deal with the world at all.

So I have been in somewhat of a slump for a long time. And things have only gotten worse since last November. Last year, I was doing a video and a blog entry a day, and doing fine that way.

But now, I blog, and that’s it. And that is not good. Not that I have some sort of obligation or compulsion to do more, but this blog of mine does not absorb enough of my creative energies to keep me calm. In fact, lately writing this blog entry has felt really easy for me. I guess that means I have gotten back into shape, writing wise. This little outlet of mine does me a lot of good, but it is feeling increasingly like a warm-up, not a routine.

This would naturally lead to finding something else to do with my day, and it is not like I don’t have lots of exciting and fruitful possibilities. I could start a new book, or try to pin down some of my short story ideas long enough to write the damned thing, or go back to making videos, maybe with my tablet this time (better quality), or start up a wacky fake news website like I have been planning to do forever, or yadda yadda yadda,

So I have a lot of neato things I could totally do. But I am stuck at the end of the diving board, scared to dive even though I know the water is only a few feet below.

Thus, I am feeling the conflict big time, and it is a very hard thing to resolve. I need an inner conflict resolution expert. My inner self wants to emerge and shine and release all that latent power into the world in the form of wonderful, witty, wacky, warm works of art.

But there is still this barrier within me, the little boy who can’t jump, and that terrible fear that makes me cling to stasis as the only way to keep my demons quiet hold me back.

Hell, it holds me down. I really feel like I am holding my own head under water lately. I used to feel this sort of thing as me staring at myself, unblinking, and holding myself in place that way. Frozen by the light.

But now it feels a lot more like a hand on the back of my head, pushing me down, squashing me into place, keeping me from lifting my head and looking around at the world.

This is the point in the battle for my soul when the skirmishes stop and the war begins. I wish I knew a better way. I am conflict avoidant by nature, preferring to stick with the smooth and mellow groove. I don’t dig the harshness.

And part of me keeps trying to find a diplomatic solution. Something that balances the ambition and the fear and lets them find a third way out of the conflict and into cooperation with each other.

Problem is, that inner barrier has to go. That is not negotiable. That wall inside of me, the wall that has both been keeping me in and keeping the world out, has to be destroyed. Perhaps a new, more flexible, more nuanced barrier will replace it eventually, but for now, the old wall has to come down like the walls of Jericho.

Only when I can let the world in and let myself out can I find a more healthy equilibrium. I will always be an introvert. I will always need serious alone time to recharge after social engagement. I will always seek the quiet spaces where I can do my quiet activities in peace. I will never be someone who is a social whirlwind.

But I need to move in that direction. Let some fresh air into my soul and clear out all the junk cluttering up my mind. Get rid of old thought patterns in favour of new, optimized ones. Patch myself into Fru 2.0 already.

As always, though, the real issue is patience, and faith. The patience to wait for this long damned process to work itself out, and the faith that all of this is, actually, leading somewhere.

Turns out, the war within will not be short or decisive, and will in fact be something of a quagmire.

And here I thought we’d be greeted as liberators.

See you tomorrow, folks!