Or is there? I dunno.
Patient readers know that I keep coming up against the brick wall of my feeling of constant crisis. A powerful feeling that operates way in the background of my mind and makes me feel like I have to hide out against some terrible calamity happening just outside my tiny little bunker.
But there’s nothing there. Nothing is “after” me. There is no nuclear holocaust to justify my bunker mentality. It’s all green grass and butterflies out there.
The only ghosts chasing me are the ones inside my haunted head.
But no matter how often or how firmly I tell myself this, the feeling persists. And as long as the feeling persists, my logic is helpless against it.
It’s really just my shattered sense of safety all over again.
Being raped when I was 4 left me permanently traumatized and that’s what locked me into the “freeze” (of fight, flight, or freeze) mode that has warped my entire life.
So while I “know” I am perfectly safe, I don’t believe it. Not really. Not deep down, where it counts, on the primal animal level.
If only I could truly believe that I am safe – that the crisis is over and I survived it and everything is going to be okay now – then I think I could be much happier and healthier in this tired old skin of mine.
And not just psychologically. Physically as well. I am convinced that this bunker mentality of mine interferes with my body’s ability to heal and regulate itself by locking me into a constant low level adrenal stress state and as we all know, stress kills.
It kills by keeping us in fight or flight mode, which focuses all out energies on the here and now under the assumption that what matters is surviving that saber toothed tiger or felling that wildebeest so the tribe can eat, and not how you’re going to feel after.
So I am sure that plays a big role in my shitty health.
So ya know, no pressure. Just get sane or die. Ha ha ha.
Well I’m working on it. The words you are reading right now are a big part of that. I write these words to express my emotions and work through them.
And I feel like I am on an accelerated path lately. Every demon I release and every ghost I exorcise is just a little bigger than the last one, and as I liberate them through the oddly narrow opening that is my writing talents, my hope is that by the time they are all gone, the opening will be big enough for me to go through, too.
Not sure if that means it’ll be bigger or I’ll be smaller, but I am okay either way.
So writing on this blog really is my job because what society expects of a sick person is that you do what you can to get better, and this is how I get better.
And I thank you all for making it all possible.
More after the break.
Dying in the dark
Lately, I’ve had this feeling that I am dying.
And this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Because a big part of me IS dying, and I’m all for it, because it’s the bad part.
The diseased part. The toxic part. The part that has been holding me back for far too long and therefore has to go. NOW.
So I think I need to be careful about what parts of me I am identifying with. The depression wants me to think it and I are one and if it goes, so do I.
Bullshit. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that the more it dies, the more I live, and that’s what it can’t stand.
It is, after all, just a mindless computer program I created a long time ago in a moment of horrible crisis with the only goal being to keep myself safe.
. And seeing as it’s a program “written” by a four year old in response to being raped, I can forgive it for not exactly being sophisticated.
But its reign is over. I’ve seen it for the idiot mechanism it is, and with every beat of my heart the real me goes stronger and the old me, the sick and crippled stunted child-man version of me, ebbs further away.
And that’s sad, in a way. When it is gone, I will mourn it, for it was me for a very long time and it’s not a bad person, just no longer an expression of who I truly am.
It’s like a suit of clothes that no longer fits me because I have outgrown them. And my new wardrobe will no doubt take the best elements of it into its design, but it will no longer be limited to those old clothes with all the holes in them.
I need room to grow. Because I have one heck of a lot of growing and healing to do and I can’t do any of it if I am cooped up in my little tin box of a life.
I need the freedom to be alive. To live and breathe and think and feel and be a part of the world instead of a refugee hiding from it.
And I don’t even need to leave this bedroom to do it. The internet is a vast and thriving place and brimming with opportunities for a brilliant fellow like myself and it’s only a lack of courage and vision that has kept me from seeing that until now.
By golly, I’m going to either make something of myself or die trying.
And given that I turn 50 exactly a month from today, that’s not just an idle saying. I might very well drop dead before I make any of my dreams come true.
But I’d rather die trying than die in the dark.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.