My entire personality is based on keeping something in.

Make that a lot of somethings in.

But I don’t know what they are. All I know is that these things are dark, horrible, hateful, detestable, digusting, toxic, and deeply deeply shameful.

And if they got out, something horrible would happen.

Dunno what it would be. But it is literally unimaginably bad.

This is how a lot of survivors of childhood sexual abuse feel. We feel like we are nightmarish garbage on the inside and if people knew who we really are,. they would scream, recoil in horror, and run for the hills.

That’s certainly how I feel. Not quite sure who that “real me” might be. That’s what happens when your entire mind is structured to bury those memories in a grave so deep they will never, ever see the light of day again.

Because the number one person you are hiding them from is yourself. I don’t remember being raped. I remember being in the shower stall with someone and I remember making the decision that this wasn’t really happening and that I was going to take my mind away until it was over.

And it’s never come back. Not fully. I feel like part of me died that day, and its corpse wraps around my mind like a moat and keeps anyone from ever touching me again.

Even if I want them to.

Even if I am desperately reaching out to find someone, anyone, who can make me feel real. Like I am really alive. Like I count. Like I matter. Like I register in people’s mind.

Like I am not all alone in here any more.

Even if I am dying inside from emotional starvation and the dead tissue rots inside me and poisons me so thoroughly that I can’t remember what purity feels like.

It seems nice.

And in some ways, it is the stuff trying to get out that keeps stuff from coming in. The corridor is blocked and the emotional inputs from the outside can’t get through until the stuff that wants out gets out of the way.

Because that’s the thing. If it was simply a matter of not accessing certain memories, there wouldn’t be a problem.

But that’s not how the mind works. My mind still wants to finish processing the bad stuff and that means bringing it into my conscious mind and making me re-live it so that the memories can finally be put away for good.

And this part of the mind strains against the blockage with a pressure that increases day by day. Emotions pile up at both ends of the corridor and my mind remains in a permanent state of stalemate. A kind of emotional detente.

And there’s lil ol’ me squashed flat in between. No wonder I sometimes feel like I am between two plates of glass on a microscope slide. Opposing pressures within me keep me squashed so flat I am almost two dimensional.

And yet, somehow I live. It’s not much of a life. granted, but somehow I keep going.

My freedom can only come from somehow resolving the tension. Something somewhere has to give.

The bad stuff has to come out.

I am fascinated by how horrifying the thought is to me. To release all my industrial waste into the world seems like the most disgusting and shameful thing I could do.

But I am getting to the point where I don’t give a shit any more. Take my pollution, world. It’s your problem now. I have been holding it in for forty years and I am goddamned sick of (and from) it.

It’s coming out whether you want it to or not. Deal with it.

Oh, and I suppose I should tell you that I have been refining it for all that time, reducing it to a hyper potent meta-toxin that can skeletonize a cow in three seconds.

Then it eats the bones.

It’s also a potent mutagen, so fair warning, the forecast calls for giant malicious mutant zombie animals over the next few decades.

Oh. And it smells worse than sewer leak at the junkyard.

I hate to be so environmentally irresponsible, but this is an emergency. This poisonous bile is threatening the entire facility and all the good people who work here.

So it’s dump or die, really.

Any large release on my part is going to take more than I have been doing. That much is clear. I am increasingly convinced of the need for something big and profound in my life. Something bigger than all my petty intellectualizations and the sad little world I live in. So much bigger than it sweeps them aside like anemic cobwebs and changes me in the ways I deeply need to change.

And that is not going to come from thinking about it. Thinking rationally and logically about things is a wonderful thing but lately I am keenly aware of how small and limited it truly is when compared to my emotional issues.

No, I need some kind of profound spiritual experience that breaks me open inside and lets all the bad stuff out so that I may, at last, be cleansed by pure waters and greet the day with a pure and honest heart and a clean and untainted soul.

I am not yet sure what form this experience would take. I am open to many things. Meditation might get me there. Travel could do it as well.

Or maybe what I really need is to find a nice middle of the road Christian church and sit in the back during a service so I can soak up the vibe and try to grok the whole thing.

Who knows. Maybe I would even join. Whether I believe in God or not seems like a petty perservation compared to what I would get out of being part of a community of people who open their hearts together in prayer and song.

I might not believe in God or Biblical literalism or Christ’s divinity.

But I fervently believe in Christ’s message.

And I can seem myself falling in love with a church.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.