A Place To Begin

Crying.  A life defined by a vale of tears.  But that is not so.  It has only been in the past three years that I have had access to my tears.  I shut my emotions down so effectively that I was unable to feel practically anything.  I was numb all over.  It was like my feelings were caged in a prison-like cell where the key hole was rusted and the key long forgotten as to where it was placed.  The numbness permeated my body until it became who I was.  The very essence of me.  Like a pinball on a table, I was buffeted by the paddle until I sank into the hole of despair, no longer able to play the game.  In that very hole, the depression would manifest itself until it took up my entire being.  The blackness in my soul was stifling and the Little White Guy, the me that was struggling to get out from under the massive weight of my self-hate, was all but obliterated.

Imagine a world without feelings.  No joy.  No excitement.  No curiosity.  No feelings of anticipation for upcoming events.  No anger expressed, although there was a multitude of it boiling under the surface of my being.  Not acknowledged.  Completely unaware of its presence.  Denied an outlet for expression for decades.

And then emotions did begin to burp into existence.  Sadness so profound it blanketed me in suffocating stillness.  It reached beyond my soul and paralyzed my limbs until movement became almost painful.  So still I would sit.  Statue-like amidst a world of perpetual motion.

And Fear.  An entity so gripping it squeezed whatever life was left in my skeletal frame and made a permanent home for itself with Sadness as its neighbor.  Fear and Sadness.  Sadness and Fear.

Then along came Guilt and Shame.  These two insidious friends intertwined with one another and snaked themselves in and out and in between the lots that Fear and Sadness neglected to occupy.  Guilt for being alive.  For taking up space on the planet.  Shame for who I was.  For all the exchanges I had with people in my world.  The numbness was replaced by four giant feelings that in turn became the entity I named, ‘The Beast’.

The Beast has had full range to commandeer my life.  The years of this occupation seem endless in their entirety.  Since the early eighties it took possession of my body, mind, and soul.  It ravaged me completely until the shreds of my dignity were all that remained.

But remain they did.  It is these remnants that bound together to make a fabric sturdy enough to withstand the continued lashings of The Beast.  With every slash endured, the binds in the fabric became stronger and it grew in width and length.  Today I stand victorious as the fabric waves in the wind; a victory flag of a battle fought and won.

Is the war over?  Have I successfully smothered The Beast in the materiel of my own creation?  I do not know.  Perhaps it is too early to tell.  In these past months I have made significant headway in regards to these questions.  As Time rolls forward, I will move with it.  I will no longer remain stuck in the negativity of my past, no matter how comfortable it is.  No matter how familiar.  I will not be seduced by the power of The Beast.  A power I gave it in the Dark Ages of my disease.

I now take the power back.  And with it comes the responsibility of choice.  I choose the new path I am forging over the old one I have known.  What awaits me down the road is a mystery.  One that only I can solve.  So on with the adventures I will discover along the way!  The Universe is with me, and I with it.

********************************************************************

The purpose of this blog is to document and reflect upon part of my journey, in the hopes that it may touch others afflicted in similar ways and let them know that they are not alone.