'that i would be loved even when i numb myself / that i would be good even when i'm overwhelmed....'
The song conveying the most basic desire of my soul, of my psyche, of my being: to be GOOD, not only for myself, but for those whom i love, and whom (i can only assume), love me in return.
i have tripped, stumbled, fell flat on my face so many times: my final resting place, as i believed it to be, was a filthy, dehydrated to hell mess in some trash-strewn bushes on the outskirts of progreso, mexico, broken shards of glass trying desperately to cut deeply enough into my skin to force the lifeblood out of my veins. i truly believed, or hoped and prayed, that i would die there: i did not see any other option, and when i finally crawled up and out of those bushes, numb and terrified, shaking and lost, desperate and lifeless, i drank the most delicious orange juice i have ever tasted from a roadside stand (the first thing i had consumed in three days), and stumbled my way back into humanity. but humanity is a sick motherfucker, or perhaps it's simply me that has allowed the badness, the madness, the sadness and the insanity to drive me to the utter brink of it...
i am reading a book right now by an amazing author, thomas moore, who was a catholic monk for 12 years before eventually moving out into the World At Large and becoming a therapist; his training and life experience is such that he realizes and embraces the incredible nature of the human psyche, the human soul: it's one of those 'self-help books' that actually encourages simply SITTING with the 'dark nights of the soul,' embracing them for what they are, as learning, growing, potentially even giving birth to scintillatingly creative processes. he said something that hit me square in the face, like the thunk of a basketball that smashes directly into your nose, and it was simply one word: sadomasochism. andrew always said that i'm in love with 'beautiful tragedies,' and i accepted that at face value, as a part of my romantic, somewhat lost, questing spirit. now, here is this man, this ex-monk, saying that sometimes in life, we begin to think we DESERVE to suffer, we DESERVE to feel pain, and we eventually come to depend on it so fervently, we set ourselves up for failure... i'll quote some things out of it before i return it to the library. for the first time, truly, i was able to put it all together in one terrible, awe-struck, dripping blood and howling screams manera... children have always been the ONE thing in this world that has brought me a true sense of Joy, deeper than anything else I have ever experienced. and yet, i am stuck in this tape-loop of melancholy, of depression, of not-deserving-anything-good (so red said...), and i... had to up the ante. i had to make it worse. i had to deliberately (albeit unknowingly, but come the fuck ON - everyone else in 'normal society' can take the most basic of precautions, why couldn't i??) decimate that. i'm not sure... it's all still somewhat convoluted, because it is the most honest, startling revelation i've ever had in regards to all THIS, and it sounds absolutely ridiculous from any traditional, logical, normal-thinking sort of way. but that is, indeed, the long and short of it, it truly, truly is... up until then, everything that i had screwed up, i had screwed up on a non-permanent basis: there was always somewhere else to run if things got bad enough, there were always other jobs to be had, other housing situations to be found, other groups of people to befriend. that developed into such a pattern, and still, the depression never abated, and still, there was a neurosis of (shall we say it?) self-pity, of billy corgan screaming, 'i'm in love with my sadness...' and we take that ten steps further, and find ways to obliterate all, all, any and all.
and so now, what do i do with these realizations? now that i KNOW the root cause of it all (and it was not arrived at through any number of hours with my counselor, because she has such faith in me, she views it all positively, she thinks i'm pretty damn incredible with all the crazy things i have done - but her personal admiration for my craziness and adventures has clouded her objectivity to help me get to the very ROOT of it. perhaps the roots of it cannot be attained when i'm meeting with another person, because, 'therapist' or not, i am still trying to put on a certain front for her, for them, i am still trying to show that i am in control, that i am, and have always been, a logical person - and what kind of person deliberately sabotages the entirety of their career that they LOVE?!? i don't know. me. no, it had to come to me while alone; it was different than simply blaming myself, bemoaning myself, kicking myself in the ass. it was a small step backwards, a slight step outwards, and an attempt to ask WHY. because there is always a reason WHY, even when something seems completely and utterly arbitrary. now, i have the Reason... and somehow, that makes all the difference in my mind. somehow, i can finally breathe easier, i can finally smile and nod wisely and say, 'ahhh....' there is a level of understanding, and that is more precious than anything else, no matter how terribly it was arrived at. do i deserve love? do i deserve companionship? do i deserve to have a job i enjoy? do i deserve anything but the blessings of nature, to run wild and naked and free through the woods, a wild-child spirit-nymph of the night...? i am growing up, i am getting older, after having lost so, so much time, but i am still stuck on a precipice between where i want to be (but can never achieve) and where i am, between all i have lost and what i may gain, if i am strong enough. if i LOVE myself enough, and i have never, ever been able to do that. sometimes bad things happen, and then we begin to believe that we deserved those bad things, and that mentality attracts even more bad things, and so it goes... 'everything you see is just a thought manifested'... and i am somewhat reeling and shaking from these revelations, the sheer enormity of them, the sheer relevance and consequence of these faulty belief systems that i have perpetuated for so many years. warm fuzzies can do nothing for us these days...
and yet, i'm god's baby, and i can only fall at Her feet and apologize for having burnt in effigy Her creation, her plan for my life (to teach kids to read and travel the world), always said with more assuredness than i have ever been able to muster in regards to ANYTHING before. i WILL find a way, because now i know how very, very precious it is, how truly perfect it is, and how much it's worth fighting for. and it will take time, time, a mountain of time (and that is something that slips through my fingers, through all our fingers, every single blasted-apart day) until i have sufficiently Healed to be able to attract the life-forces of children, to be able to have parents see it in my actions with them, their responses to me, that i would never, ever do anything to do anything but love them. there are ways, and i'll find them. until then... we work on Love, the final word that will be written into my arm, and it is not yet time for that one to begin. and with good, good reason.
and yet there is another form of strength, as well, in my life right now: a website called Prison Talk, a forum, of sorts. now, i've never been to prison, now, i hope and pray to Jah i never will (i need to be Pure...), but it is the most perfect, perfect thing for me right now. me, who has spent the past 4 months agonizing, crying, wailing, wringing my hands in sheer PANIC that i'm a criminal, i'm a criminal, i'm a criminal, there is nothing i can do with my life. i desperately search the internet for answers to these questions: can i do this, can i do that, can i do FUCKING ANYTHING?!, but this forum is filled with people who are actually LIVING IT, who are actually living proof that after the depths of darkness and despair, there can be light, but it depends largely on your psyche, on your spirit, on how badly you want it and how many doors you are willing to have slammed in your face before just one opens even the slightest. after what i previously wrote, it doesn't seem like the odds are in my favour, but every day, i get a little, little, little bit stronger. every day, i contemplate, tentatively, small things that i may be able to do; i touch the tip of my tongue to the metal of my fillings, the acridity of my failures, and let these stories of hope, inspiration, and even (and especially) the sheer shared feelings of complete and utter hopelessness fill me with Peace, small and tranquil, rooted and rocky, but albeit, still there. a gathering of people who UNDERSTAND, who are trying to rebuild their lives after life has dealt them perhaps the harshest blow that can be dealt... and so i wait, and so i wonder, and so i ponder.
i haven't smoked pot in three weeks; i can't imagine that i ever will again. truly... let's not jinx it quite yet, but i am an addict. but i have a tendency to let substances take over entire parts of my life, if not the entirety, in some way or another. there is no 'middle path' with this one anymore, unless i am in a setting, a realm, a SPIRITUAL PLACE, where it regains its sacrosanct nature. but as is, i broke that agreement, that God gave it to us as a vehicle for discovering certain secrets of the universe, but the silly humans were not going to view it in that way, so we must guard it behind locked doors and use discretion, at ALL TIMES. i forgot about that, completely and utterly... when i go to grand rapids, i actually WANT to start going to MA meetings (there is such a thing), just so i can STAY in that realm, just so i can HEAL, just so i can meet people who are questing towards wholeness and happiness... algun dia, algun dia, algun dia...
i have tripped, stumbled, fell flat on my face so many times: my final resting place, as i believed it to be, was a filthy, dehydrated to hell mess in some trash-strewn bushes on the outskirts of progreso, mexico, broken shards of glass trying desperately to cut deeply enough into my skin to force the lifeblood out of my veins. i truly believed, or hoped and prayed, that i would die there: i did not see any other option, and when i finally crawled up and out of those bushes, numb and terrified, shaking and lost, desperate and lifeless, i drank the most delicious orange juice i have ever tasted from a roadside stand (the first thing i had consumed in three days), and stumbled my way back into humanity. but humanity is a sick motherfucker, or perhaps it's simply me that has allowed the badness, the madness, the sadness and the insanity to drive me to the utter brink of it...
i am reading a book right now by an amazing author, thomas moore, who was a catholic monk for 12 years before eventually moving out into the World At Large and becoming a therapist; his training and life experience is such that he realizes and embraces the incredible nature of the human psyche, the human soul: it's one of those 'self-help books' that actually encourages simply SITTING with the 'dark nights of the soul,' embracing them for what they are, as learning, growing, potentially even giving birth to scintillatingly creative processes. he said something that hit me square in the face, like the thunk of a basketball that smashes directly into your nose, and it was simply one word: sadomasochism. andrew always said that i'm in love with 'beautiful tragedies,' and i accepted that at face value, as a part of my romantic, somewhat lost, questing spirit. now, here is this man, this ex-monk, saying that sometimes in life, we begin to think we DESERVE to suffer, we DESERVE to feel pain, and we eventually come to depend on it so fervently, we set ourselves up for failure... i'll quote some things out of it before i return it to the library. for the first time, truly, i was able to put it all together in one terrible, awe-struck, dripping blood and howling screams manera... children have always been the ONE thing in this world that has brought me a true sense of Joy, deeper than anything else I have ever experienced. and yet, i am stuck in this tape-loop of melancholy, of depression, of not-deserving-anything-good (so red said...), and i... had to up the ante. i had to make it worse. i had to deliberately (albeit unknowingly, but come the fuck ON - everyone else in 'normal society' can take the most basic of precautions, why couldn't i??) decimate that. i'm not sure... it's all still somewhat convoluted, because it is the most honest, startling revelation i've ever had in regards to all THIS, and it sounds absolutely ridiculous from any traditional, logical, normal-thinking sort of way. but that is, indeed, the long and short of it, it truly, truly is... up until then, everything that i had screwed up, i had screwed up on a non-permanent basis: there was always somewhere else to run if things got bad enough, there were always other jobs to be had, other housing situations to be found, other groups of people to befriend. that developed into such a pattern, and still, the depression never abated, and still, there was a neurosis of (shall we say it?) self-pity, of billy corgan screaming, 'i'm in love with my sadness...' and we take that ten steps further, and find ways to obliterate all, all, any and all.
and so now, what do i do with these realizations? now that i KNOW the root cause of it all (and it was not arrived at through any number of hours with my counselor, because she has such faith in me, she views it all positively, she thinks i'm pretty damn incredible with all the crazy things i have done - but her personal admiration for my craziness and adventures has clouded her objectivity to help me get to the very ROOT of it. perhaps the roots of it cannot be attained when i'm meeting with another person, because, 'therapist' or not, i am still trying to put on a certain front for her, for them, i am still trying to show that i am in control, that i am, and have always been, a logical person - and what kind of person deliberately sabotages the entirety of their career that they LOVE?!? i don't know. me. no, it had to come to me while alone; it was different than simply blaming myself, bemoaning myself, kicking myself in the ass. it was a small step backwards, a slight step outwards, and an attempt to ask WHY. because there is always a reason WHY, even when something seems completely and utterly arbitrary. now, i have the Reason... and somehow, that makes all the difference in my mind. somehow, i can finally breathe easier, i can finally smile and nod wisely and say, 'ahhh....' there is a level of understanding, and that is more precious than anything else, no matter how terribly it was arrived at. do i deserve love? do i deserve companionship? do i deserve to have a job i enjoy? do i deserve anything but the blessings of nature, to run wild and naked and free through the woods, a wild-child spirit-nymph of the night...? i am growing up, i am getting older, after having lost so, so much time, but i am still stuck on a precipice between where i want to be (but can never achieve) and where i am, between all i have lost and what i may gain, if i am strong enough. if i LOVE myself enough, and i have never, ever been able to do that. sometimes bad things happen, and then we begin to believe that we deserved those bad things, and that mentality attracts even more bad things, and so it goes... 'everything you see is just a thought manifested'... and i am somewhat reeling and shaking from these revelations, the sheer enormity of them, the sheer relevance and consequence of these faulty belief systems that i have perpetuated for so many years. warm fuzzies can do nothing for us these days...
and yet, i'm god's baby, and i can only fall at Her feet and apologize for having burnt in effigy Her creation, her plan for my life (to teach kids to read and travel the world), always said with more assuredness than i have ever been able to muster in regards to ANYTHING before. i WILL find a way, because now i know how very, very precious it is, how truly perfect it is, and how much it's worth fighting for. and it will take time, time, a mountain of time (and that is something that slips through my fingers, through all our fingers, every single blasted-apart day) until i have sufficiently Healed to be able to attract the life-forces of children, to be able to have parents see it in my actions with them, their responses to me, that i would never, ever do anything to do anything but love them. there are ways, and i'll find them. until then... we work on Love, the final word that will be written into my arm, and it is not yet time for that one to begin. and with good, good reason.
and yet there is another form of strength, as well, in my life right now: a website called Prison Talk, a forum, of sorts. now, i've never been to prison, now, i hope and pray to Jah i never will (i need to be Pure...), but it is the most perfect, perfect thing for me right now. me, who has spent the past 4 months agonizing, crying, wailing, wringing my hands in sheer PANIC that i'm a criminal, i'm a criminal, i'm a criminal, there is nothing i can do with my life. i desperately search the internet for answers to these questions: can i do this, can i do that, can i do FUCKING ANYTHING?!, but this forum is filled with people who are actually LIVING IT, who are actually living proof that after the depths of darkness and despair, there can be light, but it depends largely on your psyche, on your spirit, on how badly you want it and how many doors you are willing to have slammed in your face before just one opens even the slightest. after what i previously wrote, it doesn't seem like the odds are in my favour, but every day, i get a little, little, little bit stronger. every day, i contemplate, tentatively, small things that i may be able to do; i touch the tip of my tongue to the metal of my fillings, the acridity of my failures, and let these stories of hope, inspiration, and even (and especially) the sheer shared feelings of complete and utter hopelessness fill me with Peace, small and tranquil, rooted and rocky, but albeit, still there. a gathering of people who UNDERSTAND, who are trying to rebuild their lives after life has dealt them perhaps the harshest blow that can be dealt... and so i wait, and so i wonder, and so i ponder.
i haven't smoked pot in three weeks; i can't imagine that i ever will again. truly... let's not jinx it quite yet, but i am an addict. but i have a tendency to let substances take over entire parts of my life, if not the entirety, in some way or another. there is no 'middle path' with this one anymore, unless i am in a setting, a realm, a SPIRITUAL PLACE, where it regains its sacrosanct nature. but as is, i broke that agreement, that God gave it to us as a vehicle for discovering certain secrets of the universe, but the silly humans were not going to view it in that way, so we must guard it behind locked doors and use discretion, at ALL TIMES. i forgot about that, completely and utterly... when i go to grand rapids, i actually WANT to start going to MA meetings (there is such a thing), just so i can STAY in that realm, just so i can HEAL, just so i can meet people who are questing towards wholeness and happiness... algun dia, algun dia, algun dia...