Hi, I'm me. By all appearances, I'm not the me you might remember and in all honesty, I'm not entirely the me that I remember either. You see, there was a time when who I was then was totally antithetical to who I am now. To take it from the Buddhist construct of Yin and Yang, it could be argued that I was on the light side, or Yin.
I was happy, married, surrounded by friends and people who gave me love and support and had what seemed to me to be a solid purpose to where and what my life was ultimately going to be.
The problem is, however, that light cannot exist without darkness, and while I enjoyed my time in the glow very much, it was resting atop a very large void of blackness that I had skimmed along my whole life. Eventually and somewhat inevitably, the thin veneer separating the two gave way and in I went.
And there I've stayed.
On this point, I feel I must be clear. It wasn't just one thing which broke the proverbial ice and sent me plunging into this perpetual abyss. Like all situations where you find yourself on unsteady ground, the first cracks can start with the very first step you take, then track you down the farther out you dare venture.
Mine started when I was a boy. The exact time and place, I have no idea, nor does it really matter in anything more than an arbitrary perspective. What matters is it happened. The cracks formed and despite my attempts to out run them, I fell in to the dark and what I found there cost me practically everything I hold dear in this world.
As much as we dislike the darkness in ourselves, which we try to ignore, I've tried over and over to explain this to people. Anger, self-loathing, self-hatred, self-destruction...yes, they all exist on the other side of our minds and most people have both the training and the resources available in their psyche to ignore it the greater majority of the time.
Of course, there is no way to truly shut those things out entirely and we all struggle with the archetypal "daemons" every day of our lives. Such things are often temporary, however, thanks in large part to an influx of positive stimulus from those around us who we lean on when such support is needed.
But not everyone makes it out.
For the last two years, despite my painted smile and well-rehearsed stiff upper lip and mockery of an attempt to just "soldier on," in actuality, I've been totally and completely folded into my own Yang, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that part of me REALLY liked it there.
You see, there is an undeniable fact of being that immersed in anger and passive-aggressiveness and fear and doubt and uncertainty. It can feel really, really good. I mean intoxicatingly orgasmic good. I have never tried a single narcotic in my life, but I know a great many people who have, and when one compared heroin to a three-hour orgasm, it doesn't take much to see the appeal.
Same applies with spending so much time focused on the negative and being so blissfully, infernally angry that you feel nothing else and cannot wait for the next thing to set it off, because you know instinctively just how good your going to feel wanting nothing more than in wanting to burn the whole world to cinders.
So I suppose, after that long dissertation, we come to the fundamental question.
What are we doing here?
Well, there's no easy way to say this, so I'll just lay the cards on the table. I'm 36 years-old. In my lifetime I have survived physical, mental and sexual abuse, I've been through three divorces (two of them before I was 10, the other my own), left my home at 12, was in prison at 19, have been written off and discarded by the greater number of society as nothing more than a criminal of the worst order. I've lived on the streets, been left for dead, stolen money to eat, taken advantage of the generosity and kindness of others, and have a great deal of red ink in my ledger that needs to be paid back in full, with interest.
I've lost friends to death and idiocy, beautiful amazing women who I've loved with the passion of a sun who I lost because of my own insecurities and fear of inadequacy, a son who shouldn't have to go through his life wondering where or who his father is, a career I've fought tooth and nail to earn but feel wholly unsatisfied with, and I live in a world I barely understand and in all honesty, terrifies me as much as it exhilarates me.
I am here because I've spent too much time in the dark, and if I don't get out now, I may never make it out at all. I am here because I want my friends and the people I love back in my life and I owe them that much and so much more.
I am here because it's time to stop hating myself so much, to work through what I need to work through, and give myself a well-earned and much deserved break.
I am here because this is where I need to be. In the light. I need to remember and to know that this world and everyone in it is not my enemy and I am not theirs. That I have something to contribute and that despite everything I have survived, those things do not define me and I have to, once and for all, find a way to let them go.
I am here to start over, but to do that, I have document where I'm coming from and what I'm feeling along the way. I am here because I have to be and because I know I can be something better. Something greater. I have that in me somewhere. I just need to find it again.
So I will be here every day, rain or shine, whether I want to or not, for no other reason than I need a gauge and a release valve. This will be where I come to figure out what I'm feeling, especially when I'm taking a backwards step, so I can figure out why and keep myself moving forward.
It won't always be pretty and at times it may get downright disgusting, but life isn't always pretty and recovery is often disgusting.
So it begins.
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