There are no manuals or instruction to life’s many hurdles you face along the way through this journey. Each path you encounter leads to more confusing paths. Bookshelves are lined with countless self-help guides to understanding what makes things tick. I’ve read many of them dealing with everything from the natural addictions to our emotions and their reactions, to our connective thread between us all. And still I remain confused. But, that’s the secret of self discovery… remain vulnerable, exposed, and confused, albeit open to new ideas.
It’s a new year now. A new decade. Yet, the end of 2009 marked a stoic finale, filled with self-loathing depreciation. As the blowing horns, loud music, and even louder drunk celebratees packed the club we were in, I failed to allow myself to enjoy any of it. I was bound and gagged within an internal turmoil of pointless worry and regret. The earlier 10 years of my life echoed loudly between my ears. It filtered out any hope of being happy for the future. I ended up regretting the very thing I sat there regretting.
On the eve of the turn of the century, 10 years earlier, I had already gone through my 2nd divorce. I was playing drums for a crappy garage band without a singer for a bunch of people who turned out to be nothing short of useless for my self-esteem. We played our “set”, regardless, through the stroke of midnight as Y2K came into existence. Opposite of what the usual groups of doomsdayers projected , banks didn’t collapse, black holes didn’t suck the earth into itself, and life didn’t come to a screeching faceplant into a wall of chaos. We continued on. Whoa, big fat hairy surprise there, Nostradamus.
Around the center of the previous decade, I became the father to two more beautiful children (bringing the total tally to 5), and was encountering another dissolving marriage due to a variety of colorful reasons. It was clear that the path I’d assumed (of husband and father) was in question. I could barely keep my mental state in one piece after the domestic rug was yanked from under me. I allowed the wrong people to grasp my subconscious with their clever tentacles and weakly succumbed to the idea of what it was they thought I should become. It took a few years of deep reflection and even fewer new, genuinely caring friends to shake out the old, tired notions of being a failure, and replace them with new, stabilizing ideas. There was a lot of work ahead of me. Many years of bashing one’s self into a pile of shit isn’t easy to rise from. No one ever said it would be. You can “think positive” all you like. Unfortunately, as humans, we’re subjected to too much negativity. It’s everywhere we look. Any positive thought is a mere smear disguising what lies beneath.
It was then that I knew for certain the guilt formulated by religious teachings was the anchor dragging me down. That old foundation needed a good sledgehammering into oblivion to transcend to the next level. Not an easy thing to do whatsoever when everything you think you know about the mechanics and mathematics of life derived from fiction and deceit.
I went through many therapists pushing a different drug for every minute ailment they falsely diagnosed me with (depression, schizophrenia, bi-polar, anxiety) … and then another set of drugs for the side effects those caused (headaches, stomach aches, hallucinations). I then self medicated to mask the pain I was afraid to feel and the tears I had been too embarrassed to shed. This is not the way to handle anything, I realize, but as my view of God faded along with the skin I was unwrapping, I felt even more lost and confused. So, I kicked all the pharmaceuticals cold turkey.
I began pouring into those darn “new agey” sciences and theories of Quantum mechanics. Suddenly things began to make sense. I was starting to see that the emotions I’d tried so hard to hide and ebb away, weren’t going anywhere; they ARE me. I AM them. They are complex, softwired tendencies and fundamental ideas created through the natural process of conditioning. They are the product of personal experience and the result of the reality I had convinced myself I had no control over its creation. When, in fact, I was responsible for that control, and it landed squarely in my lap. It has taken much effort to wrap my head around these principles. But, I tell ya, they work…
Just as the fundamental, universal laws of gravity keep us from floating off into space; it is the law of belief, the law of expectancy, and the law of attraction which breathe life into the realism of our self-made world. If we believe something true, we expect it to happen. When we expect it to happen, almost miraculously, we attract that belief, which then becomes everything we base what’s real on. It was comforting to know I had every bit of say over how this clay molded… but it’s so much more challenging to do than it is to talk about.
After I got my mental state under control (somewhat), I felt empowered over the outcome of my emotional “committee”. I realized each emotion is created by a certain experience I had throughout my 36 years within this skin. Each emotion we’ve branded has a voice and each needs to be heard. And it is especially loud once called forth by something as simple as an old memory being triggered by some similar experience. However, I am the committee chairman. I’m the CEO of this meeting. I have the power to hear out those members of the committee when I see fit, versus allowing them to have the floor and take control of which path I’m on. Take the metaphor for what it is, or invent your own, but it has worked wonders for getting me out of those deep rutted depressions and actually understanding what put me there in the first place.
Confusing, sure. It’s a work in progress. You can read all the self-helpy stuff you’d like, but you still have to help yourself in the end.
So, why the loathing? Why the breakdown on New Year’s Eve? Why the occasional Facebook status updates which seem up one moment and down the next? Obviously, we’re not wired to have everything all figured out, otherwise we wouldn’t be glued to this carbon-based shell, wandering the planet in search of purpose.
I plan to continue this trek through this blogging medium more often than every 3 months, so my goal is to offer some answers. At best, I hope to provoke some degree of thought stimulation (even if I’m talking to myself). At the very least, you can laugh at me.
Regardless…
Only the confused shall be confused. The rest will remain fairly amused.
(To be continued)
JadedFish; the blog 