Thursday, February 14, 2013

Sense of humor


I've never had a girlfriend whose parents liked me.  That statement is still true to this day.  Chris was no exception.  Her parents hated me.  I would have too if I were them.

I sealed the deal one night.  Chris and I rented movies.  She liked to rent movies and just stay at the house and hang out.  That was fine by me.  I had no problems having her all to myself.  One of the movies we rented was Faces of Death.  It’s a classic movie with nothing but scenes of people or animals losing their lives.  It has all kinds of weird stuff in it.  Anyways, her parents were gone and weren't going to be home till later.  Trust me we made sure we handled business well before her parents got home.  She was very careful about her parents not knowing about her sexual activity.  What parents wouldn’t be concerned about this?  Well, besides my mother that is.

The movie was about over when her parents got home.  We were laying on the floor in the living room.  They came in and sat on the couch to watch the end of the movie with us.  Gossiping about how weird of a movie it was.  A scene came on where a guy jumped out of an airplane.  His parachute didn't open.  He plummeted all the way to the ground.  When he hit the ground a huge cloud of dust appeared in the air.  Not like a mushroom cloud from a bomb, but like a balloon being blown up.  It was a big ball of dust.  Then all of a sudden you see this mangled figure come flying back up out of the dust cloud. 

The dude bounced.  He literally bounced off of the ground.

No joke, I have quite a laugh.  My laugh can be heard quite well and it stands out more than a bit.  I could not stop myself from laughing.  It was hilarious.  He bounced again!  The dude bounced twice.  I had tears in my eyes.  Her parents just sat there and looked at me.  To them it was not funny at all.  Someone had just lost their life.  Needless to say, they never liked me and were glad to see Chris and I break up.

I've always had a different sense of humor.  I cannot help but laugh when people fuck themselves up.   Instantaneous laughter.  I recently watched a video where a guy tried to do a backflip but landed on his face.  One of those videos that goes viral on YouTube.  I laughed till I cried, just re-watching it over and over.  So funny.

Years later, in my mid-twenties, I found myself in the presence of the man who abused me the most as a child.  It was my younger brother’s wedding.  His father.  I was suffering this man’s presence for my little brother.  All my brothers were there.  She was there too.  The whole family was there.  My little brother would have been very hurt if I did not show up for his wedding.

You know how it is at weddings.  Prior to the event everyone is hanging out socializing.  There was a group of guys standing around talking, telling stories.  Small talk.  Douche bag was telling a story.  There were like six or seven people standing around listening.  I don't remember what he was saying, but he was talking about someone getting hurt.  He and I were the only two that laughed.  We laughed at the same time, in the same way.

I doubt anyone else noticed my face turn white.  I felt sick.   There was this man standing in front of me who had practically ruined my life and when he said something really messed up, I spontaneously laughed.  I was sickened.  I wanted to murder him on the spot.  Just beat him to death with my bare hands right where he stood.  When this event happened I was devoted to not be like those who had raised me, yet there I was, laughing out loud at someone getting hurt; just like him!  This man is lucky to be alive.

I realized right then that my sense of humor had been given to me.  I wasn't really researching yet so I had lots of unanswered questions.  I laugh at the most morbid of things because of why?  It seems that humor is passed on.  It seems to be a learned behavior.  Even now, after all of my research I cannot explain it fully.  Where is the boundary between the stars imprint at birth and the molding of one’s environment?  There is no boundary.  It is all meshed together.  A definition of the terms cannot actually be given.  There seems to be no solid ground to stand on.  No one way. 

In my thirties my brothers and I went to a comedy club.  We were the only ones really laughing at the opening comedian.  We thought he was funnier than the main event.  He was saying messed up stuff and we were dying laughing.  The rest of the place was not laughing so much.  Josh and I talked about that too, later.  He is self-conscious about it just like I am.  The depth of imprinting done by parents is beyond comprehension. 

Somehow this man imprinted on me a morbid sense of humor.  He taught me how to be cruel.  How many other things did he imprint on me?  How do I undo it? 

How does one undo all of that?

One picks and chooses it seems.  I decided that laughing at these things is not actually hurting anyone so it is not worth the effort it would take to undo it.  Undoing something that deep, which goes that far back into one’s life, takes an enormous amount of hard work.  That kind of change requires constant internal vigil.  It's not hurting me or anyone else to laugh about these things. That guy who bounced off the ground is dead after all.  Harsh as it may sound what difference is it to him if I laugh or not?

The hardest part was letting it go.  I had to accept that no matter what I did I was going to be like those who raised me in some ways.  I had to accept that there is nothing I can do about it.  It was a bitter pill to swallow.  I had to be okay with it or I would forever feel flawed and broken. 

Who knows?  I could have been born with a morbid humor and just happened to share it with him.  But why do my brothers have it to?  How did they get it?

The things he imprinted on me that did hurt others, those things I got rid of, or changed them into something good.  I put all my energy into getting those things taken care of.  In light of all the crap I had to deal with, my sense of humor was just not worth the energy.  Who cares if someone doesn't like what I laugh at.

I hadn't taken that turn when I was sixteen.  I wasn't trying to undo it yet.   That night at Chris' house I realized I was fucked up on a different level.  Her parents made me feel fucked up by the way they talked to me. The way they looked at me made it very clear.  They could tell I was a fucked up kid.   I knew what was up by how they treated me.  I saw my fuckedupedness in a new light.  It was another piece of straw on the camel’s back.  It was another event tightening the spiral. 

Why did she let this man do this to me?  That my hatred of her was greater than my hatred for him saved him.  That my hatred for both of them was greater than my hatred for myself saved me.

I really did hate her



There are so many little stories I could tell to show you how crazy it was.  My life has been a phenomenon of sorts.  The only times in my life when lots of stuff is not constantly going on is when I am spending large amounts of time alone and back then I was never alone.  If I am out in the world, socializing, you can be sure lots will be going on.  I feel less anxious in a way if I am out in the world creating change.  Like a pendulum swinging back and forth, completely alone to utterly social, back and forth I go. 

Like I said, I was very social then.  Chris and I were in the process of breaking up.  We loved each other so it was difficult.  Being alone back then freaked me out.  I associated being alone with something being wrong with me.  Alone equaled wrong.  I was looking for another girlfriend while I was still talking to Chris.  Cruel I know. I have stated clearly that I have always regretted this. 

I had people over at my house from Golden Coral.  Not a lot of people.  It wasn't a big party or anything.  Everyone was doing what people do at parties.  We ended up on the back porch smoking.  Rachel was someone I worked with at Golden Coral.  She was older than I was so she was not in school.  I never remembered seeing her at school either.  She was completely new to me.  It was just her and I outside talking.  It was cool out.  For years I clung to the image of her hair blowing across her face as we talked that night.  Those images saved me later in life.  At times they were all I had.

We were talking about music.  I grew up listening to a lot of 80's glam rock.  You see, when boys were around I could not talk to girls honestly.  The very second boys realize that I can connect with girls they immediately start hating on me.  I didn't have the confidence back then to prevent it from happening. I couldn't talk about the music I really liked if boys were around.  It was inevitable they would call me gay.   While the other boys were banging their heads to something unintelligible to human ears I was listening to We Are the World.  I wore out my Love & Rockets cassette.  I had every Madonna cassette at one time.  When I was a kid I would record my favorite songs off of the radio onto cassettes and just play them over and over again.  I still do it today just without the cassettes.  Music saved my life.  It was my drug before I knew there were drugs.  It still is my favorite drug.  That night it also scored me a girlfriend. 

We clicked.  I liked her.  Rachel knew what it was to have a cruel father.  We had a great deal in common beyond attraction.  She later told me that night on the porch was the first time she saw that there was something to me beyond the façade.  She thought I was just a dumb jock until she actually talked to me.  I realized she was intelligent like me.  She studied people too.  I fell in love.  Not that night, but I assure you it happened.  I did not know it then but I had just met someone who would both save my life and destroy it at the same time.  I did not know then that I would end up marrying this girl. 

JoAnn's life was on the rocks.  I was riding high and her life had once again gone to shit.  We all knew this was inevitable.  We just never knew when things were going to go down.  She could not survive without a man.  Literally.  I have experienced this in my own life so I understand her plight well.  Without someone else helping pay bills she couldn't pay them all.  It was a fact.  She was always very good about keeping the details of her shenanigans to herself.  That is why we never knew when shit was going to go down.  I never knew what would be happening when I got home.  No one ever did.  Who knows what happened between her and Bob.  They were both cheating on each other I am sure. 

I'd broken ground with the clique, which was a huge accomplishment.  School was going well.  I am a junior at this time.  I had the best wrestling season to date.  I went 23-8 and never weighed in over 205 lbs. as a heavy weight, which capped at 275.  I even qualified for state.  I was beating guys I couldn't put my arms around.  I had a job with people I got along with.  I was dating a girl who was on my level in certain ways. The only bad thing in my life was my mother.  I really did hate her.  What she did next though was intolerable. 

She moved.  AGAIN!  Husband number four coming up.  He lived on a farm outside of Fayette, MO in the middle of fucking nowhere.   Even now, after all this time has passed I can’t help but to feel rage.  That fucking cunt.  Seriously, it was bad enough to move again, but to move us to the middle of fucking nowhere?  Over the top.  We ended up living in some rinky-dink farm house out in B.F.E with Josh and I sleeping in the basement yet again.  It was a 1A school district.  They did not have a wrestling team.  It just was not fair.  I had been brainwashed by her that I couldn’t go to college because of her poverty.  Wrestling was my only shot at going to college.  

The bitch never thought about anyone but herself.  Husband number four was a ranked correctional officer.  At least this time she moved up the ranks a bit.  He owned land.  He had an actual salary.  He was going to college so he could be even higher ranked.  What a fucking cunt.  

 The only good thing I can say was that he actually seemed to be a nice guy.  He was fucked up, don’t get me wrong.  Anyone who falls for JoAnn can be anything but fucked up.  No not fucked up guy would marry her.  It is a requirement just to date her that one be fucked up.  He was a nice guy though in that he never seemed to get angry.  Believe me, I was pushing JoAnn’s limits because I hated her so much so he had reason to be angry.  I was living in his house after all.

I couldn't stay in Fulton.  "Normal" people didn't like me so there was nowhere for me to stay.  I had to go with her.  She was always throwing it in my face that I was not old enough to move out.  She would call the cops.  She always did.  She didn't want to be the mom whose kid moved out at sixteen.  I was going to be starting my senior year in a new school.  I didn't want to be the new kid again.  I had just risked my life more than a few times getting myself established in Fulton.  Fuck I hated that bitch. 

She would always say, "I am doing the best I can."  I didn't know to say it back then, but I know what to say now.

Bitch, your best wasn't good enough.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

On the subject of drugs.



I never had money really.  She somehow always managed to get my paychecks.  She was really good at this.  If I ever got a couple of bucks, alcohol was first thing on the list.  Sometimes we would drink before school.  We didn't care about anything really regarding school.  The clique I was trying to get into didn't go to high school.  In high school it was only the jocks I had to worry about, and the others associated with the clique.  I had to worry about them saying something that would discredit my rep.  I was going into this blind, but I knew the basics.

Moving around a lot as a kid taught me things about socializing that a lot of others didn’t learn.  I always had to pay very close attention to the entire goings on between the cliques and within the cliques.   Always being the new kid this information is vital or one risks being permanently outcast.   Ultimately it was a tradeoff because I lacked a lot of information all the other kids had.  I do not have the experience of actually being in a legitimate clique so to speak.  I do not have long standing memories with long standing friends.  I have the exact opposite.  There is only one situation in life where I do not feel socially awkward, and that is when I am around those raised like me.   JoAnn kept us on lock down, me especially.  I was ignorant about so many things.

I smoked cigarettes for a couple months when I was thirteen until I got caught.  It is a powerful drug.  We just wanted to be cool.  I smoked a bit in the seventh grade too.  We would sneak into the government building and buy them out of the vending machine.   Living in Fulton with her again, I started smoking.  It was cool.  I wanted to seem tough.  I wanted to impress girls.  They laughed at me when I coughed at this party.  I wasn't used to smoking.  It gave me such a head rush.  I cannot stand to be laughed at.  I went and bought a pack of Camel no filters.  Two packs later I no longer coughed when I smoked a filtered cigarette.  Girls weren't going to laugh now.  

This should make it painfully clear the affect my parents’ ignorance had on me.  Not only them, but the entire culture really.  Only an idiot kills himself to impress girls.

I finally got a joint.  I was a sophomore in high school before I got my hands on some cannabis.  When you are sheltered like I was it is not easy to just get drugs, but a friend sold me a joint.   It was a very negative connotation to be labeled a pot head back then, but I finally scored.  That sweet intoxicating smell.  Oh how I love that smell.  It's a tragedy too, because if one smokes for any length of time they lose the ability to smell it.  From the very first we were in love.  I took the roach to school with me the next day.  I kept it in my front shirt pocket all day so that I could smell it constantly.  I just sat around in school high as a kite waiting to get high again.

I was doomed from birth.  People all the time wish to label those who do drugs negatively.  They are bigots just like the racist or the sexist.  It is no different than labeling gay people negatively.  They have no choice in the matter.  Causing others to feel negatively about themselves when they cannot help who they are is an extremely destructive thing.  At fifteen I did not stand a chance at fitting society’s definition of good.  Give me something that would take me somewhere else and I had no choice but to want to do it.  None at all.  Might as well say I am bad because I wanted breast milk when I was a baby.  At fifteen I was getting black out drunk already and regularly.  I would go and go and go.  Just like now, but at fifteen I had no control of myself whatsoever.  It is the difference between doing something when one hates one’s self and when one loves one’s self.  These two stories show a clear distinction between the two.  Back then, deep down in my heart, I wanted to crash and burn.  I wanted to go away and never come back.  The pain and energy perpetually burning away inside me made me want to die.  The problem wasn't drugs.  Drugs just speed the process up, whichever process it may be. 

My very first job was at a Little Caesars Pizza.  It was weird for me.  I was jumping from crazy intense dysfunction to this sterile performance driven bright light machine.  Certain things seemed to simply be understood and I did not understand them.  It was disorienting.  Awkward.  I was embarrassed to work there.  Once it was no longer challenging I moved on.  I ended up in a Golden Coral.  This seemed to be the perfect place for me.  I got to do something I love to do and I was surrounded by equally fucked up people.  No social awkwardness at all.  I could write a book about the craziness of just working there if I remembered it all.  Far too many drugs between then and now for all of that.  Working there was very important to me because that is where I met the ex-wife.  You will meet her soon enough.

I am like a Native American; if you give me whisky it gets really sketchy.  A powerful drug.  No adults have ever seen me drunk on it.  Nor do they want to.  I don't allow it to happen.  Every once in a great while I will do a shot of Crown.  That's it.  When I was fifteen I would get Evan Williams 750 mL at a time.  It's cheaper than Jack and honestly I think it is smoother.  Half way through a bottle of Evans and I am generally blacked out.  It was a thing to see how far into a bottle Ben could get before shit went sketch. I've always been a light weight.  It has never taken a lot to get me drunk.  Everyone has always known this.  On whisky though, I take it to a whole new level.

Chris and I broke up.  She found me out.  I was cheating.  I didn’t really try that hard to hide it.  I had to be the one to fuck it up.  Like all immature boys do, I clung on afterwards anyways. I love her after all.  She was supposed to be at this party.  Some of the clique was there too.  The party was a mix.  The goodies and the badies, the yuppies and the toughs, this made for a rare scene back then.  These two almost never mixed.  Remember I had friends on both sides, but I wanted in the clique more than anything. 

I was in angst because of the girl situation.  The clique was bored.  Yuppies throw terrible parties.

They decided to go get a bottle of Evan Williams.  They knew if they got me drunk entertaining shit would ensue.  Broke just like me and yet they spent their money to see me crash a party.  They really were bored.  Needless to say, they partied hard.  Twenty minutes later Stacy, he was one of the main ring leaders, showed up with the bottle.  Hour later I am drunk off my ass.  Belligerent is not the word.  Because the clique was there none of the goodies would stop me.  I was making people drink it with me.  Shoving people.  Someone shoved me on the shoulder and I just punched them.  They didn't do anything back.  At one point someone was holding me up by my belt loop and I would just punch people.  They never did anything back.

I finally went outside to take a piss.  When I walked back to the door a guy was trying to keep me out.  I can't remember what he said but he was trying to get me to go home.  He was standing up to me because the other guys were not around.  He failed to get the door latched before I got to it.  He was pushing against the door trying to keep me out.  I shoved the door open.  He went with the door so that he was standing with his back against the wall.  I hit him right in the mouth.  His hat flew up and his glasses kind of popped off his nose.  It was quite comical because he just slid down the wall just like it happens in the movies.  I’m serious.  A part of my mind was like, that really is how it happens.  When he sagged to the floor I kneed his head into the wall a couple of times before his girlfriend saved him. 

I was blacked out.  It took me awhile to put it all back together again.  I was told they made everyone leave and my friends got me out of there so I wouldn't go to jail.

The next day I was at work.  I was so hung over.  When I had to go in early I would drink pickle juice.  The manager of Golden Coral came back to the cook line to tell me that someone was here to talk to me.  I flushed.  All the blood rushed to my brain.  Flight or fight.  They told the cops.  Time to go back to jail or time to run like hell?  My boss said it wasn’t the cops.  Whew!  That was close. 

I turned the corner only to see the guy I wrecked at the door of that party the night before being towed in by his girlfriend.  She informed me that what I did was wrong and that I should apologize to him.  I could not not smile.  I told him I was sorry.  On the inside though I was laughing so hard.  He had braces so his lips were just shredded.  He was standing there in his hat and glasses, lips shredded, looking at me like, please don't do it again.  His girl was pissed off.  She stomped out.

Everyone was looking at me.  I just laughed and went back to work bragging about my drunken escapades.  If you give drugs to a fucked up person, fuckedupedness is what you will get.  My friends didn't give a fuck about me. 

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

It's time to change again.


I will be 38 this year.  That is, in and of itself, an accomplishment.   I've defied a fair number of odds getting to this point.  I am still defying them right now.
 
Remember that we are all sending out… energy?   Most with religious upbringing understand it as prayer, but what they don't understand is that prayer has nothing to do with some made up god.  It has to do with your body sending energy out into the universe and the universe responding to that energy.  Just like children have an affinity for their mother, we as a species have an infinity for ours, which happens to be the universe itself.  It is the source of our existence in the same exact way in which a mother is the source of her child's existence.   We are made of the same stuff the universe is made of, the exact same way a child is made of her mother.  

We are all connected to the universe just like a child to her mother.  The baby does not know it is connected to it's mother, it just is.  We are all sending and receiving information perpetually whether or not we have any awareness of it while it is happening.  Even modern physicist cannot explain 99% of the universe.  It is invisible to us.  When you use the word pray it just means you are focusing your energy on one specific idea.  In reality you are just focusing your thoughts.  Sending is a weird word, but it gives a general idea of what is happening.  We all pray all the time, like I said, perpetually.  Some of us know we are doing it, while even fewer are aware of what exactly it is they are sending out into the universe.  Ultimately it is all one in the same.  You get back what you send out.  They are one in the same.

Our actions are prayers.  Thoughts turned into reality.  A thought goes out of the brain, the universe complies.   It is proof of the power of proximity.  The body being the closest thing to you, it is the thing you have the most control over in the universe.  The further away, the less control, the less influence.   Think about how little some people have of themselves.   Truly great people have the most influence.  They have the most awareness.

I've spent the past almost eight years now working on this idea of prayer.  I believe this to be how one changes the world.  I am pretty much solely focused on attaining awareness of this phenomenon.  My ultimate goal is to heal people.  It would be cool to take it a step further and be so fucking bright that anyone in my field doesn't need healing because simply being in proximity to me does it automatically.  Even if it were only a ten foot radius, that would be epic.  I do not know if I will have enough time in this life to achieve that goal though.  I always dream big, big as I can.

Obviously I cannot teach someone something if I do not possess it myself. How can I heal someone else if I have not healed myself? This proves the old saying that the only way to change the world is to change one's self.  Realizing this, my entire focus went into this goal; self-improvement.   When I was younger I self-improved so I would not be like those that brought me into the world.  That was all I cared about.  Once I achieved that goal, I was lost.  What now? I had to move on to loftier goals.  I figured if I can do it, anyone can.  Having done it myself, I can help others.  It's more than that.  I have a responsibility to help others.  Karmicly in life I have for the most part repaid my debts.  I have opened the eyes of quite a few now.  But being true to myself requires that I take it as far as I possibly can. 

I did something that few seem to do.  I think this is why so many are stuck.  I did it my own way, and they don't seem to.  Other people always seem to be listening to what someone else tells them to do.  I didn't find some one person, some one method, some one any thing, that was the way.  I don't believe anything anyone says honestly.  Not anymore.  I took in as much information as I could from as many sources as I could, and honestly I have never stopped.  I didn't just read books, I applied them to my life, used them as tools to improve my understanding of reality, and threw out the trash.  I put their ideas to work in my life to see what was what.  I am still doing it right now. 

For instance, this writing.  I have never done this before in my life and I already know it is healing me in ways I never dreamed of.  Can you see how knowing this one little piece of information sets one apart from the majority in this society.  The telling of this story will be a testament to the work I have done.  How many are just doing what others do without ever really thinking about it?   Most go to school, believing they are educated, and yet, they did nothing more than take multiple choice tests, and because of this spend their entire lives disconnected from their true self.   They have opinions with no substance behind them. 

I cannot help it that everything I do, I do it to the fullest.  I just can't do it any other way.  Even if what I am doing is not good for me, if I think it is what I need to do, I will do it to the fullest.  I tell people all the time when they complain about how intense I am, to be glad they did not know me in my twenties.   As you can tell from my childhood I don't operate on the same level as most.  Not many people liked me in my twenties.  I don't blame them.  I didn't like me either.  Nothing has harmed me in life more than my inability to calm down.

I've been drinking hard for over two years now.  Drinking to the fullest.  As always, I have been attempting to do it like none other.  Doing it the best I can. Defying odds.  Society tells us it is bad to drink and get drunk, but luckily for me I do not really listen to anything society says.  I had good drunks. Life changing drunks.  You see drugs are like guns.  Give them to an idiot and something stupid is going to happen.  Give them to someone fucked up and fuckedupedness is what you will get.  Believe it or not though, I was healing myself.

I couldn’t read self-help books any longer.  They annoyed me.  They all say the same thing in a different way, so it was like reading the same book over and over again.  None of them had the answer.  I was out of books to read.  Something had to happen.  I looked and looked for an answer.  I would have died to have an intelligent conversation with anyone who had an understanding of what was going on.   I was doing everything I could to learn something new to help me solve the puzzle.  I prayed for this constantly for most of my life, and yet it never happened.  I read and applied, read and applied.  The problem was still there.  I was still eating myself alive on the inside.  I still felt like something was wrong with me when I was doing everything that I was supposed to be doing.  I compiled as much information as I could from the wisest men who wrote books.  I was doing everything I possibly could.  I was too old for this to still be happening.  It had to stop.  When I was going to MU I was teaching myself to be highly social and this energy was greatly hindering my ability to progress.  It is noticeable after all.  It can be sensed by those in close proximity.

While going to MU I broke down and made arrangements to talk to someone on campus.  I talked to a few people actually.  I was very discreet about this.  Asking for help on this level is no small thing.  It walks a fine line with shame.   I had to seek someone with an understanding.  This is the place where they are supposed to understand after all. I felt like I had looked everywhere else. I was conquering huge personal boundaries just being at MU.  I was defying the odds.  Manic would not be the word.  I was living my life to the fullest.  I was pushing myself in all ways.  I was growing on the inside like champ.  I've changed my worldviews more than anyone I know. I was so alive from all of the spiritual activity in my life that this issue absolutely had to be dealt with.  It had to be dealt with or I was going to burn up.  It would not be odd defying to go down in flames. 

I used the campus people because it was free for students.  Seeking "professional" help is expensive, and it is also like gambling.  Who freaking knows who that person with a degree is going to be.  I’ve met more than a few counselors in a bar drunk.  They were just as crazy as anyone else.  As one counselor at MU told me, some of the most screwed up kids come from wealthy homes.   MU has no shortage of wealthy kids.  She knows this from first hand experience.  In my mind I did not have high hopes on the understanding level of the staff because of their being public educated. 

Someone there actually understood.  I was surprised.   She had seen enough to know what was going on to have understanding.  She didn’t have the look of being one of us, but all I know of her was her sitting in a chair.  Either way, she helped me out a lot.  It was very validating.  She let me know I was doing it right, but that it simply takes a long time.  This is very powerful stuff for those who always feel alone, to sense in another true understanding.  However brief these encounters seem to be, their impact usually lasts forever.  And hers did.  Most people tell me to do this, or that.  Tell me I should be like this, or this is how it is.  Rare is the person who looks me in my eyes and knows why I am the way I am.  

The truth of the matter is just like she said; some things simply do not heal quickly.  Some things are a long drawn out process.  Sometimes very long.  Like a calculus problem that takes three pages to solve.  One of these long drawn out processes happens to be life.  I had banged my head against that imaginary wall in my mind long enough.  No answer ever came.  No answer was coming either.  So I started drinking.  My soul was telling me to get drunk.  So that is exactly what I did.

It's not that I didn't drink before this.  I just only drank socially.  I hated hang overs.  I hated to not have full control of myself at all times.  I didn’t get drunk much in the years prior to this time in my life.  I drank a lot in my twenties at times, true, but I had been working out constantly in my thirties, and never drank at all for long periods.  It is pointless to work out really hard if all you are going to do is get wasted drunk.  That lifestyle came to an end, it all changed.  True to my nature, it changed in a hurry.  I kept the majority of my drinking to myself. 

Now if you go to a counselor they are going to tell you something so radically different than what I am about to say that I imagine most people will simply disregard what I say and discredit me in some way.  So be it.  They can say whatever they wish and use whatever label they learned in public school any way they want.  Means nothing to the truth what they think.   I know for a fact those employed by the state will definitely disagree.  Their paycheck depends on them disagreeing.  Prison rates depend on them being right.  For them to admit that they are wrong would cause them to immediately realize they are being cruel to people; they simply cannot bring themselves to do that.  Despite what anyone says, I've lived this shit and know what is up.  They are wrong.

If you go to a sober person, a person who has lived a good life seeking help, but you were raised like me, I do not see how they will ever be able to help you out.  It is a universe of infinite possibility, so anything is possible I suppose.  From my own experience though they were absolutely useless.  There are obviously exceptions.  Generally speaking though, they are little more than opinions without substance. Who can convey what it is to see a mountain to a person who has never seen one?  The majority of so called professional counselors simply say what they were told to say.  Any moron can do that.  It would be like asking someone who does not know there is a China, to teach you Chinese.  Generally speaking those not abused are terribly apathetic and they have no clue that they are.  Do not do what I did when I was younger and allow these people to make you feel like there is something wrong with you.  There is not, and never has been.  Stay true to yourself and hold out that you will find the way.  It takes a long time.

I couldn't explain in words the feelings.  I never could.  They were without thought or images.  They just were.  All my life it has been there.  It is still there, just different now.  I have no memory of where they came from.  These feelings created/create tremendous energy within me.  They are just feelings, after all, and even though I am aware of them, they did not go away by my being aware of them.  I was not even able to label them.  I could not express them.  It wasn’t like realizing why one is actually angry and then not being angry about it anymore.  It was something different.  I knew why, but without memory of why. In my mind I likened it to the trauma, but what trauma?  Which event?  The rage was coming from nowhere, yet it was everywhere.  It never got dealt with so it just stayed within me always creating energy.  Always. Always. Always.  I could only contain it, never extinguish it.

I found that I could get it out drunk. Not buzzed.  Drunk.   If I got drunk enough I could literally radiate it out of me.  Drunk out of my mind, I could rage, but the rage was out of my mind.  It was like it made it safe for the world.  Who could even think of such a thing sober?   It’s weird too, because I had to learn other things to get to this point.  It's not like I just woke up one day and could do this.  The one who rages drunk and has not learned to control their mind will ultimately go to prison.  It happens to people every day.   I had to go through a lot of tough life lessons, so to speak, in order to get it out drunk.  It was hard work getting to the point of being able to do things in my mind, beyond my body, really, really, drunk.  Just getting mature enough to handle being drunk that much, for that long took a lot of work.

That is a crazy way to talk about what is going on.  I would get really drunk and really emotional and I would handle shit.  When I put my mind to it,  I could feel things I could not feel sober.  I could go places I could never have gone to before.  The trick is being good, that is to say, strong minded about being drunk.  Strong enough to focus the drunk on what I wanted instead of the drunk focusing me.  I wasn’t getting drunk to forget my problems.  I wasn’t getting drunk because I can’t handle life.  I was getting drunk to get the bullshit out.  It is a matter of degrees.  It is like the difference between a fifteen year old getting drunk, a twenty three year old, and a fifty year old getting drunk.

I did this is my mid thirties.  This is what makes it that long process.  I could never have done it in my twenties.  If I drank in my twenties like I did this past couple of years someone would have died and it probably would have been me.  It is possible to be drunk maturely.  Not driving.  Not doing ignorant things.  Still handling business in life.   Not that crazy things never happened, but I don't need to be drunk to do crazy things. 

Sometimes I would talk about it.  Those things deep inside.  Sometimes I would share with people I trusted.  Sometimes I would cry alone.  Sometimes I would just be as social as I could be for weeks on end.  Living the life.  But I was always getting it out.  Find me a counselor who recommends this.  Yet, it saved me.  I had so many healing moments roaring drunk that I could never have experienced sober.  Never. 

Sitting here sober right now, remembering those nights, I cannot imagine feeling the way I did any other way.  I will forever be grateful to those I shared those times with.  They helped me and I could not have done it without them.  There was no other way to evoke it.  There was no memory to evoke it.  No way for me to get there.  There was a vast gap between my mind and the source of that energy.  A gap I worked most of my life to build.  I made it so wide I couldn't get back to it.  Drunk though, the barriers in my mind could be bypassed and the bullshit could all come out.  It’s not possible to speak of the workings of the mind in 3D language.  Maybe a better way to say it is, that learning to do it drunk has taught me how to radiate it out sober.  I couldn't figure it out sober.  I was trapped in what society imprinted on me.  All the people trying to tell me how to get it out were sober people.  It seems being sober is not the way for some of us.  I just think there is no one way that works all of the time. 

I couldn't do it any other way.  I tried and tried.  I begged and pleaded.  I put the whole of my will into it.   Nothing worked.  I could not evoke the emotions, I couldn’t heal, I couldn’t release what I had kept inside without being wasted drunk.  Just a plain and simple fact.  It took a while, years actually, but it worked.  I couldn't simply undo over a decade of habituation in a mere week or two.  I was annoying and dreadful at times being so drunk, no doubt.  But it worked.  I think there were times too, when I was quite loveable. 

Now it has to stop.  It is over.  I cannot sustain it any longer.  I’ve even asked my friends to pray for me.  I cannot socially drink either because I have been drinking solid for too long now.  I need to heal my body.  Whether it worked or not I was also killing myself, my physical body anyways.  I was habituating my mind to a deadly habit.  While alcohol can be freeing for the soul, it can be terminal to the body.  The worst of addictions are those cultivated by time.  Had I listened to society I would still be banging my head on the wall unable to find a way out.  I would still be thinking there was something wrong with me.   Luckily for me I read books written by wise people and I took their advice.  I did my own thing.  I busted through the wall even though people thought they were showing me a door.  I made my own way.  Becoming another step closer to the greatest possible me.

There is no one way.

I’ve mentioned before that quite often in my life, right after learning a major spiritual lesson I find a book perfectly describing the lesson.  It’s as if the universe is congratulating me for discovering a truth.  The book is called Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore.  If you are wondering who you are, if you are still learning about yourself, this book will change your life forever.  The life work of a man condensed in a book.  I cannot think of anything more powerful than that.  Maybe though, it is the thought, the realization, of a spiritual truth that brings it about in reality.  For me it just happens to express itself through books.  In my life books are the single greatest material objects that I relate to.

There are infinite ways to see the truth.

I'd say it is time to handle business now, but that is exactly what I have been doing.  I'm just doing it differently now.  Changing once again. Changed once again.  Better today than I was yesterday.  There are no barriers, only lessons. 

No one knows what will happen next.