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.

I was proud.

It shocked me when I got older to realize I shared things with supposed great men.  Not ever having a real male role model I have always constantly looked for them.  It turns out that the only place I have ever found good male role models are dead guys who wrote books before they died.  I've seriously never found a real male role model in person in my entire life.  They are always found wanting.   More than a few times I have woken up to realize I had been idealizing the worst of men simply because I wanted an older male in my life.  Until recently in my life I was always searching for replacement parents.  I'll save that lesson for later in the story though.  This part though, has always been true about me; if I were to get rid of my pride, I would only be proud that I had done so.  When I make up my mind to do something; I do it.  The problem was, when I was younger, I was making up my mind to do things that were not good for me at all. 

Fifteen years old, hyper masculinized, ignorant, crazy, and no longer giving a fuck.  There were only two things that were keeping me in check, my girlfriend and wrestling.  It would be hard to say which I loved more.  Teachers would always comment that I was a much better student during wrestling season.  It was a way to release all that energy physically.  That year was the best I had done wrestling wise.  I qualified for state as the lightest heavy weight.  I could legally take it out on someone else and not get into trouble.  There is great freedom in doing this.

JoAnn had me on a tight leash, or so she thought. Her stupid ass was working evenings so there was no way she could control me.  Her and my probation officer talked regularly I think, but like most people who take those jobs they have no clue as what is going on with kids like me.  JoAnn was also working at the county jail so she knew all the cops.  But because of wrestling season and my having a girlfriend I was not in quite so much of a hurry to crash and burn.  Don't get me wrong.  When I say I was being good that is not the same thing as actually being good.  I was being good for me.  Looking back on it now I have always pushed the limit no matter what I am doing.

JoAnn was stupid and crazy.  There will never be a way for me to express this appropriately.  I'd say she was as promiscuous as they come.  My brother Josh met up with one of his friends from back then, later in life, and says that this guy, liked to come over to our house when he was a kid because you could always hear our mother having sex at night.  It was the norm for us.

I remember once my girlfriend came over.  JoAnn had a boyfriend over.  They were watching a movie on the couch.  My girlfriend and I watched like fifteen minutes of the movie, went downstairs to my bedroom and had sex, then went back upstairs twenty minutes later and watched some more of the movie.  It was obvious as can be that we just had sex.  JoAnn never said a word. JoAnn said that she couldn't stop me from having sex so she said she would rather I was doing it at home than elsewhere.  The only time she ever said anything about my having sex was if I left condoms out in my room.  She didn't want my brothers to see them for some reason.  As if they could not hear her fucking her boyfriends every night.   If I had alcohol though, she would immediately call the cops on me.  The woman was dumb.  She still is dumb.  That is all I know to say.

I was still sneaking out at night.  I was going to parties when I could.  I had been trying to work my way into the tough crowd, but this was no easy task.  Tough crowds don't just let other hyper masculinized alpha males walk into their click with open arms.  You have to earn a spot in their click.  I understand this well.  Respect must be earned.  One must prove worthy before it is given.  I learned pretty early that when you have a hot girlfriend you pretty much have to fight whether you are trying to get into a click or not.  Guys will not make it seem like they are fighting because of the girl, but that is what is going on.  This group that I was trying to get in with was rough, and also all older than me.  They were all already mostly eighteen, some were twentyish.  They were cool as hell to me.  Fighters.  As always I was in way over my head.

In high school I was never in a clique.  I always had friends in every clique, but I also had enemies in every one of them too.  It was a weird dynamic compared to what was expected, compared to what is considered the norm.  This is a pattern in my life.  I am my own clique you could say.  I had friends who were nerds, geeks, jocks, preps, religious, older, younger, whatever.  I have always had a soft spot for those like me.  To me, I either got along with you or I did not.  I did not care about cliques, and I don’t think that I was ever in one.  She always moved a lot anyways, so I never stayed in any one school for very long.  Whatever you want to call it, wherever I went, I had friends and enemies.  More often than not my friends were friends with my enemies.

The first time Chris and I went to one of these parties it got sketchy really fast.  Chris is the girl I fell in love with by the way.  She was a year older than I so she had a car already.  The party was at some clay pits outside of town.  Back then everyone drove out to spots in the countryside to party in order to evade cops.  In small towns there is generally nothing for kids to do but party and have sex.  Most of these guys were just like me, raised fucked up, hyper masculinized and always looking for trouble. 

We were not at this party for very long and there was already a fight.  All I saw was them kicking some guy into the side of his own car.  It was dead quiet when this was going on.  It was eerie.  Usually at fights everyone is yelling and talking shit or whatever, but it was dead silent as they fucked this guy up.  Being in proximity to such violence made me feel alive inside.  All my senses were heightened to the max.  Without thinking it, my body knew my life was in danger.  They fucked this guy up really bad.  I never found out who he was.  When they were done with him they shoved him into the car and someone drove it out of there. I was surprised he was alive the way he was being kicked.  They even ripped the door off of his car and hit him with it.  That guy showed up at the wrong party.  Turns out these guys understood violence like I did.  Just like me, they were born to it.

It was just my luck to show up at this party right when the meanest of the group was in a rage.  I knew I was in trouble.  Chris wanted to be there too so we didn’t leave immediately while they were still fucking that guy up.  It spiraled so fast it was like a movie.  They saw Chris, and then eyes locked on me.  The dude was yelling for me.   I took off running for the car.  Chris and I both had friends at this party and they were trying to slow these guys down. There were actually a few people who did not want to see my pretty face smashed believe it or not. It may seem like a bitch move to get to the car without Chris, but they were not after her; they were after me.

I made it to the car.  She got in right after me and she was freaking out.  Soon as she started the car the main guy that wanted me was on the hood.  There were guys at both doors.  Just like the movies her car was not starting.  She was really freaking out.  Finally, it started.  Time was slowed down.  I didn’t want what the other guy got.  The engine came to life.  Chris was yelling, “What do I do?”  I reached my foot over the console and stomped on the gas.  I know from personal experience it is quite easy to punch a window out so I was not going to give this guy the chance.  About 100 yards down the road she slowed to let him off the hood, only to have him still punch the windshield.  Soon as he got off the hood she floored it.  We were out of there.  She was so freaked out that she missed a 90 degree turn completely.  We had to drive in a field next to the road looking for a break in the ditch just to get back on the road.  We could see headlights coming, they were not happy.  I was not sure if her car was going to make it.

I escaped.  Barely. 

There was one particular individual in this group that really had it out for me.  I never knew why.  If he knew I was around, he would come for me.  Some friends took me to a party a few weeks later and this individual was there, the same guy that jumped on the hood.  My friends didn't want to leave, so there I was.  I tried to get them too, but they would not bend, for them this party was a must.  They just kept saying it would be okay, that he would leave me alone.  They said people had talked to him and that he didn’t want to kill me anymore.

I knew I was fucked because as soon as we pull up to the house this guy was so drunk and pissed off that when he went to kick a cooler that was sitting on the ground he flipped himself.  Literally.  His feet flew up in the air and he landed on his own head.  Soon as he saw me, he came straight for me.  As they say, run Forest run.  This guy was older than me, bigger than me, and tough as fuck.  I simply did not stand a chance.   I took off for the woods.  I don’t know how long his drunk ass looked for me.  Eventually he gave up.   The dude passed out later and someone came looking for me.  I was covered in mud from running blind in the woods.  I ran right into a swamp practically so I was literally thigh deep in mud at one point.  I was so pissed.

When I was young I could not see that my friends didn't give a fuck about me.  I was too proud to give up.  I was proud that he wanted me so badly. I was being made famous simply because the toughest guy around was head hunting me.

I wish I knew the answer.

When I was a child I bit my finger nails.  Sometimes I would bite them till they bled.  I am a worrier.  Born anxious.  It is not rare at all to see me pacing.  I prefer a short pace.  Eight feet or so.  Sometimes I will walk the inside of the house, back and forth, but my favorite spot to pace is barefoot on the rocks down by the lake.  I have always been this way.  Sitting still is one of the hardest things for me to do.  Relaxed for me is not the same as relaxed for most people. 

It turns out that when certain situations occur while a woman is pregnant the child is forever after operating at a different energy level than a baby who did not experience those same situations.  We are alive while in the womb you know.  We are already adapting to our environment the second that sperm penetrates an egg.

It turns out that if a child experiences violence during the first years of its life, it will forever operate at a different level than a child who did not. 

Say for instance, that a mother pregnant with child experiences violence.  Say it happens repeatedly, the effects are even more pronounced.  Much like energy from the sun, if someone stands in it for too long they get burned.   I think drugs have similar effects on the energy levels of these children too, but not the same as violence.   I would say a mother detoxing off of something harsh or in the throes of addiction would be very traumatic for a child's energy.   The mother would be focusing all of her energy on a drug and not life, or family, or baby, or anything.  Her whole psyche would be focused on the substance.  These children have no choice but to develop addictions. 

Instead of society helping them with their addictions they are generally locked up and criminalized when it is their parents who fucked them up.  It is a vicious cycle. 

I watched something once were a scientist was showing the effects of weaning pigs too soon.  They filled a tank with water and would then place the piglet in the middle.  There was a spot on the side of the tank where the pig could get out and also a spot in the water where it could stand safely if it happened to find it.  By the way pigs are pretty good swimmers.  The baby pigs that stayed with their mother the full eight weeks, or whatever time it was, just swam around and got out of the water once they found the step.  The pigs that were taken from the mother before the specified time immediately freaked out when placed in the water and instead of finding the step would just continue to squeal constantly and stay in a state of what seems to be panic while swimming all over the place. 

Obviously human beings are not pigs, but we are both animals, with feelings, intelligence, and consciousness.  We both have an affinity for our mothers.  A connection.  Children of any animal do not do well when their early life is stressed.  I personally believe that because our minds make us, or so we think anyways, so much more complicated than the pigs, it stands to reason that the damage from such trauma is as equally complicated.

Please remember there are millions of people whose mothers did not take care of them.  Being beat.  Doing drugs.  Insane emotional situations.  It is everywhere.  They, just like me, feel really fucked up from it all and none of them know what to do.  This culture has them so fucked up they are literally in the dark.   Many of them are doing exactly what their parents did; they are doing it to their children too. 

I know a few like me searching for a way out.  We will make it. 

Did you know I cannot grow a beard for any length of time?  I pull it out.  I will literally pull the hair out of my face.  Right now there is a bare patch of skin under my jaw line where I have pulled all the hair out.   I had to shave it off the other day.  I was looking mangy.  I woke up feeling really anxious so the beard went to shit in a hurry.  As soon as it is long enough to get a grip on you will see me pulling onk it.  You cannot stop me either.  You could sit next to me all day long and smack my hand every time I do it, but as soon as we focus on something else my hand will be there pulling.  If I am not anxious I do not do it nearly as much.  Sometimes I can go a month or two and not pull it out, but as soon as I am in a car, alone and anxious, half my beard will be out the window thirty minutes.  I cannot let the hair on my chest grow out either; I will pull it all out.  I have to keep a shirt on when I am anxious. 

I was in a situation when I was younger where I was extremely stressed out and was being forced to sit in a chair for hours at a time.  I pulled most of the hair off of my lower legs.  From my perspective, the energy cannot be contained, so if I am forced to stay in one place, the energy must escape somehow.

It is even worse internally.  Our minds do not ever shut off.  Like I said, it creates a different energy.  A forever anxious, I must be doing something, must be doing something, must be doing something.  It never goes away. It never goes away. It never ever goes away.

Theirs does not either and this helps me feel not so alone knowing they have this same phenomenon.

In my twenties I learned to focus this energy.  Remember when I said I wanted to know the truth?  I wanted to know why.  I used this energy to do just that.  I try to help my friends see that they can do the same thing.  Although the energy cannot be turned off, it can be focused to a certain degree.  There is some choice in how it gets directed.  I could let it consume me, or I can consume it, but no matter what it is getting consumed. 

It was a bit freeing for me later in life when my grandmother ended up being a school bus driver.  I say that like I am old or something.  She worked for a small town elementary school as a custodian for a long time.  Her health forced her into driving a school bus.  She was no longer able to stand on her feet all day long anymore, but still wanted a part time income.  I used to talk to her on the phone once in a while and we would always talk about the kids who rode on her bus.  How bad they are.  She was forever unable to control them.  Her outlook on those children completely changed when she became a bus driver though.  Now she has to see where they live.  She has to deal with them outside of the school setting.   She gets to see who the parents are that are raising them.  Those kids are not bad. 

The reality is their parents are not handling business.  Every single one of these small mid-west towns has these children.  Some of them are full of these children.  In the town I am currently living in there were over fifteen pregnant kids in the school last year.  I do not know how many there are this year.  I see young fifteen year old girls all the time in public pregnant as can be.  They all grow up together and just think that that is how it is.  As if a fifteen year old is capable of being a mother.  Even having a child in one's twenties is too soon, but around here it is almost expected.

My grandmother sees it now, but it seems too late.

It was quite freeing for me to say to her, "Yea grandma, I was one of those kids."  I was that kid getting kicked off the bus in kindergarten because I could not sit still.  I was that kid driving some bus driver fucking crazy.  All my life she has told me I need medication.  I find this very offensive and I do not speak to her because of this.  Medication?  I needed a fucking mother. 

I went home to insanity every day.

I do not know how she lives with it.

I wish I knew how to calm down.  Most of my life I just wanted to be like everyone else.  Now I know the truth.  There is no “everyone else” to be found.  This culture makes people crazy.   It effects every last single one of us from the top to the bottom.

I wish I knew so I could help my friends.  They, like me, did not deserve it, and there has never been a single wrong righted.  It is happening now just like it was in 1975 when I was born.  This sense of wrong, deep down creates an awesome amount of energy.  I believe most people label me as intense.  My friends are equally as intense.  We often laugh with each other about our other levelness, because we are on another level.  We were injured on another level. 

This culture will never heal until this issue is addressed.  How can it heal if it continually pumps out the same old thing?  It will not be addressed by politicians, or city councils, churches or psychologists.  They might help us along the way, if we are really lucky,  but it can only be taken care of by us.  Those without the experiences cannot even know what to address.  We must carry this burden ourselves.  We must right the wrong ourselves, individually. 

I will continue to pace until that day comes.  Honestly, I do not have a choice.  I will pace until the wrong has been made right.   That energy is there, in us, because there is a wrong that needs made right.  It has nothing to do with genes, or biology.  Nothing to do with our opinions either.  It has to do with the soul. 

When you see that child who is out of control.  Say a prayer.  They are going to need all the help they can get. 

I fell in love.

Before I start this, let us be clear.  I was born an idealist.  Not some, I am trying to be cool idealist; I literally have no choice in the matter.  I am as high minded as they come.  I have the gift of single mindedness.  If you ask any friend of mine to name dominant characteristics of my personality this will be one they all agree on; I do not ever lose focus on the thing I am focused on.  If I am in love I think of nothing else.  Many people find this very unnerving.   Nothing matters as much as love.  Nothing.  I’m not talking about some silly love either.  None of that, love is this, and love is that; opinions matter not.   This love I speak of is not some romantic crap that immature girls dream up.  I don't wish to possess or control or nothing.  I just want to love and be loved, pure and simple.  If you hear me say I love someone, it is a wholehearted no questions asked kind of thing.  It is not temporary.  It is not fleeting or whimsical.  It is as real as it can get.  If I say I love someone, it is for life. 

This gave me writers block.  It stopped me dead in my tracks.  When I got to the part of the story where I fell in love; no words would come to me.  The desire to write left me as quickly as it came.  Then one day I read something and a few days later a friend said something and here I am writing.  Ernest Hemingway said, "Write drunk; edit sober."  This woke me up a bit.  I've read some of his biographical writing, so I know we share some things in common.  My friend said, "Write it, but don't put it on the internet."  That is sound advice, but don't put it on the internet?  Now I know the truth; I was just being afraid.  My fear shut down my creativity.  My fear shut down my writing. 

To be in love is the most vulnerable thing I know of.  Just talking about it in these simple terms makes me very anxious.  To be an idealist in love is dangerous.  Suicidal even.  It is no ordinary love.  If I speak of love I bear my soul.  It is dangerous indeed in this world to bear one's soul.  I can bear heart break now.  I am much older and wiser.  The fifteen year old me though, would not have survived a true heart break.  Even now I cannot imagine what would have happened had she broke my heart.  I nearly went mad when I got dumped after prom the year before and I did not love that girl.  Even I could not fathom what I would have done had this girl betrayed me too.  Dangerous times for a young Benjamin.

At fifteen I was getting exactly what I was praying for; the perfect girl for me.  As you will see later in my life, learning this fact was an emotional face plant.  A stab in the chest?  More like a repeated twist of the knife.  In my defense I was only fifteen years old.  Raised as I was how could I have possibly known?  How could I possibly have known that she really was a girl for me?  Pure intentions had the girl of my dreams right before my eyes, but because of my ignorance I could not see reality.

She was beautiful.  Correction.  She is beautiful.  But since I am writing about then, maybe it is okay to say, she was beautiful. 

This is part of what locks me up.  It is not was.  She was not anything, she still is.   She is.   These things are timeless.   If you know how to do it, if you know how to find your matches in life, they transcend time.  My girlfriend now, she will always be a match for me, no matter what, regardless of environmental circumstance.  Every woman I have loved, I still love, and will always love.  It was not my choice to love them.   I did not plan it.   It just is.   We mesh and that is all there is to it.  You can break it down all you want, explain it, rationalize it, whatever you want.  At the end of the day it is what it is.   Someone could say this or that, but it will not matter what anyone says, when we are near each other, it feels right.   Our connectivity, our bond, transcends culture and time.  It is deeper than us, beyond us, but not limited to us.  That is to say, there is not only one person that one can connect with.  My heart is too big to love only one.

The truth is she does not know how I feel.  None of them do.  I don't talk about it.  So by writing this I am bearing a little bit of my soul.  Who is not afraid when they do that?  I fear most, that even after attempting to explain it, they will not understand.  I am powerless in this regard.  Who does not fear being powerless?

I've never felt so guilty about anything in my life, but I just couldn’t believe it was true.   I couldn’t.   I was afraid for my life.   I just could not believe that she actually liked me.   I mean, my own mother didn't love me, how could this girl possibly, actually, love me?  I really had trouble even believing that she was dating me.  I was jealous and insecure.   I kept waiting for the cruel joke to be exposed.  I'm not joking.  I really kept waiting for everyone to make fun of me for actually thinking that this girl liked me.  I kept waiting to show up at school where everyone was laughing at me because I was stupid enough to think this girl was my girlfriend.  How could this beautiful, intelligent, amazing girl love me?   Even my brother was in awe that I was dating this girl. 

In reality she knew nothing of my childhood.  We have talked as adults and she still does not understand or really even know about it.  From her perspective she had no idea what was going on.  She was being just like me and just simply seeing me for what I was and not what the world had made me.  She didn’t see a boy whose mother never loved him.  To her I was a boy at school she liked.  All my dysfunction was a brand on my forehead that only I could see and feel.  Like looking through a key hole, she could only see a tiny part of me.

My psyche could not handle it.  It was too good to be true.  I knew if she betrayed me, and she would, that I would not be able to handle it, so I did it for her.  Does that make sense?  I mean, I was only fifteen.  I cheated on her so that when she cheated on me it would not be devastating.  Plain and simple.   I loved her so much I could not bear her hurting me, so I hurt her first.  I had to do it.  You see this way, when she hurts me, I will deserve it, and thus be free of once again not measuring up.   You see, I can handle it if I deserve it.  I would have killed myself had I not, and we all know that no girl would be faithful to me, so I had to be first.  Otherwise I would have had to die.  I would have died.  I nearly died anyways.  I wanted to be loved so badly it was maddening.  I was already telling people I would not live to be thirty.

This was the first time in my life where it became clear to me just how badly my mother fucked me up.  Not that I actually grasped what she had done to me, but that I could tell that she did something to me that fucked me up.  Things were just beginning to peak through to my mind that I was different than everyone else.  I knew this because when I talked about love no one understood what I was talking about.   I learned to keep it to myself.  All I wanted was for a female to love me.  It was consuming.  I wanted nothing else.  I knew then that my mother robbed me of something that could never be returned.  I couldn't voice it, but it was there all the same.

Trust me.  I see it now.  All too clear.

I had a soul mate in my proximity and I smashed her heart.  The thing I wanted more than anything was right in front of me and I smashed it into a million pieces.  Such things cannot be put back together again. 

My writers block will not let me write about those magical moments we shared.  Those are mine and hers and no one else's.   Know that I loved her.  Always have and always will.  She impacted my life in such a way that I will remember it until I die.  I do not have many regrets, but this is one of them. 

It rings in my ears...

I was going to school in Sedalia at the time.  I remember it clearly.  The emotional impact was so significant that I will probably never forget that moment. 

During this time in my life I was often frustrated.  My upbringing has always been a source of great angst in my life.  I was in my thirties and still not where I wanted to be in life.  From my perspective, I was a guy who was still suffering because of how I was raised.  I didn't want to waste the prime of my life suffering because of what someone else did.  I wanted to be living my life.  Looking back I imagine it like I had a big brand on my forehead letting everyone know I was damaged goods, except I was the only one who could see the brand.  I was thirty something years old and was still having to undo what was done to me.  I was fed up.  I had had enough.  All I wanted to was to be healed.   

I was going to college to socialize, to make friends, and to learn about myself and life.  I wanted to get a sense of everyone else in the world.  The life I had lived made me different than everyone else in so many ways, and I finally had enough self-confidence to mingle with the rest.  Going to college was the appropriate thing to do.  I can't remember if I had had the conversation with my biological parents yet.  Wait!  I do remember.  I had already told them off because I had to call my grandmother to find out what time I was born.  I couldn't call my mother.  I was done with them. This was a pivotal time in my life.  I was bitter because they fucked me up so much, and it took so much effort to undo what they did, that they just didn’t deserve to know me any longer.  I felt that deep down, for me to be able to look myself in the mirror and it actually be true that I love myself, I couldn't allow those people in my life any longer.  They simply are not worthy.  We have not talked since.

I had a really close friend at the time.  We would spend hours on the phone together.  She was my girlfriend, you know, the platonic kind.  We talked about everything, and being the serious person I am, we talked a great deal about deep personal things.  She was the first person I called when I discovered this new information.  It was late in the evening.  I was taking a break from studying by reading articles on Facebook like I often do.  I came across a website that gives free birth charts.  I had always found astrology interesting, but too difficult to know which is real and which is not.  Which is crap, and which ones actually know what they are talking about.  Astrology is like all other professions, there are those who suck and those who are really good.  Anyways, I put in my date of birth.  I didn't know the hour I was born, but I found out that it doesn't change anything.  Not on the day I was born anyways.  All my life I had thought something was wrong with me, but nothing was wrong with me.  The planets and stars are to blame.  It is the universes doing. 

Go here to get your profile.  http://alabe.com/freechart/

I was so giddy after reading it that I could not contain myself.  I was dumbfounded.  Years of my life wasted; all that suffering for nothing, all that self-loathing, all that expelled energy, simply because I was ignorant of something so simple, yet so completely complex.  In my profile it says things about me that are so spot on it is disturbing.  The personality issues that I had been dealing with all my life are spelled out perfectly in my profile.  Because I was born Sept. 1st 1975 in Columbia MO.  I am super critical.  All my life I allowed people to make me think that there was something wrong with me, but in reality it is just who I am.  It has to do with the time and place of my birth and nothing else.  I was so relieved.  My outlook on myself, my Selfview, changed forever.   I have not felt negatively about myself for being so critical since that day.

For instance, the following quotes are from my birth chart:

"You are supercritical of yourself and others and, at times, prefer to be alone rather than deal with any imperfections in yourself or in those with whom you might relate."

"Your energies get turned on quickly whenever anything interests you. But you have a very short attention span and it is difficult for you to complete tasks because something else more interesting always seems to be beckoning."

"The way that you grow and develop is by being an uncompromising individualist."

"At times, you are so supercritical that you are merely nit-picky." 

Indeed.  I am supercritical.  Most of my life this super criticalness has been quite a bane.  I cannot turn it off.  It does not go away.  It is me.  I am it.  When you think Benjamin, you should also think supercritical.  We are one in the same.  I am Mercury born.  A Virgo.  All I do is think!  The issue is that super criticalness bugs people.  They find it quite annoying.  I always thought something was wrong with me because of this.  It makes people feel like they are never good enough.

At this same time in my life I was spending a lot of time alone.  I have always spent a lot of time alone.  This always bugged me too.  Our culture makes loneliness out to be a very negative and bad thing.  This culture makes people feel like something is wrong with them if they are lonely.  I kept thinking in my head that if I could remedy the trauma I would have lots of friends like everyone else, and I would never be lonely again.  Unfortunately, my childhood trauma and my loneliness in life had nothing to do with one another.   As my birth chart says, I prefer to be alone, that is, when I am not thinking something is wrong with me because I am alone.  Talk about inner conflict!  This is a perfect example of how culture screws us up.  We are told to be one way, but in reality we are another. 

Then, as I do now, I always pray to just be me, whatever it takes.   I didn't know it then, but my prayers were being answered because it is in my nature to be alone.  A lot actually.  Looking back on my life, I have often been in situations where I had no choice but to be alone, and often times alone for long periods of time.  Life is crazy.  To accept the loneliness, all I had to do was accept myself.  Crazy indeed.

The second example I listed has also been a bane in my life.  According to this American culture, to public schools especially, to all our career choices, we are supposed to pick one thing and stick to it for life.  I find this impossible.  More than anything public schools made me think I was flawed because I cannot stick to things for very long.  I am always eager to move on to the next experience.  Looking back on my life, I can do tons of things well, but none of them really well.  I never stick to things long enough.  There is nothing wrong with me.  It is simply how I am.  It is this culture which is broken.  There is as much gift in being able to do tons of things kind of good as there is in being able to do only one thing really well.  No one way is always better than another.  Fact of life. 

The third example I listed is something I found easy to embrace.  Put simply, I cannot be told what to do.  I do not compromise.  I do what I want to do and that is all.  It is a perfect one sentence description of me.  I will not do something just because I was told to do it. 

These few examples I listed are but a few sentences from a full page profile.  I just re-read it while writing this, and sentence after sentence describes me near perfectly.  There are however, some sentences which do not seem to fit.  I have pondered these sentences at great length, searching myself for the answers.  After all, my prayer is to be me, no matter what.

"You have an almost desperate need to be loved and wanted and needed by everyone with whom you come into contact, and you go out of your way to be accommodating to them."

"A born diplomat, you dislike discord so much that you will go out of your way to make others feel comfortable and at ease. You speak softly and pleasantly."

When I was younger my need to be loved caused me more suffering than I can currently understand.  Because I never actually received any love, within me, it turned to hate.  The environment in which I was born was completely against my personality.  I am trying to get back to that point.  It is hard work.  For a long time in my life I worked at not needing anyone.  My goal was to be autonomous.  It was a spiritual quest you could say, and I accomplished my goal.  I overcame this aspect of my personality.  When I was younger this aspect dominated my behavior.

Also I do not speak softly or pleasantly.  I am very direct.  I am actually quite confrontational.  This is the exact opposite of what my birth chart says of me.  Again, my environment played against my personality and environment won.  When I was younger the places I lived did not allow for me to be accommodating, polite and soft spoken.  It was the exact opposite.  I was raised in violence.  My childhood environment was the exact opposite of my personality.   I was hyper masculinized.  Hyper masculinized males are anything but soft spoken.  I cannot help but think that had my parents actually taken care of me that I would be a really nice guy.  Oh well, such is life.  I am taking what was given to me and making the best of it.  Who wouldn't?

As with all things, there are contradictions.  I have known friends who have read their birth charts and commented that they did not match.  I wonder if they are themselves or if environment won out?  Some people live their entire lives never figuring it out.  The fact that I am not soft spoken shows how environment can overcome personality if it is extreme enough.  Think of children born shy but forced on the stage by demanding parents.  Children like me who require security as children but are born in war or violent homes. From my perspective it is simply a matter of knowing one’s self and using whatever one can to understand just what exactly that is.  In my search for myself I came into alignment with my personality.  I found what I was searching for. 

It is not an issue of it needing to be contradiction free to be true, it is a matter of being able to hold contradictions as true.  It is only our labeling system, our language, and method of thought that makes things seem contradictory.  In reality, it is all true.  For instance, needing love and being an uncompromising individualist are completely contradictory, yet they are both true at the same time.  It is a matter of realizing at any given moment we are thousands of things simultaneously.  Our culture causes us to label things as one way or another, but nothing could be further from the truth.