I stare at the horizon and the waves hit my shins. The receding water buries my feet in warm sand, and I’m finally at peace. My cluttered mind now at ease. A place I desperately wanted to call, home. Here, I can relax. “I’m not returning until I find answers.”
“You’ll leave when I tell you to leave.”
Then I was back. Back to the paradigm we call, reality. Torn from the fantasy world once again, and whisked against my will back to the land of the living through a swirling vortex of color and light.
When I snap out of it, it always takes a moment to re-calibrate. I have to find my footing and clear the webs from the noggin. I have to stop in my tracks, back up a few paces and remember what it is I’m fighting to forget. What is it I’m trying so hard to ignore?
I believe that’s all it really is on the grand scale. We cling to those negative past experiences and once they become the primary focus they slither deep into our souls. The roots find a home where they’re nurtured and watered daily, then they branch, weave, and spread out like a virus without a cure. Thick vines choking us out to the point where eventually the inability to breathe feels normal. No machete or chainsaw is strong enough to hack it all away.
We find comfort in escapism. We seek methods to mask the madness dwelling inside. Those coping mechanisms vary individual to individual, but we all have them.
Sometimes we walk the path of the light to escape, and sometimes we go dark.
For a brief moment in time, I went dark-silent-protected-contemplative-introvert-hermit.
No method of escapism was good enough. No matter what I drank, I couldn’t quench my thirst. My mind was racing 24-7 and my thoughts were erratic. I’d indulge in escapes I was accustomed to, but had a hunger I couldn’t feed. Because I couldn’t find answers where they didn’t exist, I decided to go to the source of the problem; instead of focusing on the results. I needed to dig for my answers and to this day, I still dig in the same holes from time to time. I could not longer exist on the surface of my personal issues in life, I needed to find the reasons to “why” I was having my experiences. There has to be more to it.
And it all derived from a central point. I know the source of the problem.
That problem is, me.
I used to carry a sledgehammer. A heavy tool to break down obstacles and obliterate impassible walls. Now I carry a shovel in it’s place. I traded one laborious tool for another, but today I dig, search, and look for personal discoveries that are applicable to me. Instead of smashing through the wall and moving on to the next, I try and figure out who built the wall, what it’s made of, why is it here? Why am I facing it? Why today?
Of course, no answer will be found, but through that search I believe I’ve come to be a better person then who I was in the Old Life. And to me, that’s all that really matters. I exchanged my negative experiences for positive ones. I transformed the bad, into something I like to think is, good. If not good, then better than what I was the day before.
Quite possibly the biggest hurdle thus far, the largest of the walls I’ve ever seen, was constructed in early summer of 2012. I couldn’t see the wall, until I was standing toe-to-toe with it. On the other side of the barrier I could hear the screaming of the enemy and all its minions and monsters. Mocking, taunting and yelling obscenities. Telling me to walk away. Instructing me to try the other paths instead. This one wasn’t for me.
I had to find a way to silence the screams. I couldn’t retreat. The path behind me wasn’t for me anymore. I had to keep moving forward. I had to continue to pursue something away from the darkness.
I needed to undertake a journey I wasn’t prepared for.
The journey involved a place between places. A location conjured in my mind. Somewhere I needed to reside temporarily, in order to get through it all. My little trips into the fantasy world were my coping mechanisms. My escapes. My methods to quell the madness. The subtle clues and hidden secrets were starting to appear in locations I didn’t expect. My subconscious mind took control and I gave in allowing it to take me elsewhere. I latched onto the snippets of information I was provided and I taught myself to put the pieces together accordingly, to create a scene I somehow needed to see, even if the picture was hazy and vague.
I had to make sense of it all. Why is this happening? Why me? Why us? What’s my bigger picture here?
I still don’t know. I’ve lumped it into the category of, “life happens.”
It’s what I do with the provided data, that makes the difference to me. I have to look for a potentially bigger picture, and continue to place the pieces. Transform the bad into something good.
Something that makes sense to me.
My brief time as a hermit, that dark path I walked before deciding it wasn’t for me, came to be an asset. I was able to latch onto that experience again and it guided me to where I needed to be. I didn’t want to relive that moment in time. I had to.
“You have to do what needs to be done.”
“What is it?”
To continue being honest, I still don’t know. I don’t know what needs to be done. All I know is what I can do and what I try and accomplish within my parameters. Nothing more, nothing less. To continue being myself.
If not for the journey, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I dig who I am. I like me.
The wall was high and wide and I walked head first into it. It was invisible at first. Subtle, easily ignored, and overlooked. Maybe a lozenge would help. A little non drowsy medication before work. Go see the doctors when you’re ready, or it lasts longer than a week or becomes something that needs to be looked into.
It all started with a cough.
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