Maybe you can relate?
Sold out: "I'm a sell out, a fake, who am I to offer anyone guidance? I'm as crazy as they come!"
And now for the Shit Show:
I’m spiraling in the midst of something and I don’t f'ing know what it is. It’s a new era and an oh so old one. As if I’ve been
suddenly transported back in time and now I want to do strange things like fall
into bed with strangers followed by smoking cigarettes in bed.
Normally I'd only scribble these dirty little secrets in my journal, where I keep my messy and my crazy locked up safe. I choose to write it here partially because I’m looking for penance, maybe to to punish my self with public humiliation (I don't do self flogging that well anymore) and the other part is just because it’s
true.
I’m bored with self help gurus that make it shiny, squeaky
clean, and tidy. That’s almost as obnoxious as those that say it's easy. “10
simple steps to inner peace”, true it’s simple, what it's NOT is easy!
Everyone who is on the human path of self healing and
wholing deserves to hear about the time it didn’t work. Today is that day. I’ve
felt it gurgling inside of me. It’s an inner unrest, a rebellion. I can’t quite
put my finger on it. Maybe its just having to do stuff I hate. I don’t believe I should have to do shit I hate. It
feels disgusting and inauthentic. If I’m an entrepreneur, it’s a choice I made
having much to do with a burning desire to do what I choose, not what only what
is expected of me. Anyway I digress, I muscle my way through it, with no real
grace or know how until I’m about to run away. Then today it happens, I crack.
I let the noose of reality slip thru my fingers. I release
the hard work of being present and I become someone else. This someone I become is
well…perfect of course. She has it all and is just basking in the fruits of my
imagination. This the first sign trouble is really brewing. At this point I
know I’m falling of the cliff and am not sure how to pull my parachute. There
are several paths of destruction that might follow this inner collapse.
As I write the thoughts reorganize themselves. My inner
Hitler whose been trying to send me to the gas chambers for my shadow even
existing, has lost his blow horn of contempt. Now some of the other parts of me
can be heard.
The very act of admitting: "this is where I am and it sucks",
disarms him.
What is true for me is that even in this funk, this relapse
of sorts, there is an obvious evolution. What I now perceive to be the depths
of inner personal hell, was at one time my norm. When I knew no center, and
relied solely upon my vices and constant distractions to tolerate, and just get
through each day, I have perspective now. Even my worst day now is better than
my best days then.
A friend of mine referred to one of her stages of healing from
her eating disorder as being a “dry bulimic”. I so get that!
The artist Ani Difranco poses a brilliant question in one
of her songs,
“And they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics
Even when they're as dry as my lips for years
Even when they're stranded on a small desert island
With
no place within 2,000 miles to buy beer”
Is it really that impossible to heal? Feels that way at times.
Stage 1: On these worst
days when I check out, I give in to the fantasy of inhabiting another’s body,
her life, and I use all my imagination to create for her/me a most hospitable
existence of ease.
Stage 2: I revert to a state of dry bulimia. It takes a certain
amount of will power to NOT throw myself head first into a tub of Ben and
Jerry’s, and then into the toilet. It takes will power to avoid a slew of other
shadow behaviors that once ruled me. Yes, today at 41 yrs old, some days like
today I just want to take ecstasy, rip all my clothes off, have riotous sex
with people at random, masturbate to shocking porn all day, shoplift, smoke
a pack of American Spirits, do a couple lines, drive off leaving
obligation, my calendar, and anything remotely resembling a duty in the dust! (TMI?)
The difference
today is that I watch myself entertain these notions and relive old memories. While
I’m not exactly present, I’m still able to observe myself. There is space
between my thoughts, impulses, and actions. In these shadowy times of being a
“Dry bulimic”, the pattern is activated; the difference is I am now in choice!
These days come rarely now, and they leave quickly. (Apparently there is something to this path of personal growth after all.)
Maybe I'm not a sell out, maybe I'm just another human. On this grand stage of life I'm gonna say it like it is and every once in awhile I'll show the world my shit.
