I asked a question yesterday.
If you remember, I asked “where are you?”
Today, I find myself asking another question
What are you doing?
What did you do?
What have you done?
In answer to any of the above, was any of this loyal to you?
Was anything you’ve done or have been doing something that was loyal to you or your best interests?
I think this is a fair question.
Don’t you?
I ask this because if you are not honoring what you want out of life; or, if you are not being true to what you want or need and if you’re not where you want to be, or with who you want to be with, and if you are not being loyal to what you really want in this life, then how are you honoring your happiness?
How are you honoring yourself, let alone the relevant question; how are you honoring your sanity?
That is, if there is such a thing. Sanity, I mean.
I was listening to an interview from guitar great, Steve Vai when he said, “You have to honor your creative impulses or you slip into depression.”
I agree. In fact, I think this is brilliant. I think this says so much about us and the way we live and breathe.
We have to honor ourselves; otherwise, we slip into the void of a sad and unfulfilling existence.
It is true to say that only some people hit bottom. And some people never do.
Instead, the bottomless continue to fall through the trap-doors of an otherwise never-ending swamp of emotional quicksand.
But if you ask, no one wants this.
Nobody wants to drown in their own emotional swamps or lose to the weight of depression or depressive thinking. No one asks to live with anxiety. Then again, nobody asks to be unhappy or to live in an unwanted life or in an unwanted place and with unwanted people, yet – we see this happen all the time. We see this often even within our own lives.
We see people who are locked in a life and stuck in the rut, which I call “more of the same.”
So, again –
What are you doing?
What have you done?
What did you do to make a change?
If you’ve done nothing, how are you honoring yourself?
How does the way you live now honor your dreams or your happiness?
If the truth to the questions above is unpleasant or undesired, what are you going to do about it?
If the answer is nothing, then so be it.
But understand that this is a forfeit.
This is giving up.
This is what sinks us into depression because although we’re afraid to make a change or we’re afraid to take the next step; so as a result, our body and our mind acts out and rebels against our environment.
We find ourselves repulsed and turning inwards; therefore, we know that where we are is not where we want to be.
We also know that we have to make a change. Otherwise, nothing will ever change.
We have to risk and dare and make a move yet, what do we do?
What happens when or if we balk?
What becomes of us when we allow procrastination to act as the symptom of our greatest fears?
What happens when fear or worry of the unknown takes place and we allow this to wash us away?
(as in right down the drain)
What does this do to our ability to honor ourselves and our needs?
At a minimum, what does this do for our happiness?
So, here’s the question – If you don’t like where you are:
What are you doing right now?
Is this what you want to do?
Is this where you want to be?
Or, is this only a wake up call that a change needs to take place.
Now, you’re faced with a more important question:
What’s my next move?
In the beginning of this journal, we traced our inventory and went back to our earliest memories of rejective thinking. We talked about our introduction to shame-based ideas and our biases concepts and we discussed our thinking errors and catastrophic or tragic thinking.. We made these connections to understand our breakdowns and freak-outs. But also, we did this to understand the threats that work against our best nature.
It’s no wonder why we freak out sometimes. It’s clear to see why we tend to be upset or emotional. We know that we have discomforts. We know that we have fears too. But what has our social and emotional discomfort done for us? How have our fears empowered us?
What has this done to honor our needs and at the simplest level, what has this done for our happiness?
See?
Now, back when I was young and bullied, and for the record, I seldom share this as openly because as open as I have been with you; this particular detail is one that hurts me the most. However, I used to hear the sound of breaking glass in my head and then, in that instant, I would envision something awful and violent. I was told that these are called violent fantasies.
I would see someone hurt in my eyes, and yes, this was often someone who was hurting me or bullying me, or at minimum; this was someone who I would be resentful towards or against someone who (in my eyes) caused me to hurt or feel shame.
I cringe as I record these facts in fear of judgment; however, since I saw myself as weak and meaningless, I believed that I was exposed and humiliated – all the time.
Hence, I would hear the sound of a brick as it broke and crashed through something like a plate-glass window.
Then, in my head, I would see something terrible and vengeful.
To put this simply, this was a representation of my mind without a relief valve.
Mind you, I understand this is subjective and although the violent fantasies are not commonplace with everyone else, I will suggest that there are times when we all hit the overload switch and without relief, we have our meltdowns that, in the end, are catastrophic to us and to those around us.
I am not comfortable with this; however, I report this to you as an end that justifies the means.
Also, I report this to weaken the old voices and remove power from them so that I can replace my thoughts with action and place honor where it belongs, which is with me.
The reason for these mental outbursts was because I had enough.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I was about to explode and since there was no relief valve in my head, I would hear the sound of a brick through a window.
Then I would see things in my mind that were inhuman and unthinkable.
I suppose part of what I am doing about this, which in fairness to the story, I no longer have these auditory hallucinations nor the fantasies. At the same time, I do have a limit.
I do have a mark to which I know myself and I know my mindset. I know that if I do not take care of myself and if I do nothing but allow the resentments or my emotional challenges to pile-up or if I leave myself unsaid or fail to defend my best interest and allow me to be the doormat and submit or allow myself to be codependent and taken for granted; I can see what happens next.
I implode. I fall apart.
Or worse, I sink into the abyss of that emotional quicksand.
I lose myself to a thought process which is undeserving of my attention and degrading of my best nature.
I ask these questions –
What are you doing?
What did you just do?
What were you thinking?
And of course, what are you going to do now?
I am writing this to act as an official record but more, I want to humanize this as well and normalize my findings because, in fact, I am human. I am real and whether I am normal or not, I can see how this could be up for debate. However, I am a person with thoughts and ideas. I have feelings. I have worries. I have hopes and I have fears that I’ll miss the window of opportunity and thus, I will find myself at the bottom again. or worse, I will see myself and the consequence of my actions; as in facing the shame of a life that I allowed to happen or pass by without taking the risk.
I can see what happens when we betray ourselves; or, more to the point, I know what happens when our thoughts betray us.
I see what happens when we give in or disallow our dreams a chance to come to life.
What am I doing?
Well, aside from writing to you about this, I am replacing thoughts with action.
I am telling on my fears to shrink them by acting in an adverse way; because above all, I want to prove my fears wrong.
I want to repair the pieces of my brokenness and assert myself in a brand new light because, of course, I want to find myself with a brand new life.
What did I do?
I took a shot.
I risked it all.
“But what if it fails?”
Well, at least I’ll know instead of walking around thinking, “What if?”
Besides, I’d rather take the risk and know than stay the way I was.
Otherwise, I’d never know if my dreams were real – or just some myth that I made up in my head.
It’s not easy to dare the lines.
It’s not easy to expose oneself or to be vulnerable before the world.
But I am, wholeheartedly imperfect and true. But also, I am building. I am mounting and creating a new narrative which is my new best friend instead of my old worst enemy.
I’m vulnerable. And maybe I’m weak too.
But as weak as I am, I can only grow stronger by admitting to the truth which is this – I am working on the rebirth of my sanity.
I am real. I am not paper or fabric. I am more than these words and more than a story that someone can read about.
I am a person which means I have value and a voice.
I have all of this and more. Yet, I have you to help me recognize that once and for all – I’m not alone either.
Even if I am . . .
I might be scared of the dark or the troubles with loneliness – but the one thing I can say is at least I took the shot.
At least I made the break to honor my truths of my life.
Like the guitar great, Steve Vai suggested, I allowed myself to honor my creative abilities to write to you on this page, to create a new life for myself, and to openly admit this to the universe that here I am taking a shot because I can’t let my life slip away from me anymore.
And do you know what?
Neither can you . . .
The Written Addiction 