Monday, June 27, 2016

Incarceration, institution, or death.

...and I'm already two for three. 



Maybe it's my Catholic upbringing...

But I need to confess. To someone, anyone, I need to tell the real story of how it happened. I don't know if I just need to get it off my chest, or maybe I want someone to know what I'm really capable of. Maybe I want to test the age old adage that the truth will set you free. 

Does that still apply when the truth is something dirty and awful?

Probably the most dominant emotion I have, ever-present and tyrannical, is shame.

SHAME.

DOUBT.

INSECURITY.

FEAR. NEED. DENIAL.

I am embarrassed. I am humiliated. It's like I banished myself to the depths of my own dungeons, but with just a wing and a prayer, I began to hope for a way out, began to forget that this darkness around me was no ones fault but my own. 

When I built this penitentiary, my single-cell Supermax, I lined the walls with my greatest fears. I hung every charge against me like Tiger Beat posters in a teen girl's room. Hundreds of thousands of pictures and words, overlapping each other and hugging every visible inch of my cage. Evidence. Every scrap of damning evidence, a mosaic of memories, bore witness to my sins. If you stood in the dead center of it all, you could see them as parts of a whole, illustrating the crime I've been convicted of.

Fraud.

I am a fraud.
And I am guilty.

But ever so subtly, as I carried out my sentence, my weaknesses began to get the better of me. My hopes and fantasies, wishes I never even bothered to wish, began to knit themselves together and take shape. Giant wings formed and stretched themselves wide, covering the tapestries I'd placed to keep myself locked away. They unfolded themselves to reach their full open span, muscles rippled under the countless white feathers and grew stronger by the minute.

It practically writes itself, really, this pathetic story...

When the demons who secured my prison were blocked out by the guardian angel my dreams pretended to be, I forgot about them entirely. I started to believe in my distractions, my delusions, they were all I could see. I constructed my totem carefully, forming an idol that gave shape to all those things I forbid myself to say. And then I took that last, tiny step off the edge of reality, and fell face first into what was, essentially, a scarecrow. The next natural thing was to breathe life into it. This imaginary cell mate I created was just to keep me company in my solitude, but I poured so much of my soul into it I began to lose my perspective. It took that one breath I gave it and awoke with a start, gathering me up in strong angel arms to carry me up and out of darkness, gaining momentum with powerfully flapping wings. Each fluffy white feather was a pretty white lie I told myself to escape an eternity reliving my mistakes.

I almost made it out alive, too.

Almost.

But that wasn't really freedom I thought I was heading for. The bright orb above me I willed those lie-covered wings towards was the harsh light of reality, and as we flew closer I felt it like the heat of the sun, scorching the pristine white feathers. Just like that, I plummeted all the way back down to where I started, a whirlwind of smoke and flames trailing after. Those wings, those beautiful wings, were nothing more than white feathered lies that danced as they fell, burning all the while, before settling on me as a blanket of dull gray fluff.

Its not that the walls weren't high, I had built them as high as I could, and they appeared to have risen impossibly higher as I looked all the way up the length of them from the heap I'd collapsed in when I hit the cold, hard floor. The regrets and reminders I'd plastered all over them weren't just condemning me anymore, they mocked and jeered at my attempt to fly the coop. I was breathless. Injured. Immobilized. There wasn't anything left to do but lay as a few wispy gray tufts continued their descent like snowflakes, burying me in the ashes of each white feathered lie that had gone up in flames.


2 comments:

  1. Love, love, love! The truth applies ESPECIALLY with something dirty and awful. FEAR keeps us "comfortable" in the guilt and shame - deluded by ourselves. The darkness is captured quite eloquently here, as this is a darkness so vile and real since it's tailor made by us, for us; our mind knows all the little tricks. Regular people can never really understand. "Your secrets will keep you sick" is something repeated a lot, and it is absolutely true. I could spend months fearlessly searching through all the wreckage, looking at behavior and self-centered motives, and that one thing I knowingly omit will be what grows, and grows, and I soon would have found myself enslaved once again in complete consternation as to why I let it happen. The beautiful thing about the whole process is that I can let go of all of that guilt and shame once I vigorously complete my housecleaning and follow through righting what I can today. Today, faith is my antidote for fear. Now I am more vigilent than ever before as to why I do what I do. Funny how the one thing I really didn't want to give up turned out to be nowhere near as shameful as I believed. My pride told me not to go there, but I did! The resultant humility and freedom that surrender produced was why, incarcerated, I felt more free than ever before. I knew I was done... and somehow alive!

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    1. "So let each family play together or separately, as much as their circumstances warrant. We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. We cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a vale of tears, though it once was just that for many of us. But it is clear that we made our own misery. God didn't do it. Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence."
      AA BB, p132-133

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