The real me...?

When I'm fucked up,
That's the real me

I recently stumbled on this cover song I used to listen to a lot, around this time last year, and I remembered, quite to my shock, how I resonated with the above lyric. I'm not sure what the song is about, drugs it seems to be. Alcohol. Cheap, casual sex, all those things that seem to be considered fun in today's world. Listening to it now, I'm a little shocked. Not so much at resonating with it then, but at how far I've come, and how different I find myself today. Less than a year later.

I've been keeping it on repeat more or less as I write this morning, and I've occasionally had to stop and ponder. What kind of person thinks along those lines? And then, through some unknown grace, I allowed myself to acknowledge the answer. Someone who holds on to their pain, who wears it like a mantle around their shoulders. A mantle of protection. For many people, past pain can become a shield from future pain. As long as I define myself as the person to whom this happened, I have an identity. Thus, I avoid the risk of becoming someone to whom other bad things happen.

But also, other good things.

When you wear your sorrow like a cloak, it only seems light on the first few days, when the wound is fresh, and protection from the outside world is paramount. After, you find, if you're even a little self-aware, it becomes heavier and heavier. Until it stoops, and breaks your back. Until it tramples you underfoot, and all you can taste is asphalt, and dirt.

Letting go of what has hurt me, I admit, has proved a monumental challenge for me. I have a hard time processing, or recognizing the impact things have had on me, their true extent. Only recently, I was listening to a podcast with Gabor Mate (someone whose work I think I've written about before, and who has been a source of great light for me). And listening to that, it occurred to me, as evident as the sun shining above me as I walked, that I harbored inside myself a great trauma.

Now, that's a word often bandied around, and in an effort not to join the egocentric, selfish masses as they desperately grovel for a problem, I'd shied away from that knowledge. I'm someone who needs to feel in control, and secure. I am not someone who bemoans how terrible life is lightly.

But that moment, that realization, and the very association of the word "trauma" with my own past came as such a blunt-force revelation, it knocked me off my feet. It brought tears to my eyes, understanding I'd lugged that around all this while, and that somewhere, deep down, there was a part of me trying desperately to heal. In an environment that doesn't even acknowledge your suffering as such, that refuses to even give it a name, how can you hope to heal?

I now give it a name, because I've realized what I feared in the world around me was wrong. I used to think all these youths around me had been tricked into self-pitying, egotistic behavior, in this society where mental health issues have become as much a trend as skinny jeans (are they still trendy? I don't know...). I was afraid of becoming that, without understanding what that was.

A quote from the book I'm working on. I wrote it today, and saw myself in it as soon as I'd hit the Space bar.

Now, I see I was wrong. I think most people have hurt in their life, somehow, somewhere. so they're not wrong in saying they're traumatized, suffering from anxiety, or depression, or all those other tendrils of hurt that latch onto your mind. That much is true, and it's even good to acknowledge it. What's truly wrong in society is that so many people are told they need to hold onto their anxieties, and their depressions, and their peculiarities, and their PTSDs. We've built around us a society that feeds hurt and trauma, setting them on a pedestal, and discouraging healing.

Except I want to heal. I realize I've lost so much time already, before I could speak the name of my hurt, if only in my own soul. All those years of lugging it around within me, and trying desperately, with every story, or poem I wrote. Trying to let out the grief that bubbled inside me. I don't count those years as wasted, not in the least, but I do count them as deeply hurt, and survival-mode.

I wanna thrive, not just survive, and in order for that to happen, I need to let go of everything. Of my recrimination, and my hurt. I need to let go of the things that hurt me, of the people that did, and of the things and behaviors I permeated upon myself.

One of my biggest focuses right now is, in Mate's own words, accepting that forgiveness isn't about downplaying what happened. It's accepting that although what happened was cruel and terrible, I can no longer lug it around after myself, and need to let go, as bad as it was.

For years of denial, I sought to populate my "happiness" with everything that typically subsists in that bubble. Adventure, thrill-seeking, motorcycles, alcohol, sex, music. Until I understood the goal wasn't, as we're led to believe, happiness, that hedonism is not really the point.

And when you're free of fear, and of guilt, and of the suffering that went before. When your focus is the love around yourself, and creating good and light, that's when happiness comes unbidden. That's, maybe, what happiness is.

The same artist who was singing that cover (he's actually a really cool dude), also released another track, around the same time. A personal one, delving into his suicide attempt, and fighting for the good. It's what drew me to his work over the past year, the struggle to help, and to be good, having overcome many of his own demons.

This other track I didn't pay much mind when it first released. I was not in a place to understand it, even if I resonated with the emotional depth. It's called "Strong for Someone Else", and at the very end of the video, has this message:

I was once told that if you kill yourself now you'd be killing the wrong person, because you would steal from yourself the person you're going to become when you get through the hardest time of your life.

And that's one of the most powerful messages I've heard (read) in this past year. I know this text is somewhat sad, morbid maybe, but I find that balance and strength isn't ignoring the band and chirping along. I have a great tendency to do that, as well. It's about knowing all this darkness exists, and being able to take it in your palms, and not collapse under its weight.

I think "the real me" is somewhat of a trite expression, because who we really are is ever-changing. Nevertheless, I love who I'm turning out to be, and sometimes, when she looks at the darkness behind her, and smiles, I love her most of all.

I don't know what this is, but it's here now, so thank you for reading.