Lifelines

I’m not afraid of the darkness. It’s been home for so much of my lifetime. I’ve known the darkness for far longer than I’ve known the light. But you, my friend, were the light. It’s why we all had you on a pedestal. You were someone, something none of us had thought we could ever be. Your death marks, not the end, but in fact a new beginning. That singular light in one individual is gone but you shared your light with so many of us that it will never truly be gone. You were a lifeline that kept me hanging on desperately when all seemed without hope. In a dark place, you reached out to me and offered friendship, a hand. I was standing there on the brink of oblivion, apathy dripping from my fingertips and you approached in quiet confidence and struck a note that awakened my soul, and every time over the next 16 years that I found myself ready to dive into the darkness and disappear—that same note would reverberate in the depths resonating me back into this sphere we call “reality” and would hand me that lifeline all over again. Their presence may be fleeting at times but lifelines leave ripples which will ever remain true. When you reached out a hand to me as I began to collapse into the oblivion, you stopped me and without even knowing it, you provided me with a safe place. That memory has been a companion through some very dark times in my life. The vibrations in my soul gave me purpose and helped keep me from letting go.

I have cut myself open time and again trying to sort through what was, what hurt, why it hurt, etc. and trying to process and digest some excruciating details. The truth is, none of us has the whole story, but when our stories collide, the ripples extend far beyond what we could ever imagine. I have bled my truths on the pages of my story. I’ve cried out, sobbing over these pages time and again as I rip myself open to bleed out the pain of all the memories of damage done. There were so many days I felt like I was barely hanging on and was at risk of being launched into the metaphysical space and disappearing into an ongoing, ever-growing black hole—an abyss from which I might never emerge from, no matter how much I tried.

We are a broken people seeking truth, seeking meaning, seeking values and purpose; and we come from a long line of broken people seeking the same. Or maybe in some cases just trying to be okay with what life has dealt them. Some seem to get it. Those like me try to avoid those people for fear that we will come to a place where those people realize how damaged we are, especially against the light of their own getting “it,” whatever “it” is. We don’t know what “it” is, just that we don’t have it and others out there seem to. Still others we might be able to clearly recognize as full of shit when they try to act like they do also have “it.” And no one seems to care about how you’re doing when you are quiet and through, that’s when everyone decides you must need counseling. Or in other words, you need to talk to someone else now that you’re opening up to them.

We don’t need a hell to go to and suffer in because most of us have resided there for years already. We can medicate, prescribed or otherwise, maybe we can successfully numb the pain for a little while, but it won’t be forever. The bandages many of us use are food, drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. and they are but temporary. They stifle the pain for a time but wear off and drive us to our next “fix” when we encounter the next trigger for pain. If we don’t get to the bottom of it and find what it is we are running from, it may one day kill us and take away our ability to decide altogether. Life can make or break us. These journeys as hard, complex and insufferable as they are, bring out who we are meant to be, if we are lucky. Often we take the hardest path possible to get there. Maybe because we feel like we deserve it. Our souls cry out from the day we are born, searching for meaning, for value, purpose. And often we might search until the day we die if we aren’t provided with a safety net, or a loving environment to help us navigate who we are and the ways of the world, we will always be searching. If we don’t have boundaries in place to keep us from feeding the demons, or becoming the demons for someone else, then one day the accuser takes over to present a new war on the world.

The ego-self is a caricature of who we are meant to be. The True Self is the one plugged into the Universe—God. We each have a portion of the Universe inside of us. The ego-self tries to bury the True Self. It cannot engage that piece of the Universe until it experiences a sort of death which sparks the True Self to life.

They say misery loves company. If we are so heavy-laden with our own demons we might be inclined to treat others in such a way that we impose our own demons or some off-shoot of them, or we may even intensify their own demons. Sometimes the things we see in the spiritual realm might make us feel “crazy,” like we are losing our grip on reality. I used to see things lurking in the shadows. I couldn’t see it if I looked right at it, but I would frequently catch glimpses from my peripheral vision.

I think our demons are essentially those black holes in the metaphysical. They are out “there” in space surrounding us internally. If they grow too large inside, sometimes they can slip outside to cause problems in the physical realm. The demons are roadblocks, speed bumps, the stuff along the way nudging us ever closer to the abyss. If we fall into the oblivion and become consumed by the abyss, then we become “Satan-the accuser” of sorts. She had lost her humanity along the way. It was no longer a person—she held the features of what should have been—but she was no longer a person. Her heart had suffered too much damage and had died off long ago. Only a black hole remained and it was constantly on a seek-and-destroy mission to consume anything looking remotely close to what had damaged her along the way.

It is irrelevant where you come from demons are immune to our circumstances. They find us in our own hells and bind us there away from peace. It is important to come to terms with who you are at the core, in that place where we hold the very breath of life, the light of God before it gets smothered beneath our ever-developing egos. Demons block us from who we are, or at least they try to. Once we understand who we are—a part of something so much greater than our individual selves—they no longer have any power against us and we can rise to new heights.

I once helped to repair a slow drip under a bathroom sink. The only prior attempt to “fix” the problem was placing a small bowl under the pipe that was leaking. The items already beneath the sink weren’t removed, the bowl was placed haphazardly on top with a faint idea as to “maybe this won’t fall.” There were plastic bottles full of bathroom cleaners, various toiletries, etc. that sat beneath this bowl. Simply not opening the cabinet fails to fix anything, but this was the method taken. The family was blind to the extent of the problem. 30-something year old sons guesstimated it had been like that since they were in high school. Wet wood and damp drywall turned a striking shade of black as the mold crept in. Even the plastic bottles denied the truth as they began to hide beneath the heavy, wet blackness. Eventually it was just accepted that you don’t open that cabinet, the problem festers and grows, but it is never dealt with or acknowledged, or maybe it is and sounds something like “yeah, there was a leak under there in the past…. I don’t remember if it was ever repaired……”

Meanwhile, mold spores are opportunists looking to infect the lungs of anyone near it. If you aren’t looking for the root cause, you’ll probably miss it, yet many family members face growing issues with their asthma or other breathing conditions.

We started by removing the bowl of putrid, brown, filmy water from its home and clearing out everything in the cabinet, removed the plastic bottles (which wiped clean rather well), and cut out the wet wood. We discovered the tile beneath the rotten wood and bleached the drywall, tile, and other areas of the cabinet. Then the leak was fixed, the wood was replaced and no major signs of damage remained aside from a small section of water damage at the base of the cabinet to maintain its truth.

Demons. Some are created for us. Some of them we create. Some hold little power and others may hold the power to completely crush us. In some way, shape, or form, they hold power over us. Maybe something we did or something that was said or done to us. Sometimes we choose them, but more often they find us through miscellaneous words and deeds of others that are cast out or pushed onto us. This may be done intentionally, but they can grow and become consuming just like a black-hole. Some of my own I happened across and even chose when I got lost in the darkness for a time. It’s far easier for them to attach to you than it is to shake them lose when they find a home with you. Like the mess in that bathroom cabinet, it would have been easiest to fix the pipe upon the realization that there was a leak. It is an extremely daunting task to take on, confronting demons. Demons lash out however they can to do the most harm and until they are faced, they can’t be dealt with. The only way to do it is to dive in and trust what God has promised to do all along the way.

This is my story. I thought I had done a good job stitching myself back together over the years, unless I was trying to be honest with myself. I reasoned I was putting the broken bits back together into some semblance of a functional human being, but it turned out it was a shoddy patch job at best with loads of infection mixed in. Every story I wrote was the tearing of a seam, reopening the wound, and letting the mess pour out of me. I bled these stories out on paper and only after staring the mess in its bloody face, did I find healing. Of course, some stories have to be bled out more than others. I told a story once but found it came up again, tied to other stories and I see more infection festering in the wounds of previous healing. Sometimes it takes a bit longer to get rid of the lingering, festering infection.

I invited the demons in early in life. In my eyes, God had turned on me. He took away those who loved me the most with the passing of my great-grandfather and my dog. He allowed someone I thought cared about me to betray me and spread rumors that would follow me all throughout second grade through graduation of high school, and beyond. He allowed me to nearly drown in the ocean and then took my dad away for his annual training on my birthday at a time I really needed him to be around. While I recognize all these years later that my 7-8 year old brain couldn’t separate the individual parts, they all added together to show me one thing. God, for whatever reason, hated me. And so, I hated God.

Regardless of how they find us, demons are real. They take on a life of their own, finding form in our thoughts and within that spiritual realm. Some talk about awakening the Third Eye and how scary it can be to do this too early, too casually, or even unintentionally. This is because the Third Eye is a way of connecting to the spiritual—it can be beautiful if you are prepared for it and terrifying if not.

Beauty for ashes. We aren’t done here yet.

Our demons can help us reach out beyond ourselves and connect to new people based on shared experience. Demons we conquer become a threat of commonality. There’s a deep desire in each of us for connection. There’s a need for depth of relationship and genuine understanding. People are dying without it. People uniting for common goals make a difference. It makes the greatest type of impact, but we are so afraid of missing the mark, of not being good enough, not having value; that we don’t often reach out, and especially not when we really need it.

I’m not looking to condemn any “key players” in my story, nor am I trying to put the blame anywhere or on any one person, but unfortunately there have been some extremely dark moments along the way which served more as a means of destroying lifelines rather than creating them. I can only be true to my experiences and hope that someone, somewhere can learn from my story and move into creating more lifelines than they destroy.

The world is hurting.