A part of me feels like I've just woken up from being dead for the past 12 years.
I know sometimes we might "say" something like this, but we may not actually be experiencing that statement in a factual way; there is nothing existentially profound about the experience. I have been guilty of this in the past; language, in its very nature, is very easy to distort. But here, I do not exaggerate. Something trenchantly episodic is happening to me. Two things have happened, and they occurred almost simultaneously.
First, I went on a different drug. I began the new regiment a month ago, went down 75mg of Effexorto 37.5 mg, and have just recently come off the drug altogether. I also have gone on 10 mgs of Cipralex . And second, I have recently begun reading "Healing Developmental Trauma: how early trauma affects self-regulation, self image, and the capacity for relationship" which offers frankly astonishing clarity into the experiences of someone who has suffered developmental trauma. From the very beginning, the book captures the essence of developmental trauma by reflecting on its opposite: "This is a book about restoring connection. It is the experience of being in connection that fulfills the longing we have to feel fully alive". Fully Alive. Those two words feel like a distant memory to me. There was a time where every time I acted, I was fueled by some nebulous impulse to feel alive. Its a basic spark. And this spark facilitates connection. It is the docking bay for embodied experience.
I have begun to feel myself more fully - more intently - and it is a blend of the blissfully nostalgic, on the good side, and a slight terror, on the bad side. When I say terror, I mean it; It's a little astonishing - in a terrible way - to realize how far you are from normal human experiencing. I remember it. I have not forgotten it, thank God. But being back there, being able to maintain it for a few good days straight, it felt both liberating, and scary.
I have woken up to myself because I didn't even realize I was asleep. How many years did I spend wasting away, masturbating in front of a computer, playing video games, watching TV, or going to play Basketball. And how many times was this experienced with strain? With some baseline anxiety, always revolving around the FEAR of not being able to connect; not even realizing that the sense of inability derived from a serious emotional trauma, which had veritably stunned me from experiencing my own reality in an expansive and exciting way. HOW MANY YEARS!!!
I am angry about that loss. I am angry that I have experienced this. And yet, I am felicitously aware of my ability to transcend this problem. I don't know how else to describe it. A few strange things have happened in the past that may have primed me to this perspective, but skepticism aside, this awareness I have that awareness itself transcends all semantics, all emotions - that I can govern myself the way a King would his kingdom, it is a powerful sense; it doesn't seem to be affected by good or bad emotions, which is to say, even if I've had a few disheartening experiences, the "King" is there to offer comfort to his counselors (my mind...) keeping them from further hurting themselves by brooding over destructive matters.
When I think what I've had to go through to get to this moment, to get to an awareness that I have right now. It makes realize how much I have to be proud of. I always had this awareness in me. It was just concealed, clouded by the severities of external experiences; bullying, straining to speak, the myriad anxieties, fears, phobias...the 3 weeks where I didn't sleep and the horror that that brought into my life.
This awareness is the product of experience, but is also aided by the thousands of hours of reading I have done, consuming books in religion, philosophy, history, sciences, and psychology. I have a sophisticated worldview - and I try to say this with all modesty. I say it only with a sense of amazement at my own personal growth; and what I feel is intense compassion for myself - for what I have had to suffer for a dozen years.
I can barely speak of this without contemplating philosophical and theological questions. I wouldn't even be asking such questions - living in such a refined zone of mind - if it weren't for this life circumstance..... Is my compassion for my self sufficient? Or should I proceed further, and assume some ontological predicate for my experience of compassion for myself. Not all people go this deeply, but I can't quite help it. I feel gratitude. And because I feel it, I want to ask WHY I EXPERIENCE it. Of course, asking why does not mean why is begging to be asked. You either feel it is important, or you don't. And if you do, it does not necessarily add anything "more" to your spiritual status. It's a personal decision without moral urgency.
My philosophy has moved over the years from ultra Orthodox conservative, to a middle of the road attitude. It's been influenced partly by my readings of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Steven Pinkers "The Better Angels of our Nature" and other books I can't now recall. My earlier belief that homosexuality was abominable and deserved to be outlawed became replaced by a more liberal understanding, albeit, one sprinkled with subtly. Politically, and emotionally, I feel for homosexuals. My cousin is gay, and he is probably one of the kindest people that I know. However, I have this ongoing fascination with a metaphysics which posits physical reality as indicating ontological laws about reality. For example: man and woman represent cosmic opposites, counterpoles. Yin and Yang; God and earth; philosophically, we could reduce it to the non-deterministic and the deterministic. The semen of potentiality becoming a fixed reality. In any case, my view is closely related to Hal Harzogs concept of the "troubled middle". One part of me wants to entertain the option that God may exist and may indicate proper sexual behavior through patterns he projects into nature; while another, more practical part, can't allow that perspective to distract me from the real human harms that can come from holding so tightly to a perspective, which, in practicable historical terms, is no more viable to implement than Islamic Sharia law in the 2nd decade of the 21st century.
