Compared to what it was like when I was younger, NOW it feels like my future makes sense.
When I was only like five years old people used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grow up… lol. That only took me another 18 years to figure out. I’m not judging myself but now that I think about it, it seems kind of weird to ask such a young child that question. I used to feel confused in school when we would take those career tests and they’d give me suggestions for what I should be. What about who I want to be, or how I want to live? Where are those tests? And the answers that I received which revolved around why never really felt like the full truth. Something just felt off for me personally. Why has my future been written out for me?
Existential questions like this drove me to some pretty dark places. But now that I look back, it wasn’t necessarily those questions, but more of not knowing how to deal with the emotions that came from those questions. I never really excelled in school or had the desire to push myself academically. I felt like a failure. I felt like everybody else was more intelligent than me and wanted to succeed more than me. I had social anxiety, insecurities about my looks, about the way I talked, pretty much the full scope of anxious person syndrome. On top of that, I had a sexually traumatic experience when I was a child which had a big impact on my decision making when it came to social situations, specifically when women and alcohol were involved. Once I figured out that the effects from alcohol acted as a simple cure for this trauma, I developed an extremely bad habit of over consuming when I would drink. And along with that, my dad passed away when I was 10 years old. In order to deal with that experience and my entire relationship with my father, my mind created a gigantic box labeled “NOTHING TO SEE HERE” and pushed it deep into a corner. Back in 2014, the combination of these things led me down a path of non-stop partying. I got addicted to Xanax for awhile. I wanted anything to numb the pain so I could get rid of the weight of my past and not have to think about my future.
Thankfully an opportunity presented itself in the music industry. I decided to stop taking college classes and pursue this path that I believed could turn into a dream career. But even then, this trauma tucked away in my mind still had control of my decision making. The problem with over consuming alcohol didn’t stop. I still asked around for Xanax. I almost lost my dream job but was thankfully given a second chance and moved back into a full time position eventually. It was like no matter what I did, I couldn’t control my behavior. I’d black out drinking and act like an idiot, then wake up the next morning and immediately drown myself in shame, guilt and regret. But I would keep doing it.
I got a grip on the Xanax cravings awhile ago, like over three years now. That is something I can safely say I will never go back to. But my issue with over consuming alcohol in social situations didn’t stop until October of 2018. I went out drinking one night and got way too drunk. I ended up calling my mom like 10 times at 2am, and woke up (in my bed thankfully) to her frantically calling and asking me if I was okay. I had a very deep realization at that point that I had done the exact same thing to her before. I was repeating the same exact behavior as my father, who was an alcoholic. The same exact behavior that my mom warned me about. The same behavior that I feared I would inherit “from the addictive genes that had been passed down through my family.” This deep realization came with other memories of bad decisions, and I ultimately realized that I was lucky to be alive. That just maybe my dad was watching over me somehow pulling cosmic strings to give me more chances, to wake me up. At that moment I knew I had to put an end to this behavior.
I had a panic attack one night in November of 2018 and decided I would start meditating and look into therapy. I really had no idea what I was getting into. Little did I know, this trauma that had been collecting dust since I was a child had an extremely tight grip on my subconscious and unconscious behavior. It had control of my past, my present, and my future. The very things I refused to look at covered my mind and my heart in a thick layer of pain. I slowly became aware that these traumatic memories are permanent events in my past. They’re imprinted in my identity yet I was planning to spend my entire life running from them. Running from the idea that these monsters had sunk their claws into my mind and were controlling me like a puppet, dictating my every move. But then I realized, if that was the case, I only had one move – to dig. Very deeply. And that’s what I’ve done.
For the last eight months or so I’ve been doing everything I can to look at these wounds and heal them. I went to therapy and it helped a little bit with the sexual trauma, but I decided to stop going. I took the therapist’s way of associating emotions and have been using float tanks and meditation to explore my mind and study the traumatic events from every possible angle. And then I discovered something else lurking in the depths, another powerful force that was using me to chase illusions – societal conditioning.
When we’re children we tend to pick up on every little behavior from our parents and infer conclusions without actually finding the full truth. Even if our parents are responsible people and raised us with good intentions, there are still systems of belief that they passed down from their parents and their societal conditioning. It’s not their fault, they did their best. But it seems like the ego finds all of these little patterns from our parents / society and takes them for truth, then uses those conditions to predict our reality based on the sole instinct of survival. Talk about an illusion right? Our entire identification of self and the external world is through a lens of conditioned fear. Fear that we aren’t enough if we don’t have the right type or amount of attention. Fear that if we don’t behave a certain way we might not be worthy of receiving love.
I understand this trauma stuff is a touchy subject. Trust me, I’ve been there. I’m not trying to get attention for my past nor do I think my problems are special, that is not my goal by expressing this stuff. It’s actually the opposite of the point I’m trying to make. What I’m saying is, as team human, we need to stand together and inch closer to these dark places in our minds. Step by step. We can ease into it, but we need to have more conversations around pain and the human experience. My mind, along with our collective mind, has convinced us that our outward projection of energy is all we need. That we don’t need to look inside because pain is bad and if we look at it, we may not survive. Here’s the actual truth though, we can survive. It might actually be the best tactic to figure out how to work as a team and reverse the damage that has been passed down by so many generations before us.
Unlike our external world, the power is in our hands. We don’t have to be trained astronauts to explore the internal universe that’s waiting for us. However, if we want to take the initiative to venture into our minds we must first face some uncomfortable truths. 1) that the answers we seek are actually hidden within our pain. And 2) that the only way to raise our children consciously and not let programming dictate our behavior is to deliberately confront these conditions and traumatic memories. It’s a big task that we’re being presented with, but the key to going on this journey together is developing more vulnerability.
And if we can all start to be a little more compassionate with ourselves that will lead to more compassion towards others. Then I think we’d realize that underneath the subjective experiences there are patterns that we share. Patterns that we can connect on and try to understand together.
For the first time since well, maybe ever, I feel like I am starting to have control of my decision making. I feel like I have control of how I react to thoughts and emotions. I have noticed a significant difference in my physical body. I can breathe easier, my chest doesn’t feel so tight, my back doesn’t hurt.
I finally feel like I’m starting to take control of my narrative. Not in a sense of controlling the narrative of my external events, but more like controlling the narrative of my internal world. I feel like I’m starting to have control of my presence. I’ve learned how to deal with my social anxiety by using practical tools and self-communication skills. I feel like my future makes sense and I’m working towards something I’m passionate about. I still have a long way to go. A very long way. But now that I’ve befriended my demons, I can try to enjoy every moment of this path forward rather than trying to run from a past that doesn’t exist.