Shining Light On My Hate and Resentment

Points of Light, part of a life lived in and surrounded by light, color, and beauty, lies in having a heart that’s not conflicted with itself and a thought life without schisms between it and one’s emotions. Said another way, it lies in having a heart at peace with itself as well as having both our mind and emotions living in harmony one with another. Okay then, now that it's been said and written in stone, now that we know what to do; let’s go forth and live in an amazing, light-filled colorful world full of breathtaking beauty! Ha, where life lived that easy!

I ironically laugh there knowing in my last post I wrote to you saying, “There's some brutal honesty I need to confront and write about. This will tax my heart as well as my mind. I need to dig deep and face some harsh realities that I've not dared face before. It will be extremely painful, it will hurt, I'll be made sad, and I'll shed some tears, but afterward, it will bring healing, much-needed healing.” So, now as I write this, I’m well aware that it’s very needful for me to be fierce and dig deep to confront an issue that’s negatively affecting me within my heart as well as leaving my thought life in conflict with my emotions. So, let the truth be told.

As children, we learn a colorful and playful axiom that’s supposed to guard us against the mean and nasty barbs of other children. Back then, we learned to say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me." the axiom was supposed to help children understand that the mean barbs of others were just words, and words have no power to hurt your body like, well, a stick or stone can. I suppose some children have the capacity to process the obvious intentionality of this axiom, and they use it to allow the mean things other children say to them, to flow off their backs as they remain happy. But we all know some children haven’t this ability and they allow those same words to affect their hearts and to pit their thought life against their emotions.

Now, these children live in a universe where physics must and does constrain them to move through time and space, and soon, relatively speaking, they become adults. As adults, we learn to think critically and try to live rational lives. And as adults, we can logically appreciate our childhood axiom as we’re capable of thinking about it objectively. However, there are some adults who, while they appreciate the axiom and the logic behind it, still, with rampant irrationality, allow words to inflict searing pain on their psyche. Points of Light, I’ve realized this for years, but still, I’ve never acknowledged it or processed it. What do I mean? It hurts me to confess this; I’m this last kind of adult.

From a very early age, I accepted and had ingrained into my psyche, or said another way, placed in my heart as well as into my thought life and my emotions, was this hideous lie - “I didn’t matter.” Thinking about this lie, it tells you that while you experience a life lived just like every one of your family and friends, that while you breathe, while you eat food and drink water, while you play, read books, go to school, graduate, join the military, et al, these three words become your reality - “you don’t exist.” From this lie, you learn the lesson that you’re invisible and even though you do some things and don’t do other things, while you say some things but don’t say other things, nothing really matters because, being invisible to everyone outside of your own skin, nothing you did ever happened. “But Tod, what about the people you interacted with, how did they fail to dispel the lie?” Good question. Of course, you interacted with others. Sometimes these people smiled and laughed with you, sometimes plans were made, conversations were had, duties were performed together, and much, much more. My answer then is this, while he knew he was present, other than Haley Joel Osment, how many people heard or noticed anything Bruce Willis did in “The Sixth Sense”?

Unimportant is a horrific untruth when it’s wrongfully believed. Growing up in this false belief, your automatic default is to acquiesce to everyone who’s not you. You’re unimportant - they’re important; your thoughts don’t matter - but theirs do; your plans don’t matter – follow their plans; your wants, and likes don’t matter - theirs do; your feelings don’t matter - theirs are of utmost importance; etc. This is ingrained into the very foundation and framework of who and what you are and is forever present with you. Your life lived is completely caught up in this - “I’m invisible, so why try?” However, you’re still a living, breathing, thinking, feeling person, so, there are things you say and don’t say, there are things you do and don’t do. Does any of this affect family and friends? The big lie is ever present to very loudly remind you, “No it doesn’t matter stupid, you’re invisible and no one sees or hears you!”

It’s funny how all the above unfolds in your life lived. The big lie has become the truth, but from time to time you experience cognitive dissonance. This is what I mean, the big lie is the truth, but occasionally you experience moments when you want to believe you either do matter or ought to matter. This causes extreme conflict between your mind and emotions. Your mind struggles to agree with your emotions, while your emotions struggle to agree with your mind. Eventually, the heart is only ever in constant turmoil. The end of all this is to shut down, said another way, it’s easier to believe the big lie than to fight to find and live in the light of the truth.

Now, the shutdown is made easy for several reasons, with this being very important, from a very young age you heard the banshee scream repeatedly, “Now go to your room and stay there!” Eventually, you begin to feel comfortable within the seclusion of your lonely room. Here in your room, you feel safe as you’ve removed yourself from the noise and confusion of the rest of the world - along with everything about it you never understood. A plus for being in the room - the banshee wasn’t here. In your room, you could soothe yourself and use your imagination to think about all kinds of wonderful and fantastic - conversations, amazing stories, and adventures - where people actually loved and appreciated you. Here your mind was alive and active, your emotions were given a momentary reprieve from feeling pain and your heart lived with a taste of peace. And it was here in your room when you’d sometimes hear a song on the radio, and while you didn’t understand why, those songs touched and moved your heart in very good and amazing ways, and they afforded you the opportunity to feel warm and wonderful emotions. Years later, you’d learn that these songs allowed you to vicariously feel the good emotions whose existence you were trying to deny.

Unfortunately, you couldn’t always enjoy the seclusion of your room, and when you couldn’t be in your room, and you had to experience the big wide world, you easily denied yourself any feeling of emotion. But there was more to your reality, and the truth is, you were numb to this reality- your constant state of being was that of never-ending confusion, pain, inner turmoil, fear, and utter darkness. In this state, well, your heart was at war with itself and your mind and emotions only experienced discordance one with another.

A life lived like this assured that while they “were only words”, every acrimonious insult, criticism, disagreement, snarky comment, and negative joke at your expense, did hurt – hurt more than any rock or stone. These kinds of words held tremendous power over you as they served to confirm the big lie about your own intrinsic self-awareness - as a person, you were ignorant, stupid, useless, hopeless, crazy, and a hideous monster!

With all of this ever-present with you, unknown to you as to when, eventually your subconscious began living by this absurd manifesto:

"Pieces of me, that’s all. Stay where you are. Come no closer. You need not know more. Stay where you are. Where I am you shall not come. You cannot enter. Here behind the veil lies all of me, something I keep in reserve, hidden, set aside for me and me alone, my secret guarded. One knot is my lock, Gordian knot to be sure, tried and true. Stay away. I will share, but on my terms and please be sure that only I hold these terms also within, they are mine as well! What is within is within for my reasons, for the purposes I choose. So stay away, and our unison will be strong. There are things within, many, many things—some good, some bad—but they shall be held with steely grit and determination. My life, my way, by this I am bound; and by this, I live or die. The things within may be hideous, they may be wondrously beautiful, but I am free of your rule. You have no power over me. I will be a rock, a fortress. If I acquiesce it is on my terms, and you shall see a little, but not all, never all. And be confident of this rule with firm resolution, for in that I will be happy. Do not pry, do not prod, and do not hope to know more than all that I reveal! There is so much within. Why do you wish for more? Don’t I know best what to deal out? Ask not the question “Who does he wish to protect?" for rather I protect myself or those without, only I can choose. The lock is strong, it will remain. Stay where you are, and with you do not think to bring along Alexander!"

In this manifesto, you get to see how, as an adult, I became numb to the big lie that I was an unimportant invisible puff of smoke no one ever saw or noticed. My subconscious effort to work on and then live by my manifesto gave me some autonomy for why and how I was existing. It also allowed my life lived to feel very familiar to me in that it was not unlike the solitude I used to seek in my room. This manifesto was my outward expression of my inward, self-imposed, dark, and dank prison. It was there where hideous monsters with razor-sharp teeth appeared and would forever nip at my flesh, desperately desiring to devour me. Just like being in my room, there’d be times when peppered throughout my stay, the tiniest slivers of light broke through and afforded me opportunities to find color and beauty. Yes, these occasions were extremely rare.

Many decades later, I’d learn that the lie was just that, a hideous lie. I’d learn that my self-imposed prison stay was unnecessary. I’d learn that even within my dark manifesto, I left room for my desperate desire to find, Light, Color, and Beauty. I mean, after all, contained in my manifesto were these truth bombs: “There are things within, many, many things—some good...” and “The things within may be...wondrously beautiful.” Points of Light, I’m not going to lie; this wasn’t easy to learn, it was extremely hard because I’d never allowed myself to consider anything else but the lie. The lie, well it had always been the end all, be all, of my miserable existence. It took hard work to overturn my steadfast belief in the lie. I’d have to work with wonderful therapists. I'd have to force myself to accept objective evidence of all the people in my orbit, even tangentially, who were made glad for my presence. I needed Terpsíchore's wonderful and gracious words of love and encouragement. Finally, I was ready to hear Fuga, the hummingbird's question, which was, after all, Alexander's sword that would cut the Gordian knot that was the seal on my prison door, and set me free. “Why did I”, she asked, “work so hard to find so much bad in something so good?” With all these things coming together as a wonderful confluence of life-changing events, I was finally able to realize the truth, I was the only one forcing me to live in that dark, damp, and dank prison. And those hideous monsters wanting to torment and devour me, they were something I did to myself. So while it took patience and time, I'd finally walk out of that self-imposed prison and never look back!

Points of Light, walking away from the prison was only a start. I made myself push one step and then another toward, well, Light, Color, and Beauty. You see, I had to not only walk away from the negative, but I also had to push myself toward the positive! I’ve happily chronicled many of the steps it took to push myself toward all this Light - a metaphor for how we choose to positively view our world, Color - a metaphor for finding wonder in our world, and Beauty - a metaphor for using Light and Color to find happiness in this world. You can find this journey written in any blog post here in WritingBeautifulLight - Or you can find a couple of them here...

The Choice Between Dark and Light

https://www.writingbeautifullight.com/post/the-choice-between-dark-and-light

Heart Smile

https://www.writingbeautifullight.com/post/heart-smile

Okay, so my life lived should be pretty perfect right now, right? The simple answer is, no. Points of Light, I need to tell you what is probably self-evident to most people - it seems self-improvement is something many of us can never quit working at, said another way, for many, if not for most of us, self-improvement is a life-long endeavor. At this point in my life, hadn't I learned the life lesson about the importance of self-acceptance? Had learning this life lesson afforded me all the happiness (light, color, and beauty) I’d always been searching for? Well, the answer is yes, a million times yes! But having become a solid person known, seen, and heard by many of the people I’d encountered, and having been freed from the prison, once again, unrealized by me, there remained bits and pieces of the very bitter memories and emotions from my time in the prison.

It seems that from time to time, there remain those occasions when I still have those Bruce Willis experiences where I feel I’m not understood, or that my intentions are not heard -despite feeling I’ve made my intentions perfectly clear. It seems that from time to time, these misunderstandings feel like insults meant only to hurt me and cause intense pain.

Fragments from lifelong learning and believing "the lie" percolate up from somewhere deep inside. In that dark past wherein I existed, of course, I was never happy living there, and what I haven’t mentioned up till now is this revelation gained from introspection - I held bitter hate and resentment for feeling as though I'd been forced, against my will, to live there. So, my revelation is informing me of this truth, when I feel unheard or not understood, even when I've made my intentions very clear, just like I'd done in my past, all that irrational resentment and excessive hate shoot out of me like a finely tuned and precisely focused laser beam.

Points of Light, I’m learning that I'm presently

doing what I've often done in my past, I can and sometimes do become very reactive with some interactions. Seeing this and coming to grips with what this has meant, and continues to mean to family and friends, I’m deeply pained for what my reactive nature has obviously caused them to feel. So, here I am. Having been fiercely honest with you and having done what has facilitated for me some much-needed healing, I find I’ve dug deep and found a serious dark flaw I’ve unconsciously held onto, even amid some very bright and intensely transcendently life-transforming light.

I’m unsure where to go from here. I know I must continue being transparently honest about this with you. I know that I must talk about this with my therapist. I know none of my negative past interactions can ever be undone nor can they ever be removed from the negative feelings and emotions family and friends have solely because of these types of interactions with me. I know I can learn how to acknowledge that because of my past, I can accept that I have every right to experience my feelings of past hate and resentment and still respond positively rather than reacting negatively. So, Points of Light, more hard work, even very hard work remains.

Love and Peace,

Tod w/only one d