Tag Archives: Belief

Getting Past Who I Thought I Was

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I’m discovering I wasn’t who I thought I was.

When we reach a certain point in our lives, we find that the person we believe ourselves to be, isn’t the one everyone else sees. This is either by accident or design.

I’ve always thought of myself as shy, reserved, but in my family life that’s not how I was.

During my time with TM, I’ve discovered I’m not the person I thought I was, I was much worse.

I believed myself to be a good husband, father and son, though quite a few times it has been the opposite.

I’d been demanding, belittling and sometimes cruel. I write this because I’m doing my best to be better in all the roles I listed above.

A few weeks after I started doing TM I had a self-realization moment.

I watched myself, how I acted towards my wife, kids and parents, and I didn’t like what I saw.

I’ve put up this facade of who I was, what my family life was like and it’s time to tear it down.

I no longer want to be the person who tells stories about his life, I want to write stories about others lives.

Growing up lies were told to me many times about many things, and I’ve found myself doing that to people I care about, not because it was planned, but because it was something I took as normal and in truth, if you love someone you don’t lie to them.

The lies I was told as a kid grew to shape who I am, and what I believed, but in shaping me they’ve allowed me to create this facade and build a wall around myself which I thought protected me from being hurt by others, which was a constant as a child.

My self-realization moment happened and I sat down with my wife, apologized for the man I’d been and promised that I would be a better man, it was a true awakening moment.

When I realized the things I was doing, I was overcome with emotion and had to think about all the things I’d done to people. It was as close as I can get to make amends for the things I’ve done in my life and the way I’ve hurt people.

That I’ve caused pain to my wife, who’s stood by me through everything and put up with my attitude and being an ass, shows how much she cares for me.

I realized that my wife is the best thing to happen to me. She’s never judged me, or anything I’ve done. She’s loved me for who I am and ignored or tolerated the person I was.

I find myself in a new place, devoid of having people who only want me around for their own means and I’m learning that I have more control of things and who I’ll be in the future than I thought possible.

I say these words often to myself, but they ring true every time. Our life is our own, how we deal with it defines who we are to ourselves and others. Who we choose to be is under our control and no one can tell us who we are but ourselves.

 

When Your Feeling the Writing Flow…Or How I Spent My Tuesday

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It was empty when I walked in, the freshly polished floor shone in the early light. The smell of coffee and cinnamon rolls rolled through the mall in waves of ecstasy.
My footsteps echoed though I only wore Vans.
The mall was my savior.
I people watched, wrote new chapters of my new project and took notes on what I saw.
When you’re in the mall there are things you don’t see, unless you’re there wasting time for five or six hours, as I did on Tuesday.
There’s something different about being there with only the security guards, the mall walkers doing their laps, a laptop and a Moleskine.
There’s a different feeling to it when the stores are preparing to open on a Tuesday. There’s no anticipation of it being busy. The shop keepers seem to understand, “Today is a get your hours and go home day.”
Sitting in the Starbucks, a pool of wetness at the base of my Venti iced latte, I started to write.
It wasn’t like the other times, it didn’t sputter, it wasn’t clogged with traffic or nonsense.
It was the beginning of The Flow.
There were glimmers it might happen, the morning TM was amazing, breakfast tasted better, but I couldn’t believe that I would write with such energy.
The first few sentences weren’t remarkable, but they were sentences with structure, flavor and they flowed.
With each description, each piece of the story I didn’t notice my latte was creating an lake in the middle of the table, nor did I notice the two people watching me write, who incidentally saw me look up at them and turned away.
I wasn’t sure how long I was writing, maybe thirty minutes, possibly forty, but they moved together as fast as my fingers across the keyboard.
It’s an incredible feeling to make the scene the way your mind sees it. To create the atmosphere the way your bones feel it and to feel the flow of the words without noticing how much time had gone by.
When the flow comes, the writing moves without effort.
It’s the Zone, the box or your own little world.
It moves and you don’t see how fast the words come until you’re staring at your words, look at the clock and see it’s been forty minutes since you looked up.
That’s the best type of writing.
Feeling the flow.

When you Find the Strength to Continue…

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Strength, physical or mental has always been something I’ve dealt with.

When I was in ninth grade I weighed 75 lbs, and worried every day about being bullied. There were days I’d want to give up, and though most don’t know it I use to scratch myself, it’s called cutting now, but I never did it very deep, it was always a way for me to control something.

I couldn’t gain weight, much to me dad’s dismay. I didn’t do well in school and there were many times I’d wish the world would go away. Most of those times I’d sit in my room with a small knife and rub it against my arm, sometimes I’d bleed, others not, but it’s been a long time since I last cut, and I’m finally happy with where my life is.

We reach the darkest places in our lives when we no one is listening, watching or otherwise paying attention.

No one knew I cut, I’m sure my parents had no idea, probably still don’t.

I got through the hardest parts of my childhood by keeping things inside. I’d never tell anyone what was really wrong. I feared they’d throw me in the white padded room wearing a hug-me jacket.

The things I kept inside were the hate I had for myself and the guilt I felt for things in my life. I knew I wasn’t a great person at the time, I knew that cutting was wrong, but I didn’t care, it gave me comfort when I felt there was none.

The truth was, I felt that if my parents had stayed married, I would have been a different person.

When they divorced I was outgoing and liked who I was, I was eight, but still. I knew these things then.

Afterwards, not so much. I hated my life and wished I was anything but who I was. That went on for a long time, longer than I thought, especially as I’ve been rather reflective of my teenage years lately I’ve found that life isn’t fair, for anyone.

We live, die and move on, but in the middle of it all we have to find time to live, truly live. If we don’t live the life we want, why are we trying so hard to live?

Each year since my parents divorced I hated the start of the school year, except when I became a dad. I’ve learned when the kids go back to school it’s not about me, it’s about them, and they’ll always matter more than I do.

As my kids have grown I’ve discovered my parents did right by me for getting divorced. I know it was the only option they had at the moment and now that I’ve been married nearly 15 years, I know how hard it is to keep things going, and they’d just had enough.

I don’t blame them, fault them or have any bad feelings about coming from divorced parents. I’m proud they discovered they weren’t compatible anymore and decided it was for the best they not live in the same house.

Now I’m five months into TM and I can reflect on who I was for most of my life, I’m not happy with how I treated others, but most of all I’m not happy with how I treated myself. I’ve learned my life is under my control and any mistakes are my own and it’s time to own up for things I’ve done.

To all those I’ve wronged in one way or another, I’m sorry.

To be in control of oneself is a different feeling, and it’s something I plan to keep doing. Transcendental Meditation has been the greatest blessing I’ve ever been given and will continue for the rest of my life, I just want others to discover it and finally be comfortable with themselves.

Bri

What do we do when our life gets out of control?

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For most people, stress is an everyday occurrence and they just live with it, deal with, or put it out of their mind until they’re laying in hospital bed.

Almost a year ago I was stricken with Shingles. I thought it was something older people got, but I was wrong. Shingles can attack anyone who’s had chicken pox.

Having Shingles was especially unnerving since my parents had said I’d never had chicken pox, well I obviously had and band of scabs stretched across my clavicle, spread up my neck onto my head and right ear.

I missed a few days of work, luckily I noticed it early and started treatment.

After my recovery I began to think about how I became so stressed that a virus ravaged my body.

I discovered there was a perfect storm around me.

  1. My grandfather died.
  2. My dad ignored me at my grandfather’s funeral.
  3. I became depressed enough that I wanted to take my own life.
  4. My fiction writing became stagnant.

It was months later, after someone I worked with confronted me and said, “I don’t care about your problems”, which sent me over the edge. I talked about this in a previous post.

The death of my grandfather was something I knew was coming, but having little contact with my dad’s side of the family, I was unaware of how bad he was.

My dad’s snubbing me at the service was something I didn’t think would happen, This comes mostly because it was his father’s service and I thought he’d need the emotional support, I was wrong.

The depression which set in after leaving my grandfather’s service hit me a month later when the first sign of Shingles appeared.

My writing had always been my escape from depression, even as a kid I’d create stories in my head, never writing them down.

Writing has helped me discover who I am as much as TM has, possibly more since it’s been in my life longer.

As a teenager, writing helped me find who I was, and even though I wasn’t quite sure who I was, writing always helped.

When I wasn’t able to write, my depression became worse; which led to more stress, eventually leading to Shingles.

I’d never experienced sickness like Shingles before. Sure, I’ve been suffering from migraines since 2004, but I’d never had something knock me on my ass like Shingles. It made me begin to reevaluate my life.

The catalyst to getting over my depression, the stress I’d suffered from my grandfather’s death was a mental break.

The break made me realize I wasn’t healthy, mentally, physically or spiritually.

When I broke, I knew something had to change. That was the middle of March, just after my 38th birthday.

The one thing I thought of when I broke was this, “Every one will be better without me.”

I believed this, not because I was selfish, but because I believed I was doing something good for those around me.

When you’re depressed enough to want to take your life, you completely believe if you weren’t there, every one would be better.

This thought is not selfish, it’s a belief that life for you is better without them, it’s not about getting away from life, it’s about you being better because they’re not there to cause problems for you. This one thing is a misconception about suicide.

I’ve been to the edge with a knife, and I know what it looks like to stare at the blade and resist the urge to “make things better for those around you”.

Depression nearly took me, but it was my desire to see how this story ends which has kept me going.

When it was at its worst, I found something to help me get better.

Life takes us places we never thought we’d go. Sometimes we end up in a place where we need help.

Please ask for help if you need it!

Suicide Support Line

 

 

 

Writing to Help Others.

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We disguise who we are from ourselves. We do this to keep others away, keep ourselves happy and to, hopefully, chase the demons we deal with.

The disguise we use often depends upon the nature of the demon. Childhood trauma is a big one, but hiding from things we don’t want others to know, this keeps us happy, but also maintains the disguise.

Keeping up the illusion gets harder as we get older, and creating ways to deal with our demons may lead us down a darker path.

A path filled with pills, bottles and cutting, but writing creates a forum for our demons. It brings them to the forefront of who we are, and more importantly who we strive to be.

Writing, like meditation is our outlet and with that outlet we discover we’re stronger than we believed possible, even if we must discover it through our fiction.

Fiction is the one outlet which we can put a character in a situation and possibly work through the issues we’ve dealt with through them.

The process is difficult, but leads us to a different path, one devoid of pills, bottles and hopefully cutting.

Finding the right story to get through our trauma may be difficult, but keeping a journal of the trauma and story ideas helps.

In the pages of our journals we find an avenue to get through the life we had, have and hopefully will lead us to a better day.

Writing fiction helps us to find ourselves through our characters. It encourages us to get through another day and discover, we are better than we were told, and it helps us to know, just like our characters, things to get better.

They get better because we keep writing. We keep trying and we decide the disguise, though useful, isn’t necessary anymore.

When we write, we discover there are others who’ve needed the help. Who’ve waited for something to help them through their dark paths.

We write because we know there’s that one book which helped us, and we want someone else to feel the same hope we felt.

We lose our disguise because we no longer feel the need to hide from the world. We abandon the disguise, we get through it and we write to help others.