Where I Came From Isn't Where I'm Going

This is a true story, and if one person gets something from it, I'm appy. For most of my life, I drank too much. I grew up in a home where intentions were good, while the ability to live a functional life was zero.

I wore the badge of family tradition for a while. I watched my father drink himself to death. I watched my grandfather drink himself to death. For a time, I followed in their footsteps.

It seemed easier to drink than think. It seemed easier to get power from a bottle than own the fact I am a worthwhile human being. It seemed simpler to die than to live.

Or so I told myself over and over, anything to avoid the rage, pain, fear, confusion and feelings of abandonment. All of these lay inside me, while I pretended they didn't. Do you think I could be told otherwise? Of course not. I knew it all. No one knew better than me. In the terror, anger and shame I wriggled every-which-way to avoid the truth. But truth has a way of winning one's attention.

And then there was God. It was all his damn fault in the first place, I told myself... I hadn't asked to be born, so what had I done to be tossed into a universe of suffering? Self-pity flowed like Niagara. Being raised in a strict Christian environment only added to the confusion and fear.

What kind of loving God created such a Maelstrom of insanity? Heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo, the devil, fallen angels, Lucifer, pagan lies, original sin, mortal sin, on and on. It was an endless list of negativity adding to my problems. I was even taught I was defective because I had been born.
Time for another drink.

Yet even I couldn't be so thick skulled permanently. The self-pity finally came to a head - I had to choose to die at my own hand, or change. I sat with the gun in my hand, and, since I'm still here, I apparently chose to live.

Nothing earthly influenced me to put that gun down. Something came from inside, from a place I had stuffed as effectively as I'd stuffed the knowledge there are no victims in the world. I now know we live life from the inside out, not the other way around.

There is a loving and all accepting God, and because there is, it doesn't mean this God will rush in because we are having a hard time. I discovered if I want to know God, I have got to go out and make my own acquaintanceship with Him.

In the years since I held that gun my children have grown and live their own lives. I recently re-met their mother, the woman over whom I was planning to take my life, for the first time in about 15 years. We had a lot to share, talk over and bring to closure. She has become a beloved and special friend to me. I love her as a person, as the mother of my children and for introducing me to this mystery called love. There will always be a place for her in my heart.

I have only hated 2 people in my life. One for about 6 months, the other for most my life. The long term stint was against myself. Talk about being in for life. There is nothing shameful about being in deep pain. It means we have been wounded, is all. Shame happens when we judge ourselves for being who we are. Shame means to see ourselves through someone else's eyes.

Leave the judging to the perfect ones of the world. I am not writing this to convert anyone. What you do with your life is up to you. Many times I turned away from God, the Universe, the Tao, spirit, call it what we will, and it was always there when I turned back.

People who drink too much won't be told anything. This is their way of control, no matter how they prefer to describe it. I know because I've been one. Only your heart understands how to heal it all - when you give it, and yourself, a chance.

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