Wounded Healer

I found myself this week in an introspective place because of medical issues with my sister. The music I listen to has shifted to fit that mood which in turn has given intensity to the introspection; YouTube somehow in its magical algorithm detected this shift and recommended videos from the Bones of Quietude of which I have been immersed. On Saturday, I broke bread with a man who had recently connected to his core wound, and though he protected that sacred place, I caught a brief glimpse (not from a desire to intrude, it’s simply the way my mind is wired to work so that I’m better able to offer the support needed in the moment; also, the brief glimpse may have been allowed with intention— the moment passed in a flash and so I’m unsure). The recognition of what I touched spread my awareness over my existence, and so here I am, listening to the chants of Quietude, pondering life, and writing this blog. It is a vulnerable exercise, and I am curious where it will go.

Our wounds are a difficult thing to fully understand. I’m writing from my experience and of course that comes with plenty of judgments. At the same time, there are pieces that are data where for others it might be judgments because of the way my mind interacts and processes the world. For a long time, I was defined by the wound—the wound had swallowed me whole, and my spiritual and emotional being was trapped within. Adding to that, I was a prisoner in my own mind. It’s difficult to describe, but I was in a NI-TI loop (introverted intuitive / introverted thinking) for around 3 decades (which is a very long time indeed). I had minimal perception of what occurred outside of my body—someone could be screaming right next to me, and I would not be aware. Yet there was enough external sensory perception for me to move through the world, do things (especially work), and understand danger. I was always on high alert, always without exception in a fight or flight mode, and I think that’s way I was able to maintain a kind of external awareness despite being hyper-disassociated.

In private, I wept, and this occurred throughout the day but in public I was in lockdown. Emotional pain was always present, and with that came physical pain as though someone stabbed me continuously with blades and hairpins. Twice a week, I drank alcohol to the boundary of tipsy and drunk, and I cranked up the stereo, lit candles, and danced free form as the pain receded. I knew that the alcohol resolved no issues, but it served a valuable purpose—on those nights, I had around 3 hours where the pain could not reach me. I was free, much like Londo Mollari with his keeper. Though fleeting, it gave me hope during the week, and something to strive for, to make it to the next weekend when I could once again have a brief respite from the ever-present pain.

But one weekend, the pain was simply too intense. That night is a blur, but I remember weeping with intensity unusual even for me. The weeping went on for hours, and I was unable to drink any alcohol. Around midnight, I began to black out. Dark shadows started to fill in the world, and my body grew quiet heavy. I crumbled to the floor; my heart beating slow and ponderous. My consciousness streamed into the cosmos, and I thought I would soon pass out and not wake up. I prayed, with every neuron and cell of my flesh and bones, I pleaded with God to take the pain away—that I could no longer take it, that I was ashamed of my weakness, and then I blacked out.

I woke up a different man. The pain was gone. To this day, I believe that God had answered my prayer. It was like I had been given an emotional and mental lobotomy. But there was a cost—I didn’t feel much of anything; there were no highs, no lows, not much of anything. On balance, I judged that it was a tradeoff that I had to make, and I appreciated the gift.  As the years passed, however, I began to call it the Living Death. In truth, I didn’t feel alive, but there wasn’t much if any pain. Part of me began to panic as more years passed as I understood that life should not be experienced in the semblance of the dead, and I also marveled that I was able to exist at all and to work with hyper-focus abandon.

 That changed on a fateful day that forever changed the direction of my life. I had been working 80-90 hours a week during the height of tax season. It was Sunday, and we had filed the company’s BIG tax return (I think the day before or it could have been Friday) in the nick of time. I felt utterly dead, and I started to drink coffee 12 ounces at a time. I had another cup, then another, and as I drank my 7th cup, my steady pulse skyrocketed. My heart was beating so fast I could not get a count, my body was shaking, and my vision started to black out. I managed to call 911 with shaking hands, and the doctor on call treated it as an anxiety attack (though I didn’t know that at the time) when in fact I had overdosed on caffeine. He called in a prescription for lorazepam. I didn’t know anything about the drug, but I assumed it was a kind of sedative. Lorazepam does not interact well with caffeine (so my judgment is that doctor was an idiot). I don’t remember how I made it to the pharmacy, but I was stumbling around the parking lot and taking my first dose.

The drug “weirded” me out. More on that isn’t possible as my memory of that day became quite hazy after taking the drug. The next day, I set-up an appointment with my GP, but I was advised to keep taking the lorazepam. By the time I saw the GP, and found out what it was, I had become addicted (the internet was quite primitive at the time). The combination of the caffeine overdose, and the interaction with the drug, had also caused my Living Death mindset to collapse overnight. All of the pain, the full brunt of every wound and shadow I carried, came rushing into my awareness and body as though the floodgates of Hoover Dam had been opened wide. In combination with the lorazepam, I descended into an anxiety-panic disorder with hardcore insomnia. As a human being, I felt myself disintegrating. My sleep collapsed to on average 3 hours a night with many nights of zero. I was taking a walk in the valley of the shadow of death, and it was a wrenching, terrible time and yet beautiful for therein began my journey of healing.

I was back to heavy weeping; I was worn out from lack of sleep which made it difficult often impossible to filter my sudden surge of emotion and pain. I believed I would be dead within 6 months as I physically fell apart. At the time, I read the Bible on a daily basis. I was sitting on my bed, hot silent tears rolling down my cheeks, holding my Bible, and I began to pray. The prayer was an “everything” prayer, which is to say, everything I had to offer I put into the prayer, and I was fully open to whatever needed to be heard. As I prayed, I opened the Bible at random to the following verses Matthew 15:21-28:

And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.  But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

As I finished the verses, I wept, and I yelled, and I screamed, and it was a thing of relief and of joy. For I had imagined myself as a dog, as not being fully human, and this for me was God talking to me saying even so I will heal you. It was another miracle. But I was afraid that perhaps I read too much into it what had happened—that opening to that verse was a coincidence. After all, I was a closeted gay, and the church made clear that I was to burn in hell for eternity. So I prayed again—are you sure God? Do you know who is praying? That may seem strange to ask and it was an ecstatic moment where I wasn’t clear on my audacity. Then I asked a deeper question, is it ok that I’m gay? Can you love a gay man? I closed and then reopened the Bible again.

This time, my eyes fell upon Matthew 22: 36-40:

Master, which is the great commandment in the law?  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

I reread the verse several times, and I felt like an immense weight had been lifted from my soul. It felt like God was speaking to me again saying that we are here to love and to follow our hearts. I felt like I had been given permission to be gay (because I believed before that point that it was not ok, I was not engaging in sex because God would have known). I was also in shock—the church has been quite clear that being gay was not ok, indeed, even the word “gay” was not permitted to be spoken. So instead of accepting the miracle already granted, I closed the Bible and I asked one more question—Are you sure?

I opened the Bible again with fear and trepidation and it came back to the same page. At that point, I felt like I had to accept the moment; perhaps there is a scientific explanation as to why it came back to the same page, but sometimes it’s best to not overthink things. I thought I might die in a few months from the crushing physical toll of the anxiety, panic attacks and insomnia, but I would die an authentic human being or least someone who had started on that journey.

So I came out. I fell in love. I started seeing a psychologist, also a woman who was attuned to emotional healing, I joined a men’s group, and I started neuro-feedback to repair the neurological damage to my mind. I experimented with quite a few healing modalities during this time (some of them quite strange!). I left my church and joined one welcoming to gay men. I reevaluated many of my beliefs, and I made some significant adjustments in a short span of time.

I feel like the healing journey is a different blog. But as my awareness stretched over and connected to my wounds after breaking bread yesterday, I feel how I am no longer trapped within them. And yet, I also experience the myriad ways in which, for better for worse, the wounds have shaped who I am; the beautiful, flawed person that I am, who no longer sees his identity through the wound, and who has received many gifts and burdens to carry. I am reminded that though there are burdens, so too are the gifts, such as being there for others who are going on their journeys, who touch their pain, and simply being there as a loving presence.

I have been a private person. Vulnerability has not been safe. Yet, I live so much in my heart these days that being vulnerable has become as natural as being closed off. I owe much of that to the work I have done in my MKP I-Group. The trials of being wounded, and the healing that eventually followed, cracked my heart in a way that would otherwise have never occurred. I am able to see myself, and see others, in ways that would not have been possible without the wounds and the healing journey that followed. This blog is a testament to the journey—that I am no longer in fear of the wounds, no longer defined by the pain, no longer in shame with the way I survived, and that I am content with who I am. Though of course, the journey continues!

I write this with love, and I finish with a I love you, to myself, to others, and to God.