~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Chapter 13

 Meeting Myself

Look at me.
          Does it show? Does it show that the things I'm telling you about hail from my mind? Perhaps you're thinking it takes nothing short of a freak to have dreams like these spinning around in one’s brain. And perhaps it does. Perhaps I really am a freak, but look at me. If I am, you couldn't tell just by looking, right? I wish I could hear what you're thinking now. Because I'm thinking that if you do think I'm a freak you wouldn't say it to my face. Now would you? 
          So, who am I?
          … Let me tell you, even if my relation to God has taken me places so dark and toxic I honestly didn't know how I was gonna pull through, it has also brought me the most amazing and miraculous gifts anyone could ever hope for. Sometimes I've been scared, sometimes I've been petrified beyond words and yet I've continued my walk, sometimes I’ve more or less thrown myself into what I could sense being a heart of darkness. I never want that darkness though, I really, truly don't want it, it's like it's eating me alive, still I chose to go there if I believe that's the path I have to go. But you know, if I should die tomorrow I would die happy, because of having followed my path, having followed what I believe is His way for me. Yes my friend, even when it has led me into what I can't describe as anything but a world beneath Hell, a world where nothing exists for real but a soul-suffocating darkness. … Yeah … even so ... strange really, when you think about it.
          Sometimes when I look into the mirror a hideous person looks back at me, sometimes I look into the eyes of someone I love. I guess it depends on who's looking and who's looking back. My previous deepest image of myself, the one I've been carrying with me since childhood, is that I'm someone cold. Someone tainted with evil. Insensitive and oversensitive at the same time. Worthless, or, no, not worthless, more like … like born to bring despair into people's lives. And predestined to fall short with everything I truly set my mind to, the things I truly want in life. And yet, even if this is my deepest self- image and I've carried it with me for as long as I can remember, I can no longer really believe in that sinister depiction of me, of who and what I am. Not really. Because, you see, beneath it lies another image, or I think feeling is the correct word here, a feeling still so frail I can't get a hold of it; the second I sense it, it like vanishes out of reach. But I do know it's a feeling of being someone with a soul not quite that dark.
          I know myself I'm not insensitive. Oversensitive at times, yes, but not insensitive. I know compassion. I know what it's like to feel passionately about something or someone. I know I have accomplished several of the things I've set my mind to. I know I'm not treacherous, I can be unpredictable, even to myself, that's true, but not to the extent of being treacherous. Still, I'm afraid of letting loose the real me. Like, what if the menacing self-image I've been carrying with me turns out to actually be the truth about whom I really am? You know, what will happen then, if I set it free? What if my underlying feeling of not being all that bad is false? What if I'm wrong about what I believe I know about myself?
          – Yes, what if the dark image is in fact the real me? That is, the person I've been trying to shut down for all these years. Because that's what I've been devoting the majority of my energy to. Closing her – or me, that is – out, teaching myself how to not ever get in contact with her, because maybe (s)he is evil, cold, deceitful? I've always thought to myself: "You never know what will happen if you open up that door. You mustn't ever do that." Well, now I'm thinking, perhaps because I said it out load for the first time?, yes, I believe that's the reason ... or, is it? I don't know, I don't know the reason, but what I'm thinking is that the opposite also holds true, you'll never know what might happen if you don't open up that door. What if I should find out that I hold something beautiful within me? What if the dark side I know so well can also be a calming, cosy, embracing and soothing place?
          Yes, what about that?! Wouldn't that be something! I believe, that just as a light that shines too bright can burn you, like a star dying, casting it all out to become a black hole where space and time as we know them ceases to exist, just like that the other side of darkness can hold true wonders, like the velvet blackness in the dead of night without which you wouldn't be able to see the impressive celestial body of the moon, glowing there in ghostly white, in beauteous silence and solitaire; nor the navigating formations built up by the myriads of glimmering, glistening, twinkling stars, including The One with it's clear, strong and yet so very peaceful guiding light. Don't you miss that darkness when the sky has been clouded for too long? Isn't darkness also a gift, a promising and vital gift, because of that?
          I believe so, I believe in embracing darkness because of its power, and because it discerns all those night-beams that'll one day convert under the shielding shadow of The One and bring Faith back to me. Yes, I believe so. It make sense, don't you agree? How strange, when I think of it all like this – it can be so very close, so reachable, and yet now it seems so very far away. A child, buried somewhere inside of me. Will I ever be able to reach her? Oh you don't have to doubt her existence, (S)He is there, I can feel it; I can feel her immense fear, her struggle to survive, barely able to breathe now, but not dead, no, never dead. And hence with an impending potential to come alive again, for real this time. A little living flame she is! Yeah, funny really when you think of it this way, all these years (s)he survived – (s)he refused to die on me no matter how hard I tried to kill her. And (s)he is me. So, who am I?