Heroes, Victims, Villains or Survivors

It is said life begins at conception. I believe life begins at consciousness. That first feeling you get when you realize that you are alive and one day will die. I remember the feeling the day my father died when I was five years old. It was the first time I knew death. I remember seeing him in his casket and thinking damn, it’s just a body.

I became keenly aware of myself the day my father died. It was the first time I knew I was breathing and that if I stopped I would die. I felt my skin. I felt the air. Every single object around me became real. We spend most of our lives walking around in a routine ungrateful daze. The genius of the human body is that everything is automatic. Our hearts pump without the Manuel, blood flow through our veins, our lungs take in the oxygen. Everything on this earth or universe has a purpose. Everything on this planet is energy, is alive but humans as we know it have consciousness. If I kill a bug is that the same as having an abortion? To say the bug’s life is less than our own is like saying the tree life is less than a flower. It all has purpose. I don’t mean to get all Buddhist but there is life and then there is conscious life. Just because we are born human doesn’t mean that all of us are truly aware.

I thought I was going to die a victim. The fear created anger and the hurt child decided to grow up and hurt others, so I evolved into a villain.

A lot of victims become villains: Hitler, Hussein, King Kong. Lol. It’s the hurt child who doesn’t want to be hurt anymore that seek the most power. It’s external power. It’s a way to control the pain. It’s irrational power. It’s schizophrenic. We human beings are equipped with remarkable ways of surviving. The body learns to repair itself. If one is in pain, the body would shut down the nerve endings in order to survive the trauma. I sometimes wonder if the body was designed after the soul. The soul is also capable of repairing itself. Children born in abuse, molestation refigure the world and learn to adapt their journey towards god. I truly believe the human experience is the journey towards God. When the soul experience trauma, begins to questions its existence and purpose, feel as if God is against she or he, it also rebels. I think true evil is a hurt soul, rejected soul, broken soul, when one feels the light has abandoned.

I felt for a long time the light abandoned me. I would awake and all I could feel is darkness. The sun could be shining and all I could feel was darkness. I was hurt so I grew up to hurt and I did it brilliantly cruel. I was the best at hurting myself. I became such a victim and soon the villain no one trusted, not even myself.

What changed?

Intially I rejected the idea of being a survivor. I remember watching those kids from Dafur have to cross the brutal African night for safety. I thought to myself after everything they had experienced how would they ever be sane, happy. They were kids who saw their parents murdred, mothers raped, had been raped, brutalized by a war they would never understand. It wasn’t something they created but was born into. Yet, they had decided not to become victims. The only goal, short-term was to survive. I could only think the human soul, short term always want to survive. Every animal just want to survive. But surviving for the short term can’t be enough. To live a good life one would have to want to survive for the long term.

I believe short term survival begets victim mentality. Getting high or drunk is just a short term victim mentality, it’s surviving to the end of the buzz and then back to reality. I remember when my apartment in Chicago was broken into how it changed how I dealt with people. My short term survival was to protect my life and make sure my belongings were safe. I called the landlord, demanded better security. I never spoke to strangers for a long time. I developed an angry persona. For the short term I needed to survive. Yet, I knew long term survival meant I would have to learn to trust again.

As a child, short term survival was just growing up and getting out of the hell in which I was born. When I finally made it to college and graduated and entered the real world I hadn’t graduated my short term survival, therefore, continued my short term survival mentality. I understand it now. Like a wounded animal after an attack I just needed to lick the wound for now. Like a wounded animal I just needed to get high or drunk for now. The problem, now became long term. The math or logic no longer added up. What changed? I realized I kept the wounds opened. The abuser, the war had come and gone but I was still fighting it in my mind.

The problem I have with the Jesus saved me freaks, is that once the drug saved them. Who in their right mind would just someone so manipulative. It’s drugs one day and then religion the next day as long as he or she is getting their fixed. I more concerned with “how.”
When short term becomes long term life is suffering. When those hide in the dark to escape and the sun rises the next day and they don’t seek the warmth of light soon the sun doesn’t exist anymore. The sun purpose is so that life can grow. Not much survives in the darkness. Without light everything withers and die.

Intially, I rejected the idea of surviving long term. I felt the world needed to know what happened to me. I felt if I forgot that meant it didn’t happened. I wanted my past punished. Ironically, I was my past I wanted myself punished for surviving.

When I looked in the mirror all I saw was the past. I saw my molester when I was naked how sex became so distorted. I saw all the childhood abuse would I cut myself early in the morning. I saw abandonment when I refused to let anyone in my life, quit a job, became homeless. I knew I could survive it short term. I could survive the short term lust which would probably leave me with a long term problem. I could survive the short term driving drunk and high which would leave with a long term record. I could survive short term suciuide which would leave me with having to deal with life after completely giving up—if I could trust myself again after what I did to myself. The worse was always did to me.

I knew to survive long term meant believing in a purpose. When a tree loses a branch in a storm it doesn’t bitch about it for the next hundred years. It grows another branch. It never loses its purpose to provide oxygen.

My purpose is to create. To write these words. To share the story. That’s my purpose. It was my purpose before I knew it was my purpose. Every time I write I get stronger. Every time I share the story I feel love. Silence is darkness. Silence is short term survival. Silence begets victim mentality.

The greater good: love yourself like a child of god, love someone like a child of god, and love something to survive to tell your journey back to god.

I say god not like religion. I say god like the universe. I say god like how one interrupts their meaning.

What changed?

Now I know what changed. As a victim it was always the question of “why?” Why me? Why did it happen? As a victim I thought if I forgave would make me forget. I didn’t want to forget. I needed everyone to know what had happened to me. As a victim I thought if I forgave that would make what happened permissiable. I didn’t want anyone to think I was every okay. Or that I could be every okay. I thought forgiving would make me a victim twice over. I thought pretending would make me a victim twiced over.

What changed is that I stopped asking why, and started asking how? How I could learn to forgive and be okay for real. How I could be a better person. “How” I could learn to heal, trust myself again and truly love. And with “how” came “I can.” “I will.” “I am.”

As a victim it was always “I was.” I don’t’ think short term survival anymore. I survived ocean and quick sands, now I must build.

To be continued “Long term Survivor and learning to be a Hero”