Thanks to you, I am still lost, but it is good.

During the day today, I came to the realization that I have enjoyed being single. Sure, I miss having the companionship, the physical touch. I miss having someone who shares my home, my life & my bed. I miss making love, having sex & enjoying the psychology of becoming one with someone.

But, what I have been learning is enough to make me be able to still enjoy life, despite missing some of life’s joys and pleasures. As much as I sometimes crave those aspects of life, I know they are not the only aspect of life that I should enjoy.

After being married young to my high school sweetheart, I did not get a lot of time to date and learn who I was & who I was looking for in a life partner. I thought I had already found that. But, since that was not meant to be, I am now to a point where life has allowed me a chance to study myself, to figure out who I am as a being. To study the thoughts of others to learn who I am looking for. To examine my life, my faith, my career to see if I’m on the right path to what I am desiring from this life.

I have learned a ton in the last 2 years, but much of my learning has happened over the past 6 months thanks to this blog & to finding such wonderful people on twitter. Some of the nicest people I have ever met are on there & they have shown me things within myself that most do not even know. I can be myself and people seem to enjoy my company.

My biggest challenge now is that I have reached a point where I must figure something out. As I have come to realize that there is a conflict between myself, the typical personality I am attracted to & my desire to maintain my personal faith. Since my faith is rooted in the idea that I have a strong belief that no other man can tell me who my god is or how to worship & give thanks to her. That no book has all of the answers to life’s challenges, even if they give a basis of morality that I already follow. I see the world through my own eyes & see what the world provides & I live a moral life. I do not drink, I avoid most meat products & I save my sexuality for the safety of love that is driving towards marriage. I believe I am a very moral being & do not do things I should not do for the safety of my body, my mind & my family. Do I challenge my own faith? I do not know.

Or can I find the same type of person within this world that does not reside within a faith I am not in so that my faith and theirs does not create a problem within our hearts, minds & families.

Maybe I just need to pose a question within myself. What plays larger in my life – my intellectual mind or my spiritual mind? A hard question indeed because they both have shaped my view of the world. I’m more inclined to let my intellectual mind take over, allow it to explore the faith but also know that it is not me who is unwilling to accept those outside of my faith as potential love. So, it is not me who needs to decide what is ultimately more important.

I know my love is out there, but where I do not know. My life is at another cross road within me & it is both exciting, confusing and fearful all at the same time, but it is much better than being depressed, alone & unhappy.

This is the lost I would rather be.

But I do shake my fist at all of those who have led me to this point and still say I love you all. Thank you for being my friend, for showing me who I am, for listening when I reach out. Thank you for your willingness to accept me. The world is a large place, but within my heart, you are all there by me as I walk out the door every morning.

I ::heart:: every single one of you. You bring a smile to my face when there are tears & a tear to my face when there is joy. And, I can say right now, my life is on the right path, I just don’t know where that path leads me, but at this moment, I am okay with that.

When pain threatens to overcome

One of the questions in my poll a few posts back was “Have you ever thought of suicide?”

The answer is yes. There have been two moments in my life that I have been within moments of making the choice. The first one seems so lame now that I look back on it as I had not known pain, yet I thought I was in pain so unbareable that I suicide was the only way to release it. It wasn’t until the second time around did I realize just what pain felt like.

Both of these incidents happened in moments of my life when I felt very lost, alone & unsure of how to survive on my own. But, both of these events, I believe were changing moments in my life that has led me down a path of greater understanding & happiness. Had things gotten worse in those moments, I may not be discussing it now as thought it was in the past.

It became known to me during both of these that suicide is only one answer to the question, but only one. While it is still the choice of the individual & is not to be denied to them, it must be known to them that their choice is the ultimate one without being able to go back. It may seem like the answer, but it does not have to be.

My first experience happened when I was 15. I had grown up in a fairly good home with both parents being educated, employed and happily married. But, things fell appart a little in the family life at that time. My mother would reveal that she was pregnant & have her third child (she was 38 years old at the time). My younger brother would have his first major panic attack during school & the next year I witnessed things that I wished I would never see. I was even put into a situation where I was asked to hold my brother so my father could talk him down from his rage. Anxiety & panic attacks can be very hard to deal with, especially for an 11 year old like he was. So, while my family started to split apart, I found myself feeling more alone. I was having trouble making friends at school & would often find that my “friends” were more interested in getting answers for homework than being my friend. And, of course, I was also in the middle of my teenage years where emotions play with your head & hormones mess with your ability to focus sometimes. While locked up in my room, I had very little to do but think about the pain. It was at that moment that I returned to the God I had been raised on & saw the power of faith and what role it can play in bringing you out of the destructiveness that I had found myself in. Between age 15 & 18, my spiritual self played a big role in who I was. While I would eventually leave the faith I was raised in for my current ideals of god, it was a path that has forever changed me.

The second happened after 6 months of torment in a failed marriage that was not even a year old. My emotions had been played so long as I competed with the “other”. The stress & emotional low that came with the idea that my 7 year relationship, the person I cared the most about & loved so much that I would die for them, only to find out they are willing to say they love someone else, but they love me as well. To see the notes exchanged between them, to know they work together & spend time together every day, to feel betrayed & unsure who to trust. This pain is almost unbearable. Seeing the hate from their eyes as they blame you for their unhappiness without any compassion for your own pain. Seeing the person who took your first kiss, your virginity & pledged your life to them for life stare at you as though you are some sort of disease. Hearing them degrade you one minute, then shower you with affection the next only to turn their back on you the moment the “other” comes back into the picture with an email or myspace message. And, the whole time wanting to be supportive to them because you believe they are going through an identity crisis & because you love them you want to be there as they go through their own painful experience.

This pain is greater than I thought I would ever experience. It tears you apart from the inside, slowly, painfully & you can feel every pin as it pushes against the walls of your organs, your heart & tries to break through the skin.

Add on top of the pain, the stress of being in your final semester of graduate work, putting a theatre production together in two weeks, working 20 hour days for that span. Putting together your thesis debate to defend it. And, having your wisdom teeth removed.

Yes, all of this happened between Jan & April of 2007.

A number of things happened that helped me through this. I had some wonderful friends who supported me. I had family who loved me. I had my own intellectual mind that was able to see the signs of pain & I had the strength to call a counselor while in tears & her kindness of talking with me on the phone for 30 mins for free, scheduling me the next day AM to come into the office. During that 30 min call, she suggested I seek additional help from a Psychiatrist as they may want to put me on a med to help me through it. I was able to get myself an appointment that following Monday into a new doctor that had just opened up her private practice after leaving the University’s hospital. (If any of you know Psychiatrists, you know their schedule is never that open..I was lucky).

I also went for a few appointments to the family counseling center at the University. I think I shocked the Graduate student who was my counselor, as I had quite a story. (What I have revealed is not the full story.)

All of that support around me helped me get over the pain enough that I no longer thought suicide was the answer. But, it wasn’t for another year and a half that I would be fully out of that emotion. It would take me moving in with my parents for 2 months, filing for divorce, moving 900 miles away to Alabama for my new job to get me moving. But, it wasn’t until a few months after my divorce was final did I ever feel free enough to break away from that pain. That was a year ago last March. I went off medication in July of last year. I still struggled with highs and lows, but it was no longer completely based on my past, but now about my future & present, so I had moved forward.

What suicide, depression & pain has taught me is that I’m extremely strong, I have the desire, the will and the want to not allow the pain to overtake me. But, most of all, despite having only a few close friends, they are ones that I love with my life. While my relationship life may have forever been hurt as I struggle to trust people, my love of life was not destroyed. I would not let that die within my heart. My heart still longs to be compassionate & I long to love someone greater than myself. For now, that part of my life remains empty, but I know when it’s time, I’ll be ready (I hope). I just hope they are ready to handle what might be within me not only in love, but also in pain. For I know, once I have someone who loves me enough to be willing to comfort my heart, the darkness that hides within me will need some light but the switch is nowhere to be found.