Our Past in Our Present, and Future

 I grew up in a household with a lot of weird stuff happening in it. This household revolved around addiction, the person who was the addict, and then all the effects that it had on the people around the addict, making for a very un-healthy environment. I know that the survivors still deal with the after affects to this day.

When I was three years and eight months old my parents, in an attempt to save their already failing marriage, due to my fathers heavy usage of a substance, drove us from Toronto ON, where we lived, to Unity NH to my Grandmothers house, and then left us to go back to Canada.

I did not see my Father for another 7 and a half years, until I was eleven years old. I did not see my Mother for about another two years, until I was five and a half years old.

In the moment when they drove away I made a decision, there was something wrong with me and everybody was going to leave me. And I began to look at every relationship through those eyes. And it makes it hard to have a decent, Human, relationship when one Knows that everyone is going to leave them.

Somewhere along the line in here I also began to use my imagination as a drug. I believe that this is when Addiction truly began for me. In my imagination I began to envision a world where I could right wrongs done to those who could not resist them, and to help people in trouble. All the things that I could not do in my life for real at that time.

And I also began to envision myself in isolation, away from all other people, so that no one could hurt me.

I also was having a lot of problems in my relationship with my Step Father. When he showed up with my Mother, who was also 6+ months gone with my sister Liz, I knew that he was wrong. He did not belong in that spot. My Father did. And I got Angry.

So I began to abuse him. At five years old. Because I was angry. And he tried, for a while, to see past what I was doing to who I was, and form a decent relationship with me. And I was too violent and angry, and also very fearful, to see this. All I could see was He Was Not my Father and he did not belong there.

And, he also was an abuser of a substance.

And, eventually, Henry stopped trying and began being angry with me. So I created the relationship that I hated and blamed him for.

Here I am, going through the rest of my life, looking at the world through the eyes of, Your Leaving, Isolation, and Anger, and the world looked pretty bleak. And my future, any future that I could envision, looked even bleaker.

And then my substance abuse began. I was already an addict. This is just when the substance part of addiction began.

I spent the next twenty two years chasing being high, while looking at the world and everyone in it through the eyes of Your Going to Leave me, Isolation, and Anger.

Needless to say all of my interpersonal and professional relationships, all my relationships of any sort, were pretty bleak and unfulfilling. And all of the futures that I could see looked just like my past and present, bleak and not fulfilling.

I had no hope at all that I could have it any different. Although I kept trying to make changes.

The problem was that I had no idea that the changes that I needed to make were all internal to who I was. I kept changing my location, my "friends", my job, my clothes, my activities, I kept changing all of the external things. I never truly examined who I was as a Human Being.

And then, I had too. I had too examine me. I could no longer stay in the place of blaming others for my life. I had to, finally, turn the focus on me. And I could only do that because the part of me that wanted to live was just barely bigger than the part of me that wanted to die.

At first I was going through the motions of looking at myself instead of everyone else. I learned the language of reflection, and learned how to look and sound good. And for about 7 or so years that was good enough. No one really caught on to what I was doing. Especially not me.

However, as I have so often heard, "If nothing changes then nothing changes". I came to another bottom in my life, and saw that I was still that same person I had been all along, that I had dressed up the outside and made it sound good, yet, internally, I was still me.

I had, essentially, put lipstick on a pig and called it a beauty queen.

And I finally began to honestly do the work of Introspection, Examination, and Discarding. I began to actually look at my life, and see where I wanted to transform, and began the process of Transformation. And for those of you who are asking, Yes. It was uncomfortable as hell.

When a person is going through the process of examining every single aspect of who they are as a Human Being of course it is uncomfortable. Why the hell do you think I resisted it, and faked doing it, for so long?

And when I finally began to acknowledge the truth about me, like the things I wrote about above where I set up and created my bad relationship with my Step Father Henry, it was very uncomfortable.

To go from Blaming everything on Him to acknowledging as True my not insubstantial part in the whole thing, was devastating. And liberating.

And as I went along through these things and kept having to own my whole life, I was becoming Free. Free of my past, able to shape my present in a different and much more positive way, and able to see a future where my past was no longer in it and being recreated continuously.

I no longer look at my Present and Future through the eyes of my past with all the different lenses I had on my eyes. I am free to see and create a future from Nothing, where my past no longer plays any role at all.

Today I live a life worth living. I am no longer shackled to a past that was never what I thought it was anyway. And creating a future that is worthy of ME.

Do I have setbacks and places where I do not live up to this vision as well as I would like? Of course I do. I am a Human Being. Which means that I do not do it perfectly. I do it as well as I am able and sometimes that is very much not that good.

And I have stretches of Life that are so wonderful and fulfilling that gratitude starts leaking out of my eyes.

Mostly I live somewhere between the two places.

And it is good.

So my friends, if your future looks bleak, and a lot like your past, then look inward and see why you keep putting your past into your future and own it. Then put your past truly in your past and have a space of Nothing in which to create a future that is worthy of the magnificent person that is YOU.

Become Free.

I am waiting to Welcome you to the Greatest Adventure ever created.

A Life worth Living.

Welcome