I look in a mirror and see Peter. I listen to my voice on the phone and wonder who it is. I look back at what I have done and wonder why. Who am I ? I am so caught in trying to figure out how to stay sober that I have lost who I was and have not yet found who I am. I read, listen and speak, trying to figure out what direction to go. I am mostly a jumble of thoughts that make me tired and unsure. I do see progress, to be sure, but at what price ?

Sometimes I look in that mirror and am satisfied. Sometimes I look and see nothing I like, a broken grey haired man, beaten down by the darkness within. At others the light shines through and can’t be contained. Some days there is a blank staring back at me. I spend a lot of time trying to match the image of who I see to how I feel. I wonder how this kid got in this old pot bellied body. How the kid stopped growing and the body kept going. Didn’t it know that I was still back there ?

I want so desperately to see who I feel like, to like what I see, to like how I feel. I want to get to that point where I can say that we match, the inside and outside. I don’t know if that will ever happen. I’ve had moments. I wonder what it would be to be a piece of concrete. When you see a piece of concrete you know what you are looking at, I would imagine if a piece of concrete could feel it would have some pretty solid opinions of itself, it wouldn’t wonder to much about what its goal was in life.

There’s a line in a song that I like. It goes some what like this: if you could crack the code would you give up all the pain and suffering, the beauty of the light upon this earth and the sweetness of the leaving. Some days I am screaming inside: CRACK THE CODE, CRACK THE CODE. Other days I am okay with working in that beautiful Faith that says its okay whatever comes next. Its okay who others see when they look at me, because that’s who I feel like.

I walk around in the house and the ghosts run around in my head. Crashing into each other. One is me stomping around in the bathroom, masking sure the tiles are all glued to the sub floor, after we had a small flood during the renovation. Another is how I laid the stones for the front walk. Going down the hall, looking at myself in the full length mirror. Whose image will it hold in a short time ?

Every time I pick a berry, be it a Saskatoon, raspberry, currant, or goose berry I think they are the sweetest I’ve ever had. Maybe it is the melancholy, or grief of what has been lost that imbues them with their flavour. What has been lost ? Was it real, or was it an illusion. Just another ghost stumbling around in my brain. It feels real, but what do I know. I feel less substantial each day. I don’t know whether to laugh, grieve, rage or cry. I have been doing a lot of the last three lately.

I sit here with my brain racing ahead of me, catastrophising. I will be on the streets, without a home, or in a tiny apartment.  The future so nebulous, but the great fear is there in all of the scenarios. Alone, alone again. I talk to therapists and they tell me I need this time to get the ghosts in order so I feel comfortable with them, so that I can look and see today. I can reach out and hold my face in my two hands and tell me that I love me, I am proud of me and it is going to be.

Right now though all I know is that I will be stepping out into the dark of change. Please God when I reach out to hold your hand, grab it and tell me that faith is all I need.

My world blossoms again. I feel that I can reach out in love and find that connection that says I belong in someone’s world again.

I touch you and am in love again. When I hug you I feel rooted to the world. Your body is a beautiful reminder of where I get to be today.

I look into your eyes and see you again. The hopes, fears, frustration, desires, needs come to me again.

I want to make it all fall into place again. The things we have been through have almost torn us asunder and sometimes it looks like there is no way back.

When you wake I get another chance to be with you again. A chance to make it alright, to hold you, look at you , listen and ask to be your husband, confidante and lover again.

Happy Valentines

I’ve been walking a long time. Its winter and the snow is deep. I’m cold so, so cold. I am going to freeze to death. How did I get here, I ask myself ? I started walking like everybody else, but some how I lost sight of the rest, or strayed to far, or felt that I didn’t belong. I have walked for many miles alone, through valleys, on the plains, sometimes slogging through mud. I spent time swimming against the flow. After a time I felt I couldn’t walk anymore because of the pain, so I took something for the pain. Now I can’t walk a step with out it. I am running out of time. You see, it doesn’t work anymore.

As I said its winter now, dark and desolate, and yet I must move or I will die. I have been climbing a mountain for a long time now, up and up. At the worst, when I have no feeling left, when I am so numb that I could just lay down and sleep I feel a hole in the mountain side ahead of me. I crawl in, glad for the shelter. It’s fetid and oppressive, but there seems to be heat. I crawl to the pitch black dark in the back, as I go I can hear slow methodical, rasping breath. As I put my hand on the paw I realise that I am in a grizzly den.

The bear stirs and I am consumed with fear. What do I do ? Where do I go ? Back out to the raging storm that is my Life, or do I stay here with the bear ? I crouch motionless, scared to even breathe. The warmth of the bear is delicious. I think, I can’t go back, I can’t.

I imagine the bear laying there with talons on his paws that have ripped the flesh of large animals apart. The carnivorous teeth that have feasted on that flesh. I waver towards the cold, but the heat is pulling me back. I struggle with myself, my head saying leave and my heart saying no more cold. It comes to me that even this close to the heat I will not survive the cold. I have little choice in the matter, if I want to live I must get close to the bear.

I crawl forward till I am shivering next to the animal, is it the cold or is it that fear that the medicine has squelched for so long now. I am still not warm enough, I squirm in closer, next to the great beasts belly, under his paws. As I luxuriate in the embrace of the warmth, with breath moist on my neck, I realise what I have done.

I fall asleep to the gentle swelling and falling of the chest behind me and I dream of the walk. I am with you, we walk hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder. We trip and fall, helping each other to our feet. We break a path for each other, reaching out our hand to lift and guide. Always there is one who can point towards the Light

I wake refreshed, surrounded by light, ready to walk. As I get up I put aside the teddy bear I have held through the long cold, dark night

I look into his eyes and shiver. can it be, can it be he ? My constant companion, always his shadow or something more. Like a wall with a sign saying ” turn back ” or ” you can’t fill this space ” My flickering light so often blown out by his smothering breath. He can appear at any time to keep me rooted to the spot, vacillating between action and painful implosion.

I am not the only one who knows him, her, it. Have you seen the face, the slathering visage that makes you turn away ? That is his mission to stop at all costs, to keep us from going forward, in the darkness we know. The killing, unbearable, suffocating darkness.

He visited me today. I was at work and a coworker got mad at me for something that I had done. I explained to him why I had done it. We blustered around the incident for awhile coming to an understanding. I went on my day, but the fear was still there he nibbled at me when I saw him talking to a coworker. I heard ” they are talking about me ” and ” I am not perfect ”

It goes back to a little boy hearing ” not good enough son ” It connects so far back that it can rush in when ever I let my thoughts wander or am caught unawares.

The face of fear.

It can take so many forms, ready to pounce and fill the hole left by self doubt,  can supplant self worth if I give it room. It takes just a fleeting moment for it to  come back to stare into my eyes, saying you dare not go this way.

Now I can look through him and see to the other side. The side where I have come through to you. I can’t be be perfect, but I can be me, and that’s all I ever really needed to be. After so long bullied by fear I just really longed to stand up for me.

It has taken me a long time to figure that out.

Feet facing forward, heart in hands, just be yourself. As Jann Arden said.

On the radio your voice says girl, yet you say you are a boy. I hear you and my conditioned mind says that you are this, your words say I am that.

I used to have trouble with that concept, I have a hard time with going towards something,  I am so used to running from something.

Running from myself, to dissipation. You run towards your wholeness. A journey fraught with danger, either way. In the end I will work hard to see through the running to the runner.

When I see your courage I can look at where I am going and turn to face myself. Then I will be going home too.

The best part is when we turn to each other, in the light of connection, and say let’s run together for a while.

Women to Man. Man to Man. Women to Women. Male to Female. Female to Male. Androgynous.

I wish it were Love to Love. When we decide to give up the labeling, then we can have that.

In the end that is what we can strive to be, because without Love there is no living. I wish I would have found this out sooner, but I know it now and I won’t forget.

 I am standing across the road from our home. I see the light from the windows. I know that there is life within and yet I don’t want to go in. I stand there musing that if I just walk away I will be able to break the timeline.  Walking on into a new reality, one full of the unknown, where life goes on.

You see, I can hear the footsteps of death coming. They are in front of me. They walked into my Fathers life, on Good Friday. They were there as I dined on roast goose with my Mother, wondering whether it would be the last time. I see it in the splintered pine as I walk, down by the river.The black of the Raven, as it dines on what was once alive.

I am standing in the middle, unborn children behind, ash’s of my Father ahead. What I leave is now, an ephemeral thing, it floats in my mind, as the diamonds, twinkling in the snow, dance in my eye’s, a flash and gone.

I want to be warm. I want to be bathed in light, to live in Love. I don’t know what happens to these things in death. I have lived with coldness in myself for so much of my past, I don’t know if I can go back to it. I need to store up so much of the light that I will never be in the dark, cold again. I look up into the clear, radiant blue of the sky and let it soak into my soul.

I will find the sparkle of the diamonds in your eye’s, if I look long and hard enough. I will feel the warmth of your heart, if I hug you, and give you the warmth in mine. Together we build a vessel that can withstand the dark cold. A vessel that will ride on the waves of light, in an ocean of warmth. A vessel called Love.

I turn the handle on the door, putting myself back into the timeline. I walk back into the light and warmth. What other choice was there, really ?

One day I will hear the footsteps, loudly behind me, only I hope that I will also hear the beating of wings. I want to fly with the Raven. I want to ride into the sky. This is my most fervent wish, that I can look and see all that I have encountered and all that is to come. I don’t know if I have the capacity in myself to encompass all that. With Love I will try, as I hear the bells chime.

I hold you at the airport, you have come to see us in our home. The feeling in me one of remembrance and familiarity.Where ever I see you, that is what surrounds me.

I don’t remember you holding me as a baby, but I feel it inside. My connection to you forged by the love you nurtured me with.

I know you don’t like cooking much, but it is seeing you at the counter that is one of my earliest memories. Those days in Summerland making soup were so transformative. Memories filled with light.

When I am with you I feel love, and I give you this back by cooking for you. It’s what I know to do. It’s my gift to you. Thank you for giving me this gift. It brings comfort into my life and, I hope, the life of those I cook for.

Imagine there is no safe space to go, there is always fear that you will be attacked, in some way, or another. Think of how a child feels growing up like that. The horror. It doesn’t feel like horror, its all you know.

Can you imagine that? If you can, you will struggle to find that safe space wherever. You will seek out the comfort that you have never known. If you can’t find it in others, you will fall back on things that promise it. Chemicals, behaviours that take away the need for your place. Where you can drift in a sort of featureless, colourless fluid, where time has stopped.

Its hard work to make a place for yourself when you are 54.  I was told that I need to         re-parent myself. My own didn’t know how. I would prefer not to blame them, but I do. I know that they came from a spot where there was no place for them. I have heard my grandfather described as Hitler by one of his sons. They were torn from their place by circumstance, or people. Adrift in their world, how could they pass on what they knew little of.

I never had to go through the things my parents did, but in a way I did. The way they raised me and my siblings was predicated on those experiences. This was all they could feasibly give to us. They carved out a physical home for us, by hard work and perseverance. I wonder if they ever found their place inside.

I watched my Father die, not so long ago. I wonder what he thought at the end. Did he have a place ? Did he think to himself that he was home and he could brave what came next, or did he think to himself that he had just lost his place again. He was a carpenter. he never stopped building. will he forever be building, or is he finally home, in  his place.

Its hard at 54 to find your place, but at least I have a chance. I come to you, I reach out to you. I make decisions to keep myself safe, and I work with you. In the end I make my place, I re-parent myself. When I die, I will know that I had a place. The place called Love. I will be able to go wherever with that held in my heart.

I live inside of a hollow man. A child trying to fill the space. I wake up every morning to that task. Some days I feel the space inside and that little child in awe and fear of it. Some days I look around and see where I can grow. Some days the feeling of emptiness grows.

I live inside of a hollow man. Every day I must work hard to fill the shell, if I don’t something else will come in. Nature abhors a vacuum. I tried to fill it for years with fluff, smoke. It appeared white, but carried the darkness inside. Its so strange. I used dark to try and drown the darkness. How absurd !

I live inside of an insane, hollow man. I work hard each day to find the little boy at the center and talk to him about the world he has built to fill the hollow man. Not an easy task tearing down that armour. The child sees those things as essential protection. He doesn’t want to be naked anymore. He gets hurt when he is there, when others can see him.

I live inside of a hollow man. I look inside and see that mewling child, the one that has been hiding under cover for so long. I hold him, crooning to him, telling him how much I love him. I am still faced with the task of filling the space. We show up together, face the emptiness, and with your help, begin to build.

I live inside of a hollow man. I thought that I had to do it all myself. That’s where I was wrong. I fill him with love and light for myself and become comfortable enough  to invite you in. We become the light and love that pours out of the hollow mans eyes.

I see me, I love me, and I am not alone, anymore.

I see you, I love you, and you are not alone, anymore.

You see me, you love me, and we are not alone, anymore