I’ve found the handle to the door, to the room that has the mystery of my life in it, again. I don’t know why I went walk about in the first place. I think that it had to do with me thinking that I wasn’t going to get my way. I threw all humility out and started to swim in the ocean of fear again, led by my ever so clever ego.

Has it been worth it I have to ask myself. I am so far from shore I constantly think that I am drowning. I come up for air only to drop back and start swallowing water again. Yet there it hangs, the handle to the door that opens into the room that contains the mystery of my life.

The handle is you God of Light. If I reach up and grasp the handle and turn, I see me, in you. The room holds you, me and all the versions that I have tried to pass off. Can I be happy with being my true authentic self ? First off do I know what that truly is ? Can you help me me as I go through this patch of insanity ? Trying to round up all my persona’s into a cohesive soul is quite a task that is only exacerbated by my acting out.

I’m going to try again, because I can’t, nor do I want to live this way. I slipped back into the dark again and I want to be in your light. I think that I will turn the handle on that door, so that I can look the mystery of my life full on and take what comes.

Every time that I hurt you I feel so much shame and pain. Yet it is so familiar it feels like home. Isn’t that sad. I need to remember that I love you. How do I do that. Do I look at your picture ? Do I talk to you ? I am so disconnected from you that I don’t know what to do to bring you home. It seems that I have tried to keep you in a box. A action that is foolish and hurtful. It serves no purpose that I can see.

I guess my dismissal of you is an attempt at trying to void those years of drifting loss. Those years where I didn’t find myself or my way. I have felt like a drifter for a lot of my life and the time has come to own it or it will slip away again, as it has done so many times in the past. It is time to walk into the fire and see how I come out, not walk around as I’ve been doing for so long.

Yes I’ve come a long way, but I’ve fallen back into my ways of cut and run. I don’t know what I am fighting, but I am fighting and floundering in the fight. I want to give up and find my way back to you. I don’t want to hurt you any more . Others may not have had faith in you, but I know that it’s time for me to have the humility to allow you to walk with me, because I know that we can walk this road together and help each other when we stumble.

Why little boy ? I don’t know why, But it doesn’t really matter anymore about the why, it only matters about how we take care of each other from here on in. I will do my best not to hurt you and I will be your wall when others try.

Why ? Because as much as it doesn’t look or feel like it I love you.

Do you trust me ? Not anymore I’m guessing. I have inflicted a thousand little cuts and watched the trust bleed out of your body and soul.

Do you have faith in me ? No much I am sure. I have whittled away at that tree till there is just a toothpick left.

How can I ask you to hold it in you again when you are going to have to watch it ripped away from you when I confess what I have done again, again, again, again , again, again…

Maybe it is not only you who has bled out. I have no trust left in myself either. I feel faith till the obsession rips it from me again, again, again, again, again, again…

What can I do about that ? Not much by myself. Can I turn the mirror of my heart to you God of Love and see the faith you have in me. Please let me reflect that to Cathy and the world.

I am tired of bleeding, as are those around me. Every day that I call to you when that obsession comes knocking on my door and I go to bed sober and recovering is another set of stitch’s in my soul.

How do I ever make up for all those cuts, Oh God ? What’s that you say ? Stat sober and walk forward, one step at a time. Again, again, again, again, again, again…

I stand at the door, handing out candy in various forms to roving bands of kids, who range in age from 4 to 18. They come from homes and graveyards, dressed in costumes, some terrifying, some inventive and some with not much forethought.

I think back to my years as a child getting dressed in the parka and pulling the homemade costume over top. we would go down the block ringing peoples doorbells and strangely enough they would open and you would get candy. What a concept !!

Mom or Dad always came with us when we were young, to keep us safe. Speaking of safe, we always went through our haul to ostensibly check for razor blades, pins and such. In reality we were making lists in our heads as to what we got and when we would eat it. In our teens we would go it alone ranging far and wide filling our pillow cases on those cold dark nights populated with roving bands of monsters, clowns and other misfits.

There were the stories of houses getting egged, burning piles of shit on doorsteps and toilet paper streaming from trees. I personally never saw this, but who knows I was pretty focused on candy. These stories were usually spread the next day in school. On our way the next morning we would often have to kick our way through the snow, as Halloween always seemed to herald the coming and staying of snow.

If we were prudent we could make our candy last till the end of November and then Christmas was just around the corner. Where has that excitement gone ? Now I stand here with a mask on my face to keep in the tears and fears of a life gone askew. Now the horror show is usually on the inside and it doesn’t wait for any specific day, it comes and comes.

Some days this is how I feel, or not feel as the case may be. Some days I can see the light and follow my heart towards it. I am laughing again.  That’s a great sign.

Come on kids.

I was walking last night through the trees down by the river and the way I felt it was a scary place to be, even though a familiar one. I haven’t been doing so good lately and I don’t feel at home any more. I feel like the tree that has all its branch’s chopped off. A tree that is just a stump of its former self.

That is how my soul feels, just a stump of its former self. I have seen my love and the light inside slip away. I am now standing here in the dark wondering how it happened ?

It seems like I don’t belong anymore. How did I get back into this place of isolation where I feel that the only recourse is to hurt myself to numb the pain.

I have made a start. I have let the pain out in front of you. If I keep doing that and not letting it fester inside it can’t block the light. It is so easy to go back to what I know. I want so much more for me and others, but I can’t see it if I am in the dark. I can’t give it away if I don’t have it myself.

I will humble myself and reach out my hand. I don’t want to. I am “all that” don’t you know. I have to do it. I can’t live like this anymore. I want to see new shoots flower on my black stump and for that it needs light. I want the Raven to have a beautiful tree to land on when he comes to take me home.

They hurt themselves first, though. I feel so shitty about myself that I punish me first. That is what I have learned. I can’t make you happy, how can I make myself happy, and when I can’t take it anymore I turn to checking out of life. Oh the sweet death of not feeling, but I come alive again. Why do I have to keep getting resurrected ?

There is a little person inside of me that is so afraid of the world and the people around him that he just wants to go live in a cave, but that cave only exists in his mind and it keeps getting darker and darker in there. I don’t know what to do. The sunlight is very bright and it hurts to see what I have become. I keep casting back to what I know of myself and how to deal with that.

There are hurt people around me and they do the best they can to validate me, even if that isn’t much. I need to take those kernels of love and the ones I can recognise in myself and feed them to that little person. I need to feed the boy in me and the girl as well, because if I don’t do that I will still see her as another that I want to control, abuse and hurt.

If I don’t do that.

Well, hurt people hurt people.

I ride the Raven here in the Yukon sky. The choppy strokes of his wings add to the queasiness of my stomach, me being afraid of heights.

He chortles as we go toward the King’s Throne. We fly above aspen then fir. We are soon at the tree line and above the slopes of scree.

The grade is dizzying and I wonder how one gets up, much less down. As we crest the slope and dip into the caldera of this mountain I see rising in front of me the remaining slopes after it blew apart.

The Raven speaks in my mind ” this is my home and not yours. You can come here and climb. You can come plant a flag on top and photograph. You can take away a piece, but you can’t make it your own”

As we glide back to earth he says to me ” your journey is to counqer the mountain of fear in your mind ” I say to him ” it is not the same, the mountain in my mind is not just one, but   many ”

He chortles and speaks”  don’t you see, you humans are climbers, it’s not if you get to the top, it’s when you get to the top. You will never be happy with the top. I have watched and seen you come and counqer. Your relentless drive is your burden and gift. Apply it to your twisted, tormented thoughts and you will find your equal ”

He dropped me to the earth and I could do nothing but sob. This is truly the journey that can break me, I thought, as I hesitantly stepped forward.

As I sit here, listening to the lawnmower chug through the ankle high grass. Looking at the majestic cedars cut conical shapes into the clear blue of the northern BC sky. I wonder about where I will be in two days.

I am going to the Yukon. Hiking in the beauty that I have only seen in shows, or ads. I will walk alone.

I don’t know if this will be how our marriage ends. I know we are trying to make it work, to come together over the mountains that strew the emotional landscape of our relationship.

I have come to realize that just like this trip I can only walk through this alone. I must heal myself to make it over the rubble of years of wreckage. I can’t go into this a broken man, hiding from my own brokenness.

I would love to have a moment of Nirvana up on the slopes of Kluane national park, but I don’t think that is how things work in my recovery.

Instead I will hike, one foot in front of the other. Watching the ground for rocks and holes that can spell disaster. I will look at what is around me and stare in wonder at what has been wrought.

This is how I will make it through both mountain ranges. One day I will stand looking around me, taking in the beauty and one day in the future I hope I can stand  there with you.

I drive in to Calgary for meetings and I pass industrial power lines on my way in. They are held by huge steel structure’s that look like giant men, one after the other fading into the distance. Carrying energy.

I see myself in these metal men. A Man who has energy coursing through his body. The energy of emotion. Joy, pain, sorrow, belief, conviction and suffering. Sometimes the sparks fly from my body and if you are to close you will be burnt. Sometimes I burn from within and you will feel me. Sometimes though I feel alone and the energy seems only to dwell in me.

At those times I must remember the person up the line, because at my best I realise that my energy does not live in a vacuum. It connects me to you, either when I lash out, or when I offer you the warmth of my love.

The picture of that solitary Man standing there channelling the energy is a stark one, but if I remember that I can be in you I see less of the structure and more of the ties that bind us together.

I will burn.

The laughter intruded on my feeling of loss. I kept reading about the writers breaching the literary shores and I felt in myself a yearning so powerful that I was about to cry. That short burst of laughter seeming to say either get happy, or you’ve left it to late.

I know there are words in me. They rush around in my head, looking for a spot to rest. The question is; will I spend the time letting them scamper down my arm to rest on the paper. Where they can connect up to the one behind and in front. When they do there is creation and my mind is at peace for a while.

That’s why it matters. I write to release myself from what crash’s around in me. So that I can string it together and sense the uncertain logic behind me. When it is laying on the page, there I am.