Have you ever had any demons, of which you’re fairly aware of, haunted you for years? You have, right? I mean we all have our own demons we struggle with at some point or another in life, whatever they might be…right? Have you ever for the most part managed to lock them up somewhere deep in the back of your mind achieving a certain state of denial/avoidance/hiding? Have you ever had any of those demons come out of that deep locked up place you put them in and stared you right in the eyes, and no matter how much you try to look away or figure out how to locked them up again, you ultimately feel compelled to finally face them while also feeling incredibly afraid to do so?
That’s exactly where I suddenly and very unexpectedly find myself at the moment, right at the corner of dazed and confused. I won’t go into specific details about my own demons and current circumstances, because, well, they’re deeply personal and private (though I guess not quite as much after this post!); I’m definitely not comfortable sharing that much here on the blog and not sure I ever will. However, lying here in bed alone in the middle of the night, I feel like reaching out in hope that someone out there can relate to what I’m vaguely describing; and maybe, just maybe, even provide some comfort or interesting insight on dealing with this sort of thing, that I wanna believe to a certain extent it’s a universal human experience.
As much as a part of me urges me to find that damn lock again so I can stuff everything back in the back of my mind under an “ignorance (or in this case denial!) is bliss” sign, I know that’s not really what I want. What I want is to be free, because I now realize it wasn’t that I had locked the demons up somewhere, I had just locked them out; unintentionally creating a prison for myself in the process, a prison that seemed like a safe place to hide. But now I want to be free from that prison, I want to be free from those demons. I fear it’ll be a long and painful road to freedom, but I’m almost 30 years old, I’m too old to be playing hide & seek with my issues.
I actually can’t stop wondering why now, after decades of managing somewhat successfully to avoid dealing with these issues, all of the sudden one seemingly insignificant incident has broken all the locks and yanked me out of my hiding place…precisely now, 2 weeks before my 30th birthday. It almost feels like life telling me to grow the f*** up and get over it. Except, is it possible there might be things in life we can’t get over? In the face of certain realities we can’t change, maybe there’s no such thing as getting over them, maybe our only option is to learn to live with them, as painful as they are. And how does one do that? Does it mean learning to live with the pain forever? Or does it come a time when, even in the midst of a painful reality, there’s no pain anymore? Is that the ultimate sign of true healing? I don’t know…all I know is I want to find my way to those answers. I just hope I have the strength to handle them when I do.