Kindness to Kindness

Fear and doubt. Fear and doubt. Oh, and add healthy doses of self-hatred and guilt. These emotions often dominate my life. There are days when the blackness they cast almost makes it impossible to move. Often the emotions have a face, the face of my mother as she sat for days on end in her housecoat watching the television, or the face of my brothers and father as they watched her illness and now mine – unable to talk openly about it. And yes, most especially my face in the mirror – a man whose sadness makes it look older than many who are his same age – a man who often begins his days writing drivel such as this. Even now, as I watch these words appear on the page the committee who live in my head shouts.

“Everyone else is fine. You simply are projecting your self-centered pain upon them.”

“What’s the point?”

“Why do you bother?”

“Stop this silliness at once. Cease bothering the world with your self-pity.”

“Sharing all your nonsense just brings others down and makes their day darker. How selfish of you.”

“Voicing your fears only makes them more real you know.”

The committee’s chatter is with me always. Even on the brightest of days I can feel them. They nestle in a dark corner of my brain in angry silence; waiting for the right moment to pounce on any sign of happiness or joy. I have spent years in church pews, 12-step rooms, psychiatric hospitals and with therapists trying to destroy the committee. Yet it remains. Some days, like today there is only one arrow left in my quiver, one last bolt to use in trying to silence the committee – it is the shaft of writing. Fuck the committee. Fuck each and every member. Let my words slay them for yet another day.

AND I share what I write. The committee finds this idea hilarious. It loves to pounce on the idea of sharing.

“You realize it is all just ego on your part don’t you?”

“Your grandiosity is showing.”

“You better spend more time editing and making sure it is the best you can possibly do before you share it.”

I share anyway. Damn the committee. I know of at least one or two people who say they like what I write and that they want to read more of it. Today that is enough. It will have to be. I feel as if writing honestly about what I experience in this moment, this very one, may be my only defense against the committee. Even if later I find my writing to be less than truthful or perfect it is the only thing I can think of to offer life at the moment. Trying to capture this tiny second of the eternal universe is the best I can manage just now. May it be enough for life. May it be enough to silence the committee. May it be done on a path of love and kindness.

The phone rings. It is a friend from Little Rock, Arkansas. Larry Atkinson. We have seen one another maybe a dozen times but have talked on the phone for hundreds of hours. He carries the ghost of addiction, as do I. We will talk until there is nothing left to talk about. Perhaps life meets kindness with kindness once again. I will act as if it is so.