Most of us;
Many of us;
Live lives of quiet desperation.
At some point in our lives we are deathly, quietly afraid. Terrified of life. Of something in it anyway. We are anxious and fearful. I know it and you know it, those of you reading this right now and thinking of that thing that you are quietly (or vocally) afraid of are going to follow this a little easier than those of you who are denying it. And I know there are those of you who are denying it. Nothing, never, evermore, you say, have I ever feared. Nothing, you say, to the point of terror, and never to anything you would call "quiet desperation".
To you I say, "you’re good". You are the best liar of all, because the best lies are the ones you tell to yourself. We are all afraid of something, unless you have faced that fear… and you would know if you had because you will have that little episode marked down on your little mental Facebook calendar as "The worst fucking time of my life". Those of us who have had to face down our worst fears are never the same after it. Sometimes we are better, sometimes we are worse, but we are never the same.
When this happened to me, I wasn’t the same. Actually it happened to me three times. I had to endure facing my three worst fears… and as my Grandfather would say, I lived. I am still here… but changed. I am no longer living a life of quiet desperation, I am living a life of cacophonous desperation. I am desperate to be myself. For many years of my life I have molded who I was to be somebody for someone else. I made myself into everyone’s Doll, hoping that they’d buy me and take me home.
But when my "Happening"... uh… happened, it let loose the real me. And it turns out the real me is a Force of Nature, something like a Phenomenon, with all the destructive force of a Hurricane. And since I have made this little discovery I have spent countless amounts of mental energy trying to contain myself, trying to NOT be who I am, because people apparently couldn’t take the intensity. Or that’s how I perceived the state of affairs to be. Maybe I was right, maybe I was wrong. But that is certainly what it felt like. These days I often feel like there’s a caged starved, half-crazed wolf in my head trying to break out and I have to keep it caged and starved and crazed because… because…
Because… why exactly? Why indeed?
No more. I’m letting it free. I’m letting the Hurricane free to wreak havoc. I in short, am going to start being myself.
God help us all.
And for all of you who are also living lives of Quiet (or vocal) desperation, please write me, I will show you how to let your beast lose. We need more people to be real, to be themselves… to be Forces of Nature.
