I was sitting at a local chain diner this afternoon. I'm still there now as I write this with an ink pen - later I'll transcribe it onto the computer and post it. I was sitting at an end corner of an area with multiple tables, tucked away from the rest of the dining area. I was turned sideways with my back against a railing and my feet up on the bench, knees bent towards my chest with my arms simultaneously hugging my knees and holding the book I was reading, a collection of short stories and plays by Anton Chekhov.
The somatic reality of the moment, curled up in a corner reading a book in my own energetic cocoon whilst chattering and clamoring commences around me - suddenly reactivated a memory from 7th grade.
I was wearing a Ramones t-shirt with ripped up jeans, doc marten boots, and a flannel shirt tied around my waist. I was leaning against the wall of the woodshop classroom by the quad/lunch area with my knees to my chest reading a book - "Henderson The Rain King" by Saul Bellow.
A boy on the on one of the lunch tables (C. Johnson), threw an opened half-full can of Pepsi up near the corner I occupied. The can hit the wall above and behind me and the syrupy mess spilled and splashed all over me and my book.
A switch flipped inside me. I was fuming and furious. I stood up and clenched my fists and screamed "FUUUUCK YOU." I pounded my boots on each concrete step towards C (who was surrounded by friends and just laughing uncontrollably), slowed down and glared at him venomously as I passed him and walked around the corner to enter the boy's room to clear my head and clean myself up.
I paced back and forth in the small bathroom huffing short, quick, shallow breaths. I turned to the door and just started smashing my foot into it repeatedly with every red hot flaming fiber of my being - harder and harder and harder while screaming bloody murder until the door busted through the trimming and then tore off the hinges. I collapsed onto the floor into a heap of sorrow sobbing helplessly, half in rage and half in confusion.
In the principle's office, they asked why I did that in the bathroom. I said it was either the door, or C-- and they should feel lucky I chose the door. I received no sympathy, but a suspension (and worse at home).
Zoom out. Snapshot. 7th grade was my first year in a new middle school. I had spent the grade before in an entirely different town.
My father and I would take many years to get right, and he'd first get clean and sober and go through a myriad of personal changes. The scars and the fear remained for me for a long time.
My mother was a mom of 2 boys, bouncing from husband to husband (deserving of love but without the tools to make healthy choices), making minimum wage, with family traumas having been piling up since the beginning; she simply wasn't equipped to try to parent conventionally. So at some point she just gave up. Her approach and philosophy was: you're going to do whatever you're going to do, so I'd rather you do it at home and know that you're safe.
In addition to the grief, pain, and sorrow of some childhood darkness and sexual abuse, and having no healthy processing or coping tools given to me because no one around me had them either.
I would very soon after move in with my grandfather in Los Alamitos, would meet my lifelong friends and some healing would begin.
----
So there I was curled against the wall of the woodshop classroom, given an opportunity to release the fucking pressure valve. C throwing that can of soda gave me something I deeply needed: An opportunity to let some real emotional sorrow/grief/shit out. To let the fire burn through every pained and violated cell in me. To rip the gag out of my mouth and wail. To do to a door what I wanted to do to the men who molested me and the man who used violence as a disciplinary tactic. I wanted to embody the fire, to step into it and become free, though I lacked the proper tools and deeper understanding.
And now here I am. Curled up in another corner. Finding a place to hide and observe everyone around me, guarded and not fully present and expressive, gathering the strength to step into my power and speak.
I could blame a death from 12 Thanksgivings ago, but that would probably be a misdirection and abstraction. It probably isn't the deeper reason I find myself in a diner on Thanksgiving.
I'm in my 40s. The incident at McAuliffe was 30 years ago. and still my body and psyche seeks a comfortable place a few times a year. A sense of safety and containment, which is admittedly not entirely dissimilar from hiding and recharging.
I'm grateful that my soul has beckoned me into a life path wherein I have finally found the tools to deal with the accumulation of undigested experience. Tools to feel things I didn't let myself (or wasn't allowed to) feel when I was a boy. To feel and to heal. To process and to release. To transmute and to transform. To grow and to become.
I have been blessed with exposure, experience, and education in meditation, bodywork, yoga, breathwork, combat, and shadow work - to name a few of the tools that are helping me to heal; to heal the child that I was and the man that I am continuing to become.
And still, sometimes the desire to crawl up in a comfortable corner and disappear arises. Luckily and even greater still, the desire to speak and be seen arises very quickly thereafter.
The path of healing and awakening is not easy. There is no magical point at which all the healing is done forevermore and you live in Bliss City. It is a spiral that travels endlessly through light and shadow that continues to bring up from the depths all that is unresolved, and also continues to grace you with the tools and the support needed to break through the cocoon and become your true, authentic, aligned, healed Self.
Today, I am so grateful.
Just don't ever throw a can of Pepsi at me. I may be a nice guy and wish you lots of love and grace, but you'll probably catch hearts and hands, as I've long retired from the door smashing business.
11-26-19
