Set him Free

For 20 years I arrogantly believed that I knew when I turned inward and quit letting my feeling escape. I thought I new when I went into the whole. It seemed at 12 when the house went nuts when my sisters drug abuse which dovetailed into menopause for my mother. When I say shit was crazy it was crazy, some stuff I wouldn't even would to speak into the air.

Through therapy and my intense inquisitiveness I have been spelunking into the dark caves of my experience and my emotions.

I have figured out that by 5 years old, I already was trying not to let on that I was frightened or angry. My mom took me into a little 5 and Dime in a town near ours. I was looking at a toy display and I looked up and my mother was gone. I hurried down the aisle and did not find her. At this time my chest had cut my ability to breath off. Pounding in my ears . I was trying to figure out how she could forget I was with her and leave. As I was in full little boy panic attack mode, I tried to walk slow and make it look like I was completely fine. I was melting down and I couldn't cry out and say help. She appeared as quickly as she disappeared and I tried to look like nothing had been wrong.

I had already bought into "my feelings are bad and must not be shared".  It made me feel week if I let you know I was melting down. It didn't have much to do with actual embarrassment. It had to do with me censoring my feelings and it proved to be a near deadly decision on my part to not share fear, or pain or joy for that matter. Everything had to remain dark. Mushrooms and fear/terror are the things that grow best in the dark. 40 years later, it's hard for me to open up and share what goes on when my mouth closes and i am left with only the bad messages I was injected with as a baby.

I'm trying to live differently. I am trying not to sensor myself to the point I say nothing of relevance. If I couldn't display the emotions of a child, what makes me think I can must up grown man feelings to set free to the world. Hope. Hope and the hard earned knowledge that to deny my feelings is to welcome the death of my soul.

But for the life of me I can't imagine existing through childhood any other way. The wolves would have finished me off for breakfast. Most of the defect of my character at one time helped save or preserve my life. I reached the tipping point with them and now they only serve to me me sicker and more hurtful.

If I had the chance to be a boy, this boy for an hour, I would like to set him free.