The depth of darkness...

When I was in high school I used to write stories. Aside from the "porno stories" I used to write in middle school (!), in high school the escalated. I used to write stories about blowing up the school and killing I don't remember who. I don't know that I ever named names nor did I ever necessarily have anyone in mind, though it's quite possible.

But I was so detached and everything so external I tended to categorize and label rather than personalize anything. It led to a certain form of schizophrenia. I was able to get along with pretty much everybody and didn't really dislike anyone (though my middle school yearbooks tells a different story) and had some really good friends. I had many "girl" friends but didn't date much and this, of course, is also a pretty curious detour to travel upon.

But there was a growing darkness, a gap between who I was and who I perceived myself to be. I don't remember when I did this, but below is an image of an artistic creation of mine.



And the reverse:



It's kind of bizarre looking at these things almost thirty years later. Creative? Certainly. But pretty disturbing.

Would I have ever really gone off and done the violence I fantasized about? I may have. I found enough outlets, negative as they may have been, to distract this impulse. Perhaps this is how copycat killers evolve. Perhaps these dark dreams lurk in the shadows and are brought light when seeing others pull it off.

Perhaps that is my ego rising up again, the flare for the drama to attract attention. But in digging up this past I am seeing the signs, the answers to those drives that seemed to mysterious and so compulsive. I also see it now through the eyes of love. True healing will be present when I have worked through this darkness that seems so clear now and begin to look back and see the good. When we live in a state of anger or despair or depression, we either idolize a past golden age or we filter everything through these lenses and thus only see those things that align with how we feel.

The obsession now isn't that my past was bad. I have had a good life. But right now I have become obsessed with laying these ghosts to rest. In uncovering the source of these wounds I will be able to close the door for good, heal up the gap and live in the present with no denial, no distraction and no imitation of life.

The reality is that I did have a strong support system growing up and I did have a strong sense of right and wrong, some sense of hope, that there was a future, even if that future was only dreams of escaping the stifle of small town suburbia. In hindsight, I don't know that I ever contemplated the reality of it.

There was always a part of me that was longing, love buried deeper than the hate that covered it.