Sunday, June 28, 2009

Ego Trip

I am a force to be reckoned. Everyone who meets me for the first time seems to know this immediately. I am both a lover and a fighter. Look at my history, my full resume of actions, and you will see this clearly. I have battled both the internal and the external. In college, I fought my philosophy professors who challenged the establishment of religion or theology in the modern world. At the same time, even just hours later, I would attend Bible study and challenge the notions of faith without knowledge, experience without insight, interpretation without perspective. I have few loyalties.

I can hurt people. I am dangerous, and make no mistake of understanding this, safety from me is never guaranteed. I was genetically hardwired as outrageously passionate, strong willed, and mindful. Give me a scholar, a scientist, or a theologian to fight and I will learn their weaknesses and expose them frankly. Hand me a machine, puzzle, or any tangle of knots that I have never before seen and I will see them through. Offer me one to love and I will pour onto them more affection than any poet with song or Buddhist with delightful appreciation. Offer me one to hate and I will go straight to the heart, the self-worth, and the futility of their life. I love a challenge. I would face any Goliath.

My attitude is unrealistic. I have lost more battles than I have won. I have scars, both internal and external. I fought a trained Rottweiler in 5th grade, leaving my arm and back permanently scarred. I have fought deep depression and hopelessness, leaving stretch marks of starvation and gluttony on my back, stomach, and legs. I have fought the bottle, emptying it into myself and flinging it into the street to hear it shatter. I have fought the pills, under blankets and in front of white coats. I have sent myself into more challenges than I can possibly survive, and yet, here I am.

I have stared into the abyss and the abyss has stared into me. I have spent days in absolute solitude with the question of why my life is worth living. Just opening my eyes and sensing the world around me, I have no doubt that I was made for it. Made, made in this exact way, for it. Even with personality altering drugs, hypnotherapy, professionals of identity that put me under a microscope and surgery, I am like I was made to be.

3 comments:

Land Mines said...

~ I enjoyed reading this, but enjoyed it more when I listened to you read it to me.~

jo said...

This is a rare steak. Love it.

Becca's blogs said...

I couldn't agree more with your passion and am amazed how you can bring out every passion inside of me with you words even still after all these years. you have a gift, a talent and a soul that is deeper than many and for that i love you deeper than i love many, and believe me...i love deeply!