When feelings returned

I had always believed myself to be quite insane. I honestly believed that about myself ever since I was a little kid.

There was some bit of misunderstanding going on when I came to that belief about myself.

A doctor who had just examined me stated that I had ADHD. When I asked what that meant, my dad said, “That means you’re fucking crazy!”

My mother started to cry, and the doctor just nodded his head, “Yeah, this kid’s gonna have problems for the rest of his life.”

Before I walked into that doctor’s office, I didn’t even know there was a problem. I didn’t know why we were going.

I walked in unaware of a problem. I walked out aware that there was in fact a problem.

I’m the problem.

That moment severely altered my perspective on life. That’s not an excuse, I’m just explaining how things that came to be came to be. I take responsibility for my life.

The idea that I was insane, so severely that my mother was now weeping, shamed me. I was ashamed to be me.

I think I was about six or seven when I came to the conclusion that I was completely defective.

In my heart, I believed I was insane, and that I needed to hide that fact from discovery by others. I was ashamed of myself, so I avoided vulnerable connection with people. In all of my relationships, I kept things shallow. I did not want anyone to discover my true self. In my opinion, I was nothing but shame.

Thus, I didn’t have many close friends or mentors. I kept my distance from intimacy. In that spiritual solitude, I built my beliefs about life, the universe, and myself.

I developed a set of rules to live by in order to avoid gathering more shame.

Rule number one was to keep vulnerability to a minimum at all times.

I had some good solid friends, men and women who would give up their lives for others. All of them deeply service-oriented, willing to fight evil in defense of their country and fellow humans. Every one of them a blessing to know, and an honor to serve with.

I was the one who never revealed personal thoughts or fears.

Sometimes I tell people that I have friends I could call in the middle of the night who would help me move a dead body with no questions asked.

“I’ve got those kind of friends. We’ll fight to the last bullet and trade our lives for one another.”

I then reassure them that I don’t actually have any dead bodies at the moment.

Those are strong relationships. Very strong.

Those are what I call warrior bonds.

In those relationships, I also had a rule.

Never expose anything I perceived as a weakness.

That was warrior code rule number one.

I never engaged in conversation deeper than war stories or jokes. Anyone who broke this rule was often ridiculed and became the subject of entertainment for the rest of the team.

Everyone was taught to keep relationships shallow and inauthentic.

As a child, I learned to invalidate my internal emotions. It didn’t benefit me to have a big smile on my face if my dad happened to walk into the house being dope sick. He would knock that smile right off my face.

“What do you have to be smiling about?”

“You want to cry? I’ll give you something to cry about!”

I quickly learned to shut off emotions like a light switch.

I didn’t know my father was an addict. I didn’t know what opiates were. I just knew the house was chaotic and confusing. Invalidating my feelings made life easier to navigate.

I also learned to mimic the emotions of others to blend in.

“Why are you laughing at your uncle’s funeral? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

The fact that I was a bored, hyperactive five-year-old who didn’t even know my uncle didn’t matter. I learned to act sad to avoid another ass-whipping.

All of this was reinforced in the military and first responder world, where I met many others raised in similar dysfunction.

We don’t know that about each other, because it’s never discussed.

We’re all acting like we have our shit together, while secretly struggling with the same fears.

I’ve done a lot of scary things in life. I’ve been in over a thousand dynamic entries on drug and gang houses.

Learning to be vulnerable with my honest inner thoughts took more courage than all of those crack house raids combined.

I didn’t know how to do it. I had to be shown by other warriors.

When my emotions came back, I had invalidated them for so long I didn’t even recognize them.

The first time I opened up, I grabbed my chest and said, “What the hell?”

Someone thought I was having a heart attack.

I said, “No, I’m fine. I just have this weird feeling in my chest. It feels warm. Fuzzy. Like it’s glittering and radiating outward. What the fuck is that?”

They said, “That’s called love, Larry. You might not remember feeling it before.”

I said, “No, I’d remember that. I like it. How do I get more of that?”

Thanks for reading…