Breaking The Illusions - An Autobiography - 4. Chapter 4

The Crumbling Temple

I'm going to cover an entire decade in this chapter. While there are many different experiences I could address, I'm going to focus exclusively on the things that pertain to my trauma and my healing from said trauma. I will try to keep things in order, and I hope I don't lose you on the way.

At twenty-two, I officially came out to my three closest friends. As I stated before, Glen already knew, but it was necessary for me to secure the understanding of my other brothers. They accepted me and supported me without hesitation. It was a great way to start my coming out journey, and I'm grateful to them for that.

I started a new job shortly after that and came out to a couple of people there. They were fairly understanding as well, though I was still a bit nervous about living publicly with that identity. The scars the church had left in me ran deep, and despite my best intentions to ignore the voices in my head, which spoke of my worthlessness, they instead grew increasingly louder as the months wore on.

Yet I had begun to accept myself for who I actually was, and not who others told me I had to be. For a brief period I was agnostic, then atheist, then back to agnostic until I finally decided to start exploring other spiritual traditions and philosophies. I developed a strong attachment to Nietzsche, and rediscovered Taoism simultaneously, and many of my core beliefs became shaped by both philosophies.

The nihilism present in Nietzsche's work corresponded well to my understanding of the world as being an illusion, as well as his thought process on becoming better versions of ourselves. He also often alluded to the otherness of those outside societal norms, which spoke to my often convoluted sense of empathy.

Taoism offered me a potential path to harmony, both within myself and with others. Although I didn't really know how, I have always wanted to be better than who I am; Taoism presented the path that seemed to lead to there. It helped me address the darker parts of me, and find good in places which I thought were wholly evil, and vice versa. This would become the method I would use to continue to work through my trauma.

Every new season seemed to bring another piece of the puzzle. It began with the end of the job I worked at for the better part of 2010, a temporary gig at a call center working for the Census Bureau. I landed another job immediately after leaving that one, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn't for me. I left it shortly after, certain I'd find something else.

I then worked for two weeks selling Kirby vacuum cleaners. Thankfully I never sold one. I found that work even more distasteful than missionary service. It was a better product but a terrible business model, and we were abused as employees more than anywhere else I have ever worked.

Thus began my longest period of unemployment, nine months without knowing what I wanted to do or who I wanted to become. Spring of the next year, I borrowed money from Glen to get my commercial driver's license, but the anxiety of being behind the wheel of such a large vehicle made it impossible for me to do it professionally. Now several thousand dollars in debt, I was still unemployed, and hating myself more and more with each day.

The voices screaming at me in my head were so loud now that I could hear nothing else. Now twenty-three, I already believed that my life was over. I had wasted my youth, or had it stolen from me, depending on my perspective at the time. I was angry at everyone, but most notably myself and the church. I had not yet come to understand the extent of the damage Jackson had inflicted upon me, nor that my codependency with Glen was keeping me from addressing some of my issues. I was lost, without knowing where to find direction.

I finally managed to get a job at a pizza place due to some previous experience in food service. I didn't really want to spend any more time in food service, but I was desperate to have an income and to stop relying on my dad and my best friend, so I fought hard for the position and won it. The people were great, but the job was only temporary.

Shortly after getting the job, I had the opportunity to have a few therapy sessions with a psychologist who helped me gain some new perspective. He stopped me as I was explaining some things about my life and told me, "You keep using the word 'should'. You think that you should have done things differently, or that you should be in a different place in your life. For the next week, I want you to try replacing 'should' with the word 'could'. Try viewing everything as a possibility rather than an absolute."

This fit in rather well with my nihilistic worldview, and I slowly started to come to terms with some of my life choices. I still wasn't anywhere near happy, but it stabilized me, at least for a while.

I started a new job in October 2011 at an ice-skating rink. Initially, it was only for events, and I worked concurrently with the pizza place. It was where Glen worked, as well as my two other closest friends. The pizza place soon went out of business, and I began working at the ice rink part time, and eventually full-time.

The next six years were spent there, and because of the nature of the work I was often able to get by with little pressure on me at the job itself. This allowed me a lot of time to think and work through the many issues still weighing heavily on me. Being around my friends again helped to center me, and I made a lot more friends as well.

Glen and I were roommates during this time and managed to heal a lot of the issues we had between us. I was able to overcome the last traces of my obsession with him, which opened me up to the possibility of other romantic pursuits. Both of my other two closest friends got married during this period as well, and started their families. This created a bit of instability for me, and led to me seeking more codependent relationships to fill the gap.

This is what led to my most recent string of follies. Like a bird trapped inside a building, I can't see the glass in the windows until I run into it, and no matter how many times I do that, I still think the next closed window is my escape route and dive headfirst into the glass again.

The majority of the relationships I had from my mid-20s until now have been attempts to form codependent bonds to replace the ones I've lost. This wasn't true in every case, only most of them. I have genuinely been in love twice during that time, and thought I was in love during all the others. I did not intentionally mislead any of them; I just didn't understand my addiction.

This didn't stop me from accidentally hurting people I cared about, and I did care about all of them. I found all of them intelligent, interesting, and enjoyed their company. But infatuation became my newest drug, and I'd soak up the intimacy of new romance only to become disenchanted as soon as the initial feelings dulled.

Each one taught me something new about myself. From one I learned the necessity to address my depression. From another, I learned the need to communicate better than I had been. A third broke up with me when his infatuation faded first, but only a day or two before mine did, and that's when I started to understand what was happening, but still hadn't completely grasped it.

A couple of them genuinely loved me, and one of those I certainly loved back. We were both a little bit lost in our lives, and we helped each other get back on track for what we wanted to accomplish. I believe that is the only relationship I have ever had which didn't have a trace of toxicity, at least not one that I noticed. Unfortunately, getting back on our respective correct tracks meant we were headed in different directions, and we came to a mutual understanding that our time of traveling together had ended. That experience is warm, and smells like petrichor.

Most of this happened while I was still working at the ice-skating rink. I also started writing while I was working there, which formed another great catharsis for me. I was able to put emotions into my characters, which I did not feel courageous enough to express outside of fiction. I was able to talk about situations I'd gone through, using the filter of illusion and storytelling as I had learned to do as a child. The skill Jackson had taught me, despite all the wrong he had done me, became a tool that I could use to overcome him.

The one who loved me as much as I loved him was the same who helped me pursue writing with conviction. For the first time in many years, I set a long-term goal and worked towards it. I left my job at the ice-skating rink in order to write full time in October 2017, thanks to the encouragement he had offered me. We were no longer together by that point, but he still supported me in my goals, as I had supported him in his.

Since then, my journey has had a bit of turbulence, but it has all been for the better. I continued to lose myself in misplaced infatuation, though each one brought me closer to seeing the glass for what it was. I fell in love one more time as well, though it was not meant for me. Perhaps I will love again, should I ever be able to fully trust myself.

In August 2018, a treasured friend showed me the glass for what it was. The window I kept flying into was in fact a mirror, and I couldn't see it because I refused to see my own reflection. The last things keeping me from overcoming myself were my own self-loathing, and the last mask I refused to take off, because I was scared of the flesh beneath.

When I looked at the mirror within myself, I found Timothy's face. When I finally peeled that away in September 2018, I was surprised that another layer came with it. It was Jackson's; the face of a boy screaming at the world that he didn't want to do the work.

I wasn't him anymore. The temple to false gods had crumbled along with all their illusions. I was free.

But I didn't yet know who I was.

2019 was a year of self-discovery for me. It was full of a tremendous amount of growth and new challenges. The first half of the year was spent in a somewhat disoriented state, for I had finally dismantled the masks I'd worn for over twenty years and that left me with a nearly blank slate.

Who was I? Who was I supposed to be? What was left of the boy who had first put those masks on in the first place? These were the questions that weighed on my mind and continued to guide my meditations.

I had entered a relationship while these questions were still pulsing within me, and I quickly came to realize that outside forces would corrupt my answers. This realization cost me that relationship, and nearly ended the friendship at the core of it as well. I needed to escape all the voices other than my own, and that meant self-isolation.

I couldn't explain it to most of my friends, and I believe some still resent me for the distance I placed between us. It wasn't and still isn't because I wanted to remove them from my life. On the contrary, I wanted their presence more than ever, but I needed to separate myself from what everyone else expected me to be.

This led me to finally understand my codependency, and the way it has shaped my life. It is my core addiction, the one which led to the toxicity in all my relationships, and disrupts my ability to behave rationally. It is something I developed to cope with the trauma I suffered from Jackson's abuse, and the abandonment I felt from my family, friends, and community throughout my youth. Regardless of the cause, the maintenance of that codependency is on my shoulders, and it is time for me to be rid of it.

I wrote this piece and released it publicly in order to hold myself accountable for the growth I seek. This is the next step in becoming who I really am, and I believe it is the last major knot to untangle in the web of all that was done to me. Since beginning to address this, I've experienced more happiness in months than I had in the twenty years prior, including the peace I found among my closest friends in high school.

The shadow that weighs upon me no longer feels menacing. I can stand to be alone with myself for the first time since I was a child, then making up stories with my Legos. I finally enjoy my own company, and I'm learning to love myself.

I'm not there yet, but I will be. I need be with no one else to be happy, though perhaps someday I would enjoy having a warm body in my bed at night, and the conversation of someone who loves me beyond the platonic.

For now, I have my friendships. I have Glen, who still lives with me and with whom I share wonderful, invigorating conversations. I have many other people who also engage with me on a regular basis, with whom I share games, coffee, or walks in the woods. I'm not lonely, even when I'm alone. This is the first time I have ever felt that way since I crossed into adolescence.

And I have my work. I haven't been this excited to write in years, even when I committed to writing full-time. My mind is brimming with stories, and this time they're not about escaping my life, but about fulfilling it. I want to build a better world, and hope that my words will make it more beautiful in the eyes of at least some who read them.

I suspect that I still have quite a bit of growth left to do, but I have finally cleared out the clutter preventing me from doing so. For all the wrongs I've done to others, I deeply apologize. I was not prepared to receive guests in the house of my soul. I hope you know that I appreciated your visits anyway, even if I was a terrible host.

I hope in time you will visit again, and I'll be able to show you the hospitality you deserve.

Peace and love, my friends.

~Samuel