6

 -The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.

James A. Garfield

I met a guy the other day who's reading Malazan. We were friendly before, as I instantly knew that he played board games - though I never even asked him - but we connected in earnest when I asked him about the fantasy novel near the counter where I was buying ground coffee from him. We eventually spoke of games and gaming, but only incidentally as it pertains to Malazan, because Malazan is weirdly important to me. There’s nothing like 400 hours of the most remarkably portrayed strength, weakness, horror, beauty, humour, grief, hope and hopelessness, cowardice and resilience, and compassion, brilliance and idiocy, rage and constancy, freedom and crushing weight to expose my own, to bring me into myself by allowing me to leave myself. For a while. For a moment. To ponder, and reflect on the gifts of consequence. 

There's something wrong with Steven Erikson. Wrong is not right, but it makes a decent opener. If I'm as lost as I feel, how does he find me? How does he speak from the very core of me? How does he draw from me…everything? How can he do that to me, for me? I’m not so narcissistic that I believe everything is about me, but that being said, as much as I would like to see things from another’s point of view, I’m still only seeing it from mine, same as everyone else, I think.

As a single point of light, or dark, in a single point of time, I live in a moment, and die in that same moment. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right, as if there was a choice? I’ve found that there is great peril in living in the moment. It’s entirely possible, likely, even, that I’ve misunderstood the directive and I’m doing it wrong, at least I was last moment, and a bunch of moments ago.

I’m confused about how committed I need, or want to be in particular moments, because I feel regrets, I feel wrong because, in past moments, I acted without context, without thoughts toward future moments -ie. how is this going to play out- and without consideration of past moments, and the strengths and scars that I bear as a result of them. I also acted from a single perspective, as if I was not a part of something bigger, or more important, than a single point. Of light, or dark. If that’s me living in the moment, and that’s all we can do, then I’m a bad person, or I was, and now I’m not, but no one will ever know until it’s too late, and I don’t need to take accountability for my actions because I’m not doing those bad things right now, and the past and future aren’t, and thus don’t matter, and neither do I. But I want to matter, and my regret is proof that there is a substance, a residue, to time and past action, and I use it to build the platform upon which I stand now, like this...

- The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love, and ends in grief. But there are other anguishes, many others. They unfold as they will, and to dwell within them is to understand nothing, except, perhaps, this. In love, grief is a promise. As sure as Hood’s nod. There will be many gardens, but this last one to visit is so very still, not meant for lovers. Not meant for dreamers. Meant only for a single figure, there in the dark, standing alone, taking a single breath.

-Steven Erikson

I accept grief; I’m not THAT kind of fool. Grief is a blade from your past that cuts it’s path from your future, removing all but the pain of loss, and the scars of memory, both cherished and abhorred. But I don’t accept regret, not at the expense of accountability, not if it means deferring the gift of consequence. The fact is that I keep making the same mistakes and going back to the same place. It’s great that I have that place because it’s a good place, but I had a better place as more than a single point of light...and more than a single moment. But a lot can happen in a moment if you ignore context, if you disregard the burdens of past moments, and pay no heed to even the most simple, pure, and almost tangible hope for your future, a future as more than a single point of light, or dark, when you forget what you’re doing, and why.

It’s called an amygdala hijack. People with ADHD, and/or trauma get them a lot. An amygdala hijack is when the amygdala, the part of the brain most closely associated with fear, emotions, and motivation -fight, flight, or freeze- (and it links these to many other resources of the brain, or hijacks them if you’re out of whack), takes over. When this happens in response to threats real or imprinted, the amygdala’s response is to flood the brain with fight-or-flight chemicals. My experience of this is that all possible connections of the mind are made at once, even though I often feel like I can barely handle the ones that I have connected in the regular course of the day, and that there can’t possibly be any more, there is more, and then there is mayhem, sort of.

My siblings used to think me being a spazz-hazard was amusing, for a time. Being pushed and taunted by a circle of laughing older girls, or being restrained and tickled were enough to do it. Kids are (usually)unintentionally cruel in their searches for novelty, but the novelty wears off as the consequences expand beyond one’s ability to run away from them, and, as I grew, they became more wary as I became more scary.

I’m not given to violence, I’ve never really even been in a fight, though I’ve studied both violence and fighting. It’s really sobering how much damage can be done, one body to another, and I never want to experience it first hand. A lot can be said in 6 seconds, though, and if you don’t catch it and shut it down, 6 is 12, and so on. 6 seconds is how long it takes for the chemicals released by the amygdala to dissipate; any more than that, and the peril incumbent with the loss of rationality ramps up pretty quick. Sustained terror is not a healthy state in which to abide. It’s fight, flight, freeze, or breathe and count to ten. 6 seconds, then 12, and so on.

 -Speak truth, grow still, until the water clears between us.

 -Steven Erikson

If only I could grow still.

For 6. fucking. seconds.

There is a quality of truth that is improved, or enabled, maybe, by an eloquent delivery made possible by counting to ten. This is difficult to achieve in tense situations, and utterly impossible when one is in the grips of epinephrine, cortisol, and whatever else is in the cocktail that the amygdala injects to preempt the rational function of the brain before the delayed arrival of reason at the helm of your mind to steer the course towards, or away from, what you really want, or don’t. This is why I am tentative towards relationships, and bold as a writer.

This, right here, is where I get to flex my true strength in such a way that I can experience humility without shame, craft my solutions to challenges that would crush me into a jolting tangle of nerves driving a mouth, reacting to my environment only with the realization of pain. Here I can plot a path, or find the trail, forward and back, that meet, and make sense to me where I’m at right now, standing alone, taking a single breath.

I know grief is the inevitable companion of love, but I am not so comfortable with grief that I want to breathe it with every breath. It is the one consequence that I think we must defer as long as possible in order to find some joy in this life, and do so with abandon. I don’t, but I want to.

I’ve entered a cognitive behavioural therapy program. I don’t have time for it, just like I don’t have time to write this, but I’m going to, and I am, because I need help to learn how to manage my emotions. Hyperreactivity is ruining my life.

I find strength in adversity, so I’m pretty strong, but I am also very weak, and brittle, and primal, and often the people around me have to dig really deep to find the strength required to be around me, strength they could put to other purposes were I not there. I don’t want to have that effect on people that I love; I want to stay, and help, and heal, and be more than a single point of light, or dark, and consider very carefully every moment so that I may then take breath, it begins with love, and ends with a blessing.

 Amen