The Central Problem

 It never changes, this need of context.

I’m fixing to tell you about the central problem that most everyone has. There are many angles to look at this problem, but here I’m going to attempt to look at it as directly as I can. Said simply, the central problem is wanting to be different than whatever it is one is. We can definitely say this in other ways too. Wanting things to be different. Wanting life to be different. Wishing we were different. 

I’ll tell a story to show why this is such a problem. 

I had my second full blown panic attack when I was in what was commonly called 120-day shock. I’m talking about complete loss of control of bodily functions. Violently shaking hands. I couldn't get them to stop. I couldn’t talk. It was to me an almost out of body experience. It happened to me while standing in line for lunch. There was no obvious outward explanation for the attack in my mind. It just happened to me.

The 120-shock program was something in the prison system where judges would send people to have them accessed. The case workers and guards that worked in these programs would write up reports, and if it went their way, they would be able to get out on probation or parole depending on their crimes. Due to my age, being only seventeen years old, my lawyer recommended that I be sent to this in his efforts to try to keep me from having to go to a real prison.  To be honest though, I didn’t really have much hope of being allowed to get out after only 120 days because of the crimes I had committed. 

But here's the thing. When the guard saw my hands violently shaking, he pulled me out of line and had me go back to my bunk. This place was basically a huge room, with everyone spread out in cubicles. Each cubicle was like a cell with two bunk beds, and the walls were short enough such that any guard could see across the whole floor at any time. There was no privacy, except if you happened to have a lower bunk. During the day though, you weren’t allowed to be sitting on the bunks out of sight.

This place was very intense. Everyone was always high strung because no one wanted to go to prison. Everyone wanted out. Everything on a schedule. Group meetings like AA. Therapy group sessions. Individual sessions. Daily activities. This place was at the maximum-security prison in Mineral Point, Missouri. Potosi Correctional Center. So every day that the weather allowed we got to go outside for an hour. Which meant, every day, right there in plain sight, the prison where they execute people in the state of Missouri stood as a sign, a symbol, a reminder; our lives were on the line. Gun tower. Double row fence with razor wire. To my small-town redneck ass, it was literally right out of a movie. 

The guard who noticed my hands. He was friendly. An older guy. He would crack jokes with some of us and talk shit in that way that guys do. There wasn't any meanness to him. It was the same then as it has always been for me; certain people are just drawn to me or seem to always end up in my story. I’m referring to the fact that for whatever reason this guy paid attention to me. Just so happened, he was also good “friends” with my case worker, who was this older white lady, with a degree in psychology. Just what I needed let me tell you.

Naturally, a bit later, after being pulled out of the lunch line I get called into her office. I don’t really remember the conversation. I don’t know why it happened, the panic attack that is. I could tell you exactly why it happened the first time, but the second time was, and still is, unknown to me. What I do remember though, and with a sense of dread, because I knew it was going in my file, was her telling me that I had an anxiety disorder. I knew right then, I was being labeled. I think maybe from their perspective they were feeling sorry for me. Taking pity. This woman knew things about me because in our group sessions we had to talk about our lives, and the things we had been through that got us into trouble. 

It is still to this day a common tale. A theme. A pattern. Something that has been happening to me all my life. It reads: Something is wrong with me. She was telling me, directly, that something was wrong with me, and calling it an anxiety disorder. One by the way, that such a person would say I still have. 

Let’s review that play though shall we. Let’s look at this scenario from a much broader perspective. A more educated one. One with a bit more wisdom maybe, than these people had. 

I had been subjected to terrific violence at a very young age. I had been subjected to horrific violence for the first decade of my life. This had been coupled with magnificent emotional abuse at the hands of a completely narcissistic mother, who in the depths of her heart pretty much hated me for being born. I had been picked on by nearly everyone in life. Then, on top of that, I’m sitting in a ridiculously stressful situation, facing many years in prison, having it constantly held over my head, while going outside everyday looking the thing in the eyes.

How in the fuck could I not have been having panic attacks? How in the fuck could I have not just been absolutely filled to the brim with anxiety? Before even getting into that 120-shock program I had already had other inmates threatening my life. I had almost beat one of them to death for threatening me. I had already been locked in a room with murderers, rapists, and legit gang bangers. I had people constantly telling me about all the bad things that were going to happen to me in prison because I was so young. I hadn’t even made it to actual prison yet! What the actual fuck?

I say, something would have been very wrong with me; if I had not been having panic attacks. 

Do you understand the words coming out of my fingertips? They were saying something was wrong with me for being exactly what I should have been! Not kind of. Not a little bit. Exactly! Precisely.

From my perspective I seem to be a bit of a paradox. I’ve had all the same issues humans have, but there has always been something about me that has been solid. Some inner thing, where I’ve always stood my ground. Even though, as I’ve grown and matured, and found out I wasn't exactly right about who I thought I was, I was, and am, always doing this thing about standing solidly on mine. I don’t know exactly how to say it. Something like this story. I’ve always known I’m fucked up, but I somehow inherently knew, that is exactly what I should be. I seem to have been born this way.

My mother is a perfect example of someone who must always pretend to be other than she is. She is what we would call unredeemable. She isn’t ever going to come to terms with it. She cannot bear to sit in what a despicable person she is. Because of this she will always be just that. She can't afford to face just how terrible of a human being she has been.

My girl often talks to me about the people she has to work with, and the defects of character they have. She knows about their lives, and the crazy things they do because they talk about all that at work. Most everything they are doing revolves around this central problem; this inability to sit in what it really is. Mostly ignorant, stupid, and degenerate. 

People don’t want to hear that, much less feel it, and so they do all these other things to avoid it. 

People say they want to change. They want to be better. Improve etc. But the only way to really do that at a core level. The only way to do that meaningfully, is to first be exactly what one is, regardless of however fucked up that may happen to be. I think they call this being authentic.

When you want to be other than you are, in order to not actually be what you are: you are being a fake person. I’ll say it another way. If you change yourself, because you don’t like who you are, without first being who you are, you just end up a different kind of fake. You still will not feel whole. You will still not feel complete. You will not have actually solved your problem. You will still not be an authentic person.

This has been happening to me all my life. This thing where for whatever reason people are telling me something is wrong with me. But I was horribly abused as a child, so yes, of course, something is very wrong with me. But if I think to myself, man, I shouldn't be this way, then I am just doing to myself what everyone else is doing to me. If I think to myself that I shouldn’t be the way that I actually should be, then I am trapping myself mentally. I am at that exact moment creating inside myself an endless inescapable suffering. There is no end to that. 

The end to it, is simply being. This of course is ridiculously easy to say, and I have already admitted that for whatever reason there has always been something about me that has allowed me to stand on this solid ground. In the land of all these fake people, it has made me a mountain in comparison. I think this is an acceptable metaphor because so few are willing to climb the mountain that is authenticity.

For instance, did you know that I almost always, all my life, have just wanted to die. Maybe you just had a reaction to that statement? Highly likely with a whole lot of people who, if they read that sentence, would have all manner of reactions about how that isn’t good. Or that I shouldn’t be, or feel that way, etc. They'd be saying some dumb version of everyone should be happy. Everyone deserves to be happy. blah blah blah. But I beg to differ. Just like in the story above: why wouldn’t I feel that way? I got a long list of reasons to not ever feel happy.

It seems to me that the difference between me, and most, is that I simply don’t judge myself for it. I don’t think it shouldn’t be. I'm not upset that I am upset. I don’t try to change it, or escape it, well, permanently at least. I have also felt a deep rage all my life that no one else wanted to deal with, or feel themselves, or even look at. I, though, have always known my rage is righteous, and deserved, earned. My rage has been exactly as it should be. I have never once for a second thought I shouldn’t be filled to the brim with rage. That’s been a defining quality of my life. Something would be terribly wrong if I did not have all that rage.

I can’t even imagine how fucked up I would be in life, if I had put my life into someone else’s hands so to speak. Like a therapist or psychiatrist, and had them telling me I shouldn't have anxiety, or rage, or feel suicidal. If i had taken their medications. If I had let them trick me into the never ending loop of trying to “fix” myself. 

This is the Central Problem; the inability to sit in the shit of one’s own life. I could tell you all the good things that come from doing it, but it honestly can’t be explained. It is an experience. It’s not something you can just intellectualize. The typical person is so far removed from authenticity they can’t comprehend it. Maybe that’s you? That is probably you. As a child you were told how to be, and now as an adult you are doing it to yourself.

Maybe that's how I should have said it earlier. Even as a child I could not be told what to do. They tried to beat it out of me even, to no avail.

Look around. Look at what is happening. They fuck it all up. They fuck everyone up with the shit they do. They fucked you up. Then they turn and say, something is wrong with you! Then you turn around and do it too!

Shame on you!

This guy at work. He’s always going on and on about how stupid other people are. One day, he’s going on about deer hunting, and how stupid the people at the department of conservation are for some rule they made, or some change in the hunting season or some shit. I just smile and listen. Then a little later he’s getting his lunch ready. I walk over to him, and I say, “Bro, I’m about to hurt your feelings, are you ready for it?” He says, “Sure, let me have it.” I say to him, “Bro, imagine sitting over here eating these cheap ass junk food burritos out of a microwave, when you know you got health problems, talking about how stupid someone else is.” 

Then I just walk off. 

He still hasn’t wrapped his mind around it. How stupid he is. He’s too busy worrying about how stupid everyone else is, so he doesn’t have to look at his own.