Blue Pill Red Pill

I've spent most of my life wanting to die. I don't say that with dramatic flair, just as fact. I've even hurt myself a few times, once or twice in an attempt to take my own life. I've always thought if someone really wanted to kill themselves they would succeed, those are the people who slit their wrist or jump off a bridge or shoot themselves. I didn't do any of those things, I didn't actually want to die just wanted the pain to end and I knew no other way. Life was always too much for me.

I think the most dangerous combination is when one has a sensitive soul and a 'knowing' about the justice of things without the ability to discern where one should stand in life. I used to say I grew up invisible but that's not true, invisible means no boundaries but since I'm human I inherently have boundaries. I grew up with little thought given to 'me' by my family. My meaning and care dissolved in a world that revolved around my retarded brother, his seizures, his violence, his pain. My humanity was trampled by my angry and mean father who controlled the universe with his furious and demeaning declarations that everyone was a stupid idiot except him. My heart learned to close by the time I was three or four when it was clear my parents found me more of an annoyance then a lovable being.

So my soul was formed by pain, by incredible sadness that day to day life consisted of not mattering, not knowing what to do or how to do anything save one thing, react in life or death situations. I was calm and competent when I would find my brother lying unconscious in a pool of blood, or when he would go missing for hours because my parents would let him roam the neighborhood and then would send me looking for him; or when the boys next door tortured him by locking him in a big rabbit cage and he almost died because of his asthma and he couldn't breathe; or the time they held his hand under a magnifying glass in the burning sun to watch his skin burn; or the time they forced him to eat snails; or the many trips to the emergency room for stitches and listening to his scream like an animal, or witnessing his weekly tantrums where he would tear his room apart like a man on PCP or grab my mother's fingers and bend them so far back I waited for them to snap; or the time he had a seizure next to our pool and I watched as he floated to the bottom, dying, until I was sure he was on his last second of life and I had no option but to jump in a get him. And always my dad was gone, working, unable to handle the daily traumas that made up my life. These are the things I learned to be calm about. No, I would not panic, I prided myself, and still do, on my ability never to panic, externally at least.

My mind, my subconscious knew only hurt, and sadness, and not being loved and not being someone who mattered in the least. There was no goodness in my home, no hope, no hope of anything. Nothing was ever going to get better because Michael was never going to get better, ever. In the first 12 years of my life when he lived at home it never once got better, things only always got worse. In fact they got so bad my parents finally realized he could no longer live at home with us. But by the time I was 12 the damage was done. There was only one thing that let me know that hope existed in the world, even as a concept, and that one thing was a book. The first book I ever read with a hero. It was the 'Black Stallion'. My soul grabbed onto the hero, Alec, onto the conflict of overcoming extreme adversity, of fighting for your dream to come about only to have something get in the way of it. I lived Alec's plight in every cell of my body, I was Alec, and in my ability to disassociate from my world of pain and enter the world of hero, I found hope. I lived his fight, I lived his fear and his decision to overcome, but most importantly I lived his triumph as if it were my own. I devoured all 10 or so books with the fierceness of a dying man hanging onto life by his fingernails. I was so in his world that I believe my body and mind didn't know that it wasn't actually me. I lived Alec's dream at night when I would go to bed, during the day when I daydreamed too much pain away, on endless weekend days when my dog and I would roam quietly around our neighborhood, looking for an escape route from a dark and dirty world that was my home on Vanowen Street.

The hope of that story lodged itself in my cells and soon I was making up stories the only time I had complete freedom, at night as I lie in bed. Every night was a new story that transformed a quiet girl into an extraordinary hero that set her free from the contraints of pain, of past, of family. Every night I lived that break from reality for much of my life and it alone got me through.

As a child my brain developed with more pain then I was capable of handling and I learned to disassociate, easily. I thank god for my first hero, a little boy who rode a wild black stallion, because it gave me somewhere to go that was good, that was pure, that was happy. That's all I wanted to be was those three things, good, pure, happy, I felt none of those things in my house.

I believed I was badly tainted, at the soul level, the darkness in my home made me feel like I was a bad person. I was angry and I didn't know why. I felt so much pain all the time and I didn't understand why. I can honestly say I lived with frustration almost every second of every day because I knew what I was living with was not mine and I couldn't reconcile why I had it. I had little ability to think clearly - the fog was overwhelming and mind numbing. I was sure I was just stupid, defective, every instance of not understanding was just more evidence of how worthless a human being I was.

It's too much to write here about the life that resulted. The constant betraying of my soul because I didn't know how to honor it, it's substance suspect because it was never able to fully develop, led me in constant battle to want to be 'good' but believing I was inherently 'bad'. But it was the 'knowing' that there was more, that I could be more, but that 'normal' lives that people led did not hold the answer for me - so I would not choose that normalcy as my guide, I would always rather choose the Red Pill. Even though for much of my life it was extreme and out of control, I'm glad I chose Red over Blue.

I lived a life where all I did was react out of what I was left with as a child, post traumatic stress and disassociation. The world was a place where I waited for the next tragedy to happen and I looked for people who would help me deal with the next one, who would somehow 'fix' that missing piece in me that couldn't deal with the world. My partners would fall madly in love with me and then one day I would disassociate when they didn't fix my world and I couldn't remember that I loved them, or why...and then would begin the downward spiral. More humiliating situations then I could ever recall here.

It has been a long and arduous life. And while I ALWAYS felt like there was an answer to my problem it was always just out of my reach, it was there, I could feel it with the faith one believes in their most steadfast truth, but I could never get to it. And finally I accepted it would be forever out of my reach and the best I would be able to do was just try and get as healthy as I could emotionally and then learn to watch myself for bad or unacceptable behavior and 'moderate' myself, like living with a disease you have to take medicine for. I accepted that would be my fate. Pain and angst were simply normal, but I could put a pretty good face on it, for awhile.

Then in 2002 I did the Landmark Forum and for the first time I realized I was normal; everyone was fucked up! It was powerful and I left with a calm I never knew. It changed something cellular about how I saw myself and others. It gave me tools to deal with how I 'be' in the world. Landmark is about learning to create 'possibility' in your life; it's about having what you want. For the first time I actually felt 'normal' - and I started to live a 'sane' life. Suddenly I had new friends because I was able to be authentic with people and people liked that! The quality of my life and my daughter's life improved 1000 fold. It was a miracle. And it lasted for almost 6 months.

See the problem is we really are just machines run by our subconscious programming. As soon as something showed up that triggered my old routines all my old feelings came back, the angst, the confusion, and I realized while I had some new 'tools' I didn't have the answer that I was seeking. I went back to Landmark, class after class, I learned to put on that Landmark 'face' that all is well and I am supremely confident and capable, but inside I was still the same old me.

One of the ways I knew something was still very wrong was that at times I still wanted to die. Not like I was going to do anything about it, I just wanted to leave the planet. Again, no dramatics, I didn't call friends crying about my life or sit alone in my home unable to get out of bed, I functioned just fine thank you very much. But I didn't want to be on this fucking stupid planet with all the people who could just go about their lives as though nothing was wrong when we all know everything is wrong. I could engage in that world for awhile but come on, a person has their limits.

So life went. And always there in the background was one positive thing, the concept of hero was there. That hope, that knowing that it's a real thing that exists, in fact the only thing that really matters, wanting that for myself, in myself, and still not knowing how to get there. Sure, get a good education and go get a great job and make lots of money and have 2.3 children and go on vacation twice a year and have a beautiful wife/life/husband. And people will think you have it all. But I always wondered, what is heroic in that?

So how synchronistic that I'm watching the Matrix again and I’m in a conversation about heroes yesterday and I'm reminded of that is what got me through life. And so I spend hours writing today.

Ok, but back to my story. So what happened next? Yes, just machines, subconscious programming, even Landmark will tell you that. I had to change my programming. I went to Don. That's an old boring story, just a bunch of hard mental/emotional work. Not so sexy. Especially those times I sat on his couch and faced the devil. Okay, that's a little sexy, I'll expound. There were maybe 3-4 times when I came face to face with the most screwed up me. It's that place in your psyche where the 'twist' happened that had you become who you are. Its impact for me was like....imagine through a strange series of events you one day realize you were abducted by aliens, how freaky would that be?!! Okay or you've been a schizophrenic your entire life but don't know it and then one day you know it. Okay one more; like in that movie The Notebook, the woman comes out of her Alzheimer's just long enough to know that she has it. But for me it was getting on the most core level of who I am that I had certain 'things' like disassociation, like PTSD, like general huge ‘fuckedupness’ but more getting, all at once, the impact it had on my life. Like if someone could throw a whole movie into your consciousness and all at once you get the impact of every single word and gesture and meaning and nuance and action. It's overwhelming. Those times I sat on his couch literally unable to speak as I saw what had happened to me and how I had lived, what I had done to myself as a result of it. Until his gentle voice suggested I come twice a week for a month or so. One of those 'unable to speak episodes' was realizing I lived my entire life in Crazytown, that is all I knew and the only thing I knew how to choose was 'Crazy'. Really getting that was one of the most liberating things in my entire life because I really did think I must've been crazy to life the life that I had lived. Who would choose the things that I had? To know that was all I knew how to choose started my journey out of Crazytown.

Now is not the time to write about how hard it was. But here is a story of what happened one day. I was walking down the street and it started to show up, the confusion, the angst, the pain. And the most miraculous thing happened. My brain said 'no'. Just 'no'. Just didn't have to go that way. The miraculous thing was that I had a CHOICE. There was no voice of god, no vision of some distant guiding light. I had become integrated, solid, and I had choice. It was just getting out of the Matrix. You can tell I just re-watched the movie ;o) The Matrix is control, a computer generated dreamworld meant to keep us under control. Or your parents own fucked up life fucking up your life. Whatever, it's all the same. Everything is meant to take your choice away - and that's what I felt my whole life...I was so screwed up I truly didn't have choice. One day, choice showed up, and I played inside of 'choice' and then power showed up. And the next thing I knew, my life was forever altered.

There is more I can write about that but not right now. I just want to say what's there now.

What I want for myself is to push past all the limits that I've always had, and that's a tall order. There are four main things: I've had limits around what kind of person I can be, both mentally and physically, what I can do in the world, how much money I can make, and what kind of relationship I can be in. I've set new standards for myself.

Maybe it's just that hero thing that screams to climb its way out of my cells, but I still refuse to live the 'normal' life. To me a hero picks something to stand for and then holds it steadfast in the face of incredible doubt and fear and that's what I've always wanted, to know I'm the kind of person who can actually choose freely and then simply deal with herself around getting it. Oh, and not just to get it, but to get it in an extraordinary way. Ordinary sucks the life out of me.

I felt compelled to write this for a few reasons. The time off work has helped me refocus, fucking jobs have a way of shutting out what's really important. The Matrix and my conversation yesterday reminds me the importance of hero. And lastly, it's just really good to remind myself of the possibility of the future.

Both Landmark and the Matrix are about possibility - in fact the 1st movie ends with something about that's what each human being needs, possibility. Possibility gives you something to live inside of, to guide you. I've always just been driven by 'avoiding' - staving off the bad shit. I don't live in that place anymore. So if I don't live there, and I don't live in 'normal' where does that leave me?

Well, it's actually extraordinary to stand in this new place and feel power around it when just earlier this year I was so lost and confused and sometimes still wishing it would all end. This place is not transient, not the result of a 'good mood' - because I have bad moods and sometimes sad moods and still my foundation is strong. Sometimes I have to deal with myself for a few hours like last night, but I can do it. The thing that's gone is 'crazy'. Life is pretty damn good without crazy.

Where it all leaves me is wanting the feeling of being a hero, of dealing with big things in life, it's almost embarrassing to say. The capeless kind of hero is so unsexy, and clearly I love sexy. I also have a choice to just go on from here and get in a nice relationship and get a better job, you know, the Blue Pill. But I really do believe I'm an extraordinary person and I would rather set a scary goal and do that, like write a book or move away, or hold onto the possibility that I will have the most extraordinary relationship of a lifetime. The kind based on honor and integrity and crazy deep love where you just look at each other with a knowing so deep that this is exactly the person you are supposed to be with and together your world is so complete and strong that inside of that you grow stronger together and separately yet you don't grow apart. And you wake up and feel the love you have for the one who lies next to you in bed with such fierceness you could cry and when it's just too much to take you make love and maybe cry anyway because you're so happy you're capable of so much love and you found someone who loves you the same way. And then you drink coffee and talk about where you would like to live the next six months. Ok, so that's a big fantasy but I call it a possibility and that's where I choose to live. Call me crazy, I don't mind anymore.

There are many people who have no hope today. So you start with gratitude, with what you have. You have car that gets you places, you are so damn lucky. You make more money then most actually doing what you want and you have a HOUSE for god's sake. And you don't have to worry about a sniper or a suicide bomber, you get to carelessly go the store and buy what you want. You are beautiful and strong and have at your disposal REAL help, and real help is hard to find as you know. The next many months I guarantee you not be pretty and you WILL spin for awhile and/or face ugliness that seems unbearable...but it is not. So you get to think about leaving the country and you can even say it as you did but you do not get to do that, you do not get to leave without going through the process that you will not find available to you in another land. You will not be the Neo who took the Blue Pill. You are one of the few who actually has the ability to hold so much precious but more to create yourself how you dream you can be. You are one of the few who can actually live an extraordinary life and find happiness that is not fleeting (as you mistakenly think) but rather has a place in your core that lives like any other cell in your body and is steadfastly there, like it has become for me, even if it takes a couple hours to bring it back sometimes.

So just go through the process and then leave if you want. But there is a Red Pill with your name on it so fucking take it already and get in the rabbit hole and stand for the life that you claim you want - which is different then taking the road out of Dodge. Don't let your job dick you around so that you miss appointments, just do what you need to do and your life will turn out. You know, the actual work that you have to do is SO doable, you're really one of the lucky ones. In probably about 2 months you could stop living the fractured life you feel you're living, if you really worked at it.

I'm really not sure I want to know what you think or that you've even read this, if you do. One way or the other you'll know that I will never stop standing for you to have the life you want whatever it is as long as it’s a real and honest true CHOICE. You're lucky you know, because I'm a powerful woman to have on your side. But I'm on your side because of who you are. So get going.