How Dark is Dark

My friend asks me, "How am I right and they're wrong?" What is my responsibility? How do I respond to my friend?  I can at least say what is not my job. It is not my responsibility to tell them what makes them different, why she's better, what makes "them" wrong. It is not for me to react or take personally their hurts or fears.  It is my responsibility to ask questions, "why do you ask?" or "what do you think?" or "is that the best question?" At least, to work through the question myself, before I give any definitive answers. I'm honored when I'm asked directly a question, because that means that someone is looking for my opinion, so it's tempting to answer directly (maybe my head/ego is a bit puffed up) as that's easiest.  At the most, is to help them see the bigger picture. I personally don't comprehend the complete picture perhaps (read: probably) but I can try help my friend see past "me&qu

What I've been medicating all along has just been normal feelings. I developed an addiction in order to avoid my normal feelings and emotions. This addiction allows me to avoid my feelings by distracting me temporarily from dark hurts that I don't want to feel. This doesn't deal with the hurt, it only pushes it away, but it does feel better for a time. There is guilt and shame associated with addiction, it's clearly not the healthy helpful way to cope with the dark hurts on the inside; the interior world is uncharted territory and therefore even more intimidating a place to venture into. It feels like it's better to just leave what's inside inside and what's outside outside. Today I felt this specifically. Thinking about my childhood. I was treated well. But I still hurt. What I'm hurting from are normal emotions that I've never confronted. I have almost never dealt appropriately with perfectly normal hurts and feels. I've been systematically

"They must admit they did not receive the love and nurture they needed, and many of the messages they learned may have been wrong." (Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction, Laaser, 2004) I may have been loved and nurtured, but maybe not in a way that I needed. I was read to, hugged, told I was loved, given what I asked, disciplined accordingly, and given a healthy diet. My parents loved me, and they still love me. Maybe though, the love they showed and gave me, lived out, wasn't exactly  what I needed, or what I now need. To love someone exactly as they need is an impossible expectation to assume from someone who is perhaps doing their best, given the circumstances of their life and my responses to their love. It is difficult in the very least to Know the perfect response to a child's hurts and joys. To love exactly as needed is to have the "right" response, when someone is crying, how to comfort, and how much, and when, and what words to say, and what

"How dark is dark" was a fortune cookie one of my friends Jeremy opened a few years back. It was at a birthday party with a few other friends. It made us all laugh, and it challenged our conceptions of words, thoughts, and ... darkness. The philosophy of darkness is a weird thing.  We tend to think of darkness like a bad, looming thing. That we have to fight it, be against it, or run away from it. Unless we face it, acknowledge it, and question it, it will tend to have a hold on us (me) and we'll see it as 'other'. I have darkness within me. Unless I confront it, it'll cause me to feel like I'm not whole; like I'm not good enough because I have this within me.  But that's not true , and it's not helpful .  I, like everyone, am not a bad person, but I have bad things inside. No one is inherently bad, we just have "bad", and easily avoid it. Running away, it creates more and more division. There's more space between myself and

Along the way, I decided to express myself. It's not very easy for me, and I've decided now is when I'd like to do it, using as many conjunctions as possible. I'm interested in expressing the deeper feelings and thoughts that I have bottled up, and, knowing that I'm an expert of avoiding and pretending, need to find someway to let them out. Here and now. How Dark is Dark? I hope to use and abuse my life's experiences to bring clarity to issues in our daily lives:  hurt relationships overwhelming addictions finding reason (and working through different philosophies) pursuing purpose living with and without faith confronting fears learning to love loving to hate living with anger avoiding racism embracing politics accepting differences I'm no expert, but I hope to be as honest as I can, while trying not to get lost in the "words" of it. Words are the current medium, but they're the finger pointing to reality, not reality itself