What is Freedom?

Wow, looking at those older posts I see a really raw nature...I feel it. That was me writing those things down. So much rolling through my mind at that time that needed to be burped out I guess. As the buddhists might say my internal and external wounds had finally worn through to one another and the result was a beautiful process called hitting bottom. I remember total devastation of my being. Everything I had been protecting my whole life had been violently ripped from my grasp. I didn't have the energy and sufficient will to hang on anymore. One thing was certain, I no longer welcomed death as a solution to my problems...I was scared to die and conversely, scared to live. To die meant that I was too much of a coward to face the inner problems that I had created for myself. You see, I had an inability to ask for advice because I always lived under the dogma that to ask for help was to admit weakness which was to admit total defeat...the paradigm I had created wouldn't allow for total defeat. The sane of the world refer to total defeat as surrender...cease fighting anything and anyone. So, to live meant that I was going to have to ask for help.

Help wasn't a part of my vocabulary prior to this meeting of two wounds...physical addiction and an inadequate spirituality. Spirituality will be defined as Webster does with "thinking on a higher plane." Nothing more, nothing less.

I felt as if I was a living B movie...wandering the desert with cracked lips and lizard skin chasing an apparition I interpreted as my soul. It would turn to speak, utter something barely audible and continue on. I followed this thing that I have since interpreted as my last attachment to sanity...I knew this was it...and this was a full day after my last chemical intake. I'm sure some of you are curious as to what I was using. The usual suspects; caffeine, nicotine, methamphetamine, cocaine, alcohol. My body loves that stuff. Make me go fast. Make me able to deal with my cracked thinking. Make me able to live in my delusion...not illusion...not denial...delusion.

Functional, you bet. High functioning. So high I thought I was actually functioning.

Oh where was I? Oh yeah, help. I was so consumed with my own insanity that I knew I needed help but I couldn't conceptualize of how to go about it. I was so crazy that I didn't know how to walk into a hospital and say I am crazy as hell, can you help me? Crazy doesn't know. What to do? I did what any sane kid would have done years before. I called my mom.

Mom-What's up? Me-Mom, how do you admit yourself? Mom-Bad day huh? Insert Laugh. I honestly couldn't wait to go to a hospital, eat handfuls of pills and have people decide what was wrong with me. The Universe had other plans. My step-dad was there that night after a 7 hour drive to help me get my stuff together with the offer to come stay in a fifth-wheel at their house. I say step-dad with pride. He has no biological tie to me...yet he dropped everything to help. Says a lot. A friend of my folks had quite a lot of experience with my experience. He sat and listened to me for an hour or two and then informed me that hospitals were quite expensive and sometimes really hard to get out of. He said he knew of a group of people using a method which was often effective and much less expensive. I went. I identified. I went to work. They helped me prioritize my work. Here I am. Free. Free from addiction. Free from the bondage of self. Free.