The virtue of living Alone and Free.

As I sit this morning with a cup of coffee in hand, sipping the heavenly brew slowly, thoughts run rampant through my mind knocking against the walls of my head, causing mayhem... tipping over old thoughts, creating new ones, adding and subtracting the good the bad and the ugly... nothing adds up to equal the standard two plus two.... I have, over the years, created what I would call a palace. But it is not beautiful or lovely to look upon.. it is built upon practicality... built with a foundation of stone. That foundation of rock of the roughest of grades has withstood the many storms that shook the ground so violently that the walls came crashing down to splinter against that stone....Debris litters the ground... Some has been gathered up to begin the rebuilding of my protection against the elemental evil of others. Oh, some evil is just momentary and fleeting... perhaps a mark upon the walls or a blown in door. Some marks are left by cunning hurtful words or the neglectful actions of loved ones... the marks never leave but they do fade with time and each one is framed for future reference, for future change. True evil exists within a rare percentage of the population... I do believe that good lives within everyone and that when pushed to do the right thing, the right choice is made... to do good and not to do harm. This makes up the larger portion of the population. Despite being in the lower percentile, the tragedy is that true evil leaves a wide trail of destruction. Like a top level tornado they move across the landscape of peoples minds and blow through it like so much tissue paper, leaving the victim with nothing left but the wreckage. I have met evil more than a few times in my lifetime. I will not list them here but suffice it to say that I have given years of my life to 4 or 5 specific people that, upon hearing the story one would shiver in distaste and fear. In each of these people (beginning as a young child) lives a damaged, broken child that lashes out in rage against the ones that hurt them. No one and nothing would mean enough to hurt them ever again. In comparison to the protective refuge I built in my mind.... they have a fortress with turrets, a teeming-with-hideous-monsters moat and burning hot oil ready to spill over onto the nearest victim at any given moment. Booby traps, land mines and triggers lay willy-nilly on the land around this fortress and no one, not even the monsters themselves know exactly where these traps lay. The blackest of nights lays round about this distorted, disorderly and chaotic landscape. We, the empaths... we, the compassionate...we, the nurturing, bring light into that landscape for a short time. If that light happens to shine upon something tender and hurting and volatile, hell erupts and extinguishes that bright loving luminescence.

You see my dears, the true light of love is painful. It exposes the dark, the dirty, the perverted; the gaping, seeping, weeping wounds and sores that lay within the minds of the truly broken creatures that we believe(d) can/could be loved. Oh they need your love, your bright radiance... for a time it makes them feel alive and salves the wounds... calms the beast that lives within. Until.... Until it alights upon a secret perversion that we should be ok with... they just want to live life after all... Until it comes into contact with the titanium walls of their fortress... they need our nurturing spirit... but they will not allow the walls to be breached. Until they run it into the ground, smash all your walls down, smother the gleaming light that is an integral part of your being. While this brings them joy, it also runs opposite to what they truly need... As I have written in previous posts, they are the creators of their own destruction.

It is so counter productive to everything that they need and want but will not allow themselves to have. They cannot stop the hurtling destructive storm within as they would not have the continuous adrenaline rush of a new relationship, a new body.. a new and different supply of love... that rush of infatuation, that rush of lust for someone else and the knowledge that they are wanted, needed... As this new feeling wanes they go back to looking, all whilst alongside the new supply. All under the nose of the newest victim... God help us.... the destruction, the incredible waste they leave behind them blows the mind. I would rather live alone with nothing than be back under the roof of this particular monster. It is instant and insidious... the evil seeps in and a new campaign of terror and beat downs begin. I feel for the new supply currently being worked on, I would not wish the war coming on my worst enemy. Dear hearts... you are lonely, sad, hurting but you will heal. The only missing parts are the horror, the fear, the trauma.... Don't go back to that... dredge up the memories as hurtful as they are... dredge them up and watch them in technicolor until you remember why you left, why you ran for your life. You ran for your sanity.... what was left of it. You ran for your safety... didn't they threaten to maim, kill, beat you? You ran for the family you rarely got to enjoy, you ran for the ones in your life that truly love all that you are, all that you bring to the table. Speaking of what we bring to the table... what do they bring to the table? Why not sit down everyday and write down one item.. just one.. that you bring to the table and one that they bring. You will find that what you begin to write down for the man/woman who hurt you are not positive virtues... sadly no.

anger...rages...mean words...verbal abuses....physical abuses....lies...betrayals...cheating...

I'll leave that list there for you to add to... remember this dear hearts, the positives you saw were a mirror of you. Or at the very best, the positives were momentary glimpses of someone they could have been, or could be but will never allow to reign supreme in their psyches. The fear of being hurt is too large to overcome and so the dark wolf remains the alpha.

A story from the Cherokee Indian Tradition and it goes like this: An old grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with raging anger at a friend, “I too have felt great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison into your own body and wishing your enemy would suffer and die. It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is kind and understanding and does no harm; it works to benefit the entire pack. He lives in harmony with all around and does not take offense or plot revenge. His heart is open and available to the Great Spirit. The other wolf is always vengeful, vicious and full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone and for no reason. He kills without cause or remorse. He cannot think because his resentment, anger and hate are so great. His heart is closed to the Great Spirit. Sometimes it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me. Both of them try to dominate my Spirit.” The boy looked with amazement into this wise man’s eyes and asked, “Which one wins, Grandfather?” The grandfather smiled and said, “The one that wins—is the one I feed.”

The person that we loved with every breath has closed his heart to the Great Spirit, and did so many, many years before as a child. They have had a lifetime of feeding the vengeful, vicious wolf and know no other way despite preying and targeting those that bring light and life into his dark existence and seeing the example they set. They hate it, all while needing it.

God keep you safe dear hearts and remember hate only hurts us, and I for one do not want to ever step into that world of darkness again by action or by deed. Ever.