i can't help but think of diana ross and the 'supremes' when i hear that word. stop, in the name of love... supreme. supremely.
i can't even imagine what 'supreme happiness' looks like or feels like. but i think that's what every addict is searching for. supreme happiness. that first buzz, that orgasm, that rush of adrenaline that somehow told us there was more. that there was something 'out there' that we weren't experiencing. and i think we chase that our whole lives.
supreme. i also think of pizza hut and their 'super supreme' pizza. supreme wasn't enough - we must make it super. i've had it, it's not. but somehow in our minds we think that supreme is achievable in this life, and we're gonna be the ones to find it.
i tell my therapist regularly that i'm too smart to feel so bad. feeling the emotions that i bottled or stuffed for so many years just seems absolutely brainless to me. running from them, eating them away, escaping them through addiction - that seems like it's a much better alternative than actually feeling crappy.
it's pouring rain outside, just pouring. to me feeling feelings is like standing out in the middle of that rain naked. 'duh, go get some clothes on and get out of the rain dumb ass'. but i have found that running from those emotions only leads to more pain. facing them and feeling them shrinks them down to size.
before i 'remembered' the rape i was so overcome with fear that i thought my life would implode. i truly thought that life as i knew it would be over. i mean looking at where i was when i was 'not dealing with it' proved i was just incapable of remembering. that i was too fragile for remembering and reality.
facing that fear shrunk it down to normal size. remembering it was still horrible, but it wasn't life shattering. that damage had truly already been done. remembering and facing it didn't make it happen all over again.
have you ever returned to a place that was larger than life in your childhood memories? i remember in grade school we had an enormous, vast gymnasium with huge oak beams that stretched on forever. when i stepped in there as an adult i was shocked at how very small that gym really was.
facing our fears is like that. the overwhelming fear of childhood memories shrink to normal size when we shine the light of adulthood on them. really they do, they are still horrible, but normal sized, not that huge, vast, overwhelming size that our childhood perspective gave to them.
children are such concrete thinkers that those memories are etched in stone and because we were never given the tools to deal with them they overwhelm us. many times to the point of breaking them away from our active memory into a safe place in our minds that is stored for later, when we are given the tools and the support to deal with them.
so i ran from those fearsome emotions to try to find supreme happiness. karl marx truly had no idea what religion really was - opiate? try guilt monger, shame inducer - opiate - nope, doesn't work. i found my own opiate, thank you very much.
i know that i just put up a lewis quote, but i truly think this excerpt from the great divorce explains much more eloquently what i'm trying to say:
'Son,' he said, 'ye cannot in your present state understand eternity: when Anodos looked through the door of the Timeless he brought no message back. But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven," and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.'
Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce, a Dream. HarperSanFrancisco, (c)1946, 1973, 2001, p. 69.
dear father, give me eternal perspective on my fears and emotions, my pain and my suffering. turn them into heaven here, not in a sappy churchy way, but truly, in my heart remind me that you don't waste anything. amen.
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