Living

My Counsellor asked me the other day, “how did you do it?” Can you tell me in your own words how it is that you have *Survived and come this far in such a short time, what do you think is it that made it possible?

Well firstly this seems like its taking forever and also that I have just begun.

Thinking about it like “how did you do it?” is strange for me - did what? I am still doing it! It often feels like this is somebody else’s life I am watching happen right before my very eyes. The passing parade of high highs and sometimes deathly lows, the most amazingly clear days, those incredibly sad days and the full-on laughs I have still afforded myself along the way.

So much seems to happen so fast in my life and it’s always been that way. It’s full on and everything changes all the time, god I change all the time! Yet I often forget how far I have come and end up feeling like I am getting nowhere fast. But I am at the beginning of my journey not the end and that's the best thing about it.... All the good things life has to offer is ahead of me now,
if I choose to create it that way, and I do.
The best part is the rest of my life.

So much has happened recently, A wife and two children with a short failed marriage, the loss of four children two leaving with my wife, one being terminated and the other one being an eptopic pregnancy.

Police arrests and fights with them, sickness benefit and anti depressants, panic attacks and repeated hospital visits, prostitution and feelings of unworthiness and more child abuse coming to light again.

Getting into prostitution and thinking that if all those people who booked me, wanted me, then surely I must be beautiful desirable and needful - Surely I must be ok worth something. Yet it often left me feeling even colder, unloved and more degraded than I already felt. I got to see and here a lot of other people’s pain, which helped me put my own into some kind of context. I became their listener lover comforter and ego booster, and with some of them friend.

The common theme through prostitution was that these people wanted to be loved. But either didn’t think they “looked” good enough on the outside to attract anyone of any real substance, didn’t deserve or wouldn’t be able to keep anyone or anything good if it did present itself. Or didn’t feel they got the love and understanding they needed from their wives lovers and friends. Also that they couldn’t be themselves (express themselves truthfully – to speak from the heart center) with the people they loved - their friends.
The secrets I got to here.

It did give me a greater understanding of people and their desperate need to be loved, but it made me so sad. All those people hiding their true feelings and trying to full their emptiness with a temporary rush of lust, constantly looking without for something to fill the void within – me included. In fact I was always looking for something to give me a quick fix!

Flashbacks and the realization that this wasn’t just something that had happened to my sisters who I love dearly, but that its was happening to me as well.

Drugs - lots of drugs sometimes! Alcohol and spinning out trying to kill myself, losing it with my mum and going to the police about dad, loving him as I did to prove a point to her - make no mistake take me seriously mum, a show of strength.

Shortly after doing that my dad’s successful suicide and the family’s pain. My pain and confusion, a two year relationship with a very patient boyfriend, my job as a Drug outreach worker, and my incredible relationship with the most insightful and amazingly beautiful person I know both inside and out – my sister Laurel.
This is just an outline I might add (I left all the juicy bits out!)

So yes I have been busy and it is a wonder that any of us have survived this and hey the jury isn’t all back in yet either!

So how have I made it this far?

Well I don’t know that it is something I can accredit to one thing. There are many things that have helped me along the way and that I have come to know about myself. So I will start by stating the most obvious one, strength.

Strength - I have always had it even though I often feel weak. I some how managed to keep telling myself that I was special and that one day people would really see me and realize this too. As a child I felt invisible most of the time, I used to think someone was going to come along one day and actually see me and go "oh my god your amazing" and adopt me.

Imagination - I would fantasize about all the amazing things I could do if only people would realize too and allow me to become the person I felt I was. I used to day-dream all the time and I was always great - larger than life in them. I would dream of singing my feelings to people and make them tingle and cry with joy. I was always being a comedian and an actor playing games and roles out... just to see what it felt like to be someone else.

Laughter – I love to laugh and I do often, even when things have been at their worst I have managed to roar with laughter, there is something in me that manages to see a funny side in most things. I remember once years ago in Sydney I was so sick I hadn’t had a hit of heroin for days and I was hanging out like a mongrel dog, throwing my gut’s up at the drop of a hat. I was in the bathroom unsure if I should sit on the toilet of bend over it…. It was flying out both ends.

Well all of a sudden I cracked up laughing at myself speaking out loud saying “well this will teach you Andrew– how unglamorous is this?” By this stage roaring with laughter I was saying to myself shit I will be able to get into those tight pants again if I keep this up. Now I understand that some of this would have been delirium but I can always do it… make myself laugh – I just can’t help it – I won’t. Being able to laugh at myself is a gift.

Now in that situation I needed a good kick up the bum but not right then… I was one step away from completely freaking out and doing something silly – but with a bit of self directed sending up I was able to break out of that space and into a safer one, one of love (accessed through laughter). One where I could smile and stop thinking all the hateful thoughts about myself that I had been a few moments earlier (you loser - you fool - give up).

It saved me and I was so tired from laughing and everything else that I fell asleep. The next day was no where near as bad and I still had (what I called) flash back giggles. At random times during the day I would get over come for a second with a smile or giggle thinking of what I had said to myself in the bathroom the day before.

Intuition- As blind to some things as I chose to be through my life I have always known far more, I have always felt things deeply and had clear lines of insight – inner knowing… I have always held the truth deep within me. “Its time to go Andrew… don’t question – just go” and I usually did, this has saved me from many dangerous situations. I have moved in and out of circles that most wouldn’t dare and have been protected, known when and where I would be ok.

Now I do need to say that where I have let myself down in this area is only when I haven’t listened to my heart, when I have questioned it and have allowed my mind to get a hold of the information that pours forth from this, my heart center. It is at this point that the messages become unclear and clouded with doubt, in a word – Corrupted.

The mind is not used to illuminated truth… its whole purpose has been to “think” to “question” and that has a place too, but not when your inner knowing, your “Intuition”, your inner “illuminated truth” pours forth. This is not the time to question… this is a time to listen, a time to simply “know”.

This is something I am still coming to grips with, as the mind is a busy thing… it constantly wants to think, reason things away. But more and more as each day passes and as my truths are shown to me, I learn not to question such things.

I have also learnt what the antidote for doubt is...
- it’s Faith.

Faith, oh sweet faith how comforting you are, how strong and enduring you are when we remember why you are here… to save us from painful, time wasting, double checking everything, merciless doubt.

So here I hope you are beginning to see, just as I am, how it is I have come to still be here. To still feel love, to still love life, to still push forward into the seemingly unknown in the face of all kinds of trials and adversities.

It is my love of self that keeps me alive, trusting that all is as planed and that no matter what I do I am on the path to my way home. As long as I have faith, as long as I connect with my inner self and trust only the illuminated truth that pours forth from my heart center I will be protected and lovingly guided and most certainly find my way home.

Once again I hear…
“ The light you seek is within you,
Look through your light… not your eyes, and you will see home.
You hold the key... you hold the light... remember your birth right...
Look within not without”.

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