Well, boy have I been here before. Not in this precise spot, mind you, but definitely this territory. The pull to run away; the contradictory need to stay and fight; the responsibility as a friend; the destruction of trust; the loss; the desire for the comfort of denial; the anger at fate, at the individual; the sadness . . . and so many other elements, although I think that hits the major ones. I've been here twice before . . . and neither time did I do what I should have, although I have the minor triumph of having made different mistakes each time. Maybe if it just keeps happening enough, I'll eventually get it right by process of elimination.
The first time, I stayed and fought when I knew I should have walked away. The second time I ran away, when perhaps I should have stayed and fought. So, having gone the wrong extreme once each, perhaps now I can weigh options more finely reasoned. Perhaps this time I'll err on one side or the other (choosing the right option seems to be terribly out of form), but not as far from what I *should* have chosen as last time, and the time before. Trial and error. How appropriate--so much of both.
All right, I'm done with that part of it. On to the more interesting part. Is there a sociopath in the house? --Good question. Easy answer is, not this house. Not now, at any rate, and not a true one, ever. The first time around (see paragraphs above), after the events in the smiley face story, I eventually found a way out . . . the wrong way, naturally, but things like forgiveness and empathy were a little beyond me at that point. After months of the "Because They Truly Cared" counseling program from Steph and Carol, and I had determined that there wasn't a satisfying way out of life (i.e., I couldn't justify the pain it would cause the people who loved me, despite many moons of having to drive in the right-most traffic lane because the oncoming traffic just looked soooo tempting, so easy), I was talking on the phone with Steph one night when I decided exactly what to do. I'd studied self-hypnosis, lucid dreaming, and even "psycho-cybernetics" (basically, artificing the mind) for years, but hadn't taken steps to actually test-drive it by attempting to alter my mind as of yet.
I had no doubt I could reprogram myself to a degree, or at the very least, reroute something. I asked Steph to hang on for a few minutes, and said I wasn't going anywhere, but needed to concentrate. It was somewhere around three in the morning, and the house was utterly still, except for a soft hum from the air system. I lay down on the sofa in the family room and closed my eyes. I pictured my consciousness as an entity directly behind my eyes in my head, and then thought no more of my body. It was black, and I considered myself to be at the very brim of my mind, at the top level of my consciousness which extended downward into unknowable and unseen depths like an elevator shaft, with different "floors" or stopoffs along the way, at different points in my mind. I tuned out all outside input, cleared my mind of distracting thoughts, and only allowed my world to be this imageless, pitch black shaft through my psyche. When it was established, I began to ride downward, leaving my surface thoughts and head far above me, submerging deeper and deeper, passing levels of awareness and mental operation until finally, I reached the level with the Pain.
I got off, and as there had been for the entire ride down, there was no noise. I found myself at one end of a long white hallway, with open doors at either terminus. If I were going to assign a size to the corridor, I would say it was perhaps thirty yards long, with an eight or nine-foot ceiling. I had one brief instant before the embodiment of my Pain arrived. It wore *her* form, and carried with it an aura of horror and dread like a banshee. It simply stood there and regarded me from the opposite end. I didn't move at first; I simply took it in. Then, slowly, I turned and walked the few steps to my door and after having passed through, began to close it on the Pain but just before it was shut, I sensed a rushing from within and then her/its fingers were at the edge of the door and I slammed it closed and willed it locked. I didn't know it then, and it took me a long time to realize that I hadn't only locked away the Pain . . .I'd put so much of me to sleep . . .
I rode the blackness back to the surface of my mind, and allowed myself to resume taking input from my senses, and opened eyes. I felt like I'd been lost and had resumed course at last. Things inside me felt so much more aligned than they had, so much more . . . functional. As days passed, the unbearable, suffocating pain was gone, finally gone. (but you know, and I know, that it wasn't truly gone . . .only bound) I left the company of death and resumed my walk with life . . . but a different life.
If one has read my earlier "Happy Face" entry, one knows the utter ecstacy of life I had experienced before the darkness. The transcendental joy in and with her. However, after having locked away the pain, I had not only rid myself of it, but I had also disabled my ability to feel its polar opposite. No true pain, but no true happiness, either. I could still feel lesser incarnations of each; I could be happy for a bit, I could be disappointed, I could be excited, etc. But none of the deeper feeling, which is something I treasured in myself . . my capacity for emotion, for love and joy and passion and wonder . . .but I had lost my range. And, even worse, I had lost my ability to care.
This is where we get back to the part about the sociopathy. People were no longer what they had once been . . .no longer was I emotionally sensative to empathy or the association of other people with human feeling. I still retained all the knowledge of how to behave, and still had the morals to go with it . . but no feeling. I could act perfectly . . .after all, it was how I'd been raised. But the way it operated internally was almost purely cold and rational, as if I were a computer relying on built-in subroutines of humanity. Take the average man-on-the-street encounter. If I met someone at a bus stop and they asked me for the time, I would register the question, smile as I was supposed to, relay the information, and make a polite inquiry as to where they might be headed. I would have an entire conversation wherein thoughts would pass just within consciousness the entire time . . ."Smile here, eyes wider, purse your lips, tilt your head, now laugh, ask him about his daughter's class but keep your tone neutral, look regretful," etc. If he had then pitched over from a heart attack, I would stand and order someone to call 911 and attempt resuscitation, but I wouldn't really care if he lived or died . . .I just knew how I was supposed to behave consistent with the moral code I accepted and how I wished to be perceived.
Nice to know, huh? It was that way with EVERYONE. It was an occasion with my parents that first brought my true condition to my attention. Something unfortunate had happened to one of them, and I was in the midst of responding appropriately, and across it all I saw that indeed all I was doing WAS responding appropriately, and that I didn't actually care for myself. I was frightened, and it was later the fear which became comforting, because as far as I knew in studying sociopaths they either weren't bothered by or didn't recognize their lack of empathy, and I most definitely recognized it AND feared it. I started doing things to try to make myself care, but simply nothing could hurt me, or make me happy beyond a certain point, and people were to be dealt with, but not felt for.
After this had gone on long enough, I started to wonder if I were permanently broken, and would never be able to care again. The answer, I'm happy to say, was "no." A couple young ladies [grin] showed me this, and one in particular, for whom I began to fall in love. I'd known her my entire life, and had the opportunity to watch her grow from a kindergartner all the way to a beautiful, Godly, witty and lively young woman. We shared a psych class that year and even had the same discussion section. Truth be told, I lived for class. For the first time, I was getting to know her as the person she had become, and was becoming. And I cared. Ohhh, did I care! And the care spread, and I was able to feel for others again, and with her I learned that I could still feel all the joy that had been lost . . . in fact, I remember one day in particular when we had parted ways after class and I was walking back to my car, I actually (! no kidding) spread my arms and spun in circles with a huge grin on my face, because I was so happy at the thought of her. (Dang. In a few paragraphs I was going to get around to not being able to shed tears again, but, um, well, heh, I'm struggling here. It's good to know I suppose that I've still got the feelings, even if the proof is in pain.)
Yep, I was definitely falling in love with her. Well, I'm not in the mood to greatly explain the events which came a few months afterward, but I'll greatly summarize and say that, yes, I DID fall in love with her, and someone she and I both trusted implicitly and with whom she had been friends longer I, betrayed a confidence of mine and twisted my words to her, doing a nearly perfect job of destroying all she and I had worked for through betrayal and deceit. You'd have to have been there to appreciate how efficiently and effectively he did this. My heart, so newly mended and alive, was crushed beneath her anger and rejection, yet it was an entire summer (for it is always summer . . .) and part of the fall before she and I were able to fully understand what had been done to us and begin repairing the friendship we had lost . . . and in which time, shielded by her aforementioned anger, she met by pure happenstance someone who . . . I can't write it . . but I'll reroute and say that I can't blame her for falling in love with him. Now, at the time I made my mistake, their relationship was not yet cemented, and on the bad advice of someone I trusted, I kept my mouth closed against what I KNEW to be my better judgment, and what sort of jugment was THAT? And I fled from my hurt, and put a few thousand miles between us for the better part of a year, but here I am again, back at ground zero, and I nicely gave them the time they needed, without me around, to be able to forge a solid relationship.
Fudge, now I AM getting all teary. If I could change only one thing about the last two years, only one blasted thing, I would have kept my blasted mouth SHUT and not talked to Steve that Saturday night . . .you know, I still HAVE that IM conversation saved on disk, where we had the conversation he twisted and distorted, and which I was not allowed to explain for far too long, until Steve's imbalance had become too obvious for her to miss it and she began to realize what had happened. Whew, you can't live in the past, but how the past reaches forward to affect us so much later . . . But while I have no expectation, I am still allowed hope. He's (the new guy) by most accounts a good guy, and I understand why she cares for him. He's good . . . maybe even good enough, but I regret with all my heart that she's getting "good enough." But nothing's done until they're married, and that's still a ways away, despite their plans and feelings. So much may yet happen, and things may change. If they don't, then it's no worse off than it is now . . . and if they do . . . you are like no other in your faith, in your smile, in the inspiration you are to me simply by who you are. You have a sweet humbleness that frustratingly prevents you from believing the truth about what you mean to me . . you are convinced that if only I knew you better, I would turn away and see that you are not what I believed. I cannot refute a feeling, however misplaced, with logic or objections. All I have for you is the proof which lies in my visible nature, and the faithfulness and love I carry for you always. We are God's children, and I commit ourselves into His hands. May we please Him in all that we do, and all the paths we choose to walk.