Pool of Darkness

I have waded in the pool of darkness. Now let me tell you friends I don't like it!!! It makes me shudder to reminisce but I must. I have gone through periods of unexplainable bouts of loneliness in my teenage years. I would act sick and get one of my Grandmothers to call the school for me. I would sleep and read the day away, only me in the house, even as a boy I needed time alone. Looking back at my life this was how I handled the loneliness inside, by being alone and escaping into another world. I completely immersed myself in the pages, didn't matter where it was as long as it wasn't the here and now!

The loneliness and darkness really didn't take a grasp on me until the age of thirteen. My Grandfather died and a part of me left with him. You see, to this day I hate the sound of a telephone. I lay in bed and overheard the phone call that morning, saying my Grandpa passed away. Up until that moment I believe I was a normal child in a world with an abnormal Father! My world shook and still has aftershocks reverberating to this day! Kind of amazing how one can track darkness back to the exact moment, but I can.

You would expect it to be my Father, I would of traded my Father's life, for my Grandpa's and still would without hesitation. My Father had problems, someday I'll tell them, but not today, that is the deep end of the pool of darkness. Since that day of November 18th of 1964, I have waded in and out of the pool of darkness and searched for answers. I was a good student and loved school until then, and then something went amiss! I felt alone for the first time. It was Grandpa and of course my Mother, but a boy needs a good male role model to take on the world.

Flash forward to today, I search for peace within, a small bit, to simply be me, to survive! That is rather hard to do at times when you feel like you live in a time you don't fit into. I believe I was born perhaps 50 years too late than my opportune time. The world moves too fast for me! I simply am trying to hang on until it is my time to hear the phone call!

I have somehow, or for some reason made it this far, even though age, medical conditions and a lifetime of trying to tame the rage within, the love I wish to give, and the much needed search for understanding...

My only attempt at staying the course is to survive by somewhat controlling my day to day routine. I find solace in a routine of sameness. I may not have the highs of the things I once cherished, but to survive I don't have the lows that make me teeter on the precipice of darkness!  

I may go for months with relative ease, no major swings in emotions, if I stay within myself. Believe you me this is no easy task in the world of today! Then it creeps up on me, even though I'm fighting with all my might and self understanding of self diagnosis of my lifetime. Darkness has a way of drawing you out of your safety zone, dag-gone it. It gnaws at you a wee bit at a time. A bite here, a bite there, you are beginning to weaken under strains of life. You can't have a force field surrounding you when you are out of your elements and shields are losing power. This ain't Star Trek baby! Scotty can't save your ass, only you can save your ass!!! THEN! you're shields are down, you lie vulnerable to the DARKNESS! Illness bites you from total exhaustion, your plum, sure ass, dead in the water and the pool of darkness starts dragging you down. You must fight back, with what? Your body aches to the tune of a-thousand flu bugs. There ain't no flu vaccines for what you have! To give up is to die! You retreat from work to sleep it off like a bad hangover, wishing only that's what it was and for it to be that easy! Guess what sleep don't come, downward you go spiraling thoughts that you can't talk about. If only I could sleep, the more you fight sleep the worse it becomes. Your blood pressure is off the charts. The only way of survival, something that has saved you countless times from the pool of darkness, doesn't come. You have gone deeper than you have ever gone before. You have pushed too far, too hard this time! This is it, you just say, "take me I can no longer fight"! You wish to sleep one last time and let that be the end of it. You wake up many hours later. The deep end no longer drags you downward you're at a stop. You call into work, I need another day to sleep away the darkness. A asst. supervisor has called in "WE need you". "???? it". You cling to what you have left inside. Somehow you muster up enough to make it. You run on fumes the rest of the week. You have stayed at the dark end of the pool, perfectly still. The weekend is here with hopes of rejuvenation. The weekend will tell the story, to rest, to dream, to come back, if you can!

I FEEL THE NEED TO WRITE THIS LITTLE PIECE. WE ALL GO THROUGH ROUGH TIMES. IF WE CAN LIVE THROUGH THEM, THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO MAKE US STRONGER, OR SO THAT OLD SAYING GOES! I DON'T THINK THEY MAKE YOU STRONGER. THE GNAWING NEVER STOPS. DOES THE BITES OUT OF THE TREE HEAL THEMSELVES? YOU MAY COME BACK TIME AFTER TIME. ONE OF THESE TIMES THAT TREE WILL GIVE WAY. YOU CAN ONLY KEEP A-TRYING UNTIL THAT LAST DEEP SLEEP MY FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE ALL GO THROUGH TRYING TIMES. IT JUST FELT RIGHT TO WRITE THIS AS I AM GOING THROUGH IT.