my way back.

When I crossed over seas, over the bodies of deep waters, the territories vast and unexplored, I clung onto the airplane armrest.  My heart was in terror.  My heart thudded no, no, no.  My struggle on fertile soil has been hard.  How much more so will it be on unplowed ground?  Can I uproot everything I know and still know peace?  Will I ever learn the art of feeling at home while being a foreigner?

For the longest period, I thought I never could.  I thought I was going insane.  And I was.  One dictionary posits the word as meaning in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction.  Insanity.  Let me lay the cards out.  There were, at first, faint echoes of inner disturbance; later on, everything was thunderous and riotous and ruinous.  I slammed doors in the evening, fell asleep within minutes during the afternoons, drooling for hours.  My liver’s clogs became overworked and distraught from purging the toxins every Saturday and Sunday morning.  I stopped greeting my wife at the door.  I failed to say to her, simply, even once, thank you for providing for me.  I stopped writing.  I isolated myself, locking myself into thoughts and patterns that guaranteed a quick onslaught of insanity.  I told myself things, dangerous things. 

She doesn’t love me the way she loves this land, this job, these people.  They don’t understand me; they are happy, braver, better spouses.  Joblessness is forever.  Joblessness means worthlessness. 

My hope was consumed even faster than the alcohol (and that’s saying a lot).  And, as my friend says, you put love and light into yourself and others when you hope.  The inverse holds true as well—I became very dark and others were seen through dark lens.  The d-word projected like vomit from my mouth.  My capitulation was full of confusion.  I love my wife; I don't want a divorce; dear God, what am I saying!  But God was not dear to me.  God was long ago thrown out with the bathwater.  I wanted relief, help, advice, compromise, understanding, empathy.  I wanted God in a body.  I wanted what my wife (or any person for that matter) could not give me.

There’s a tradition in a corner of the world that postulates confession as paramount to spiritual health.  I guess that’s what this is.  You’re the priest and I’m veiled and sinful, wrong to the core.  My brain is readjusting to the sudden shock of a life without alcohol and one of the results is I’m seeing myself for the first time in four years.  I’m seeing my story through the eyes of the reader, not through my own anymore.  And I am writing to live again.  I’m writing my way to regeneration.