Hello. My name is Keith and I am afraid of American cheese. That is not a joke. I really am afraid of American cheese.
Lately I've been asking a lot of people some strange questions. The rough seas I've travelled this year have taken a lot out of me and quite often I don't feel like I am myself. I feel like I am somewhere outside myself trying to figure out why I'm not functioning on anything approaching my normal level of functionality. I've had to ask people close to me, and people not so close to me, for help at times, but the bigger part of my problem now is I've suffered a great deal of emotional and mental damage over the past couple of years. All of that has had a deeper impact on how I function than I'm usually willing to admit.
The insights of people who have known me for more than a few years have all tended to focus on the same things. I was always the one who never let "the little things" in life get to him, the one who rolled with it and had the faith and confidence to know that the next turn in the road would take me where I needed to go. And now, too often, I have that faraway stare in my eyes and find myself on the verge of panic, often over things I cannot even explain. Instead of always seeing the blue skies rolling over the horizon, I'm finding myself hiding from the mere idea that storm clouds have the ability to manifest themselves. It doesn't even take storm clouds or the forecast of them, all it takes is the very idea that storm clouds exist.
As I explained to some people a while back, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder following the extremely intense events that happened in my life earlier this year, events that were, in part, purposely created by someone I loved and trusted in order to recreate and mirror the events that led to my suicide in 1994. And this was done after she had created a scenario from which I could not easily escape. It is a long and complex story I've told parts of here, but in the end, the result is that I've become a shadow of myself trying to find the rest of me once again.
I'm weakened in large part by doubt, which I am told is the primary reason I have not been feeling like myself. I used to function almost entirely on faith and the belief that I was on a path that would unwind along my journey and take me where I needed to go and that if I trusted in the path I would never stumble in such a way that I could not rise again. She, who I once called The Muse, took that away from me. She took it away from me purposely because she had no faith in anything, hated herself and the world around her, and deeply resented me having my faith and finding joy in life. And I cannot let her succeed in doing that permanently.
There is something you ought to know. There are people who have given up. There are people who are filled with nothing but contempt and self-hatred, and at one point they may have wanted to overcome these self-destructive feelings, but eventually some of them give up entirely. And that leaves them with two choices, they can either destroy themselves completely or do what they can to drag those close to them down into the Hell in which they exist.
Those who choose the first option may find their wings again. Those who choose the second option...
We share a certain connection, Jennifer, and it is a connection I deeply respect and cherish. It has nothing to do with the connections most people assume men and women have. It is on a level I think perhaps only we really understand.
I will be whole again. I don't care if it takes me six thousand lifetimes.