Earth Star - Dummy a Memoir

couldn’t keep up with his peers, who couldn’t learn to
read. I was the kid who got left behind. Old ghosts swept
over me like a tsunami. I thought I had outrun that boy
long ago.
I left the room in shock, unaware that a slide into
deep depression had begun. The solid ground I’d stood
on so sure-footedly all my adult life crumbled. The
world seemed to have no place for me, all because
I couldn’t read and write. All the old questions, even
the suicidal thoughts, that tormented me when I was
growing up returned with a vengeance: Why is this happening
to me? What am I going to do? What value do I
have? How will I ever be happy? Why should I keep on
living?
In the following weeks I turned these questions over
and over in my mind, tormenting myself. In time, I
noticed that these repetitive thoughts never led to anything
new. They pointed to an unconscious pattern—a
story—I’d been living out, over and over, unaware.
Turning Around
Overnight something inside me broke. I remembered the
real person I was deep inside, who never wanted to kill
anyone. Now, I chose to be that person. Whatever Donna
or Steve had or hadn’t done ultimately didn’t matter.
What mattered was who I was, what I was willing to do,
and what I did, and it had nothing to do with anyone
else. I wasn’t willing to live anymore as the person I’d
become. I wasn’t willing to live a life anymore in which
murder and suicide were options. I was going to change
my whole approach to life. I would have to give up the
personality I’d created when I was seven. I knew this
would leave me vulnerable and weak in ways I’d previously
used anger and violence to avoid.
Donna and I would have to leave Chicago. I couldn’t
become a new person here, learn to live on a new
basis and also keep us safe. Yet deep down, I didn’t
believe I could survive as I was. I’d seen myself as stupid,
broken, and dysfunctional for too long. I’d seen
myself through the world’s narrow, judgmental eyes. I
could never meet its minimum requirements for basic
functioning, belonging, and fitting in. Others saw me as
lazy, but I wasn’t lazy. I worked harder than anyone I
knew but never got the results I needed. Society’s messages—never
give up; be a fighter; where there’s a will,
there’s a way—hadn’t served me. I’d look at people and
think, Everyone else seems to know a secret, the secret
of who they are and how to live. But I don’t know who
I am or how to live.
Now I realized it wasn’t about becoming more than
I was but about accepting who I am.
I wondered to what degree the life I was living and
the world I was living in were of my own making. Were
they a result of what I believed the nature of the world to
be? My mind seemed to be an illusionist, appearing to
be the source of truth but then leading me in circles.
From my mind’s point of view, I’d be a fool not to be
afraid. I had to decide if the world was simply a bad
place or not. If it was just a machine of death, then it didn’t
matter what I did. I’d made friends with death anyway.
But if the world was a place of meaning and my life
had a greater purpose than mere survival, then my choices
and actions had profound significance. They shaped
and defined who I was. If I hurt someone, killed someone,
I’d suffer the consequences of those actions.
I used to scare myself with my own thoughts, spinning
worst-case scenarios in my mind. My mind would
tell me it could figure it all out, but most of my thoughts
were born of fear and generated more fear. My mind was
a liar. I couldn’t stop the thoughts, but I could stop
believing them, the way Jacqui taught the schizophrenics
to do. When I believed fearful thoughts, I only felt
fear, and it crippled me in life. When I thought I had to
learn how to read or things wouldn’t turn out well for
me, that was a thought that seemed true on the surface,
but there was no way of knowing if it was true or not.
When I believed it, it only undermined me. Even believing
everything would be okay in the future was an illusion.
When I stopped and looked deeply into any
thought, any hope or fear, I could find no substance, no
absolute truth, no certain future I could rely on. There
was only myself, alive in the moment, with no ultimate
knowledge or certainty. It wasn’t about believing in one
thing more than another; it was about my relationship to
myself and to my life. If I was at peace with myself and
my life, I was okay in that moment, not regretting the
past or clinging to hopes for the future; otherwise, I suffered.
Trying to think and struggle my way through life
hadn’t worked out for me. I couldn’t find any security or
truth in my mind or in the future. I had to trust life in a
48 EARTH STAR OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2012
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