By Michael Welch
I believe where I’m the most tortured is through my brokenness. It’s the concrete regions of where I exist. All-in or all-out. If I’m dieting, I’m eating 500 or less calories a day while exercising to the point of exhaustion, if I’m eating unhealthily I’m consuming 7000 calories a day while shouting at the roof tops how fat I am. I do this with everything; it’s debilitating and it’s never allowed me to sustain anything. It’s a set-up and my sobriety’s number one enemy. It makes me absolutely nuts and my neuroses are directly linked into this tennis game of thoughts because honestly, both places are awful.
I achieved quite a bit when I was young; this precipitated the “hook” for external esteem. Nothing came from within, so I lobbied from person to person/entity to entity to be fulfilled. This obviously comes with emptiness and limitations, making fulfillment quickly depleted (if it ever even existed). The main defect that comes with my inability to demonstrate any internal esteem is shortened relationships. I call it “burn out,” where people can only exist in my life at a limited capacity. Once a person has met said requirements of getting too close to me there is no longer any use for them. It always ends ugly and this cycle has repeated itself for years.
What I am aware of is that I have never had the ability to integrate the “2” selves, the demonstration of making “1” person. Honestly, I loathe ambiguity, it feels disingenuous and fake. It is usually followed by an excuse or explanation of how something appears so wrong, yet isn’t. It is already a contradiction when explaining that to make a whole person you have to live in the “both and.” I’m not a fan of this concept; it feels destructive to creativity, potentially problematic for initiative. Ambiguity feels like touching a hot stove. I would love to allow the embrace of both sides of misery that I jockey back and forth with. I have been in positions recently where I’m clear on what I’m feeling/not feeling. But I do not know how to embrace my brokenness. I have only begun to get out of the results of today. My current growth is defined as survival; I’m fucking terrified because at some point it will have to wear off. I come across as arrogant and a know-it-all, I speak to people with condescension and as if they are unintelligent. I get why I do it; I understand the empty broken Michael that is in there just crying for help. So maybe that mask is my cry for help, it may not appeal to those who take my charge personal, but maybe I can fine tune it to not look so abrasive. So if I’m stuck on the integration piece then that is where I’m best to identify where I am broken and also how I need to embrace it.
