This is not how I am…
“I can’t explain
You would not understand
This is not how I am”- Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb
Most of my friends know that Pink Floyd is my favorite band. Of the myriad songs which Pink Floyd has produced, Comfortably Numb is by far my favorite. The guitar solo at the end of the song is simply masterful, and yet the words are just as profound. Most of my life I have struggled with anger issues. I did not get along with my parents growing up. There was always much strife and stress between us. It made me a very angry, bitter person. Due to this constant stress and pressure I would have emotional meltdowns over the slightest thing. These meltdowns were mistaken for being temper tantrums, but they were not temper tantrums. They were meltdowns. The pressure and stress would get to a point where I could no longer bear it and the slightest thing could be the proverbial straw that broke the camels back and would send me into a meltdown. I had zero fuse. Often times it would take something so simple as a spilled can of pop to send me into a meltdown. I could not control them one once they began and it would often take me hours and sometimes even a day to recover from them. And yet I knew that this was not really me.
“This is not how I am.” I did not really begin to discover the depth of the truth of the lyric to Comforably Numb “this is not who I am” until I began the process of peeling back the layers of the onion. Once the difficult process of removing years of emotional scar tissue from my soul had begun, I began to realize that the anger, the meltdowns and the rest were merely a bi-product of my youth and not the defining elements of my being. Sure there had been people who I would meet occasionally through out life who would say they could see past the anger, frustration and meltdowns. Those people saw a much more gentle and loving person in me, but it really took until much of the onion had been peeled back before I actually began to believe what these people had told me. Slowly as the layers of the onion were peeled back I began to find the real me, the person who the pre-school teacher so fondly remembered me being when I ran into her in the library in 1999. But it was not easy work to find him. It took so much gut wrenching introspection, a lot of faith that God would lead me, and a lot of self-love and self forgiveness.
I write this first and foremost to remind myself of where I have been and how far I have come. But secondly I write this as an encouragement to any one who might be reading this and who might find themselves in the situation which I was once in. If I had the strength to work through old wounds and battle scars that had stolen my true identity from me, then you do as well! It won’t be easy work, but I can guarantee you that if you stick with it, it will be worth it.
“This is not how I am”, but you are certainly free to begin the process of finding how you really are!!! Don’t be afraid! It is worth the hard work!
Gloria in Excelsis, Deo!
