Sunday, August 19, 2012

My Journal #272 - Just along for the ride?

I once wrote about the purpose of life. If you read that journal, you will know that I firmly believe that everyone has a purpose for being here. Some have multiple purposes, but everyone has at least a purpose. Just knowing that we all have a purpose keeps us moving forward. We get out of bed every morning and go about our life never knowing the exact moment our purpose will be achieved; but we face the day with vigor and hope just in case.

What makes it complicated is that some may never know when they have achieved their specific purpose. It could be that you unconsciously touched someone once, and you never knew you did. That contact may have changed the person’s life, and you would never know.

In my opinion, many of us have already achieved our purpose and now are just “finishing the ride”. To me that is no way to be. For me to realize that my purpose, whatever it is or was, is completed and that now I have no further purpose would be death. I couldn’t survive knowing that there was nothing left for me to contribute.

Armed with that understanding, I need to share some more.

Some of you read about my past life, and a certain period that drove me to the brink. I have never been one to give up, but at one point in my life I desperately wanted my life to end. I was in more pain than I can put into words. It was a combination of physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain, and internalized pain. I tried to let myself die just to end the pain.

And in that moment something unbelievable happened. At my lowest point, when I was ready to quit, a voice spoke to me. It wasn’t a long speech or anything motivational. It was a matter of a few words. They were clear and succinct. And these words changed my life.

“Live! Get up, you must live! I will need you!”

I’ve been through therapy and told this story. It has been explained to me that voices from the “other side” do not come to sane people. I am told that more than likely I was delirious from my torture and my imagination created these words as a self-survival method. I am told that to be sane I need to believe that these words didn’t just come to me.

Sane or insane, logical or illogical, I believe that someone or something reached out to be from beyond and told me to live because I had a future purpose. So for more than 20 years I waited for this person, and I waited to fulfill my purpose.

I knew that someday I would meet the person behind the voice. I always imagined they would be an old man from another country or maybe a bag lady from Chicago. I never imagined what actually happened. I did meet the person behind the voice. But she wasn’t needy, or old. She was young and vibrant. She was beautiful and outgoing.

And she made me go WOW.

I got close to her, because I wanted to be there when she needed me; but more important than the purpose is that I was drawn to her. She woke me up inside. I felt like I had been blind my whole life and she gave me sight for the first time. She made me feel things that I never knew existed. She made me happy, and I had not experienced happiness in years.

But in a cruel twist of fate, I was recently told that I was not needed. I had felt this coming for a while, but I felt that maybe what this person needed was someone who wouldn’t give up on them. They try to push people away, and others have always given up. Maybe my purpose was to be the only one to stand by them, no matter what.

Maybe all those years of nightmares, flashbacks, lack of sleep, memory loss and constantly living with the faces of the dead I’ve met were actually building my resistance. It was preparing me for the torture this person would bring to my door. It was to create in me a spirit that won’t quit on them.

I was beginning to think that all my pain was forced on me so that I could withstand the rudeness, the lack of attention, and the deceptions. I wasn’t there just for my purpose, I was there for them . . and for me.

And they walked away. And they never looked back.

Tonight I wonder if my purpose has already been served. Perhaps I was spared on that fateful day so I could torment for years waiting from something great, only to find out that the waiting is my punishment. Anticipation for many years just to have it vanish right when it is within my grasp.

Perhaps this person coming into my life is instead how I am to be tortured for all the horrible things I did. I thought I was being a patriot and a hero, but maybe I was just an idiot. Maybe the things I did were wrong; and waiting for this person, and feeling something for this person that I never knew existed, and then having it yanked away is the real message from beyond.

So now what?

Do you really think I can just enjoy the rest of my ride?

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