Here to There and Back Again

Before I can get to a new start I need to address and move past a part of my old self. I was reading the forum of the system I am studying and realized that I have a few issues to address that cannot make this new journey with me. In the process of reading two amazing posts I have come to to a new realization and learned a new term. Before we get to what I learned, I need to fill in some back story on how I got here in the first place.

In the winter of 1998 I was a young, supremely confident, aspiring pro athlete. I was living far from home. I was not without my problems but I felt like the world was mine. Two things happened that year that I have allowed to define me ever since. The first was that after an idyllic childhood my parents divorced. There were very few hints as I grew up but no attention was paid by me or my sibling. I learned about the divorce and the reasons behind it while I was living afar. While I was certainly old enough to understand that these things happen I missed the after effects and the role my father played. While I was away my sibling, who still lived at home, was dealing with some harsh realities and learning some uncomfortable truths. Truths that would eventually dawn on me and shed light into aspects of my life.

The second was that I met a woman. At the time I was dating frequently and I use the term dating loosely. I was very confident and was starting to get known in the area for my athletic talents so women were no problem. However this chick was different and I started dating her almost exclusively. The attraction was instant, however the early going was very rough and full of problems. I ended up moving in with her once my roommates and I were evicted, thanks to my actions, and that's when my life changed. We soon decided to run from our problems and the heavy party life of the area. A move which I was nowhere near ready to make. The move had a profound effect on me. For one it ended my athletic dreams as my sport was very location important on a Pro level. The other was that I was a strange man in a new strange land. I had never been to this area and it was thousands of miles from anything I had ever known. I went from being a minor rock star to being a nobody with what I thought at the time was nothing. No talents, No Money, No job prospects (I dropped out of school with a GED).

We were together for four or five years after we met and moved. Because of my immaturity and her hard past, which she could not shake, Things went downhill very fast. I became an unhappy, unmotivated, selfish boy who could only think of the past and what I thought I had lost. I lived in the past. Every morning waking up I could only think of what I would be doing if I still was an athlete. Every night I dreamt of my sport and my past life. With every morning and every dream I became depressed and angry. With every passing day I was becoming more unattached to the realities of the present. I became a demon. I became a demon to her. Like fools we stayed together.

I had moved back to my birthplace. Things blew up and over between her and I. (The end was so ugly that I still have nightmares from it) Then I woke up and the demon left. I was home and confronting the failed realities of my parents relationship, my life, and my failed relationship.

I was awake only briefly and then I let the confrontations of those problems define me to the ghost and dreams of 'what if'. I was in the past again but this time I was no demon, worse, I became a ghost buster. A weakling. I started chasing the ghosts of the past to fix them.


To be Continued...