Choosing to be Who I Am...

I came across a poem the other day that grabbed me in an unexpected way. I found myself crying. The words seem to be words that would have one day in my past smoldered within my own heart.

I am who I choose to be, random and weird.

There are times when I want to fade into my dreams and feel as though I belong.

I see myself in a place where I can always be me, and not be criticized for my actions.

I want to be young forever and not have to worry about life coming to a conclusion

I wish life could be like a VCR, fast forwarding the pain, or rewinding and relishing the moments of happiness.

I am who I choose to be, random and weird.

Awesome Ramsey!

I don't know who "Awesome Ramsey" is, but this person put words to the feelings that I struggled with for so many years. A person who felt on the outside...longing to feel like I belonged in the story. A longing to fit in...a longing to be happy with who I was...who I am. A man who wished he could stay in the happy moments of his past forever and skip over the eons of pain and frustration at failures in his life.

I pretend that I have this amazing power and with it I might one day rule the world.

But power is for the weak minded, so I say.

I see and hear things that I believe no one can ever see or hear.

And yet I cry because I know no one will ever believe me.

When I see the rain fall from the sky, I can imagine and feel my sorrows slowly lifting...

But I am who I choose to be, random and weird.

Awesome Ramsey!

Like most of us, I once believed that within myself, I could fix everything... that I could make everything OK. There was no need to seek help elsewhere... to ask for help was revealing that I had some kind of flaw, some kind of weakness. And in my mind, any form of weakness was unacceptable. So I created a persona of strength that was convincing to all the world. I set myself on a pedestal so high, that to fall would surely mean death. But inside, I knew my own weakness...my own failures...my own inability to "fix" it this time. So I silently wept untold gallons of tears, knowing that no one would be able to believe my story...my demons...my weakness.

I understand life is full of mysterious wonders.

They could be things that you wouldn't even expect to be real.

So I try not to think of the negativity around and focus on the positive aspect of life.

And one could only hope that in the end of the tale, there really is a happy ending.

I am who I choose to be, random and weird

This "Amazing Ramsey" may not have understood when he wrote these words how his story ends...or how any of our stories end. But through his words, it helps me to recognize that all of life is a mystery and we don't need to try to understand it all. Some of it is simply to unreal. My past is my past...I can't undo it...I can't change. But, I can use it and allow it to be used.



Our pastor spoke an incredible sermon this morning about accepting how God has created each of us so uniquely...and how He desires to use that uniqueness to do His work. He closed with a short phrase that spoke deeply to me on a day I needed to hear Him speak directly to me.

"Learn to love you"

When I think about my life, the word "love" is not a word that quickly comes to mind...a life that has been responsible for so much pain and heartache. The words "despise" and "hate" seem to be so much more appropriate. But I have come to learn that God wastes nothing, not even the failures of a man's life...the failures of my life. For Ramsey, he may choose to be random and wierd. Sometimes, I believe I choose to be that same way. But for the always in my life, I am learning to simply choose to be me...the way that God created me, and learn to love who that man is.

Poem by "Amazing Ramsey"

Photo from Flickr

The OTHER Victims

Something has been on my mind a lot lately that I have been trying to process...sadly, not too well. At my therapy session last week, one of the men shared some of his writing concerning his victims...and the extent of the breadth of pain that he had caused. I've thought often on that myself, and only recently as I visited with a close friend whose husband was involved in on-line pornography, I was once again reminded of the pain that a woman feels when her husband betrays her in that way.

But in the past week, another group of my victims has settled itself in my gray matter, and it won't seem to let go. I know that there were a lot of different victims in the life that I was leading...most notably the young men or boys that were pictured in the pornography that I viewed. I believe I've reconciled myself to that group. I've prayed for them...I've prayed for the destruction of the international pornography industry. I don't know what more I can do, other than never support them in any way again in the future. When I was viewing those materials, I never thought about those individuals or the fact that they were most likely sold into that profession or so drugged that they didn't know what they were doing.

The group haunting my nights these days are the young men that I chatted with. Not all of them. I know that many were just like me...a man pretending to be someone else. A man living a fantasy life...in search of something, but not quite certain what. But some were exactly what they claimed to be. Teenage boys uncertain of their sexuality looking for a friend...a confidante...to share questions and struggles. I sat across the Blue Nowhere from these teens convincing them that I was just as they were...confused, searching, a boy in search of friends. Each night, I continued with my deceit and listened and shared my own inner self with them.

And then suddenly one night, I simply disappeared. To at least two young men, I had become someone important in their lives...at least my cyber-self had. Suddenly, a friend was ripped from their life with no explanation, no good-bye, no closure. The boy in Florida (me) who was trying to lift the spirits of a boy who had recently contemplated suicide because a friend from school that he was attracted to had rebuffed him was no longer there to offer support. I often wonder about that boy...and if he is OK.

I know that I can't find any of them now. I no longer remember their computer names. And I have no way of contacting them. I can't tell them that I was a fraud...and the worst kind of friend. I can't tell them that the most intimate aspects of their lives that they shared with me were shared with a deceiver and a liar.

I hope that they have simply forgotten me...I think. A part of me wants them to remember who I pretended to be...a boy like them who cared for them. And a part of me also simply wants them to forget a betrayal...but I know from my own life experience how difficult that is.

Seeing Pink!

Even though I knew it was coming, I still wasn’t as prepared as I had hoped to be. Just this morning, he still thought that there were some options…a way out of this situation…a new hope. I could tell as he returned from the attorney’s office that it had not gone well. His shoulders seemed to sag a bit lower and there was no energy in his eyes.

I went in and sat across from him when he returned from lunch. The sign of defeat was etched in his 75 year old face as he realized the dream was over. There were no more options, and I could tell it broke his heart as he sat there with folded hands.

“We’re going to close the doors. We just can’t make it in this economic climate,” he said in a barely audible voice. “I wish that we had another chance…I really thought that we would be able to close this down and open a new LLC. It’s just not going to happen.”

And just like that, my career here was over. The economy had caught up with us and we were out of money. I would soon be joining the millions of other men and women amongst the ranks of the unemployed. I had been here before, but never as a result of a company going out of business. And the feeling in the pit of my stomach as I walked out the office was not a pleasant one.

I have had the opportunity for the past eighteen months to work for an incredible man…and his wife. They gave me a chance when no one else would. I owe them so much more than they have ever given me…which has been substantial. I have been compensated very well in my tenure here and I was given a severance which was more than generous. This has been an experience that I will not easily forget.

As I move forward, I do so with very little anxiety. I have been blessed, not only with a chance, but also with a memory of God’s faithfulness to me. While others may be losing sleep at night, I can rest assured that in some way, God will provide for me. He has in the past…and I am assured that He will in the future. His grace and mercy are the same today and tomorrow as they were in the past.

It is with a little bit of excitement and a lift in my step that I will leave this place for the last time. I don’t know exactly when that will be yet…I have agreed to continue to come in and help Lee as he closes up the business. It gives me an opportunity to stay busy and him some much needed help and support. But when the day comes that I don’t make the 30 minute commute over here each morning, I am excited for what door will have opened and that I will have walked through.

The Trophy

The frigid, winter rain pelted the large window overlooking the golf course as I sat in front of the empty fireplace with the box in front of me. It was another cold, wet March winter day alone in this beautiful condo my wife and I had purchased only six months earlier. The ninth fairway outside our window was still covered in grayish, spring snow...the remnants of the cross country ski trail still visible in the slowly receding winter blanket.

I had brought the last of the boxes up out of my Jeep and had sorted and filed. A few things, I threw away. I had only one box left. And it had my "stuff" in it. The plaques and awards and trophies that I had accumulated over the course of working 24 years as a public educator.

There was a plaque of appreciation from the local community college where I had supervised their local education extension program. The completion award for my superintendent's program. A trophy from a golf tournament. And numerous other awards and recognitions. But today, they were all meaningless.

As I sat there, looking at each one...slowly reading the words engraved on the soft metal, I could hear a voice telling me that this was not who I was any more. I tried to push the voice away...but it wouldn't leave me. Each of these pieces identified who I was. But that was it....who I "was", not who I "am" now. I could feel the tears well up as I knew what I needed to do. I fruitlessly tried to argue with the voice in my heart, but I knew deep down this was an argument that I couldn't win.

Reluctantly, I slowly began to peel the glued on metal with the words of recognition and acclaim from their wooded backs. As each one came off in my hands, I would bend it and mangle it before I tossed it haphazardly into the box. Piece after piece, the box slowly filling. These things that had identified who I was for the last quarter of a century, now nothing but a box of trash.

The last item was the last item I had received. And...it was the one that had most recently defined me.

Superintendent

The solid piece of oak that bore that inscription was too solid for me to break. The engraving in the wood, so I couldn't peel it off. The sting of the the tears as the rolled down my cheeks caused me to hesitate for just a moment. I held the award in my hand as I rubbed my shirt sleeve across my cheeks, clearing away the tears. And then it too, went into the box.

I carried the collection in the cardboard container to the door as I slipped my shoes on and slowly walked down the stairs to the dumpster. Setting the box on the ground, I flipped the top up on the garbage container and then slowly dumped the reminders of my last 24 years in with the rest of the waste. Numbness filled my body as I walked back up the stairs and into the emptiness of my home.

It has been over five years since that cold, March day. I had often wondered "why" I had been asked by throw it all away. Couldn't I have simply stored it away in a box, as a reminder? Something that I could one day put back on a shelf for everyone to see...to remember...to admire? I was given the answer last week.

I was listening to the testimony of a man who had been one of the best paid make-up artists for New York models in the 1990's. But a life of drugs and hard living had caused him to lose it all...and to ultimately end up on the streets of New York City...homeless, destitute, slowly dying. But through the prayers of a friend and the merciful love of God, he found salvation and a new lease on life.

As he shared his testimony, he used the analogy of a trophy. We spend our entire lives in this world creating an image of ourselves through our work and our behaviors. In our frail state of humanity, we make choices where our lives end up mangled and tarnished and bent. But when we allow it, God will take that broken life and restore it. The trophy will be reformed. The bent parts straightened. The scratches buffed out. The tarnish polished away. And the engraving...changed.

As I listened to his story, the voice and the memory in my condo living room five years ago came flooding back to me. And at that moment, I realized the "why" that I had asked my self so many times since that frigid, winter day. I am destined to be a trophy for God!

The Other Closet

As I sign into this blog every time I post a new entry, I type in the url..."thedarkestcloset". It got me to thinking about the title and why I selected it. It was over a year and a half ago that I began this blog and when I created it, I had no idea what it would hold or in all actuality, why I was evening writing it. When the box appeared asking for a title, I didn't sit and ponder for very long. The concept of "closet" popped into my mind and I simply went with it.

Over the past several weeks, I've been giving the word "closet" some thought and realized that it is a very apt title for this blog...and my life. It probably came to my mind while I was talking to my men's Bible study two weeks ago and I told them that when I think about my life five years ago and the following three years in prison, my natural self wants to put that memory in the deepest closet in the house, lock the door and then double padlock it and then cover that door with a six inch solid steel door so that no one (myself included) could ever get to it. But God has other plans for my life and my story, but that is for another time.

As I think about "closet" and my own life, a number of similarities have emerged for me. The first is that closets are often times hiding places. When we are children and we play "hide and seek", one of the common places that we like to hide in is the closet. We try to squish ourselves into the deepest recesses behind the long fur coat so we can't be seen.

That was my life. At every opportunity, I tried to hide. Often times it was in plain sight, but nonetheless, I was hiding. It might have been in a book or inside of a football uniform. At other times, it was behind a drunken haze. But in each case, I was hiding. I think in my own mind, if I didn't have to look at the real me...if I could hide it, then my demons weren't real. My sadness belonged to someone else.

Closets also bring to mind the concept of fantasy and make believe. One of my favorite movies is "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe". In the story, the children find an old wardrobe (a precursor to the closet) and it takes them to a different world...to Narnia. I remember the closet in my mom and dad's bedroom. Tucked away in the corner were my dad's Army uniforms. I remember as a young boy looking at them and putting on his jacket (I don't think he knew I was doing this). I would pretend to be a soldier...a hero of some type.

Five years ago, my life was full of fantasy. I was living a secret life where I was pretending to be someone I wasn't...and never could be. A young teenage boy. And in this fantasy life, I was creating fantasy relationships with other teenage boys. The fantasy would become so real at times that I would wake up in the middle of the night and realize that I was actually 48 years old and wish with all of my heart that I was actually that 14-15 year old boy. It wasn't that my life was bad and I needed to escape it...it was more that the fantasy was a life that I didn't get to have and that in some way I was trying to relive.

Closets are also dark places...and my life was so dark that it was nearly impossible for true light to penetrate it. It was full of deceit and lies...and immorality and lust. And because I knew that everything that I was doing was wrong, I tried with all my skills to keep them out of the light. And I was pretty successful for nearly three and a half years. But as God tells us in His Word, the light will always reveal what happens in the dark...and it definitely did in my life.

The last correlation that I made between my life and closets were the secrets. Because closets are small, closed spaces, they are an easy place for secrets. My dad hid some of his pornography in his closet. I'm not sure if it was there to keep it a secret from mom...or from us boys. My folks kept all of their private papers in their closet as well...including the papers that would reveal that my sister actually had a different father than my brothers and I did. I've heard stories where people will sneak into a closet at a party for a quick kiss...or more...because they don't want to be seen by their spouses.

For me, I think this last relationship is the most powerful. My life was so full of secrets! Some of them, I didn't even recognize for a long time. Things that happened to me as a boy that I was too ashamed (or afraid) to tell anyone. My feelings about trust that I simply didn't understand. My confusion over sexuality and my struggle with appropriate feelings of affection for other males. So many secrets that were so easy to keep hidden in my own little closet.

But through my writing, the closet is getting broken down. The door has been opened and taken off its hinges so that pure light can enter. It is still working to penetrate some of the deepest corners of my closet, but it is slowly getting there. And for me, the darkness is passing away to reveal a life of hope...and purpose...and truth.

Photos from Flickr

Cherished Moments!

It seems every trip, it happens! I'm never sure when it will occur. It might be early in the morning...just the two of us with everyone else asleep. Or sometimes, it will be in the evening when Walt is upstairs watching football or a Blazer's game. But the one thing that I can always count on is that it WILL happen.

Five years ago, I would have hated it. Probably done most anything to try to avoid it. I would have slept in late until everyone else was up. Or I'd feign tiredness and rush off to bed. Or, and sadly this is the most likely...I'd sit there and listen, and simply lie through my teeth, silently praying that it would be over soon. This event that might be so terrible? Simply talking.

I visited my sister and her husband this weekend and had a wonderful time. As always, I was spoiled rotten with great food and an abundance of love. Usually, I even get to win at cards, but that didn't happen this trip. But the talk my sister and I had that has become a tradition of sorts. Walt was out mowing the lawn and Toby was out resting after a long walk and swim down to the river. That left Debbie and me about an hour and half to sit around the kitchen table to just talk.

I've come to cherish these conversations. Both of us simply seem to be able to talk about nearly everything and anything. Personal things that I don't share with many people...and that I never shared with my wife when I was married. Fears. Dreams. Anxieties. Advise. Sometimes...perhaps even a rebuke (I know I've received them, I'm not sure I've given one yet). For some, this wouldn't seem like such a big deal, but for me it's a major milestone. I simply am no longer afraid to have "real" conversations with the people that I love.

One of the benefits of travelling the 120+ miles each way to my sister's is the time I have alone to think and contemplate and reflect on my way home. My sister has revealed her heart to me over the past year and half, and during that process...has revealed her vulnerabilities. I know how hard that is to do. You only do that with those that you have genuine relationship with and trust completely.

As I drove home, getting off the freeway and travelling the back highways as much as possible, I thought a lot about our family today. And it saddened me as I thought about the relationships...or lack thereof...that we have with each other. I had to start by looking at myself in the mirror. For most of my married life, I had detached myself from most of my family...especially my sister and my younger brother. I really didn't have any good reason and I don't believe it was intentional in an attempt to hurt either of them, but I didn't work at building or maintaining a relationship with either of them. And I know that they were both hurt by my insensitivity.

My life has changed dramatically in the past five years and I have been touched and amazed at the way each of my siblings have reached out to me to give me love and support. I have to honestly say that at first, I wasn't very receptive, but none of them gave up. And now, by the grace of God, my heart has been softened to the point where I cherish the relationships that I now have. They are so unlike any that I have had in the past.

The most significant difference is that I understand that I don't need the relationships to be whole, but they help to make me whole. I don't need the relationships to know that I am loved, but they help me to feel loved. I don't need the relationships as my only way through a tough time, but they help me to make it through. I don't need the relationship, but I'm so glad that I have them.

I don't really know if I truly understand why at this point in my life, I've decided to reach out and re-establish these relationships that I had been so careless about for so many years. There are things about each of my siblings that I struggle with...things that I wish were different somehow. But call it maturity (or simply the wisdom that comes with old age), but the differences aren't that important any more. I no longer try to expend my energies trying to change any of them...because it would be a fruitless exercise, and who's to say I'm right in the first place. I simply want each of them to know that I love them and want them to know that I'm here for them when they need me.

As I drove up the wooded highway through Bucota and Tenino and Rainier, my heart had a longing and a hope. It sounds simple, but I know the difficulty below the surface. That hope? That all of my family would find restoration in the relationships between each of us. To put the hurts and the anger and the sense of betrayal and the lack of understanding behind us, and do what God created us to do and commanded us to do...love one another. Not in words, but in the way we interact with one another...the way that we relate with one another.

I know that for me, it has to start with me. I know I've taken a few steps in the right direction and I'm learning to believe that when one of my siblings "hurt" me in some way, that it wasn't intentional. I'm learning that one of the best ways that I can show my love for each of them and work at building my relationship with them is to listen...and talk...and be gently honest in everything.

I don't know where the next one will occur. They can't be planned, because it will never be as good. But, I know it's coming...and I look forward to what I'll hear, and what I'll say...and the strength that it will bring to our relationship.

On the Brink of the Abyss

I find myself thinking about those days...and nights...

Tap...tap...tap. Tap...tap...tap...tap...tap

The sound of my fingers flying across the keyboard of my laptop. Too many times, Paula hadn't been out of the house more than five minutes before I had hooked the computer up, plugged it into the phone jack, hooked up the box that would alert me to any incoming calls and settled onto the bed for a full night spent in the chat rooms. And I mean FULL night. On many occasions, it would be 5:00 AM by the time I closed the computer so I could get an hour of sleep before I head back to work.

As I reflect back on those days, I can still remember the pull toward that place...a place that ended up being darker than the blackness of a deep cave. It was like I could hear the voices calling me.

"Josh...come chat with me."

"Danny, where are you? I thought you'd be online tonight."

"Dammit Conner...come on. Get your butt online so we can talk."

I had so many names, I couldn't keep them all straight. So many friends, I would get confused about who I was chatting with and say something that simply didn't make sense. So many lies!!! At times, I wish I could tell everyone of the people that I chatted with what a fake I was. How sorry I am if I hurt them in any way. How dangerous it is to pretend to be someone you're not. How probable it is that if you get too close to the edge of the abyss, you will fall in.
That's what I did...I fell in. And like a blind man walking along a narrow path, I never saw what was coming. In fact, I was so confident in myself and how well I was hiding what I was doing from everyone who cared about me, it never occurred to me that the FBI might be the one that caught me. In my blindness, I never thought that was even a remote possibility.

But I'm slowly discovering why I was so blind. I was in need of a relationship that I couldn't find any where else. They say that if you isolate a person (such as solitary confinement), he will eventually go insane. And if possible, he will do anything to find a relationship, even create an imaginary one.

In the year 2000, Tom Hanks made a movie called "Castaway",that was a box-office hit. In it, he plays a character whose plane crashes on an isolated island. He finds himself there all alone for four long years. Eventually, not able to tolerate day after day alone, he creates a friend to talk to. A volleyball named "Wilson" (after the brand name stamped on the ball). He becomes so attached to his "friend", that when it gets lost, he becomes exceedingly distressed. In the natural, it doesn't make sense to make friends with a volleyball, and believe that it is human and that it can actually carry on a conversation with you. But one of the reasons I think the movie was so popular was because many of us can identify with that kind of lonliness.

Thankfully, I was never that alone. But I'm coming to recognize that at times, I felt extremely alone...even when surrounded by other people. Even when people that I cared for talked to me and spent time with me. I would find myself looking for something more, and when I discovered the chat room, I found myself like a piece of iron being drawn to a powerful magnet.

Tap...tap...tap.

Tap... tap....tap.

All night long, my fingers cramping. My eyes red and bloodshot. A chat over....searching for the next person. It didn't matter who they were...as long as they would talk to me. As long as I could believe they were who they said they were. No matter that I was lying through my teeth to each of them. If I got any indication at all that they weren't a teenage boy, they were history! And I wasn't too kind about telling them how I felt about them lying to me and deceiving me. How blind could I be! I hated them for being exactly what I was!

There were times when I was on the edge of that abyss and my foot slipped. I could feel my stomach up in my throat as the fear overwhelmed me. But I would always catch myself. Get my feet back underneath me. Tell another lie to explain away why I was home late from work. Another lie about why I didn't answer the phone. Another lie about how great the football game was when in fact I was on my computer in my office chatting. I always caught myself. I never got too close. I was like Boris in the James Bond movie "GoldenEye", whose famous last line was "I am invincible!" He thought he had made it...but ends up frozen stiff when a vat of liquid nitrogen explodes on him.

But like Boris, I wasn't invincible. I got too close to the edge of the abyss too many times and eventually fell so deep I couldn't lie my way out of it. Sometimes, I wonder if I'll ever go looking for that abyss again. I know how dangerous it can be...and I know how tempting it can be.

But the truth is, I don't think it has the same attraction any longer. I am so much more alone now than I ever was during that season of my life. I have literally no intimacy. And I'd be a liar if I said I never got lonely. But that need for a relationship isn't as strong as it once was. Probably because I've found relationship with One who is always with me, no matter what. He will always listen when I talk to Him...and if I am willing to listen, He will talk to me. Sometimes, just simply talk. He's led me away from the edge of that abyss onto much more solid ground. My prayer is that I remain there in His presence.

Photo from Flickr