Having reached the age of personal responsibility for myself, I suddenly inherited all the unresolved conflicts of my parents. Overnight, I grew just as incapable of relating with others, particularly the opposite sex, as my stepfather had, my mother. For when my mother rejected his sexual entreaties out of the very real fear she might not survive another pregnancy, and upon medical advice to avoid another pregnancy at all costs because of the complications she had experienced during the birth of my youngest brother, I began to experience great difficulty in accepting my own sexual feelings. And when my stepdad failed to accept the challenge to find another outlet for his creative energies by turning, instead, to the spirits of alcohol to drown out his pain, I too lost my way, that is, I lost touch with the metaphysical side of my nature.
Since the physical and the metaphysical were no longer in proper relationship to each other, I started drinking and compulsively having sex with my self. When confronted about my drinking, thank God, I had the fortitude to quit. But I wasn’t able to quit the other as easily, as the solution to this problem alluded my grasp yet.
The problem became so acute only because I’d never been taught by my fathers, or by the religion of my fathers, how to communicate with the metaphysical side of my nature. O, I’d learned how to ask God for things, as if the Almighty were some genie who could grant my every wish. But I was never taught how to listen or what to listen for. In other words, I’d never learned how God communicated with me.
Were the screams I heard, a last ditch effort by the inhabitants of the metaphysical realm to reach me? If so, who were they? What did they want? And did I really wanna know? I did ’n’ I didn’t, because I so greatly feared getting caught up in some metaphysical mumbo jumbo that’d ultimately lead to my own self-destruction.
