How It Feels to Forget about One’s self

In many ways, I was just like the other guys on the ship, for I was still too much into the habit of putting down my feelings—a pat­tern of behav­ior I’d acquired from my step­dad who, in turn, had acquired it from the tem­ple priests of the Great Gray Mother. And like the oth­ers, I suf­fered the same psy­cho­so­matic con­se­quence, the awful pain that accom­pa­nied the fre­quent out­bursts of uncon­trolled acts of sex­u­al­ity. Only, when they were dri­ven to indulge the tem­ple pros­ti­tutes, I felt com­pelled to indulge my self.

For I was just as inca­pable of accept­ing my sex­ual feel­ings as they were theirs. Where they sought accep­tance in the arms of a pros­ti­tute, I fled to the con­fes­sional for abso­lu­tion from my guilt—to ease the bur­den of my pain. Whereas they sought to escape their pain in the for­get­ful­ness of an alco­holic stu­por, I wal­lowed in mine in one failed attempt after another to get to the bot­tom of it. And where they dis­carded the respon­si­bil­ity for their pain onto the out­casts of soci­ety, I held tena­ciously onto mine, fear­ful of let­ting it go.

For oddly enough, I needed my pain as much as this crutch needed me, as I had the dis­tinct feel­ing Nature was dri­ving me to lose my self in some yet unknown task. If only I could let go of my self, long enough to taste how it felt to for­get about one­self, I believed I would actu­ally find myself. In imbib­ing the spir­its of alco­hol, I had sought the spirit of such an expe­ri­ence. Because my actions were self-​​serving, I drank exces­sively, ever seek­ing to find that state of mind which could ulti­mately free me from the pain of my self. Instead of los­ing my self to the Spirit cry­ing out within me, I lost myself to the spir­its of alco­hol which then blacked out my pain and brought to life the soul­less Hyde hid­ing behind Nature’s desire for unity with spirit.

Com­pelled to release the incred­i­ble ten­sion that’d built up between Mother Nature and Father Spirit as a result of their long sep­a­ra­tion from each other, I real­ized I couldn’t accept just any olé way of life fate threw at me, like that of the Great Gray Bitch or any of her pros­ti­tutes, for only the real thing, the way of my soul, could ever cool this com­pul­sion of mine.