I was standing out in my driveway on a nice warm Texas winter day. It was one of those days where the sun shines down in the 70s after weeks of bitter cold wind chills. I found myself caught up in the moment and fully present and aware. My senses filled with the smell of a false-spring rising up from nature, the strong rays of a sunshine that warmed my soul like the reacquainting of a long lost friend. There was something all together warm, inviting and familiar about the place, but with the co-recognition that it wasn't a place that came often. I stood there watching my 3 year old play with a water table his grandma had bought him and his brother the summer before. It was as if my son was having a similar experience to me, enjoying anew the life that came with the warmth and curiosity to explore, of a long forgotten friend, high up in the sky. I don't know if it is just me, but every time I really feel the warmth of the sun, I'm reminded of a time when I was a junior in high school and I rolled down the windows of my car and blared my teenage music as the sun beat down upon my hand hanging out the window, speeding off from the High School campus for the last time that year, as summer commenced. Those rays of sun are synonymous with freedom, exploration and undiscovered futures, but I haven't been always capable of feeling their warmth and many days in those undiscovered futures were far bleaker than my 17 year old mind could fathom.
As I sat looking at my youngest of 3, playing and living in this light, I found myself reflecting on the words my therapist had often asked me in time of heighten anxiety, and concern for my ability to manage a load and mental illness, that at times seemed daunting and insurmountable. I would come and tell him the very real ways my mental illness were affecting my ability to manage the loads of life. I would sit and say things like, "If this weren't the case, or that, or if I could just sleep like a normal person." I wasn't overly reactive and blameful of outside forces on my life. I've always been one to try and look at what I can control and influence over the external, but sometimes the real limitations of the illness weighed me down and filled my soul with hopelessness. It was on these occasions, my therapist would say, "Aaron, if you could go sit and have a conversation with your 19 year old self, your 25 year old self or your 30 year old self, what would the current "you" say to him? How would you respond to the hopelessness of his current predicament and how would you tell him of what was to come?" Now, I'm soon to be 38 and have lived with the ups and downs of Bipolar Disorder and deep suicidal depression for 20 years. Those 20 years are filled with trauma, pain, suffering, breakthroughs, relapses, more breakthroughs, Divine intervention, timely connection from others and many many other vivid memories and experiences. When someone tells you fully be present in those experiences from the past, it doesn't take much to vividly remember and relive those ups and downs. It's one of the blessings and curses of highly emotional trauma. The details may be a bit foggy with time, but I remember as if it was yesterday the great burdens and pains of times where self injury and suicide seemed like my only options to manage the pain. So you can imagine the great contrast, those darkest days of 19 and 25 with little belief and hope in any future would greatly contrast to even my darkest days today, not because the mood state was necessarily so much worse, though in ways it was, but because of the groundwork, the bricks and the effort time has given me to create a structure for life. At 38, raising three kids without being overly stimulated and or getting agitated by their endless energy seems daunting. It seems hard to manage sleep when it is not only a disorder but the needs of your children that awaken you at all hours of the night. If is hard to be present enough to engage and teach them when you are exhausted from your own mood disregulation within the day. It is hard when all you want to do is tell your 11 year old that the reason you are having a hard time connecting with him and don't want to play video games or throw the football has nothing to do with him but everything to do with the burden of my disorder. These are difficult places to be, but they are nothing compared to the kid that I was that wondered if there would ever be a marriage and a wife that would understand, that would see me for my strengths and love me through my weaknesses. The kid that couldn't comprehend a child in his life, much less three. So as I have often done in therapy, I find myself at times giving those speeches to that 25 year old me, or rather that me that always wonders if the next mountain will be too hard to cross. The truth is I have had endless support in my journey for stability. I have had family, a wife, and providers that have rooted and bent over backwards to try and help me in my greatest moments of weakness. I believe God has watched over me and gave me strength and another chance at times when I have given up hope. But I would be undervaluing the greatest influence on all of my outcomes if I didn't give myself the respect and love that was required to make difficult choices to find hope and strength when most of me wanted to hide in my room and just waste away. At the end of the day, the person who did the most for that 18 year old to become that 25 year old, to be that 30 year old that cried on his birthday, truly thinking he'd never live to see 30, that kid is the reason I am where I am. He didn't quit, he didn't give up. He was slammed to the ground with a mouth full of dirt, many times, but he made a choice to fight, he made a choice to believe, or at least a choice to get up and give it another go.
My favorite poem is Invictus:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not wince nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate
How charge with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
My hope is that when we find ourselves overcome by our circumstances and aspects of existence out of our control, we will take a moment to realize that though there is little we can do about much of it, we are the master of our fate, we are the captain of our soul. If we can learn to make those difficult choices to put ourselves out there to feel and experience more pain, we might also find strength, resilience and blessings come with that pain. We might find ourself elevated through our struggle to a higher plain. My hope is we will learn in the moments to look back, to remember where we have come and the strength that has come from our continued push for life and hope. We can then look back and tell ourself, we have been here before and we have found the strength to endure and grow. Maybe if we look back too close we won't see the growth, but if we give ourselves time, we can look back and see how strong we really are.
The final part of the excercise with the therapist is to take all that growth and resilience we recognize from overcoming past adversities and extrapolate that to our future. If the current self can help give hope to our past self, knowing we may still be in the struggle but aren't at rock bottom; perhaps the greatest person to help us in our current sitaution is that same self, or rather the future version of that self. If we have found the strength to get where we are currently from where we were, imagine what we can do in the future. My 25 year old self would have laughed out loud if you told him I'd have 3 kids at 38, and my 19 year old self would have just bawled with disbelief if he saw my current life.
My hope is that I can sit in those moments when my 3 year old is playing outside and the sun is beating down on me and my current self reflects presently at the awe of where I have come to and how I got there. I give place in that moment for the 19 year old, the 25 year old and the 30 year old, but then after a moment I come back to the present filled with gratitude for what I have and where I am, not because all the pain and struggle is gone, but because I've kept going and found these moments along the way while the tempest still rages. As I come to this quiet and peaceful self-awareness, I watch my son play with his water table and start to do something my 19 year old self couldn't do, I start to imagine the life before me and what 50 year old Aaron will have to say about it all. I laugh a slight laugh, because if the last 20 years are an indicator, it will look nothing like I can imagine. There will be hard days, for sure, but I will have better tools and be armed with the past victories to aide me, and the bricks in place to see what I've since created. I also know it will be filled with joys and tender mercies. I think to myself, I've underestimated you several times, God, let's see what you and I will make of me yet in the next chapter of life.
