I am my Own Old Flame

Yesterday, through an odd twist of events, I ended up reading a letter I wrote to my mother when I was in college. When I was SUPPOSED to be in college. My family was a disaster, and I was hanging outside the fabric of society like a bit of loose yarn on a sweater.

The letter really opened my eyes.

Many writers want to throw up when they read things they’ve written in the past. Not me. I’m almost always pleasantly surprised. Even when I read things I said, which I no longer agree with, I generally feel good about the quality of the writing and thought. The old letter was an exception to the rule. It reminded me of something I had forgotten. It reminded me of what I used to be.

One of the greatest things God has shown me is that correction is the best thing there is, apart from salvation.

When you say something negative about a person, it falls into one of two categories: condemnation or correction, i.e. constructive criticism.

Condemnation is for people who will not improve. It’s what the King James Bible calls “judgment.” If you criticize someone, knowing it won’t help him, it’s condemnation. It may be necessary to do this from time to time, usually inwardly, in order to avoid continued involvement with people who can’t be blessed. You shouldn’t do it without a good purpose. You shouldn’t do it for the pleasure of hurting people or getting revenge.

Correction is for people who can change. To correct is to open a door to freedom and victory.

I think about these things every day, and I work to get correction in my daily prayers. One consequence of this is that I am now fairly ruthless with myself. I try to find ways to take responsibility for problems other people and spirits helped cause, as though I were the only one who did wrong. To take responsibility for a thing is to take power over it.

I like to say that all the problems you have after you turn 18 are your own fault. I say this because I used to blame other people, and it made things worse. I gave my parents much of the blame for the way my life turned out, and by refusing to take responsibility, I dug myself deeper into the hole.

Obviously, then, I am extremely reluctant to blame other people now. But when I looked at that letter, I remembered how my upbringing crippled me. Looking back on it, I understood that whatever I am now, it’s a wonder I’m not in an institution, or dead. My sister ended up in a homeless shelter. That could have been me.

I was raised in an atmosphere of abuse. In my case, the abuse was generally verbal, coupled with neglect. I was insulted and barked at all the time. I was made to understand that I was wrong about everything, and that if I spoke or asked questions, I was likely to be driven off with my heart pounding, looking–literally–for a place to hide until the storm passed. When others were abused, I would sit behind my bedroom door in the middle of the night, waiting for the sounds of abuse to stop.

When I was a teenager, I had no confidence whatsoever. I barely had any involvement with girls; I ruined my opportunities with my lack of certainty. It was hard for me to stand up for myself. When someone mistreated me, I suddenly felt the same way I had felt at home during outbreaks of abuse. Instead of trying to set things straight, I wanted to say or do whatever it took to make it stop. I had been conditioned to feel that any effort to defend myself would make things much worse. I had been taught that I could not do anything to help myself.

I had no goals, except to escape. I used to go for long drives and wish I had somewhere to go, so I would not have to come back. I only worked hard enough to avoid getting F’s. I never thought in terms of accomplishment. I thought in terms of avoiding suffering, and even temporary relief was worth pursuing, regardless of the cost.

I knew things were screwed up. I tried to fix it. I looked for secular heroes. I ran to all sorts of unlikely messiahs. One was Fritz Perls, the founder of gestalt therapy. I thought he was brilliant, but he was really just a dirty old man who hated his parents. His answer to life’s problems was to discard his parents and feed his giant ego and goatlike lust, without thinking about other the way he hurt other people.

I read books by people who believed self-esteem was the path to nirvana. It was very appealing. I had no self-esteem at all, unless negative self-esteem counts. I internalized the abuse I had received from others. When they weren’t around, internally, I insulted myself throughout the day, repeating the things they would have said. Believing in myself and praising myself gave me relief from that; it took away the pain, the way morphine takes away the pain of a broken bone. It was the wrong way to go. I didn’t know that.

I applied to a grand total of three colleges. Columbia accepted me. Yale sent my application back because it was late. Dartmouth waitlisted me. I went to Columbia. As a college student, I was totally ineffective. No one had taught me how to organize my life and get things done. All I wanted was to get drunk and make trouble. Animal House was my source of guidance. I tried to relive it.

I couldn’t deal with the challenges of college life. My freshman advisor quit during the first semester, and my English class moved to a new building. I didn’t do what was necessary to get a new advisor, and I missed class for six weeks because I didn’t want to deal with the administration. I hated talking to people in authority. They intimidated me, and I knew that if they asked me questions, I would have to tell them things that would get me in more trouble. Also, to be honest, the administration at Columbia was fairly useless. They didn’t do much to help people in trouble.

I fell under a lot of bad influences. Bad influences were pretty much the only kind Columbia had to offer. I thought I was going to be a writer, so I wrote a lot, and I took classes in writing and literature. Columbia was still wilting under the demonic spell of fools like Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, like a high school girl in the back seat of a car with a third-string college quarterback. The atmosphere was godless, debauched, and pessimistic. I drank it in.

I read Henry Miller. I thought he was wonderful. He was a wicked old crank and probably a sociopath, but he seemed to be getting over on the system.

More and more, self-esteem and self-determination seemed to be the answers. I made a conscious, proactive, overt effort to become proud, to the point where I gave myself a nickname that started with “Arrogant.” I wanted to be so self-assured, no one could shake me. I was building my own little internal Tower of Babel.

I saw these things yesterday in the letter I wrote. I saw the effects they had on me. I was dramatic and emotional, like one of the English Romantic poets. I kept praising my own talent. I was trying to make myself believe I could do something. My parents had no faith in me at all. They didn’t think I could accomplish anything. My answer was to go way overboard, trying to supply what I couldn’t get from them.

I was nearly insane. My handwriting looked like the scrawl of a potential serial killer. I was clinging to anything that would keep me from sliding into complete despair. It made me almost deranged. Almost delusional. I needed help, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. My desire for help and my suffering didn’t matter. No one gave me what I needed, and when I tried to give it to myself, I became more warped.

I had forgotten about this. It’s hard to relate to. My mind is completely different now. I have more peace. I’m not afraid of people. I don’t go to bed at night and hold onto myself and shift in bed, wondering what will become of me. God has worked a tremendous amount of healing and restoration in me, so it’s a shock to remember how I used to feel.

Now I’m thinking about this, trying to draw the right conclusions. I have to take responsibility for what I am; I can’t pin it on others. At the same time, I look back and realize I didn’t stand a chance. I couldn’t turn myself into a good student or a competent person. I was the only person I had to rely on, and I was running on fumes. I had almost nothing to give myself.

You can’t breastfeed yourself; you run into the same principles that govern thermodynamics. You have to have input from outside.

I’m still responsible for what happened. I chose not to pray when I was young. I looked in the wrong direction. There is no getting around that. I didn’t want to serve God. Maybe I would have wanted to serve him, had I not been immersed in slander about him. Those who slandered him to me are accountable, but I am still responsible. I knew he was God.

Looking at that letter makes me think about the way I view people who don’t believe in God. They are as lost and wrong as I was. Their blindness and deafness are extremely profound. What hope is there for any of them unless God does them a giant favor, steps in, and gives them supernatural faith and remorse? None, I suppose.

My misery was a blessing. Had I been successful, I would have thought everything was fine, and I would still be on rails, sliding toward damnation. A lot of famous, greatly admired people have awakened suddenly in hell, wondering where their limos and personal assistants went.

I have to be aware of the wrong others have done to me, and I have to acknowledge it. The truth is important, regardless of its nature. You’re not supposed to forget the bad things people have done or pretend they didn’t happen. You’re not supposed to lie about them to make them look better. At the same time, I can’t hold onto anger or blame others for my problems. If I do that, they defeat me twice.

If you want your kids to do well, there are two important things you have to do. You have to teach them to know the Holy Spirit, and you have to support them emotionally. These things are more important than food, education, clothing, and shelter, because meeting internal needs results in the meeting of external needs. There are many kids on this planet whose material needs are met, who would be better off if their parents died. That sounds terrible, but it’s unquestionably true. Many parents wreck their children, to the extent that almost any adopted parents would be better.

I still take responsibility for what I did with my lfe, but I don’t feel as bad about it as I did last week. I see now that I’m very blessed to be doing as well as I am. My sister didn’t get what I got, and my mother died young after a miserable life. My dad doesn’t know God. I’m doing better than all of them.

Don’t fool with prosperity preachers, positive-thinking preachers, or the old-line clergymen who teach you garbage about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. You need the charity of God, provided through the Holy Spirit. You need handouts, not paychecks or bribes. Improvement of the self is job one, after receiving salvation. If you know that, you will avoid a lot of blind alleys. You will eventually come out on top.