Broken

If you are like me, as I believe most humans are, you will likely feel somewhat broken, perhaps even completely broken from time to time. Or perhaps you just feel broken more often than you would like to. In this blog post I am going to talk about what it means to be broken and where I think much of it stems from. Maybe you will be able to relate to it.

To start off, I would like to say that I think we are all born with what many philosophers, of one kind or another, have called “a hole in the soul.” I believe that it might have been Carl Jung who initially called it that, but it is, for all intents and purposes, a void in one’s psyche that needs filling, but which can never be achieved, at least not fully or permanently. A result of this hole is often what we call existential angst, which is an unease about the meaning of one’s life and one’s role in it, or feeling lost, thinking you have a purposeless existence, and believe you have been abandoned by life. A mixed bag of confusion in other words.

I believe that it was in the works of Carl Jung, or perhaps Joseph Campbell, where I first read an interesting interpretation of the biblical story about Adam and Eve. In the book, the author explained that the story of Adam and Eve was an allegory of sorts about their expulsion from innocence (from Eden) and their break from being at one with the cosmos, becoming conscious of themselves so to speak. Once expelled, they could never regain their innocence and live in naïve bliss. From that point on they would try to find their way back to Eden, or to bliss, as we all do, with little or no success.

People deal with this void, with this angst, in many ways, many of which lead to addiction in one or more of its various forms. This can include such things as alcohol, drugs, food, and even sex. I am sure you and I could think of many more in many varied realms, like adrenaline junkies, or those with a unsatiable need for fame.

What adds to the brokenness is our experiences in life such as our family upbringing, cultural idiocies (traditions like female circumcision and other soul crushing crimes), and our encounters with others in our life, such as those in the workplace, in the news, and even those in movies and television shows. Each plays a role in lessening or increasing our brokenness. I am of the view that it is in our sharing when we acknowledge our own brokenness that others in our circle see that everyone suffers, and that they are not alone in their own similar feelings, that they are not so alien after all.

At this point I am going to share some of the ways that I have tried to fill the void, some in the past, and at least one still to this day. Although I realize that I was born with the void, the price of being born, I know that I had some help in my early days having that void deepened by being born in a dysfunctional family. As I looked back over the years, I often wondered if my father caused something to snap in my brain when he, according to my mother, would pick me up by the head and throw me into the crib when I was crying. I know that my mom will not want to read about this, as she reads all my blog posts, but I think it is important to talk about, if only to set the stage for my life. And anyway, my mom did everything, and more, to ensure that our lives followed a heathier road once she made the decision to get help and move fully into recovery. Bless her soul!

Some folks say that there are people that have an addictive personality, and maybe that’s true, but I feel that perhaps their void is deeper and wider than others, due to circumstances in their life that perhaps they had little control over, like my dad’s behavior, or the choices they made, until such a time their addiction was making the choices for them.

It has always seemed, at least to me, that I have been one of those people with an addictive personality. I took notice after years of smoking when I realized that starting to smoke led to a path of excessive use. I had been smoking two packs a day for years when I had finally had enough, enough of society’s pressures to quit and from feeling like the tobacco companies owned me. Although I didn’t wake up in the night to have a cigarette, it was always the first move to light one up upon waking. Like any addict, I had the urge to light up all day long and would do so, and sometimes it even seemed like the first puff would fill the void, at least for a moment. In reality, all I was doing was giving into the addiction, and easing the withdrawal. I know now that it did nothing to fill the real void I had, it was just one more thing that kept me from finding out what my real issues were. I was finally able to give up smoking 32 years ago and was relieved to be freed from that vise. Note that I think that vise is a good term to describe it, as a vise is used to hold on to something tightly, and when pressure is applied it squeezes greatly, like squeezing the life out of you, as an addiction does.

Drinking also became a way to fill the void, although I wouldn’t have thought that was what I was doing back then. At the time, it started out as something social, and the lifestyles worsened the effects from its use. I drank heavily for about six years until I was arrested for impaired driving. That incident came at a time when my life was swirling in the toilet, so to speak, and made me realize that I was heading down the wrong path, a path I didn’t really want to travel on. Luckily, my life circumstances changed and I was able to quit drinking and move into recovery. That was about 41 or 42 years ago.

After I quit drinking, I continued to smoke for about 10 years and I added coffee to my regiment of addictions. For about 3 years, I drank a couple of pots of coffee every day. Although I told myself that I enjoyed it, it was always an attempt to ease the constant unease I felt, an attempt to fill the void, as it were. Perhaps the unease was just withdrawal, but in a way, it typified the unease I had about my life, about my worth, my lovability, and so forth.

About the same time as I quit smoking (nicotine), I decided to get rid of all the “ines” in my life, and that included caffeine (coffee). Note that I do drink tea (Earl Gray) but typically I have only one cup each morning, which Denise usually makes for me as a loving gesture. As my mom says, Dee makes the best tea! It’s true, she does. I don’t feel any addiction to tea, as I usually have it quite weak, and there is far less caffeine in tea than there is in coffee, so not much of a hit.

Once I gave up the “ines,” my addictive personality found food and that is something I still struggle with to this day. The feelings are the same, I feel this huge void and the need to eat to try and fill it. I eat more than I need to survive as the mammal I am, and so I continually gain weight. There have been times in my life when I can actually feel it piling on. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have an off switch, or a gauge that says that I am full. Yep, broken.

Something happened recently and forcefully reminded me just how broken I feel at times. I am going to be very vulnerable at this point and it is my hope that what I share will not make you think less of me, or judge me harshly, but rather to see me as someone who is brave enough to allow others to see the dark side of me, that side of me that causes me so much angst. I am not looking for anyone who reads this to think I am asking for a fix, as I am not. It is just me sharing my innermost feelings, which I think can help sort things out in my mind, and perhaps in the minds of others.

A few weeks before I began to write this blog post article, mid-August I think, I did something I tend to do far too often; that is to overeat. On this particular day I had a craving for Mary Brown’s chicken, and since my wife was out running errands, I asked if she would bring a nine-piece box home when she came. Nine pieces is a whole chicken, in case you were wondering. When she arrived just after twelve noon, I ate three pieces along with a can of pop. Not a big deal you might think, and of course it wasn’t, since it was what I would consider a typical amount for lunch or supper. As I have aged, and due to the medications I take to keep me from having additional heart attacks, I find that I occasionally need a nap after eating because digesting seems to knock me out – like it is a huge job. In truth, I hate to nap in the daytime, but sometimes I just don’t have a choice as I am so tired. Perhaps that doesn’t seem so out of the ballpark, and again, that was not the problem this day. The problem was that not long after I woke up it was nearing suppertime and when Denise and I sat down to eat, Denise ate one piece of chicken, and I ate the remaining five pieces, along with another can of pop. When I finished and got up to clear the dishes, I was struck by severe tiredness and I went to bed. I simply couldn’t stay awake. I stayed in bed until the next morning.

When I woke up throughout the night, I made a couple recordings of what I was feeling and when I reviewed them again, just before writing this blog, I could sure hear the sadness in my voice, the utter disgust with myself, and the pain that this “illness” has caused me for years.

A Moment of Despair – Modeled & Rendered by Don Cheke

When I got up, I thought to myself, that my crazy eating and going to bed is not much different than an alcoholic getting drunk and passing out. I was also reminded that I have always had a crazy addictive personality and I have hated myself for it. I know that I feel better when I eat less, but somehow that doesn’t seem to matter once I tuck in. It is at times after episodes like this that I think I should have stuck with drinking and smoking, since that always kept the weight off. I know that is just stinking thinking, as they say in AA, and I would never go back to that, no way at all! Please don’t think that I am completely out of control, as I am not, since I have mostly good days, and I have my recovery, but still, I wish I didn’t have to be dealing with this addiction business, which always seems to be an attempt to fill the void.

Did you know that Denise can have one or two bites of a chocolate bar and then put the rest in the fridge for another day. The other day could be in six or more weeks. That must be what it’s like to have a functioning brain. If I have two chocolate bars in the fridge, they will both be gone that same day, if not even in the same sitting.

One last thought on this. I know of a woman in my neighborhood that seems to walk obsessively every day for miles. I often wonder if she does this so much to try and fill her void, and in doing so, is not there for her family, and if it causes other issues in her life. On the other hand, I think, why can’t I have that addiction if I have to have one. At least I’d be skinny like her, and skinny she is… but you can never be too skinny, right! 😊

I know recovery means looking at everything and working on making it different but sometimes I think who’s got the freaking energy to change even more? Somehow, I do find the energy to keep moving toward a healthier mental state because it feels a whole lot better than the alternative, which I did experience in my past when I hit what I called the bottom. The impaired driving business, if you recall.

So, I hope that I haven’t been too vulnerable here because I’m not much different than others, in that I or they don’t want people to think less of them. But I think we’re all broken to some degree. Perhaps me talking about it allows others to feel that they can talk about their own brokenness. Not that that’s my intent, but still, I think it’s important. When people let down their barriers and we see just how real they are, I think we all rest a little bit easier knowing that we’re not so alien after all. One of the first things I learned in Al Anon when I joined was that all these secrets that I had, all the shame, all the guilt, wasn’t met with “oh my gosh(s)” and “oh my god(s)” and what’s wrong with you(s)? It was, instead, a kind knowing nod of the head, an acceptance of “yeah, we totally get that.” So really, it’s all good!

For some reason, I thought that it was important to mention a bit about comparisons here, so this: So many of our comparisons are made by comparing what we perceive as our insides to what we perceive as somebody’s outsides. Of course, people often put their best face forward, so when you compare what you see on their outsides, which might seem so colorful, shiny, and glowing, with your self-perceived scrambled innards, then surely, they seem better, perhaps like they’ve got the best life ever. Then, if you’re suffering, or down on yourself on top of it, you see yourself as this miserable waif that has a terrible lot in life. You may not see their suffering, or the mess the other has going on inside, when it’s based solely on the outer appearance, so, it’s best not to make the comparison at all. I often hear people talking about Facebook, and other social media like that, talking about how they can’t stand going there, yet they still do it to try to keep some contact with other people, but they come away always feeling like crap because people often just post all these pictures of their wonderful kids and their wonderful successes and things like that. And again, they come away feeling bad because they themselves know of the troubles they are having in their own life, and it doesn’t look so rosy.

Moving on…

For many people, art, in its many forms, is an attempt to find their way back to Eden, or at the very least, to try and make sense of life, and their place in it. This has been my experience as well.

I think that, for me, being an artist and a writer is/has always been to not only try and understand life, but to fill the hole in my soul. Just today, after feeling a bit of disconnect with the cosmos, while I wrote the blog on humility the day before, I physically felt, I know it sounds crazy, a flow of energy pass through my whole body and out my chest. I felt a great sense of being alive and connectedness and I felt inspired to write my next blog post, which you are reading now.

In some of my other writing, I have talked about the assemblage of goodness in the cosmos, or as I think about it today, a collective creativity that imbues the universe. In my book called Threads of the Spirit, I wrote about it in thread 73. I think it says what I want to say very well.

Seventy-three

It will be discovered that:

On another level, spontaneous spiritual writers will know that their writing is not necessarily their own.

They realize that when they remain quiet and open to inspiration what comes out on paper is of a much deeper nature, as though it comes from the Spirit. They can allow it to flow forth freely or they can get in the way of it by forcing it to conform to their own agenda. If, however, it is allowed to flow freely, upon completion they often sit back in disbelief at what has come to be; a spiritual work they could not have penned alone. Through this experience they realize that their role entails becoming a spiritual conduit of sorts.

I love this feeling and so I strive continually to be creative and feel the high that comes from it. Hummm, I wonder if that is another addiction. If it is, it is one I can live with, since it doesn’t seem self destructive.

As you can see, I am a very complex person with many levels to me, some crazy and some not, some even closer to enlightened, if I can say that, without sounding like an egomaniac. I guess we all are some of each, that’s the glory of being human, I’d say.

I think I will stop here, as there is enough for you to ponder if you are so moved to do so.

Donald B. Cheke – November 11, 2024