Why We Are Here

I'm at a point in my life where I am discovering some things about myself, and about my history, that I have minimized - even to myself - all my life. I need to come clean. 

In 1984, the United Nations defined torture this way:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

The qualification that the torture be inflicted by or on the orders of a public official is related to the nature of the work of the United Nations. Their interest in publishing this definition is in prosecuting nations that torture people. For a government to be culpable, the torture has to be at the hands of a member of the government or someone acting on their instructions. While the behavior described, conducted by a private individual, would in all likelihood not result in UN sanctions, their actions would still be torture.

I have long believed that every family is dysfunctional to one degree or another. In fact, if you found a family that actually had no dysfunction, you would have found a profoundly abnormal  family. Allow that to sink in for just a moment!  In a strange way, if your family wasn't jacked up it would be even more jacked up than it was for being jacked up. If that doesn't make you dizzy, nothing will.

For decades now I have known that my family of origin was a hot mess. I knew that my family members, individually or together, suffered from addictions and other mental illnesses (including but not limited to depression; anxiety; paranoia; narcissistic, borderline, schizo-affective, and other personality disorders; grandiosity; and obsessive compulsive disorder, among others), child abuse including but not limited to child sexual assault, infidelity, low self esteem, anger issues, sexual dysfunction, under and over achievement, profound communication issues, financial mismanagement. Only recently has it become clear to me that what I suffered was nothing less than psychological torture intended to break my spirit.

Generally speaking, I don't have much use for tell-all books. I find them tawdry in the extreme,

and often in very poor taste. There was a time during the 1980s and 1990s when it seemed every washed up celebrity was trying to revive their sagging career through a book detailing their misfortunes. That isn't my intent. I am relatively unknown, very few people will care about my story, I have to career to resuscitate, and I bear no ill will toward anyone. I will be writing about my experience for two reasons. The first is that I am trying to understand more fully how my experiences impacted me. The second is that I know that I am not the only one who has had these experiences. I am hopeful that in some small way sharing my experiences may help someone else. You are not alone. If you have questions, feel free to ask! If something is unclear, let me know!

Finally, it is not my desire to hurt anyone. The people in my story were themselves broken by their experiences. I have no ax to grind. Because of the nature of the material I will be covering, the pace at which I write may be uneven at times. I have no desire to bombard the Internet with depressing diatribes. Some of the stories will be funny, others sad, and I suspect the great majority may be something someone out there can relate to. In the end, as we all work to move forward we will find that spirituality is a large part of that work. You comments and feedback are invited!