I Can't Get This Crazy Out of My Soul

Last night something really dysfunctional happened to me and I came home and wrote a blog post about it. However, I was so disgusted by what had happened that I erased it. But right now on twitter I saw a tweet about a video that just literally gave me chills on my arms, and I suppose that I feel compelled to write about it.

I have a seriously dysfunctional part of my self that I have tried to erase over the years and have managed to keep buried. That part of myself pops up every once in a while when its triggered by a certain event or type of person.

This part of my personality is probably related to the way that I was raised, in a house full of mental, physical and emotional abuse by a mentally ill mother. It probably also has to do with being raised in a neighborhood marked by severe gang violence, where our disputes were settled with fists or weapons. Over the years it has taken tremendous self discipline and self introspection to not want to settle a disagreement with a punch in the face.

But something that I have never been able to get rid of, nor do I want to, is my attraction to all things dark, painful and macabre. I've always been drawn to suffering and pain in all of its representations-art, music, literature, poetry, movies, and other forms. Perhaps it's a result of my catholic upbringing where the "suffering is beautiful" mentality grew in my mind. It's not that I want pain in my life, or pain in my relationships, but for some eerie reason I just feel that there is something beautiful and liberating about seeing other people in pain. I'm attracted to representations of the tormented soul.

When I was in high school and slightly beyond, I was in an extremely dysfunctional relationship. Jesse was a brilliant artist, musician, song writer, poet, writer, and performer. I was drawn to his creativity and intelligence, and since then I have never met another human soul who posses his intelligence and artistic creativity. Over the years, he became addicted to alcohol, drugs, sex and other risky forms of behavior that only seemed to fuel his artistic brilliance.

Needless to say, our relationship spiraled out of control and I just couldn't break lose. The more dysfunctional it got, the more creative I felt and the more fodder I had to write and paint about. There was nothing so intoxicating to me as expressing the inner most depths of the agony that existed in my (or his) soul. During those years, I created more poetry, writing and paintings than I ever have in my entire life.

Our dysfunction finally reached a point where one night I walked away with a broken hand from punching him and a bruised neck from being choked. Well, I didn't actually walk away, rather escorted away by the police. Hours later the telephone rang with his voice on the other end calling from jail and it was then that I finally decided to change my life. I walked away and never looked back.

Over the years I have had my share of dysfunction, but I have managed to try to erase that secret part of myself that comes out when provoked by people of a certain nature. I did my share of crazy stuff as a young adult to my current boyfriend but it never managed to escalate due to his gift at being able to deescalate conflict.

Flash forward to 2010, when my old high school boyfriend shows up on my door to apologize due to one of the steps in his 12 step program for sobriety. He has managed to completely overhaul his life and although I should have been wary about his ability to quit drugs but not alcohol, I was still compelled to meet with him for dinner to catch up on his art and writing.

It's been a decent six months, where we have remained friends and I have been once again drawn to his brilliance and creativity. My boyfriend has told me that I am an idiot, that it is only a matter of time before I morph into a wacko and knock him over the head with a bottle or something, but I became convinced that twenty years have passed and that we are both different people.

And then last night happened-a lovely night of sushi with my friend and the ex. Somewhere along the line my intuition told me that something bad was going to happen and I should have listened to my gut that we should not have started drinking sake. Hours later, my intuition was affirmed when a minor argument about me being too dominant erupted into a scuffle. Luckily the "red alert" button in my brain told me to get my purse and go immediately because one of us would sooner of later end up bleeding or in jail.

I'm disgusted with myself is all I have to say. I think that I knew deep in my heart all along that it would end up like this, but I didn't listen to my gut because I was so attracted to the allure of his creativity. However, this man brings out the crazy in me that wants to break his nose and see blood running down his face and onto his shirt. I want to seriously hurt him when something that he does or says triggers violence in me.

This is not the person that I want to be. And I know that I should never speak to him again if I want to really erase this part of my personality that I hate so much. I've often wondered if this part of me exists because I was a victim for so many years until one day a counselor told me to hit my mother back and defend myself when she was hurting me. So, I started hitting her back and hitting him back when they hurt me.  Yet now I see that I have become them and I want it to go away.

So this leads me to the video that I saw on twitter today-a video that literally gave me chills and raised the hair on my arms. The video is repulsive to me because I have lived a similar life with my ex where I wasn't so much of a victim, but where we were BOTH victims of one another. I'm repulsed because I know exactly what "I like the way it hurts" means. The video makes me sad that there are young women who are watching this who might be taught that this type of relationship is normal.  But the video also relieves me that I am no longer willing to put myself in this type of situation, no matter how much I am attracted to the brilliant and alluring flames of certain people.