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When will it happen?
That removal of the tumour that connects me to my former life?
The deepest cut.
Most of the time I’m too busy, professionally and personally, to think about it.
It’s only in the last couple of years (since the past stopped happening) that I’ve realised how much of my adult life was consumed.
In striving to make other people happy.
In expecting other people to make me happy.
Those were the years when stopping (the busy-ness) would allow the flood gates to open and the negative emotions pour in, like Arctic ocean waters crashing into a damaged submarine.
The 04:00 gremlins at the end of the bed.
Exhaustion in the face of relentless demands.
Frustration at the inadequacy of having my needs met.
Outrage at the injustice of it all.
Self-loathing at the stupidity of allowing myself to become that person in the first place.
Who would want to unleash those emotions?
So I kept on trucking, relishing in my reputation as the busiest man in town, secretly using that as a burrow.
Then, BOOM, it was all taken away in a heartbeat by someone else’s decision to stop tolerating, nine months after a braver version of me would have pulled the plug.
Funny how time turns the villain into an unwitting hero.
For the way you did it – wealth without integrity will be hollow and lonely.
For what you did – a lifetime of gratitude.
Every day now, life gets better.
I’ve been shown the light, given the go-ahead to be me, the space to breath deeply and calmly appreciate the beauty – all without the usual wake up call of accident, ill-health or death.
That’s how lucky I am.
So I owe it to myself to finish the job.
To operate.
I’ve been waiting for someone else to do it – probably so I could claim that it “wasn’t my fault”.
I left most of the former me on a beach in the Gulf of Panama on 28th February 2014.
But there is a vestige left that needs excision.
I’m terrified by the prospect of making the first cut.
Done with waiting.