Dark clouds have intruded on my mind lately making creativity into something mystical as opposed to what drives me.  Writing has become laborious and thoughts which normally run through my mind are scattered and lost among the rubbish. 

My chosen occupation in the world of school finance has become a cloudy picture at best.  The destruction of the economy and the normalcy of daily routine has become something of Arthurian legend.  Kids are at home, school districts are trying to cope with how to return children to their classes, friends and social activities. 

Normalcy.

What is “normal” anymore, anyways?  Even as we adults struggle to grasp at what constitutes “normal” we fail to see the future and what it holds.  Where will our summer bar-b-ques go?  Will evenings on a patio bar in our favorite restaurant become a thing of the past?  Will the ice cream trucks return to suburbia with their enticing tones and cool, sweet treats?

Waiting.

During this time of waiting should be the perfect time to continue with the novel I’m writing, but what has happened is the summoning of some memories that I would care not to remember.  Memories about visible scars on my skin, white pills consumed to offset sadness, regret and questions of “Why?”

Painful reminders of things though, don’t always live on in the visible.  They live on in the mind as comments said, remarks heard and cheers which were never understood. 

I have said before in a blog about self-confidence that I lack this in a major way.  The only person in my family with this trait.  The boy who never wanted to be the stereotypical “Alpha”.  The boy who preferred the comfort of books, writing poetry and getting lost in day dreams over chest thumping and machismo.  Now, with that said, I was a competitive swimmer in my youth.  I had dreams, goals and ambitions.  I loved the roar of the crowd and the feeling of besting my competition.  I loved all the blue ribbons, medals and trophies gathered over a 10-year span.  I swam with, and bested, future Olympians, made friends with souls I still chat with and dreamed of “walking-on” to the Penn State Swim Team.

As with all dreams, some are destined for nightmares and the awakening to reality.  My junior year in high school saw my team and school finish with another section title, a time for me in the 100 Butterfly that earned All-Section Honors and generated some scholarship offers at Division II programs.  It made me look forward to the next year.  The final year of my high school swimming opus.  A year my teammates and I talked about not only a section title, but a District title and shot at States. 

The fall of my senior year dawned with the same dreams.  I was training with an Aquatic Club in my hometown and doing the work the best I could.  As fall progressed into winter, and the season started in earnest, I was made a Tri-Captain by my peers.  Then, the nightmare slowly began to creep in…

Before competitions, we always did cheers after our warm-ups.  Both the women’s and men’s teams would gather in the shallow section of the pool, surrounded by dozens of banners displaying the blue blood nature of our swimming program.  The legends that came before us and those that would continue to swim after us.  The red and black banners showed the hard work, dedication and tenacity of what our sport demanded.  We were winners.  We were teammates.  We were a successful group of young men and women.

The cheers we would do were supposed to motivate us and drive us to be at our best.  To get us “amped up” for the competition and then take our opponent to task.  One cheer in particular seemed to excite everyone.  It was simple.  “H-H-S” with the rhythmic clapping and pounding on the top of the water.  We did this before every swim meet.  We made sure our opponent was watching as we cheered and showed our team spirit.  “H-H-S” morphed at some point into “H-A-S”.  I didn’t know why or what this new sequence of letters meant, but was happy enough to go along with it.   I didn’t have a clue until my sister, a manager of the team, told me.  I’ll never forget how it felt.  I’ll never understand why.  To this day, I can’t understand it or come to a reason why teammates felt this way.

“Henkel and Andy, Suck”.  H-A-S…  Ouch.

I still hear it in my head.  Every time I walk by the lap pool at my gym, I hear the cheer.  I feel the hurt again.  A dream once was to continue my swimming into college and maybe beyond.  A dream that died the night my sister told me what it meant.  The “friendships” I thought were strong and deep, were just like where we stood in the pool; Shallow.  Hollow.  Most of those people in the pool had no clue about the fact I had lost my best friend to an attempted suicide just a year prior.  They didn’t know the words which were spoken in the cold night of February, 1996.  A boy that loved the sport and the comradery of fellow teammates recoiled.  No longer were the dreams dreamt.  They lay abandoned and scorned.

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real

The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything.  (Hurt, Johnny Cash)

H.A.S

Why?  Was I too vocal?  Did I try to lead too much?  What caused this?  No answers.  23 years after, I still hear it.  I still feel it.  Admonition within when the darkness sets in.  When the trail becomes steep and the miles become long, I hear it.  “H-A-S”.  I suck.  In the midst of what was supposed to be the best year of my swimming life, I gave up.  I quit mentally.  I no longer cared.  I still wrestle with the darkness it created in my mind to this day.  Climbing mountains has been the answer to the depression and darkness I feel.  It allows me to forget that cheer for some time, but it always creeps back in.  It always returns until the next hike or climb.

“What does it matter all these years late, Mike?”  It matters because some things haunt you.  Some things you simply can’t let go of.  Depression won’t allow it.  The mind of the over thinker and person who perseverates on every mistake they have made in life, haunts them in the witching hours of the early morning.  We can’t simply, “Let it go”.  It will never happen.

I share this memory as a way to conduct therapy of sorts on my soul.  Over sharing?  Maybe, but this helps.  The Holistic Healer I visit told me the first time I went in for a Chakra alignment that I was a “Wounded Healer”.  Someone destined to carry karmic debt of others and darkness for others as my own in order to help them heal.  A burden I happily carry if it helps to bring light other souls.  This memory, now shared, I say goodbye to.  Brought into the light, I will do my best to no longer allow it to remain in my heart, mind and soul. 

Throughout life, we collect moments and memories of happiness and pain alike.  We do our best to bookmark the happy times in an effort to dull the edge of the knife of sadness.  We walk towards the summit of life and the termination of our journey in the vessel which carries our soul, hopefully with love and light within us.  Imperfect humans with dreams of becoming enlightened. 

I bid you all love, light and healing peace today and all days.  May you all find solace in whatever darkness may haunt you.  Thank you for being a part of this therapeutic release.  Om Mani Padme Hum.

‘”Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but pictures, kill nothing but time.”

Namaste, friends…