Tag Archives: Idenity

April 13th – April 14th, 2006

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Passover. Listening?! I don’t listen well. I don’t really know how to listen. Even when I get away for one of my retreats – I do a lot of thinking – and a minimum of listening.

I’m going to try again. Just going to get on the couch and try not to sleep. Going to find a passage on which to meditate for a few minutes and then simply try to hear….maybe that’s the difference! I’m trying to hear something rather than just listening to what’s there.

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That was a q relatively quiet Friday morning, and what  I heard was: “get up and go visit the places where you grew up.”

So I did.

I left work and drove to North Seattle and visited the Lake Forest Park home where I spent my youth from about 5 years old until I was 11. So strange. Parts of the neighborhood are so different now, and yet parts are so familiar. They put a pitched roof over the original flat roof on our home. But the decks, tool shed, and I think even the play house (now a storage shed) are still just like I remember them. Of course, everything seems smaller.

I received no major epiphanies.

The memories I re-lived were almost all good ones. It was a pleasant, if slightly surreal, feeling to be there.

I sat in my car. Just kept telling myself to “listen”, and didn’t really hear anything.

I moved on. Went up the road to the old elementary school, now Korean church. (Talk about surreal!)

No one was there, but I poked my head in the old Gym (now Sanctuary) and peeked in a few old classrooms. Followed the trail that we took through the trees to the road where the school patrol (crossing guards) did their duty. That was a real thrill for me in the 5th grade: being asked to be CAPTAIN of the school patrol.

I crossed the street and over to the “Nike Site” (an abandoned Nike missile base that we played in, now a city park) and recalled some distant memories. But the actual landscape has changed there. There was a reservoir that I had forgotten about. And I saw a view of the Seattle skyline that I never knew existed. I thought about the trail from our neighborhood that lead here…

As I came back up the trail to the former school I thought again about the school patrol, and how I stole the blue and red lapel pins from the storage lockers. I wanted those tokens of my success so badly. I wanted approval so badly. Attention. If there was any doubt that his battle for approval, recognition, attention and affection is a LIFE-LONG battle, there is no longer any.

I remembered for the first time in a while that this period of my childhood included regular bed-wetting, mysterious pains in my legs that I honestly cannot recall if I invented, my Mom invented, or were real, as well as thumb-sucking up until I was 10 or 11.

I remember Lee C. – my good buddy – she NEVER made fun of me for that. She was the only one who knew my thumb sucking secret – and she NEVER used it against me. Never. Thank you, God for Lee.

But it seems that I NEEDED more attention than just one simple, loyal and courageous friend could provide. I longed for it.

I recall lots of creativity: Many “shows” super 8 movie making, fantasy games; turning my closet into a super-hero lair, actually running around the neighborhood, IN COSTUME with Stan S. as my sidekick, looking for crimes to thwart. I think we actually committed a few crimes so that we could later “solve” them somehow.

I moved on from that house, and after only a couple of failed tries, found the house we lived in when I was born. Had some distant and foggy memories of the place. It was so small. It’s being re-modeled and no one was there so I could peek into the windows with impunity. Yep…that’s the place.

I tried to call my brother and my Dad on a whim to share the moment with them. Neither answered. I took that as a sign: shut-up Dan! Listen!

I listened some more. Still good memories, along with blurry “bad” ones. Conflict. Shouting. The older girls across the street: their house.

Listening. Speak little boy.

April 12th, 2006

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This from February 2004:

“I keep forcing the little boy in me to compromise who he is so as not to disappoint.

So many choices made based on what others will think. Then the little boy finds dysfunctional ways to express himself. He has tantrums, like “binge” eating, pornography and masturbation, whatever….those are choices that are for HIM alone – personal, HIS choices, stuff HE can control and choose without the corrupting influence of “big Dan” saying, “don’t do that, don’t say this…what will THEY think!?” They are kept secret from the “others” and therefore they are his (the little boy’s) alone.

I wonder…if I served with my true heart, would I be a really good servant? Would I become an encourager?

“Now is the time and place to wrestle before the divine face. If you will stand firm, if you will not bend, you will see and perceive great wonders. You will see how Christ will storm the hell in you, and break your beasts.” – J.B.”

Back to 2006 – Alick’s talk about my relationship with food from yesterday: Compulsive eating (or any addictive/compulsive behavior) is the excuse to keep what’s hiding, hidden; what’s hiding wants to speak – it wants to talk-out it’s pain, but the compulsive behavior somehow keeps it hidden, or is the EXCUSE to keep it hidden.

I can see how the compulsive behavior IS the hiding. I’m struggling with the “excuse” idea. I don’t quite get that:  Eating compulsively ALLOWS me to keep something hidden?

If what I wrote in 2004 is true, then eating compulsively contributes to (allows; is an excuse for) continuing to avoid other’s disappointment. The pressure that builds up from living the un-healthy life of people pleasing gets released in the compulsive behavior, therefore allowing me to continue in the people pleasing “without direct consequence” from the people pleasing. It’s self-enabling.

Pheew! Is that it? What does the little boy want to say?

Listening.