The Years Go By So Fast: August 20, 2004

Another ditch in the road
You keep moving
Another stop sign
You keep moving on
And the years go by so fast
Wonder how I ever made it through

Another bruise to try and hide
Another alibi to write
Another lonely highway in the black of night
There's hope in the darkness
I know you're gonna make it

Another ditch in the road
Keep moving
Another stop sign
You keep moving on
And the years go by so fast
Silent fortress built to last
Wonder how I ever made it

(Savage Garden, 'Two Beds and a Coffee Machine', Afffirmation, 1999)

My father dropped dead of a brain aneurysm in 1985, when I was 21. He was only 49, obese, a smoker, with high blood pressure. He would get terrible headaches, and instead of going to the doctor he would go sit in a hot bathtub. He also had a temper that was truly frightening, a deeply rumbling thunderhead that would sometimes flash lightning and hail down upon me as a child.

It was through the sessions of healing touch at the hands of Sister Bernie (to whom my wise counselor Sister Thérèse referred me), only sixteen months ago, that I was able to reconnect to the most deeply buried and most savagely repressed memories and feelings of my childhood. Especially the ones where I knew I was gay, but "forgot" in order to survive.

The bruises—intellectual and emotional rather than physical—are what make me flinch, even though they are (for the most part) already well healed. The bruises are what still hold me back from living the life that I know I am capable of living. And I know it's time for me to push past the flinch-point some more.