My Story
Why the name?
A movie I watched with my kids many times was called “True Grit” about a rough federal Marshall named Rooster Cogburn, played by John Wayne. He was getting up in years, had gained a few pounds, and wore a patch over one eye. In the pivotal scene of the movie, he sat on his horse facing four gunmen. He yelled across the valley, “I mean to kill you in one minute Ned, (Robert Duvall), or see you hanged in Fort Smith at Judge Parker’s convenience. Which will it be?” Ned smirked in disgust and shouted his reply, “I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!” Rooster didn’t take that very well, threw the horse's reigns in his mouth so he could shoot with both hands, and charged across the valley.
Later in my life, I too was getting up in years and had gained a few pounds - and - I might as well have had an eye patch because I've never had any vision out of my left eye. On one particular day I was railing on passionately to my adult daughter regarding some subject I can't recall, and she must have thought I was being a bit too boisterous because her reply to my speech was… “that’s bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.”
So, here I am writing my book and my website, and couldn’t imagine a better title. I hope these stories and opinions are as effective as Rooster's charge across the valley - but with a much gentler outcome.
One day I was brushing my teeth and something scared me...
Brushing your teeth is such a comfortable time when nothing should touch you or bother you, but as I brushed away and all was quiet, here came this ‘gasp’ originating somewhere around my bellybutton, as if I had forgotten something critical or important. Only I didn’t forget anything… I was just brushing my teeth. I let it pass as an anomaly and went on about my day. Then it happened again the next day, and it even felt stronger. It was like I really had done something horrible and forgot what I had done. As I stood there staring in the mirror with the toothbrush still in my mouth, I registered in my mind that it was actually a fear inside me and I remember saying out loud, “I’m not afraid of anything!” I would spend the next twenty years getting very familiar with fear and coming to terms with the fact that – in reality – I was afraid of everything.
I might as well let the cat out of the bag and share that this ‘fear awareness’ coincided with a metaphysical experience. In order to relay the clearest version of what happened and how I felt, I’ll quote directly from my journals;
Journal entry - 12/18/06;
“I woke up this morning and realized that my left hand was laying on my stomach, and it was buzzing like a slight electrical charge was going through it. It got stronger and stronger, and it was as if some kind of energy was building up. After about fifteen minutes or so, I thought I should try to pick my hand up and when I did, it felt like I had on a catcher’s mitt of vibrating… something, all over my hand. It was thick and heavy and buzzing. An instinctive feeling came over me that I needed to lay my hand off the bed – so I did. Then, slowly, in about another fifteen minutes, all this energy ran out of my hand and into the earth.”
I have always had a very high opinion of myself, and I concluded from this event that I had developed a superpower. It was not a superpower, but it gave a false boost to my ego, and I began to read everything I could find on metaphysics and spirituality. I went to events and conventions that fit that genre. I took an energy healing class. I found chatrooms online that discussed all these topics. I took all this information and taught myself how to meditate and pray and had no idea what I was doing.
My “tooth brushing fear” along with the “energy event” became a repetitious process that continued for many, many painful years. Every energy event seemed like it would pull back a curtain, allowing light to shine on yet another part of me that did not want to be seen or felt, causing me to have to deal with some whole new, raw emotion that I obviously did not want to see or discuss or feel. This bizarre process always exposed a new fear, which a mere day or two earlier, I was blissfully unaware even existed. It was devastating and seemed to have no end.
Over the years these energy events would fluctuate in frequency, seemingly with no rhyme or reason. The only constant being the emotional pain afterward. They might be daily for three of four days, then weekly for the next month. They might be triggered by a fear-based dream or some feeling of lack or fear I happened to be dealing with at the time. They might be an energy focused intently on one portion of my body that built up and built up with pain until I had to sit up on the edge of the bed to make it stop. Always, as soon as I sat up, the pain I could barely bare a moment ago was gone. I had an innate opinion that I had to let it happen so I would wait as long as I could, but sometimes it was too much to bear. At the time, I really didn't have much information as to "why" this was happening. My unawareness of "why" must have been very necessary, but my lack of understanding for what was going on was almost as hurtful and frustrating as the pain and rawness I was experiencing.
So many mornings, I would begin to wake up and for a grey and unaware split-second-of-a-moment, time stood still, and I waited. Waited for a thought. Waited for a feeling. Waited for an awareness of; who was I? where was I? Then I would have the slightest recognition of… me and the thick blanket of pain that was somehow hanging - inexplicably - only a few inches above my body would drop, and the pain of my life and the day ahead would fill me and I would sometimes feel tears welling up and rolling down to my ears. It always made me remember the old country song, “I’ve got tears in my ears from lyin on my back in my bed at night and cryin over you”. Then I’d think, “Mr. tough guy, crying on his pillow”, and I would get up, go to the jobsite, put on my tool belt and get to work. Until one day, after many months, the pain hit me at the moment I strapped on my tool belt just like it had hit me when I woke up – and that was too much. I dropped my tool belt on the ground and went home.
Eventually, I walked away from the construction business I had built up for sixteen years. I could no longer function in that capacity. The emotional pain was too much. I sold everything I owned, moved into an apartment and went to work at Home Depot for $11.50 per hour. It was 2010 and I had no idea what I was going to do or what might happen.
