Month: April 2013

Getting To Know Myself

For the longest time I did my best to avoid spending time with the one person I had to be with every day. Seeing myself in the mirror when I started each day often brought on feelings that seemed as far away from love, happiness, peace, and joy as one could be. In all reality, I hated myself. I hated who I had become. And I had lost most of any of my own self identity. My life had become a hodge-podge of other people’s personalities, and their likes and dislikes. I made a decision a year ago, that it was time to go back to my childhood, to the last time that I could remember when I was getting to know the real me, the one that had been born into this world unique and special.

I look at my childhood today with a very different set of eyes than what I had when I started this a year ago. There were so many painful memories I was holding onto from my dysfunctional family that I actively lived with self-pity because of them all. It’s easy in this world to numb myself from those type of memories. For awhile I used drinking and drugs to forget them and me. Later I would find other things such as gambling, sex, love, high doses of caffeine, geographical cures, and mega shopping to hide from all of those dark corners in my life. Eventually, none of it worked anymore. I fully believe that one can hide from all painful experiences for a period of time, but eventually, they find a way to rear their ugly head. In my case, in came through severe levels of physical pain.

I’m more grateful today for the physical pains I still continue to face because they have led me to doing the one thing I didn’t want to ever do. They have forced me to be still and be with that person I’ve been trying to avoid since around the age of 12. They have made me be with me, without any distractions, and without any interruptions. Much of my time is spent alone today praying, meditating, taking light walks as best as I’m able to, writing, and reading. Through all of it, I am beginning to learn what my own likes and dislikes are. I am beginning to learn what I really love in this world. Best of all, I’m beginning to let go of all those things that I took on in my life that came from other people’s lives and not my own.

The more I continue to spend time alone, the more I see how much of me was really about everyone else I kept myself occupied with for most of my life. As a child, I did the sports my mother wanted me to do. I enrolled in classes and majored in an area that my parents felt I would be best at. I tried many drugs in college just to be accepted by others. I shoplifted during that time of my life to be considered cool by a few people I was hanging around. I joined a fraternity as well because all of the people in my family were members of a Greek organization. I jumped job after job after graduating because I thought the financial success of being in better paying corporate jobs would make others appreciate me more. I sold almost everything I had at one point and bought a bed and breakfast to make an ex-partner’s dream come true so that he could happy. I later temporarily enrolled in a Master’s program in college because others told me I’d be good at it. I tried fishing and golf for a period of time because it was the pastimes of someone I was obsessed with. I even got into motorcycles and Harley-Davidsons because of another person I was chasing after. The list is infiniteness in all honesty. Ironically, at the current time, I’m not into or part of any of the things I just mentioned.

I lost sight a long time ago on what made me happy because I grew up in a family where I tried to make them happy by doing what they wanted me to do. From that point forward, I spent my life following that pattern with person after person, friend after friend, and relationship after relationship. That was until a year ago when it all changed and the physical pain became too great for me to keep living that way. Since then, I promised myself to follow a new path, one that was forged with God at the center of it. And one that has allowed me to discover the real me.

Thankfully, I realized it was never too late to begin again in my life. I may be 40 years old but there are days when I feel like a kid again as I learn all over what I really like in life. While I may have been doing some of them during all those co-dependent years, now I am exploring each of them and more because of my own inner desires. In just over a year, I have learned that I like a lot of science-fiction/supernatural related things, vanilla ice cream in a bowl and not in a cone with peanut butter topping versus hot fudge, being on sandy beaches staring out at the ocean or snorkeling within them, watching movies by myself at home or at the theater, playing a card game named Euchre on my phone, talking about God’s presence in my life anytime and anywhere, being active in my AA recovery, spending hours on putting together a 500-1000 piece puzzle, sitting under the moon and stars next to a campfire in my backyard toasting a marshmallow, eating spicy Sushi rolls and very burnt pepperoni and green olive based pizzas, and occasionally getting a big, juicy, double bacon cheeseburger with a regular cajun fry from Five Guys.

I know that the list of these things is only going to grow and change over time, but at least today, there’s no one else telling me what I should like or dislike, believe or not believe, and follow or not follow. Well, I take that back, there is one. And that’s God. But I’m ok with that, because I know under God’s helm, I’ll get to know myself better than I ever did in most of my life………until now.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

You Are Already A Superhero!

Many years ago, I wrote a column for a local newspaper down in Virginia. The following entry was one of those articles I once submitted for publishing. With some minor updates, I have re-printed it here as I feel it’s message of positivity is relevant given the state of our world right now.

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X-Men: First Class, The Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, The Wolverine, The Avengers…These are just a few of the many superhero movies that are hitting the theaters in recent years. And that list is only continuing to grow. Each of them have been huge box office successes and generated an enormous amount of revenue from both ticket and DVD sales. So why are superheroes so popular lately? Well I have a theory, one that centers on the child in all of us.

Everyone has their own journey of what it was like to grow up. Throughout my life, I have met many who have endured as difficult of childhoods as I have, if not worse. From being physically beaten, to having suffered from family incest, to receiving mental and emotional abuse by their parents or other family members, to moms and dads that were never around, to never even having a mom or dad to start with and being forced to grow up in foster homes, the list is painfully endless for the stories I’ve heard. The one consistency I have found between all of these people who dealt with harsh childhoods including my own, is that each of us learned to create very early on in life, our own world of fantasies. It was our way of tuning out what our eyes were seeing and what our bodies were experiencing. It was our safe harbor, our escape.

As a child, I secretly fantasized about being a superhero. I wanted to have super strength to defend myself from the bullies who picked on me incessantly. I wanted to have super speed or the ability to fly so that I could get away as quick as possible when my parents were fighting. I even wanted to have the ability to read people’s minds so that I could anticipate what family members were thinking so that I didn’t end up saying something that might set someone off and end in a form of punishment. As I grew older and stronger, in both a physical sense as well as an emotional and mental one, I gained my own independence and found less of a need to continue creating this fantasy world. But the lure of having superpowers has never fully faded.

In recent years, when I find myself fantasizing about having them, sometimes I put a lot of thought together as to why I still think about them so much. While I may not be in a broken home anymore that led me to create these fantasy worlds, I realize I have a greater family, one that consists of billions of brothers and sisters. And one that is just as aching and hurt as my own family was so many years ago. Just look at the state of the world today! It doesn’t take much to realize it is in dire straits. Poverty continues to increase. Sickness continues to spread. There are wars about to break out or already raging in multiple countries. Alcohol and drug addictions continue to increase and are leading to more violence as well as the spread of disease. More and more children are growing up in broken homes. Gangs continue to thrive as disillusioned kids look for social acceptance. Rape. Murder. Terrorism. Anyone can see this horror by simply just glancing at the front page of a paper or tuning into a morning or evening news program. I know there are others out there like me who would just like this madness to go away. We attempt to ignore and tune it all out, but unfortunately we can’t because it’s everywhere. So we continue to hope that the world will produce heroes who will provide a reprieve from the misery that seems to be surrounding every corner of the globe. Unfortunately, the heroes from our childhood fantasies don’t exist yet, at least not in the form that most comic books have portrayed.

So in droves, I, and many others, look for a reprieve from the growing terror and head to the local multiplex to watch the latest superhero flick where a hero risks their life to protect the world from a villain who is causing destruction to people, cities, countries, or even the whole planet. And while we watch these films, we find we are able to suppress for several hours any fears within us over the state of the planet. And when the hero in the movie ends up saving the day, we often leave the theater feeling a little more happy and safe inside. But sadly that bubble usually bursts not too long after when we see the latest news report covering another tragedy. There is hope in all of this though. There is a good side of the coin to look at.

While none of us may be a hero with powers like Superman, all of us do have our own gifts that we were born with and each of these in their own way can be used to create love and peace in this world. Whether you are a writer, a musician, an actor, an artist, a chef, a teacher, a gardener, a seamster, a pottery maker, or whatever your creative outlet is, just place all the love and passion into it you can and know that someone, somewhere, is going to have a positive life changing experience because of it. Think about how the following creative works have spread love to so many people: Harry Potter and Twilight, “Don’t Worry Be Happy” and “We Are The World”, the Mona Lisa and Starry Night. No one truly knows what positive impact their gifts will have at their time of creation.

So I encourage each of you to take a moment today, breathe, and set some time aside to engage in that creative side of yours. Place your heart and soul in your work and trust and believe it will make a difference in someone’s life for the better. While you may not have super abilities like the Avengers, your creative talents are already making you into a superhero. Whatever your gifts are, God has blessed you with them. All you need to know is that they can and will help this world become a happier, more peaceful, and definitely more loving place.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder And Isn’t Just Skin Deep

It’s easy to become vain in today’s world. Advertising everywhere plasters scantily clad models. The males all have six-pack abs and muscles everywhere. The females are usually quite skinny with large breasts. The stars of most TV shows and movies follow similar patterns. It’s rare to see the lead actors in a show or even those models on commercials be overweight or have average builds. So many people seem to be getting face lifts and Botox injections now to keep themselves looking youthful. But is this really what beauty is about? Mainstream society would probably say yes, my answer is quite the opposite.

Some people say I’m too honest in my speaking and writing about my personal life. I’m at a place in my life now where I’m really beginning to not care what other people think about me living in absolute truthfulness. And one of those absolute truths is that I have always been physically attracted to larger, heavier-set people. Before I really understood that I was a gay male, I dated many women, each of which could be labeled full-figured. While I choose to use that term which is more politically correct, many would say early on that I was a chubby chaser. Some even used choice words that don’t need to be written and should never have been said in the first place.

By the age of 23, I had come to terms with my sexuality and had begun to date men, who in the gay culture are labeled as “bears”. For the longest time, whether I had been dating a heavyset female or male, I saw just how vain people were in society. It’s amazing the looks that I got when I was out on a date with whoever I was with. Some were even as bold to say openly they couldn’t believe that someone like me would be with someone like them, as they pointed rudely at the person I was with. For them it was sacrilegious to see a 6’5″, 175 pound swimmer’s build guy to be with a larger person. Sadly, my mother even felt that way when she was alive. She always felt I could have been with anyone I wanted and didn’t understand why I chose the men or women I did. What’s sad is that most people place what someone looks like physically as the most important thing. I was like that for a very long time. But today, I see things quite differently.

While my attraction on the physical level is towards a heavier-set type of person, I’ve realize now as my relationship has grown deeper with God that the most important thing is not what I see on the outside, it’s what I feel with them on the inside. The world is filled with billions of souls. Some of them live in the light. Others, in the dark. Some live to serve a higher purpose. Others, serve only their own needs. My life began in the light. Over the years I went completely into the dark while I fed my addictions and obsessions. Through my recovery from those, I gradually have moved back into the light again and have seen my own beauty emerge from within.

To be considered one of the most handsome or beautiful people in the world by something like People magazine means nothing to me today like it once might have. Especially when I see the actions of these people or anyone for that matter being consistently self-centered, living in life’s indulgences and trying to do nothing but keep their good looks and worry about advancing their careers. In general, I admire those instead that take time away from their jobs to help others, that give of themselves unconditionally, that don’t care to be in the spotlight and would rather be behind the scenes making the world a more loving and peace filled place. I see people all the time when I make it to the gym who are staring at themselves in the mirror and flexing their muscles and obsessing about their flat stomachs. I know this pattern because I have lived it when my only concern was to keep looking a certain way. But as I’ve grow older and the sculpted curves have become more rounded flab, and as I continue to show greater signs every day of my own body’s wear and tear, my focus has shifted away from my looks and onto instead how I live my life and how bright my soul can become.

I don’t know how long I have to live in this life. I’m grateful though that I’ve lived this long to see the illusions I once lived in beginning to break apart. I’m even more grateful that God has given me the attraction to full-figured people in this lifetime. Through it, I’ve learned being handsome or beautiful is so much deeper than what the media and society portrays. But even more importantly, I’ve learned that real beauty was never about what I saw on the outside, it’s what is felt on the inside.

Peace, love, light and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson