In my mid twenties after leaving the Navy, I went to work for a government contractor running physical inventory processes. The work at first was sporadic, but my work ethic paid off with a full time position at the Naval base in San Diego. Working along side sailors (some of who I had known from my ship), I got along easily with everyone except for one young man from my company. He was shy and kept to himself. He brought his bible to work with him daily and could be found studying the scriptures during brakes and lunches As a result he earned the nickname "the preacher". As for the rest of us we were all piled in the break room watching soap operas (men and women alike) yelling at the screen and making jokes about the crazy story lines.
One day, after work I was walking to my car and realized that the preacher seemed to be following me. I knew something was wrong but kept walking, eventually thinking that I had lost him. As I got into my Karmann Ghia that I was driving at the time, I saw him in my rear view mirror. He walked alongside of my car and tapped on the window. That is where the memory stops for me. The next thing I remembered was waking up in my car in a pool of blood with a raging headache and a rather nasty cut above my left eye, that I would discover the next day had been made by his ring. I drove home and cleaned myself up and shackingly called my boss. I was asked not to press charges and told to meet him at my job site the following morning. When I walked in he was there talking to the Senior Chief in charge and "the preacher". That's when I heard the preacher say, but he is a sinner and I try so hard, but everybody loves him. It makes me sick. He was told to apologise to me and then my boss escorted me to the side. If I promised not to say anything to anyone, I would be transferred to a prime location in Point Loma and get to travel to all of our inventory sites including Yuksuka, Japan. Travel? sign me up! I wasn't much of a wave maker anyway. Oddly enough, it would be another five years to connect the dots and realize that I had been "Gay Bashed".
The point of telling this story isn't to point out that I was bashed or that I got to travel or that I was timid. The point is that fear can debilitate you completely! I don't know if I passed out even before the punch landed on my forehead or if fear erased the memory. But thanks to fear, I'm missing a few minutes of my life. Pretty amazing. I have come to understand that my response is something that would be consistent with victims of abuse (not the case) or bullying (defiantly the case). What ever the reason, I still find it fascinating that we can black out to avoid handling something too frightening.
Fast forward to December of 2010. Sitting in the doctors office, listening to the fact that I had cancer. I didn't pass out or fade out to some safe place in my mind. I've grown stronger over the years. Strong enough to face an internal danger that is far more frightening than an external one. Yes, I suppose that "the preacher" could have had a gun and shot me, but I would have been dead. The threat and the fear of cancer is one of living in ever increasing pain, of losing you body piece by piece until it finally and mercifully no longer functions Every survivor knows this all to well. Every care taker has taken that same journey with us and they know it all too well. Having lost my first life partner, Tim, to AIDS in 1985, I was no stranger to what cancer could do. Tim, was a beautiful and kind young man, who within a year was physically ravaged, going from a 215 lb gym build man to a 95 lb skeleton that I barely recognized. Yes I knew what cancer can do, and yet I knew something else. I could heal myself. Whether I did it using Western or Eastern medicine, was never the point. The point is that even facing our greatest fear we can heal ourselves. I firmly believe this. I believe that this is exactly the way God made us.
Fear can do much to us. It can freeze us, immobilize us, but we must remain strong in our faith and start to move one muscle at a time until the function returns. Until we can eventually smile and laugh and roll our eyes at how dramatic and ridiculous we can be. Until we can set ourselves and our spirit free.
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