A bit about me.

When I look back on my life, and I look now at my motivations for writing this blog, I don't really arrive at a particular conclusion, although identifying one would be convenient for the sake of story-telling. No, this life is on-going, and although what's happened in my past will forever stay in my past, I suspect my relationship to those happenings will continue to change. (As it should be, I think.)

I've always felt, way deep down, that I have something to say, something to contribute, something to give. These sensibilities have driven me throughout my life, from the private machinations of my heart and mind all the way up through the decisions I've made along the way. Objectively, I think I've done a moderately good job of recognizing and honoring those intuitions to date. Subjectively, however, I am extremely dissatisfied with myself. And that, Dear Reader, is both my blessing and my bane.

On the one hand, my inner restlessness, when channelled into a pursuit or activity or interaction I love, runs like a locomotive at full bore: screaming down the tracks, and pulling the load with might, precision, efficiency, and exuberance. On the other hand, though...on the other hand. Sometimes I can't enjoy things when I know I should be enjoying them. I treat my desires and passions like belligerent schoolchildren in need of harsh discipline. I become confused, mired in self-doubt and despair. The locomotive, once vital, is relegated to the shadows, where it leads my thoughts into circular punishment on some lonesome, wind-whipped moonscape.

And all I have, inevitably, is my faculty of something to say, something to contribute, something to give. My life was kind of a breeze until I turned 17 or so, when the Shadow Train Ferris Wheel started cranking into motion. At the time, it was tame enough, and I was busy enough with being a senior in high school, that I could get away without paying it too much mind. But as I made my way through ages 18 and 19, it became impossible to ignore. I had become a different person. Things I never had to think about were suddenly, yeah, impossible. My mind, heart, and moods had become Mr. Hyde, and the Nathan Gismot of old had become a shell -- a shell who, Thank God, held on just tight enough to fight the fuck back, and to not give in.

I survived. But it cost me. It cost me in lost time in school -- it took me an extra year and a half to graduate. It cost me thousands of dollars extra in student loan debt. It cost me precious, age-appropriate life span development. It cost me a lot of clarity and confidence.

I'm reasonably sure that, in some ways, I'll bear the scars, and be healing from these (and other) wounds for the rest of my life. Maybe not -- I'm no fatalist. I say that, though, because I do know that the Shadow Train Ferris Wheel experience -- and the number of similar, if less severe, manifestations of it since that time -- utterly changed the course of my life. It's been tempting at times to indulge in that Siren Song, "What If?" You know, "what if this hadn't happened?" I know things would be a lot different, and while I have a few ideas of what things would look like, it's impossible to say for sure. Maybe there's a Nate in some parallel universe somewhere who can tell you about it.

Anyway, I think I've done pretty damn well, all things considered. I've hit some personally important milestones, including earning a Master's degree last May. My survival through several stops in hell -- largely unexpressed to others at the times I experienced them, for better and worse -- have revealed a mettle and toughness and courageousness and tenacity and resourcefulness and intelligence that I NEVER thought I had in me when I was young. Indeed, I have to remind myself, or be reminded, of those qualities sometimes, almost as if I still can't quite believe it. Sometimes I kind of picture all that stuff now as being like a blacksmith's fire, and that I was the sword or the wheel or the yoke which the blacksmith's hammer had to forge into form. Think for a second about what a blacksmith has to do to take a piece of iron and turn it into something almost completely new. It was painful and terrible, because I was being beaten; it was painful and terrible, because I was being utterly transformed. But, like the iron that becomes a wagon wheel, I am still elementally ME.

And here I am. I still find myself hesitating when I wish I wouldn't, or censoring myself when I want to speak up, or holding myself back out of fear. Bit by bit, though, I'm chipping away at the dam. Bit by bit, I'm scaling the wall. And in moments like this, when I'm high enough up, taking a breather and surveying the landscape, I can appreciate the wall, because it's forcing me to become a truer version of myself. I can appreciate it for making me fight, and becoming leaner, wiser, more efficient, more learned. Better-able to pick myself up when I trip. Better-able to drive that locomotive, and enjoy the ride that is this lifetime.