I just listened to a speaker at a local Unitarian church. This gentleman was a deconverted pastor who came to a realization in 2012 that God does not exist. This must have been a very difficult and poignant idea to bring to consciousness and embrace. Standing firm in the belief meant publicly refuting everything his life was centered around: identity, purpose, fulfillment, and community. To varying degrees, those four items are integral components of the human condition and if a contemporary paradigm is shattered, another must be built in its place. Interest in hearing this speaker stemmed from a continued search for existential truth while I try to rebuild my own life paradigm. The last item, community, resonated with me as the lack of one has been so isolating and lonely. When left exclusively to my own thoughts for too long, the plunge into self-loathing and self-sabotaging behavior is never far behind.

The concept of community as a human need has deeper meaning than simply the world one lives and operates in; a practical definition might be, participating with other human beings in shared experience and intimacy. The criteria of shared experience is easy to meet while shared intimacy can be, and has always been for me, quite elusive. Within a healthy community, intimacy is and should be exercised to varying degrees but at its core, intimacy requires trust. It involves feeling comfortable enough to show all facets of oneself, including those very shiny facets that reflect the light and the ruminative ones that absorb it.

Falling into the western societal male gender role means being tough and “manning up” to get the job done, whatever that might entail. Weakness and sensitivity are deemed feminine, only to be hidden away, buried under layer upon layer of virile manhood. When it comes to emotional fortitude, I have been weak, especially in the past but still at times today. Perceived threats to my identity, real or imagined, have elicited feelings of inadequacy and shame. Overdeveloped sensitivity to these threats creates a risk-mitigating shield of fear that prevents authentic connection. The cycle has repeated over and over.

In the past several years I have been able to openly talk about this fear and others. The more open I am about it, the more comfortable I become and the less my behavior is negatively influenced. It started with a single trusted confidant and grew to include support group members. Now a willingness exists to talk freely about it with almost anyone who will listen. Unfortunately there are few individuals, if any, where a mutually deep level of intimacy exists and I am often left wanting in attempts to communicate on a very personal level.

I still don’t trust many people to let them in to the inner sanctum of my identity. Purposely going to that level outside of a structured institutional setting would be a new endeavor and it is understood that practice is necessary; gaining proficiency allows that mistakes will be made in initial attempts. It also means dealing with the aftermath of vulnerable communication by the inevitable replaying over and over in my mind of what was said and how it may have been perceived and interpreted. But the fact is, and I know and truly believe this on an intellectual level, desensitization will occur again and the aftermath of anxiety will lessen the more often I am vulnerable.

The first step is to identify a group and consistently participate within it to find those with a similar background and/or communication style. Close relationships of any kind are built upon consistently “showing up” for the other person or persons, whether it be a structured setting or otherwise. Fits and starts are part of the modus operandi that keeps the shield in place. Since determining to set a new paradigm after coming off the latest substance relapse, which ended September 15th, 2018, I have tried alternate support groups in Refuge Recovery, SMART Recovery, and a group at the local men’s center, all of which have been attended between one and three times. As of today, I have also attended two meetings of a Humanist group. I even went back to an old AA meeting twice.

The point is, I dabble but do not commit. And this creates a vicious cycle where I remain isolated through fear, the isolation leads to feelings of terminally awkward uniqueness, which then perpetuates the fear of being exposed as awkward, which justifies my isolation, and so on and so on. The pertinent question to myself as I write this: how much internal conflict and turmoil is necessary to commit to a community, with all its flaws and human fallibility on full display?