Nothingness

"The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live." -Leo Buscaglia

I lived in this place of nothingness.  Deep depression...What Leo may not be aware that a person stamped on repeatedly as a child begins to believe they deserve nothing.  The power of the book Child Called It is not in the horrendous treatment Dave Pelzer suffered at his mother's hand.  The power comes from somewhere inside of Dave; he believed if he could stay alive, he was worth more than nothing.  He did not learn this from his mother.  She called him It.  Sometimes anger at his treatment was the burning inside that kept him going for one more hour.  Sometimes a thread of belief he harbored and nurtured he would find a way out.  In the darkness of depression the belief there is away out is dimmed or snuffed out.  Anger will relight that candle of hope.  The simmering rage of what is happening is not ok.  The burning that drives people to get themselves out of whatever hell hole they were buried in.  Anger becomes a driving force against nothingness.  Sinking into nothingness there is no anger.  My counselor poked, prodded, and used his skills to light my flame of anger.  He knew that without anger I would continue to drift in the murkiness of depression.  He stirred the waters until all the smothered rage came to the surface.  A rage he was startled at how deep and wide.  He discouraged me from allowing me to let it rip but instead like puncturing a small hole in a balloon he allowed it to seep out a little at a time.  I understood where the drive came from that pushed me to excel even when no one was watching.  I understood how much anger I suppressed every day to function at work and at home.  One of the tools was buying a box of clay pigeons, round clay disk used for target practice, thrown against a wall.  His expectation was at the end of the box I would be tired and ready to quit.  I went out an bought a second box.  After smashing 180 disks at the wall, I figured I had a start.