I think we need to start working on getting at the source of your anger.

I look at him and I laugh and I stand up and I walk out of his Office.

The Halls are bright and the Fury inside of me wants them down full of holes reduced to rubble. I hate these fucking Halls I want to destroy them destroy myself destroy everything. I breathe deeply and I hold on and I walk toward the Unit. I want to go outside and I want to breathe free air. I want air that is not of this place and I want space that is not of this place. I want no walls, no Halls, no Units, no Counselors, no Rules, no God, no Higher Powers, no Steps, no Groups, no Lectures, no Dining Hall, nobody to see talk to deal with. I want to breathe. Free empty air. I walk through the Upper Level and I walk down to the Lower Level and through a Group Session Lincoln is leading and he asks me what I’m doing and I ignore him and I open the glass doors and I step outside and I breathe breathe breathe and the air is free.

I start walking. I have no idea where I’m going. I’m just walking. I take a Trail and I follow it and it leads me into the cover of the Evergreen. It’s darker in here and I feel less vulnerable and more comfortable. I am breathing deeply, as deeply as I can breathe, and the air is calming me down. The Fury has dissipated and is a walking rage, an anger like fire, entirely controllable, and easy to stop it from burning or hurting anything.

The Sun is high, its light shattered by tree branches, their streams illuminating dirt, dead leaves and rotting plants killed the Winter’s cold. Frost sparkles in the shade waiting to melt. In an hour it will be gone. In ten hours it will return. Another day another cycle here gone back tomorrow gone again. I am cold. Warmth is in the light but I avoid it. As I walk, I’ll get warmer. I’m in no hurry.

I follow the Trail and the Trail leads me along the Lake. The Lake is the same as it is each day the same. Sheets of ice, life below, birds above. Noise destroying silence, silence overwhelming noise. Reflections slowly move along the water distorting what is real the object or the image. They are both real and it is all real. It all is in front of me life is in front of me and behind me above me below me surrounding me. I can see it and feel it and hear it and touch it. Inside and outside. Right now.

A bench is empty. I sit down close my eyes open myself. I don’t know to what I am opening myself. Is it God or something Higher. It is me or what is around me. Does it matter do I need to know. It matters because it is what is keeping me together. This opening is allowing me to pick up the pieces of a shattered life. I need to believe in it to continue to believe in me. I need to know what it is. What is it that opens me.

I stand and I walk along the edge of the water until it ends in a Sea of yellow grass. The grass is dead now but will return in the Spring that is the way of the World. Things die and they return. Is that biology or God or something Higher. Are we biology or God or something Higher. I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song. Will this song exist when the beating stops. Will one stay when one is gone, can one live without the other. Does it matter. It does. I have to believe in something. It is holding me together.

Up the Pine walk and across the murky desolation of swamp and rot and life existing because of death. Back down into dense Oak and Evergreen. The Sun is still hot and high its rays still scattered still dancing across the floor of the earth and my feet are moving easily. The Fury is gone, replaced with free air and the quiet emptiness of a solitary calm. I am quiet and empty. I am calm.

If there is anything I seek it is this. The calm. If there is a God or something Higher for me it is this. The calm. If there is something that will hold me when I need to hold it is this the calm. There is no anger, no rage, no Fury. There is no want no need no desire. There is no hatred no shame no regret. There is no grief, no sadness, no depression. There is no fear. Absolutely no fear. When one lives without fear, one cannot be broken. When one lives with fear one is broken before one begins to live. The calm I feel right now. What is it?

I am lost in the Woods but still on a Trail. I am seeking that which I have but will lose again. I have sought it before as a cure for my disease of myself. In a Church as a Child it did not come. I held my Parents’ hands and I felt nothing. Love only brought me loneliness and horror. In bottles and pipes I found emptiness and pain. At twenty-two after Jail and bond and flight I went back to a Cathedral where what I sought was calm. The calm did not come. I have it now. Without God. I have it now.

The Wood fades into brittle brown grass and a slope carries me to a point where I can see all that surrounds me. I can see trees and Woods and Swamps and Lakes and birds and animals and men and women and the Buildings of the Clinic and the Sky and whatever is beyond the Sky. I can hear the wind and water and the cries of flying birds and the screams of the Patients locked down and detoxifying. I can feel them and I can feel myself. I can feel the life in them and the life around me. I can feel it in the beating of calm of my heart. It is not God and it is not something Higher. This feeling of calm is of me, within me, from me and created by me. It is not God. It is not something Higher.

I sit and I stare at the World. I see it and I hear it and I touch it and I feel it. It is what it is, dirt and rock and water and Sun and air and waves of light and waves of sound made up of definable elements. It can be created or reproduced by man at will. Science has given us that power. There is no mystery to it. We can create it all in a laboratory. There is no mystery anymore as there was at the dawn of history when no one knew what or how or why. We have answers now. Answers that reveal truth. Truth is not God and it is not a Higher Power. There is no God. There is no Higher Power.

I let in it through the open of my calm. There is no God. There is no High Power. I let it in to the deep simple center of what I am which is biology and energy and a beating heart that sings in a language only I can speak. I let it in and it mixes and settles with the calm there is nothing else. I will not fight God anymore. I will not fight anything Higher. Fighting is an acknowledgement of existence. I no longer need to fight or acknowledge what I know is not there. There are still fights to be fought, and I will fight them, but not with the blind faith of a false conversion to a belief in that which does not, has not, will not ever exist, God or something Higher. I will fight with me, my heart, my will, myself, my song, I will fight with me. I may win, I may lose. It doesn’t matter either way. What matters is how I do it. There is no God and there is no such thing as a Higher Power. I will do it with me. Alone. I will do it with me.

- A Million Little Pieces