Daily writing prompt: What do you do to be involved in community?

I have fallen very far from community. My unfortunate separation from the warm incubator of my youth, occurred as a result of injuries that I did not invite. I’ve been removed from community for so long that I now must revisit the definition of the very word.

Community : a unified body of individuals: such as the people with common interests living in a particular area.

Ah, yes. I remember now.

Back then I was a card-carrying member of white suburbia. I looked like them. I thought like them. I had aspirations, albeit vague, like them. Dad went to work like the other dads. Mom did laundry and attempted to keep our home like the other moms. We had a dog Brutus and a cat Buster, similar to our pet-parent neighbors. I played sports like the other kids. I was taught not to steal and to keep a level head, like the other kids. Yea, I was apart of the community.

Natural disasters are swift, unforeseen, and disastrous. Such was the nature of the Balrog that blitzed my gay adolescence. Internal lashes bled freely from a flood of situations that arose like a dark tempest. My grandfather’s life suddenly excused itself. The steady, shiplike union between my parents lurched, then began listing with disquieting groans. I found it difficult to smile. Shortly the knolls of West St. Louis County would be on fire, and the fire would reach my porch, enter the house, ascend the stairs, enflaming the baby blue walls of my bedroom.

I wanted to be a good boy. As a kid I was daring but I wanted to behave. Plus, I feared the ire of my father. Based on the evidence I had, I thought I was a moral Catholic. According to this ethos bad things wouldn’t happen to me. I couldn’t have been more immersed in credulity. Injustice does find the innocent. Mountains quavered, the earth split apart between my feet, constellations no longer constellated, as I became gobsmacked to learn that I was neither innocent nor just.

When I needed a Legolas to help me overcome the Balrog, I was greeted by isolation. So on the verge of great personal loss, I decided I would not walk forward until my conditions were met. This was my idealism lending it’s final breath to the intimidating ether around me. Circumstances would not obey my conditions. I had to go on. Though my childhood equipped me for much, it had never prepared me for the chapter I was entering.

Now, I couldnt smile. Walling myself off from family and lawyers, I thought I caught the cancer early enough. Balrog’s whip had already gotten to me though. The words, behaviors, and disregard of others, all of which I thought belonged to “them”, arrested my peace of mind. I felt the flush of violence first. Then I caught a glimpse of the devil’s face in my own. A simple mirror betrayed him and I both. This would be the struggle that kept me silent for 21 years.

I thought I knew myself when I was a kid. I thought I knew my parents. I thought I knew this world they raised me to live in. But I knew none of it. Knowing myself happened when the layers of my fluffy personality were stripped away and the foundations of my character were exposed for the strength they faked. The truth is even though I wanted to be that kid again, survival necessitated rebirth. I couldnt be him any more. Not only was this process filled with suffering, sorrow, and mourning, terrifying as it was, I slogged it alone.

My separation from community wasnt done out of spite. Largely it happened because I no longer had anything in common with the community I once knew. I had to put the Balrog down. Not only the external forces that were acting against me, but my inner devils. What do you do to be involved in community? I’ve looked on this question from a distance for a long time now. I thought it was a question for healthy people with mental and emotional stability to answer. I left my community weaker than all of them. Now I return stronger than I have ever been, wholly unrecognizable to my old community. I’ve been to war. The gifts I have are not for myself. Securely planted within the reborn kid, they have suffered the Balrog, are heedless of selfishness, zealous to be dispensed where they can be helpful. I have not done enough to be involved in community. For my seasons of surviving, I make no excuses. Now I am here and I am ready to be apart.