I can't speak for all chaos junkies, and I am no doctor, nor have I done any clinical research on the subject, but from my own experience, I think there are two main reasons I fed on instability until I believed chaos was normal and desired. First, there was such a sense of self loathing and emptiness that came with stillness and quiet that the easy distraction and the rush that came during and after moments of intensity, crisis and chaos became a high that made me glad to be alive and provided escape from the reflection in my mental mirror. Then there seemed to be a constant feeling that life was out of control and unsafe and learning to embrace that served as a survival mechanism that also conditioned me to believe that life was just that way. By my teens I felt more afraid in moments of calm, wondering what would blow up next and when, than I did in the midst of truly terrible circumstances. At least when the wheels were falling off I knew what the danger was and where.
Not surprising, when I quit drinking and drugging and sowing seeds of destruction, much of the chaos of life faded. I didn't know what to do with the calm, and one of my biggest complaints during early sobriety was boredom. I couldn't handle boredom, but the truth is that it wasn't so much boredom as simply stillness, quiet and calm, sitting alone inside my head and having to face things within that I had spent years avoiding, denying and hiding.
The breakthrough for me came with the completion of the dreaded Fourth Step and the subsequent Fifth. As frightening and sometimes painful as it was to finally look at that inner mirror and see the truth of me and feel all those feelings I suppressed, covered and medicated away, the sense of an enormous weight I had not even realized I was carrying falling from me left me feeling light and calm for the first time in decades. The night of my Fifth Step, I slept well for the first time in longer than I could remember.
Today I love and embrace the quiet and the calm. I am comfortable sitting alone with my thoughts and feelings unaltered. Even better are the times of communion with Daddy during the quiet times. I no longer have to always be doing something, and every moment doesn't have to be intense for me to feel alive. I don't have to subject myself to danger and chaos to produce fear in order to keep the terror of my emotions and thoughts silenced. And I can't remember the last time I felt bored, no matter how little was going on around me. I am content and comfortable in the stillness and have no reflexive need to stir the waters and create turmoil and chaos.
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