A blameless inventory. That’s what I’ve been doing with my life. It’s a concept I admire, but haven’t always had the wherewithal to navigate. Following a lifetime of experiencing a black/white cultural practice of assigning heroes and villains in any story, I’ve spent plenty of time seeing myself in each of these troupes. Retreating into and embracing my inner hermit has bestowed a certain deconstructed and open-to-possibilities perspective requiring a ground-up, fierce examination and editing of life as I’ve come to know it.
The tendency I stumbled into of internalizing hyper-responsibility and blame, intellectualizing deeply painful experiences, and struggling to grasp the reality of boundaries led me down a path of depleted confidence, sense of stability, and belief in the power of possibility.
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Trekking back to myself has been the pursuit of many yesteryears, one I am committed to steadfast and wholeheartedly— but damn is it exhausting [and you only know when you know]. I’ve long believed there can be multiple manifestations of the truth, rather than some black/white tidy box as we have been told— nay, the truest recovery has been vast shades of gray. The lessons have been, in the easier streaks, enlightening and humbling, and in the most challenging, shattering and debilitating.
And yet, I’ve rarely deviated from this pursuit of wellness, better days, and a grounded peaceful knowing. Navigating multiple descents into shadowed wells of despair, I’ve clung to shreds of (sometimes sparse) hope and faith. Often I’ve believed myself a weak specimen, perhaps too delicate for the confines of this fast-paced and sacrificially demanding world. But I’ve also come to understand that leaning into existential discomfort and facing demons isn’t something undertaken by all, it is by-nature a gnarled and often lonesome path. If you’re lucky (and I’ve been quite as such), you encounter knowing fellow travelers battling their own monsters— indeed, over time you sharpen an ability to instinctively identify and form kinship with one another, some reassurance in the storm. You listen to songs and read poetry and glance upon artistic creations, that for even a sliver remind you you’re not the only one trudging through lunacy.
It takes the biggest courage, it takes unflinching curiosity, and sometimes it takes lives [I’d be lying if I said I’d never believed non-existence a better outcome]. Yet still, we rise and we fall and we rise. And it fuuuucking sucks, but it’s our suckage. It’s the bravest thing I’ve ever done or likely will do. Why this life, like this, with these unshakable truths that scare the shit out of me? I have no doubt (and I can be a fairly doubtful and adorably cynical person), that the strength manifesting within is the stuff of true spiritual freedom.
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I’ve been called wise and strong and sensitive and confounding and overthinking and lovely and a great many other things, which I may or may not be. What we think we are and know of ourselves/the world/sentient reality can become a self-effacing box, a box of limiting traditions that personally have brought me to my knees time and again. For me, this initially unchosen roast on the pyre stemmed from a multitude of jarring and destabilizing life circumstance. Yet now, it’s the obstinate commitment to comprehending darkness and fear as an enforcing power to summon and wield.
That which you fear most, know it. “The unexamined life is not worth living" [a famous dictumsupposedly uttered by Socrates at his trial for impiety and corrupting youth, for which he was subsequently sentenced to death (Wikipedia)]. Majorly, I find this life to be worth living— a cornucopia of maddening and delightfully conflicting paradoxes, ripe for the till. Carpe diem with a big dose of momento mori, the whole damn gamut.
I find myself ever here, nestled in a blessed rabbit hole, electing moment-by-moment to do hard things, then rest and refuel, then repeat. Sometimes, the length of the undertaking is frighteningly disheartening, but I think this is the sensational reality of a life examined. A life spent befriending fears, as much as one might pursue hope and all the like.
The blameless understanding that I am human, with strengths and flaws. With big emotions and an even bigger heart. Examined, and for all that I can be, contented with here, right now.
