Coming Alive
Take off that smelly coat
It’s been a minute since I’ve written here - about six months. Really nothing has changed, but also everything has changed. Or the focus through which I see the world has tightened. I’ve been reflecting on the nature of pain and suffering, namely, the pain and suffering I endured to get to this season of life – this season of peace, stability, and contentment.
I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. Some shit – like disaster, genocide, fatal illness, poverty, violence, etc – just shouldn’t happen. Period. Some shit is just fucked up. I’m not keen on attributing shit like that to some divine plan. It’s not congruent with who and how I imagine God to be. But that’s another post. Sure, hindsight is where people make meaning, which, I guess, is how some people arrive at that conclusion.
I tend to think that shit just happens. And yet, God is.
This June and last June feel so different. This time last year, I was moving to San Francisco for the summer for a fellowship just weeks after graduating and completing the final summer intensive course of the program. I had suspected as much on the plane, but it was only an hour after landing that I realized I was a victim of a housing scam. Shit happens.
It was Cali after all, so weed was the most accessible it had ever been in my life. I didn’t realize I was leaning on it too heavily until it was too late. I was tossin’ more alcohol back too. Attempting to self-soothe after a bumpy ass start. In hindsight, I probably should’ve just taken my ass home after that initial L with the apartment scam. But I was still trying to prove something to myself, to my mom, to the fellowship coordinators. Trying to prove that I could bounce back and not wanting to lose out on all that I’d imagined that I could gain through the experience. Validation, credibility, engagement-worthy Instagram/TikTok content, and the fat-ass stipend attached to the fellowship, which I had already begun receiving installments of.
“Nah, I need this money,” I told myself. It was very real that I had bills and debts to pay. I was closer to 30 than I was 20. I didn’t want to keep making the same mistakes that had landed me in that financial situation. I was determined that that summer would be the summer I started to get my shit together. I was desperate.
I’m reminded, as I write this, of a keynote address by Ava DuVernay at Film Independent Forum in 2013. In that keynote address, she told the audience a story about her early days as a filmmaker – trying to prove herself, trying to get the attention of the industry, trying to fulfill her dream of becoming a filmmaker. Feeling like she was grasping at straws, she became frustrated. Reaching outside of herself for things she thought she needed, she realized that she was acting in desperation.
It’s a hard realization to accept. Here we are, thinking that something/someone outside of ourselves is going to make the difference, when in actual fact, the thing that will make the difference is ourselves.
No one can give me something that I don’t already possess/have already cultivated in myself.
What she was describing in that keynote was a shift in posture that led to a shift in mindset.
What I have found in the last year is that I’ve spent a lot of time looking for things I felt I didn’t have in other people, places, and things. Stability, clarity, love, recognition, permission. For me, I think the posture shift comes with acceptance. To accept something doesn’t necessarily mean you’re somehow condoning the thing or solving the thing or ignoring the thing; rather, it’s about seeing the thing for what it is.
Shit happens. Mistakes were made. Choices were made. Things went how they went, sometimes, despite our best intentions and efforts. The key, I think, is removing blame from the conversation.
“If this had worked, then that wouldn’t have happened.”
“If so-and-so had done x, then I would/wouldn’t have y.”
“If I had been better/smarter/wiser… If I had known… If I had a rich uncle…”
This is defensiveness. This is denial. This is ego.
I’ve been learning a lot about humility, particularly in the context of recovery. But also thinking about it through the lens of faith/spirituality. I think about how pain and suffering are the great equalizers, how, at my lowest moments, the last thing on my mind is looking down at someone or judging someone. The Buddhists say that attachment is the root of suffering, but attachment to what? Attachment to an alternative reality. An outright refusal to accept what is.
Acceptance is a feat without compassion. After all, two things can be true at once. I did what I thought was best, what I thought would put me in a better position down the line, what I thought I needed to do to fulfill an expectation (even if I made the expectation up in my head).
And I was running on fumes. I was trying to bend the world to my will. My ego wouldn’t let me see what was in front of me. I was exhausted - physically, emotionally, and mentally.
Don’t get me wrong, I did manage to have some fun, to see some sights, to learn some things, to meet some people, but ultimately, I ended last summer in a behavioral health facility. They put me in the detox wing. And that, for me, was my bottom.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one that I can, and the wisdom to know that that one is me.
I am coming to believe that the human who is truly alive isn’t the one who has all the shiny things, all the stamps in their passport, all the friends, all the lovers, all the money. The one who is truly alive is the one who accepts that they are limited, that they are not running the show, that, try as they might, shit happens.
And yet, God is.
And I am not a victim.
I am present enough to yield to the ongoingness of life and the process of becoming.
“Things started going my way when I knocked it off.” – Ava DuVernay