The Through Line

“The stable solution is the individual who tells the truth.”

Like any relatively young person stumbling along and thirsting to learn, there is plenty that I don’t know and understand. Because I tend to write so personally and from direct experience, much of what I state on here vacillates and changes. As I have grown up a bit, progressed in recovery, developed in my overall education, and encountered a variety of experiences, my feelings and ideas have subsequently shifted. I consider this mostly a good thing, although I do believe I’d be nearing ridiculous postmodern subjective moral relativism (which I mostly loathe) if there wasn’t a basic fundamental anchoring lying beneath my conscious ideas and diverse writing pieces.

I have written on this blog about alcoholism and eating disorders, codependency and narcissism, mental health and “emotional sobriety,” friendships and relationships, education, philosophy, bits of short fiction, and various cultural topics. I have written, be as angry as you need for as long as you need, and I have written, forgive everyone everything. I have explained, my feelings matter the most, as well as, my feelings don’t really matter. I’ve stated that to heal the trauma you must go within, to heal the trauma you must get out of your head. And onward with paradox, I have gone. All of these messages, though different and sometimes in outright opposition, are true. The human experience is grand and complex, a theatre with a varying cast of players, but underneath these sometimes conflicting ideas (that dwell within, I suppose, “the great globe itself”) are three things I revere, now and always: truth, individuality, and faith.

I have written without fully understanding, grasping for clarity with each click of the keyboard. I have attempted to tell the truth while (sub)consciously writing for a specific audience. I have been afraid to share certain ideas, lest I offend someone. (After all, I started this blog in 2015.) I have attempted to align myself with the status quo, fully knowing that there is always more to the story. Even through these forgivable (and understandable) maskings of honesty, truth was rearing its head, at least inside of me, the writer, if not between the lines of language.

The fact that I have had a sometimes fluctuating message that I am trying to weave into coherence and consistency is good news – it means that I am willing to keep growing and cycling through ideas that have grown stale, to redevelop and strengthen my point of view. And this has everything to do with individuality rather than collectivism and blind ideology. Absolutely I have learned from and been influenced by others, but what that learning always returns me to is my own personal effort to have internal understanding and comprehension; as individuals on this earth, we each have the sole privilege to continuously transform our inner landscapes. At the core of what I write is reverence for self-actualization and integration of Soul, or Self, or character, developing an inner foundation built on universal truths (and being true to thine own self.)

This personal honoring and earnest truth-seeking connects directly to faith or what could also be coined meaning. What is the point of doing anything at all, were it not for some kind of meaning? Then we could all be nihilists and seek to destroy instead of build, or to find everything endlessly subjective and open to infinite interpretations (which many in our current culture think is some sort of revolutionary act) rather than find purpose and the creation of an actual functional roadmap. The belief in something larger and profound, the belief in purpose and meaning, coupled with the respect for the individual and seeking always to understand and tell the truth, runs through everything I write about on here, even if I do sometimes change my opinions on what is the best path of recovery, how to deal with difficult emotions, or what it takes to reconcile past and present suffering. They all point to the same ultimate goal, and they all flow along the same river.

Let me tell you the truest truth. Even when I have been in the depths of darkness, and believe me I have been there, something in me was beating beating beating. It was alive and thriving and this is the through line that I am talking about, and it is nearly beyond words, because it is actually more like an embodied visceral happening – it’s the Soul stretching, inward and up. It is me, and it is something bigger, too, and I’ll say God, because I’m tired of feeling like I might bother someone for writing about God. It is a whispering of, you’re here. It is an invigorating thump of, you know. It is life, energy, force, and it is mine. We all have this, of course, but I’m not concerned with your self-actualization, and I mean that as a wholehearted and weighty compliment. That’s your business and your right to tend to –  I’m here for mine. It is faith that teaches me I can go exploring the Underworld and still be rescued, that I can play a part in my own rescuing, and that I can create meaning from suffering and surviving that will continue to propel me forward. That is my story. That is every story, if you pay attention. And I will keep telling it.