Dealing with Inevitable BS

Nobody I know is too rich, educated, or successful to escape life's inevitable BS or sorrow.

While some might find my perspective quite dismal and depressing, I find that staring at cold hard facts and reality as is and then bringing joy or a plan of action is quite preferable to denying the obvious.

I recently read an incredible book by Alan Watts called Psychotherapy East + West in which he discusses the extent to which death is not discussed in many cultures, which can lead to rampant anxiety, fear, or neurosis.

These underlying cultural tendencies to stuff down these obvious facts about life and ignore them or pretend they aren't real seems a silly way to handle the truth.

For instance, when I was twenty, one of my best friends—a young man I had known since childhood—committed suicide at the age of twenty-two.

He stepped from seven stories to his death.

At the time and for months to follow, processing this fact as part of my reality consumed and disturbed me.

I ultimately belief it is my duty to tell true stories so other people see that it is possible to pick yourself back up and have purpose.

I may not be or have much, but I exist and can try to help myself and others.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s “shit sandwich”

In looking at obvious traumas of my life, two of the most violent include:

1) One of my best friends committing suicide, stepping from a seven story ledge to his death.

2) The half-sisters of my closest cousins that marked a humongous part of my childhood went down in our local paper as part of "The Bloodiest Mutilation in Ohio's History" after they and two gothic young men one day downed bottles of cough syrup, purchased a plethora of surgeon's scalpels, and slashed hundreds of thick, deep gashes in their skin.

During a battle for custody, I saw the explicit pictures from the crime scene: sweet girls I'd grown up with covered in their own blood in the same disturbing house I'd spent time in as a young child.

Though I cannot recall the details of what the photos look like, I can also not forget their essence.

Bonus trauma: When I was in first grade, two young arsonists set over seventeen fires to my elementary school across the street from my home. I woke up one Saturday morning to somebody banging on our front door. It was my first grade teacher with black mascara pouring down her cheeks, could she use the phone? The school was on fire!

As our street was closed and the firefighters were alerted, I recall sitting in my dining room watching the smoke come pouring from the windows of my school.

Sh*t happens, right?

So why share any of this disturbing sh*t with the public? What was that about?

Why and the f*ck was that what intuitively called to me again and again and again as a writer?

Why creative nonfiction? Why tell the TRUTH of all things?

Why share the f*cked up occurrences of my life with the public?

Why air my dirty laundry to masses who have proven to be quite cruel and unrelenting to celebrity or public figures?

Why write, and especially, why write this?

It has taken me six serious years since writing my original manuscripts to bring them back to life and ultimately up and out into fruition: into the public sphere.

Why risk my reputation?

Because it is your calling! a little voice shouts inside.

Because you were given this life and these experiences for a reason—to show that the mountain could indeed be moved, right?

Or perhaps this life and experience are purely random and in fact there is no real reason these things have occurred—that too can serve as inspiration, because we are all here, alive, right NOW dammit, and we all have the ability to take the f*cked up and use it as fuel to make a better world around us.

If this is all there is, is that too not inspiration to make the best of what we've got?

Is that all idealistic bullsh*t? Maybe. But what is the alternative?

To give in to the dark side? I think not.

The thing I've been contemplating about dirty laundry: how much more damaging is it to stuff your mildewed clothing into a dark drawer?

To bury something is to allow it to slowly rot, or to plant it with intention to grow into something (hopefully of use.)

To air something out is to perhaps save the experience and make something more of it.

Or at least, that's why I am now writing.

I am writing because I am now a public teacher and have been for several years. In a way I am already a public figure, and with that comes projections from people about who they think you are.

I have always been able to best communicate when given the opportunity to sift and sort my thoughts with time and intention.

Writing is what comes most naturally to me, what I have been doing daily since the second grade for the joy of it.

I have wanted to be a writer more than anything else for as long as I can remember.

Now, at last I am taking a look at my life, my website and online platform built in the spirit of Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press, at my many streams of revenue and entrepreneurial opportunities for financially staying afloat while creating the time, space, and flexibility needed to get serious about publishing my books, essays, and musings.

As odd as it may sound, my paths as a percussionist, pianist, photographer, artist, social media manager, marketing specialist, webmaster, and even certified insurance agent have all been to build a lifestyle that would allow me the luxury of writing the words I knew I wanted to one day write.

Like many of the great artists, musicians, and writers I admired: whatever you define as Spirit: life, energy, God, radiance—you are merely a conduit of something much greater than you.

I myself am not much, an average human.

But if only I could step out of my egoic mind (what will they think of me? My in-laws? My grandparents? My business associates? What about the masses at large? The cruel critics of the world? The all-persuasive media outlets?) maybe I could actually help someone.

All I really wanted to do as a writer was meet another's heart and soul and say: hey. I'm sure you're going through or have gone through something really terrible. I too have faced hardships. I hope you heal quickly, recover, find purpose, seek solace, and serve others with the life you have.

As tragic and unthinkable as my friend's suicide was, this reality has continued to serve an urgent and important purpose in my life.

When I work at my mom and dad's office and drive past the field my friend is buried in, I am charged with the understanding that I have life and see starkly what the contrast is.

I have life, and I can do something with it.

If the extreme is to end your own life willingly, wouldn't a great alternative be to really go for it with the life you DO have?

My friend was unquestionably a huge catalyst of giving me purpose and urgency.

If death is the contrast to life, I'm ready as hell to give what I've got while I've got it.

And if what I've got to give is a few tragic or strange stories to relate to people that are struggling emotionally, then that's what I'll give.

To write is to express what? Words, emotions, memories, thoughts, observations, exposition, characters, causes, effects, catastrophes, and lessons learned.

I have been an avid reader since I learned to read. I've read hundreds and hundreds of books in my lifetime, and in a way each one taught me something I could take away, even if it was, "That is total garbage; I am taking NOTHING from this and learning what in fact I do believe, value, and think."

Every piece of creation serves a purpose, and the funny thing about this mostly silent journey is that I am not yet sure what it will be.

I obviously hope to be well-received and useful as a writer and hope to skate past rejection and ridicule.

But lessons will be learned and life will go on, and now, forever more, I will continue to write and let go of the inevitable outcome.

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