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Souled Out |
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Like A Rolling Stone
"Be in love with your life"~Jack Kerouac
August 14th, 2011: In our culture we tend to medicate two of the biggest signs that something is amiss in our life: anxiety and depression. These feelings do not exist in a void, but rather, are symptoms of something much deeper at work in our psyche or life. Making the anxiety magically go away isn’t going to change the circumstances that cause it any more than cutting a weed will make it go away without tearing it out at the root.
I start to notice anxiety whenever I leave LA and have to return. Particularly now--I've taken my “daughter” to her first music festival, Outside Lands. Leaving LA is great. I feel free of something I don’t even realize I am carrying around. Today is the Sunday we are slated to return. I wake up at the crack of dawn and call my aunt.
“I’m having a panic attack,” I say.
“Why?” she asks.
“I don’t want to go back,” I respond. “I’m dreading it.” This is news to me.
“So don’t,” she says.
“If I didn’t have to bring my ‘daughter’ back, I wouldn’t,” I reply. This is also news to me.
The drive home is miserable. I fight tears and traffic the entire way. My heart races. I feel nauseous. I am having trouble breathing. Lucky for her, my “daughter” sleeps the whole drive--I don’t want her to see me like this.
Monday and Tuesday I go through the motions—barely. I notice I have spent a lot of time writing about what it means to be HOME this year, starting with an essay I wrote about The Magic of Heartbreak, continuing with The Pilgrimage. What I have come to realize, begrudgingly, is that I found my home in a heart that could not have me. Ever since that moment, I have felt an inner sense of homelessness I cannot escape. The sensation is particularly acute when I am in LA.
Another fact that I have failed to be forthcoming about for many reasons, is that 10 months ago—emotionally bottoming out due to my romantic entanglements, being Thrown Under the Short Bus and a host of other personal situations that forced me to look around and take stock of my role in my reality—I decided to quit drinking and smoking weed for a couple of weeks. No, I didn’t get a DUI. There was nothing major that occurred, I was not a fall-down, black out drunk. In fact, I was pretty high-functioning (pun intended)--it was just an inner, unshakeable sense of heaviness that pressed on my chest constantly.
Drinking and smoking have been my coping tools for as long as I can remember. From the time that I was 12, marijuana served as my Prozac, my Ritalin and my Alleve. I’m pretty sure I would have killed myself in high school had I not been able to numb out what was going on at home.
I could write a book about all this shit and what saved me (and actually, I am while I’m on the road) but for now, I just need you to understand one thing: this is the longest I have been sober since I was TWELVE. Even after being in treatment for heroin addiction at 19, I only made it 7 months (6 of those months were in a halfway house). I figured as long as I wasn’t doing heroin (I still celebrate that anniversary) I would be fine. Needless to say, the past 10 months has been opening Pandora’s Box of emotions buried and repressed for 20 years. I never had any intention of going this long, but I felt so good when I started, I promised myself a year. It has not been an easy promise to uphold.
Anyways, for some of you, this fact will be a random tangent in the middle of my blog. For others who know me, my history and understand the nature of addiction, everything I’ve written since November will suddenly make a lot more sense.
By Wednesday night, the pain is too much to bear. I have nothing solid grounding me in LA and my brain feels like a broken record, skipping in a never-ending negative groove. My broken heart, my disappointment, my feelings of failure and my demons finally break me. I am curled in the fetal position, sobbing. I would give anything to be held at that moment or to just have a fucking drink--anything to take the pain away. The path of the Lone Wolf comes with some lonely nights, howling. I bottom out and make a run for it. It’s the best decision I’ve made in months.
August 18th, 2011: When I finally stop driving, I find myself in Oregon. I sit on the grass, take a deep breath and listen to the wind blowing through the trees, whispering messages direct from the cosmic intelligence. For the first time in months, I feel deep sense of inner peace and knowing.
The fresh air does me good. I immediately realize honoring my Soul early that Wednesday morning is the beginning of a long list of instructions that, to the outside world may seem crazy and impulsive, but to me are the necessary next steps on my path.
August 19th, 2011: I journal. I meditate. I read. I enjoy nature. It only takes two days to know unequivocally what I have to do. The ball is set in motion. Immediately upon making the decision to leave LA, the universe purrs and responds like a woman enjoying cunnilingus. Everything starts to fall into place and for the first time in a very long time--I feel juiced about my life.
August 21st, 2011: Field trip to Castle Lake. Delicious picnic on the rocks with the dragonflies. Refreshing swim to the raft in the middle of the lake. My shoulder feels better already. Hike up to Heart Lake for a skinny dip and another God’s-eye-view of things. Life seems simple, blissful and for the first time in over a year, the heavy heart feels lighter. Being with nature I am constantly faced with my smallness, with the fleeting nature of our existence here on Earth and what a tiny fraction of time we inhabit.
All of the problems and agonies of my time in LA, all of the things I am chasing, all of the heartache…it all suddenly becomes meaningless. One thing takes precedence in this moment on the mountain—and that is the condition of my Spirit. It is taking a beating in LA. I gave Hollywood my best. I gave my love my whole heart. It is not enough for either of them. I am not one to continue knocking on doors when no one is home. Or in my case, they’re home but they aren’t answering. I’ve Souled out—but it’s never too late to realign with your higher purpose. Never. Goddess energy only knocks once. I realize it’s time to ramble on…
August 22nd, 2011: I am baptized in Crater Lake. It is some of the purest water on the face of the Earth--so pure you can drink it while you swim. The very story of how a caldera forms appeals to my Spirit, thousands of years of creation only to implode in four hours time. Remarkable. Swimming in the frigid, surreal, indigo waters jolts my Soul from its groove. Takes my breath away. The record stops skipping. I am born again. Invigorated. Thousands of white butterflies surround me like fluttering snow. Transformed.
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