“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.” ~Joseph Campbell
So you’ve made mistakes—who hasn’t? The beauty of having faltered is that you can help the world with your experiences.
Because we err and hurt, we can empathize when other people are hurting. We can reach out of ourselves, forget our own pains, and hold other people up when they need it.
When you realize your flaws can help the world and bring us closer together, suddenly they seem less like liabilities and more like assets.
Still, I was set on a path of destruction. The more I allowed myself to get involved with women, the more fear I felt but I become addicted to feeling alive.
I didn’t want to go back to being cold and alone in the dark again, and would do anything to avoid it. That feeling I tried to avoid was ultimately what set me free.
I got closer and closer by observing extremes of pain, loneliness, fear, and rage, through my training and clinical work, always drawn to tortured souls.
The truth, though, is that I am maybe still avoiding the depths of my own personal darkness... I met her and I saw myself reflected in her confused and sometimes harsh approach to my deep longing, and her eventual rejection.
I became my own client in therapy. I needed saving and had a lot of healing to do and learn to reconnect with my body... I had to believe that I would not die from the immense grief, shame, fear, and pain I felt.
I also reconnected with my instincts to know what was safe or right for me; to share my true feelings about the past and present with my family and friends; and to rebuild the foundation for a secure adult life, lived true to myself.
The boogie monster hidden under my bed could no longer frighten me. The illuminating truth had set me on my path to freedom.
Gradually and over many years, I worked through resistance and acceptance to forgiveness, to make peace with my past and forgive the mistakes and harm caused by others in my life. Above all, I forgave myself for abandoning me.
Every step led me closer to falling in love with me—strong, gentle, complicated, weathered, beautiful me, and like many others, more beautiful, I now believe, because of the scars, which are part of me.
Darkness is only where there is a lack of light. I am no longer of afraid of either, and I know I am both.
Sometimes I might be separating myself from the physical world, by floating too far upward in spiritual euphoria. Or I might begin to feel darker, because I’ve given too much of myself to others, and fear has kicked in to close my heart again to the love, people, and the life that is all around me and within me.
It’s a balancing act—avoiding those extremes. It’s when we master this that we can love freely and live true to ourselves.
