On Life in Three Acts

It took me long years and a thick gray beard to recognize the reality of my life.

First and second acts lived on autopilot, playing out patterns and habits on repeat, a scratched record skipping to the same phrase over and over again.

My truth hidden down deep, the tiniest of babushka dolls, covered by layers of miscellaneous self loathing. Not handsome enough, not tall enough, wrong hair, wrong eyes, wrong name. Not enough, never enough for the love I thought would complete me, the possessions I believed would fulfill me.

Drawing erroneous conclusions born of years filled with tension in a minefield of a home, earliest childhood memories hiding in a closet singing nonsense songs to drown out the rage bullets flying above me. The smell of shoe leather comforts me to this day.

Sages told me the chances for healing would come, and they did. I just didn't have the tools to start the fix. So the stakes got higher, because that's the way of things, right? I learned that, in a 2 a.m. rumination, after a particularly hard crash. The stakes always get higher. Keep fucking it up, and you'll hit tilt and then it's the exit interview for you, my friend.

I'd dream of bullet holes, remnants of violence, thick with the essence of fear. I knew that scent, been stewing in it most of my life, and a Voice asked me: is this what you want? Paralyzed by shame, I couldn't even muster the will to speak. Could only shake my head.

Hit my knees and surrendered. And then I surrendered again, and then I surrendered some more. My life is now one long epiphany of surrendersurrendersurrender. And the babushka dolls are melting away, one layer at a time, revealing more to learn, more to heal, more to love about who and what I am.

I awoke at 2 a.m. from a dream, gasping at the vision showing me those bullet holes had come from the inside. And now, they let the Light in.