When my life became unmanageable, I knew the answer would ultimately lie within myself. It’s hard to see because it feels much like a garbage truck just backed the fuck up and dumped a lifetimes worth of discarded waste on you. It’s a disorienting experience to no longer feel an attachment to any one reality. Being a doer, my first instinct was to start cleaning up; sorting the trash, compartmentalizing, deciding what – if anything – was salvageable. And then you start to realize that not all the trash is yours and that picking up after someone else who is still making a mess is futile in the same way picking up after a toddler is. And so you turn back to your side of the street, cleaning what you can. And the answers lie somewhere in there, in your own cleanup.

I’m still casting out nets in search of my own answers. Pulling up bits and pieces of bigger truths tangled together, interwoven in garbage that doesn’t matter. Like panning for gold and looking for the few golden specs buried beneath piles and piles of sand. Finding the nuggets worth polishing and then returning to look for more.

Truth finding. Reality shaping. Buried in tangled webs of delusion and lies.

In questioning where I went wrong, here is what I’ve learned: I didn’t trust my own reality. I allowed others to wash my windows only to realize that they weren’t being washed at all but rather smeared with shaving cream and the promise that they were sparkling clean. I’ve learned that nothing is as clear as when you do the cleaning yourself and trust in what you see, what you experience and own all of that, as your reality, not theirs.

Today I stand rooted in my own reality. It’s an empowering place to be. It’s good to be here. Side stepping as I go, sure, but moving. Always moving. Forever searching, taking inventory, and learning.