“We are all made of strength and struggle”
Preface
The following is a retelling of several events in my life. I have not tried to be exhaustive in either the recounting of all my traumas or even in the highlighting of the most significant parts. There are many very happy memories from my childhood and adulthood that I have left out, including relationships with people. I have tried to represent the happy memories and the masks I was wearing with the pictures throughout. At one point in my life, I believed that the way to overcome trauma and suffering was to ignore it and pretend it didn’t exist. I have since come to learn that the path to healing and power is through the trauma, through radical acceptance, which means feeling it in its fullness and leaving it where it belongs. The following is a result of me doing just that. I intend for it to give others the permission and encouragement to do the same for themselves.
Chapter 1: The Hold Up
I am standing next to my mom in the living room. Fifteen and feeling like a protector, jury, and judge. My mom is holding a pistol determined and fearful. My dad has been out. I can’t remember all the details but its the usual. Exorbitant spending, grandiose ideas, lots of action, travel, and very unkind and abusive words to my mom and his mother. I am remembering how exciting and limitless life felt like when he got this way. A small ideal from me could explode into a world of possibilities. Something about him seemed almost childlike and free…
This isn’t the first time this has happened. I am remembering when I was younger. My dad woke my sister and I up one morning, told us to pack our bags and that we would be leaving without my mom. “She needed some time to grow up” he said. I am remembering the exciting conversations we had in the truck and how everyone we met seemed to be important, almost like they were angels. He baptized my sister and I in some kind of standing water held together by some kind of plastic container. We me someone who agreed to watch us while he carried on. A few hours later we were with my mom again and the adventure was over.
I am remembering how my mom asked me a few weeks earlier for permission to divorce my dad. I was older now and could see the effect all this had on her. I was old enough to comprehend the racism of the sign he painted along the bus route. I had experienced the bullying at school because of it. I had found the letter thrown out of a car stuffed in a cassette case threatening him and what felt like me with death. He had attracted “I’m going to fucking kill you” from a stranger.
I was in the yard with my mom when I said “I understand”, giving my father away. Giving up on the happy ending.
I am remembering how my dad had stopped working. He had been a general contractor for years. Blueprints of homes would be spread across our kitchen table while he explained them to me. He lost those jobs because of his destructive behavior. Now he raised rabbits without a market to sell to and started wasting away drawing a disability paycheck from the state. I would later have a passion for architecture and a hatred for dollars.
I am standing next to my mom when he walks in. Energetic. Sharp. Understanding. My mom says slowly, “You need help. You need to go to the hospital.” She had a phone in the other hand ready to dial the police. He is looking at me and I realize in that moment, I’m the leverage. He’s not being held by the gun, or my mom. I’m holding him. He sits down. Trapped. Exchanges a few cross words with my mom before the cops arrive. I am numb. My hero, the one who taught me to hunt, the one who taught me to fish, the one who taught me to play baseball and stoked my dreams of grandeur and greatness has fallen and I did it. FUCK!
My mom would later divorce him while he was in recovery. Served papers to him in the hospital. She moves us across the state boarder to a house that would later be condemned as unlivable. We move on. She suffers years of depression, smoking her life away on a bed while I grow up. I make friends on the baseball team, at church. I start running from the ugliness of my past.
I live with resentment for years. How could I forgive him? How do I think about the good times? He brings up the good times as if the bad things didn’t happen. How could I have him back? How could I have my family back? My spark… My confidence… My adventure… Fuck the world that killed my dad. I’ll fix this somehow. Escape.
Chapter 2: Abandoned
I am remembering how sad I was at school sometimes. I remember seeing other kids being picked up from school. I remember other kids being called in to the office on Valentines Day to receive flowers and gifts from their families. I would watch the clock, hoping but knowing that I would never get called. I am remembering getting teased by some of the kids in 7th grade, asking me if I “beat my meat”. I remember seeing a girl that I thought was pretty, Kacey, laughing. I am remembering how awkward and unpopular I was in the lunch line never knowing what to say and feeling awkward after talking to Lana, Lindsey, and Nikki. I am remembering the migraines I would have at school, pounding the floor because they hurt so bad and being alone, left alone. I am remembering the guys on my bus route being dropped off at their homes and knowing I would be abandoned at this yellowish brown driveway of the McCools.
I am remembering making the best of it. Playing video games. Watching the dad weld outside.
I am remembering playing Nintendo one afternoon and turning around to see Chad, the brother of my baby sitter, probably 15 or 16 behind me. His pants are unzipped and I see for the first time in my life an erect penis. I am remembering him telling me “its ok” and to keep playing. I remember looking back and he telling me to touch it.
I am remembering those days in flashes. Jumping into a Mac Truck excited to put his penis in my mouth. I felt some shame. I remember feeling noticed, wanted, and anticipated. I never told anyone and never confronted him later. I am recalling how I never felt affect by this time but now I feel sad, seeing a little boy who felt alone and unloved, abandoned in the woods, preyed upon and enjoying the feeling of sexual abuse to hid the incessant and pervasive awareness that my parents weren’t there for me. They weren’t there for each other. They weren’t there for their selves. I was completely exposed, vulnerable to a monster.
Chapter 3: Summer
I am remembering summer now. I am being dropped off every morning at a day care… actually that was an older memory… growing up around abandoned kids learning how to construct an outer shell, learning how to establish a pecking order at a young age, looking forward to Sonic burgers on Fridays. I don’t recall the adults, only the kids. I am remembering seeing kids getting spankings. I am remembering wanting to be good. I am probably five. We would split into groups at the beginning of the summer like Yellow Butterflies or some other colorful insect or animal. I remember getting prizes for being good. I don’t remember my parents ever picking me up, only the feeling of being apart from them, by their choice.
I am older now, probably somewhere between ten and thirteen. Same day care but now its a summer camp. I remember having fun and I remember being alone. The putt putt course was run down. I played anyway. The pool had too much chlorine. I swam anyway. I am remembering having a crush on one of the life guard (doesn’t every teenage boy?) ◡̈ She was so pretty and went to my school. She was a cheerleader and lived down the road from me. I never told her I thought she was pretty.
I am remembering a boy named Zane. He was a friend. I only remember the touching, the putting our feet in each others swim trunks underwater, other inappropriate rebellious actions. I am remembering how sick I felt. I never told anyone about Zane. He was just a distraction and no one noticed enough to ask. Lesson learned. Nobody cares.
I am remembering playing pool upstairs, throwing the ball so hard against the bumper it flew back in the air, caught me in the mouth and chipped my tooth. I remember feeling like I was in trouble. These were my PERMANENT teeth! I remember mom coming and being kind, taking me to the dentist. Modify the lesson. No one cares about you but your momma…maybe.
Chapter 4: Running with an Anchor Tied to My Feet
I am remembering changing schools in 8th grade and feeling like it was a fresh start, a chance to level set, incorporate all the lesson of South Lamar, fortify defenses, be cooler.
My dad never took me all the way to school. He dropped me off at the closest bus stop. Another lonely bus ride. An hour each way. I remember teaching myself to wink on that bus and seeing pornography.
I am recalling an earlier memory now, finding my dad’s stash of pornography and feeling addicted and troubled by it. Why wasn’t mom enough? Did she know? Did she approve? Who were these women? I stole a magazine and didn’t know where to keep it safe. I am remembering burying it, digging it up, and then burring it again and again and again. This felt like a loaded gun, dangerous, like the one my mom would hold on him a few years later.
I am remembering my resentment growing against my father. One day I pushed too hard. We are driving to the bus stop. I said something. He takes his right hand off the steering wheel and back hand slaps me across the mouth. His ring catch a tooth. I thought he broke it. He says “If you want to talk to me like a man, you can take your ass out of this truck and fight me like a man.” Fucking loser piece of shit excuse for a dad at that moment.
My time at the new school didn’t last long, just two years. I saw 9/11 happen there. First at Ag Shop. Then the gym. Then biology class. A decade later I would believe in conspiracy theories that people caused and used 9/11 to cover up financial misdealing and to justify unleashing the US military in the Middle East for 20 worthless years.
Parents divorced. Fuck him. New school. Moms depressed. House sucks. Dads gone. You better not fuck up baseball and your new friends. Work harder. Be braver. Beat out any competition. Kill yourself but don’t fuck up. You are one of the best players on your team your senior year. Way to fucking go!
Feel the confidence growing. Go to Hawaii for a baseball trip. Meet a girl. She likes you? Holy shit you’re cool and wanted by a hottie! She comes with you to your room and the entire baseball knows. Love! Oh shit you weren’t supposed to do that… Suppress your feelings. What will your good church friends think? Their opinion matters you know? What will their parents think? You’re suppose to keep your nose clean. Think! Commit to the church. Tell the girl you’re sorry and that it never should have happened. Suppress. Convince yourself to go into the ministry. Everyone makes mistakes but you know how to repent. Be an inspiration. A leader… Architecture is a small sacrifice compared to getting abandoned again…
Go to college. Start a bible study. You don’t know what you are doing…You’re lost… But you’re committed. Can’t stop now. Pray. Beat the floor like you did when you had migraines. Alone. Understand. Fucking mind figure it out. I quit baseball my junior year, the year I would have probably started. Deny. Go on a mission trip to Japan. Depression. Launch a Truth Conference on campus. That’ll show them atheist assholes.
I am remembering Rachel at this time. She was there to support me with the Bible study. She made me feel loved and not alone. I marry her after graduation. I get a super exclusive very impressive internship in Washington D.C. “Hey look Ma I Made It!” I’m good. Smart. Learning. Growing. Escaping. Belonging. Then we get pregnant.
I am remembering the first time the doctors expressed concern. Fluid on the brain is what they said. Could be nothing. Later we would be told that she’s missing her corpus colosseum. I am remembering sitting in the waiting room, waiting on the neuroligists to tell us some good news and what to do. I remember hearing the pattering of footsteps of four feet, the click of the gray steel handle, the two lab coats gliding ominously to chairs opposite us. They hand us a packet. Tell us the worst news I could imagine. We would be forever parents to an invalid, someone who could never do, only be. Never talk, walk, feed herself. Perpetually in need of diaper changes. A burden of being as a first born… AFTER ALL THIS FUCKING SACRIFICE THIS IS WHAT I GET? A CHILD I WISH HAD NEVER BEEN BORN. I remember putting on a show for a while, playing the right part in pain, never accepting her being. No answers. No way out. No where to run. Trapped.
Amielle was the anchor to reality tied to my life after a persistent pattern of acting, doing, and running. Most of my life up until this point was me ignoring, rejecting, and fighting the ugliness of my life. It appeared I was successfully running from these things. I didn’t know how to just accept this. Just accept her as she was. I am realizing that I had a severe problem of trying to disconnect myself from reality. While some people experience this disconnect as a gateway to substance abuse, I experienced this socially. I felt angry and disconnection from my wife, my daughter, and eventually my entire social network. I would attempt to cover this feeling of emptiness with pornography and promiscuity.
My mind spent the next two months looking for an exit. I couldn’t curse god for giving me Amielle but I could believe everybody was a fool like me and say “It’s all man and, you idiots! Follow me to the Truth!” After years of suppressed emotions, I exploded.
Mormonism was my exit window, the proof in my mind that all religion was man made. God didn’t exist. Objectivism was my escape ladder grounding me to reality. I was on a mission. A very aggressive mission. End religion. Burn my old life to the ground and rebuild the RIGHT way this time. Help Amielle DO more somehow.
I am remembering the more I pushed the lonelier I got. “I must be doing something wrong. Why won’t these idiots understand? What are all the people I’m supposed to admire in the Objectivist camp such proud assholes? Why did Allan Greenspan, a disciple of Ayn Rand, disciple of Ayn Rand fuck up the economy when he was head of the Federal Reserve? That fucker should have known better!
I am remembering being alienated and abandoned by the one person who I wanted to really see me and love me. I am remembering believing “She needed to grow up. I don’t want to but I can do this without her.” I remembering feeling shame and anger when she got help from the church, bought insurance for Amielle, sough help from her family. Keep pushing. You’ll break through to her. To all of them. Believe harder. I am remembering getting fired from her dad’s offshore oil company after four weeks. Backwoods idiots. They are a symptom of all the irrationality. No need to worry about them.
I get a job at Oracle. It’s 2017. Ugly politics. I’m one of the best on my team but we’re still losing. Lot of egos at Oracle! I go macro. The economy is broken. People don’t want things enough. They’re too complacent. We have to get off the dollar. We are all drunk on it.
I quit Oracle. Rachel disapproves. Somebody has to DO SOMETHING. WHY AM I ALONE? WHY ARE YOU REFUSING TO SEE WHAT I’M TRYING TO DO? WHY ARE YOU LEAVING ME ALONE AGAIN? WHY WON’T YOU SUPPORT ME LIKE YOU DID IN COLLEGE? DON’T YOU KNOW THAT’S WHY I MARRIED YOU!?
Instead of in secret, I brazenly cheat on her. She demands a divorce. Freedom. This is the new start. Acting classes. Singing classes. Improv classes. I’m teaching objectivism in coffee shops. I enrol in the architecture program of my hero Frank Lloyd Wright. Road trip to Wisconsin. Finally I’m DOING what I want. This is what is missing.
Later I would realize that doing without knowing how to BE is what led to be inevitable
Depression. I started coming down in Wisconsin, hundred of miles away from anyone I felt connection to. I believed the lie that if I didn’t have someone to share my life with, my life was not worth living.
“I’ve fucked up. Why is my mind doing this?” I remember feeling like I’m being torn in two. I beg for forgiveness. Pour all resources into winning her back. It’s rocky. It’s long. I’m writing notes every day. Printing out pictures of us and the kids. I’m connecting with her and being vulnerable. It eventually works. I can avoid the existential crisis of feeling abandoned for a little while longer.
Start seeing a psychologist. He’s a Christian. “Whatever. I’ll show him. Just help me get back with Rachel.” Get in shape. Start keto. I get in shape and my confidence grows. Rachel is coming around too.
Covid. Move to Colorado. I’m really good at my job. I make Half a million in 2022. Move to management. Fed starts tightening. People have less money now. Sales becomes harder. Leadership is failing. Why is my life suddenly HARDER after a record setting year in sales. Isn’t a period of successful sales supposed to make life EASIER? I go macro again. I start studying the economy. I’ll do it myself.
I go to LA on a whim with nothing. Only an ID. I remember my goal being to barter my way back to Colorado without using the dollar. I want to have Rachel and the kids come with me but its too important to wait and I’m running out of time. I leave them in Colorado and tell them I’ll make my way back or die trying. Rachel comes to rescue me. A friend used dollars to buy my ticket there. Rachel used dollars to get me a hotel room. We used dollars to rent a car and buy gas on the way back. Getting off the dollar feels impossible. I start to come down and hit a low. IT feels like my brain is again being torn in two and I get a hug from Rachel. It feels like that saved me from depression.
She says she thinks I should go to Denver Springs for a few days to chill out. Later she suggest I come to the Raleigh House. I arrive at Raleigh House on Thursday July 27th, determined to gain wisdom and understanding and break the cycle.
Chapter 5: The Monster
I am remembering staring at a puppy bumbling along the stone path to our trailer porch. Brown. Shiny coat. Floppy ears. A Christmas gift. I am 13 or 14. I understood it to be an offering of some sort, making amends for something awful. I would only later learn that my father had shot my first and favorite dog Blackie. Blackie was my shadow as a young boy. I remember him standing between me and another aggressive dog in the woods on afternoon. If it weren’t for Blackie, my father might have buried his son that day. Instead I was nursing Blackies wounds. We lived in the woods. My dad hungered. One day when my dad was out, Blackie wondered near, threatening to scare deer away. So my father shot him. That motherfucker. I was close to that dog. He made me feel loved and warm. And my dad killed him for recreation.
At the time I am remembering this puppy as being some kind of balm for our family. I am remembering worrying about my parents separation and divorce, remembering the pornography, the attempts at family game night, the mean words, hearing my parents having sex and finding no comfort in it. I can’t remember a time when they were affectionate with each other outside the bedroom. I would later find out he was absuive to her in the bedroom.
I am remembering what a life this puppy was. Things were not ok and this FUCKING PUPPY OFFERED NO ARGUMENT, NO SOLUTION TO THE CONTRARY. Nothing was getting better and yet here was this token. Of hope? Of promise? No. Of guilt. Of shame. An attempt to substitute a fragile, beautiful animal for the sins of a monster and a life of neglect. A distraction. A bottle of whiskey to make the pain of sorrow. An orgasm to provide a fleeting whisp of pleasure in the midst of being eaten alive.
I am no remembering his pen behind our house. I am remembering the dog house I had built in Ag shop for Blackie, the one with a plywood bottom and pitched roof. I am remembering the splotchy grass and the single gate at the front. I am remembering standing at the gate blocking him in, holding my pellet gun. I remember wanting him to run away, to get away. He didn’t BELONG HERE. I remember the first yelp as he felt the pellet plant into his coat. I remembering tears rolling down my face. Pop. Yelp. Pop. Yelp. Get out of here. Yelp. You don’t belong here. Yelp. Pop. Yelp. Pop. Yelp. Pop. Yelp. Pop. Yelp. I remember him huddled in the corner whimpering, scared, confused. I’m scared, confused. I remember approaching him. I remember him whimpering more and then growling. He wouldn’t leave and I couldn’t pick him up anymore life I could have 10 minutes before. I leave. He runs away and we never see him again.
Chapter 6: Summary of Traumas
These are some of the windows into my soul, the reality of my childhood, a reality that I’ve never even attempted to accept completely until my time at the Raleigh House. There are others of course. 37 years of life tends to capture a lot of reality. Some good. Not many moments worse than these. While writing this I’ve felt anger, disgust, helpless, alone, abandoned, betrayed, forgotten, ignored, abused, molested, exposed, ashamed, manipulated, embarrassed, guilty, defeated, discouraged, cheated on, scared, defensive, unloved, unworthy, disgusting, monstrous, abhorrent, awkward, repressed, sick, contemptuous, resentful, dead, buried, drowning, falling, sinking, depressed, misunderstood, unseen, unfairly treated, vindictive, victimized, sad, and tired.
All of these emotions and all of these events are part of me. They are part of my past and they have shaped me to be who I am today. For years they were the food for my shadow, that unknown force that no matter how much I ignored it, no matter how fast I ran, no matter how many times I moved, no matter how many moment of love and connection I felt, no matter how many affirmations I received, now matter what… it was their snarling, growling, pulling me, pushing me, accusing me, torturing me, and driving me to co-dependence, dishonest speech, destructive actions, and abuse of good things like sex, sport, and achievement.
For years I thought the only appropriate response to pain was to avoid it. The only response to ugliness was to ignore it. And the only response to malice was to fight it. That’s what I did for 37 years and it almost killed me. I remember thinking how this world could be so cruel. If God existed, how could he let these things happen?
Chapter 7: The Way to Acceptance
I am now remembering a story I heard growing up and even a story that had been on my lips for years. I am remembering how a king decided to visit his people from heaven. His name was Emanuel which meant God With Us. He came as a baby but he didn’t have to. His first act of coming into this world was an impossible feat of divinity, a virgin birth. In the past he had come as a burning bush, as a tornado, and as a force that stopped rivers from flowing. He could have appeared in any form. A giant. A huge beast. A towering tree. A terrible storm. A ball of fire. Anything strong and impressive. He came as none of those things. He came as a baby, experiencing the vulnerable state of us all, completely dependent on his mother for his life, his health, and his sanitation. He could have been born in the best of circumstances, surrounded by a hundred maids, protected by 1000 armies, laid down on the finest linen bed. Instead of this, he chose impoverished parents, looking for shelter in an unwelcoming town. He was born among farm animals next to their filth and laid down on a stack of hay. He felt exposure. He lived a life of menial labor, trading his swear and the pain in his body in service to others as a carpenter. He felt stress, pressure, and the threat of failure. He knew what it felt like for the body to be depleted.
When the God King was ready to deliver his message and announce his arrival, he could have employed the arch angel Gabriel. He could have written his announcement in the clouds, or had the whales of the sea all stand on their fins singing the details of the kingdom. He could have reached the kings, emperors, queens, and rich, the influencers and power blockers. Instead he called on 12 dumb fishermen, visited with the meek and powerless, the monstrous, the addicts, the cheaters, the thiefs, the paralyzed, the blind, and the forgotten, empathizing with their pain, limiting the reach of his voice to the same limits we experience, suffering with friends who misunderstood him, had little faith, and were scared and confused. He felt the wounds of an enemy in friends clothing, choosing one of his disciples knowing he would betray him for a few pieces of silver.
He could have lived forever, teaching, preaching, healing, correcting, and setting the world right. It was certainly in his power. Instead, when he was handed over to the police, he held his armies of angels at bay. He was called worthless. The king was made to appears as a prisoner. He suffered false accusations, the injustice of a kangaroo court, beatings, mockery, and abuse. He felt resentment, betrayal, shame, hatred, discouragement, fear, unseen, unfairly treated, victimized, sad, and tired. He suffered the most excruciating death known to man at that time. He had a large nail driven through his wrist and through the tops of his feet. He felt light headed as blood poured from his wounds. He experienced pain like I’ve never felt and he never ignored it, never rejected it, never fought it. He felt scorn like I’ve never felt and he never lashed out to defend himself. An he even felt death, an unthinkable thought for an immortal god king!
And right before he died, he endured the trauma of all traumas. He said, with one last gasp of air, what the little boy with the penis in his mouth felt, what the teenager standing behind his mom through, and what the man looking at his distant wife felt. He said, “My god My god, why have you forsaken me?” But then he said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Why did he choose to live this way? What did you choose a life of sorrow, betrayal, and death? Why did he choose to suffer?
While he was with us he gave us some clues. One of his disciples recorded him saying this:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. That whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.”
He also said “Greater love has no one that this, than a man lay down his life for his friends.”
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
The word “narrow” here is the word for affliction. The wide gate is the life of ease. A life rejecting the traumas and the effects of my sin.
Remembering the story again, in the same way that the king came into the world, so he left the world, showing his power. Three days after his death, the king walked out of his grave, ascended into heaven, and sits again in love and joy with his Father, whose name is I Am. Jesus was the perfect example of radical being, radical acceptance, radical trust in the source and higher power guiding every dew drop and every pellet and every hammer pounding nails. It’s his choosing to radically stay present, patient, and even joyful that shows me the way to eternal life, where all sin and all pain will be no more.
Therefore,
“fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
I once was lost in darkest night and thought I knew the way
The sin that promised joy and life had led me to the grave
I had no hope that you would own a rebel to your will
And if you had not loved me first, I would refuse you still
Hallelujah All I have is Christ
Hallelujah Jesus is my life.
Here’s now to a life of Radical acceptance. Radical awareness. Radical trust. Radical suffering for the sake of a life of radical love and radical joy.
Amen.
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