Uncertainty

Today I am angry. I am afraid. I am lost and confused. What am I doing here? I feel goalless, directionless, planless.

I am afraid because I know that I could die at any moment when I have only just begun to live. I'm afraid too, because I could easily break down and have a drink, or a drag or a line. And that would be worse than dying.

I am lost because it feels like I don't understand the dharma at all. Instead, I feel that I am really, really self centered, that the amount of time I spend thinking of others is so minuscule as to be almost immeasurable.

I am angry because I don't want to feel this kind of discomfort, this kind of uncertainty. I want life to be smooth, predictable. I want my goals to be shining bright on the horizon, calling me always forward.

But it's not like that. Not today anyway. Some days are just like this.

So when I feel this way I have to come back to the center, to the root, to the foundation, to the beginning

I am alive. I am sober. I am out.

And that is all that really matters.

Naive

Made a comment on the Tricycle blog yesterday, just an experiment to see if it drove any traffic to this one. It did: three hits. But it was a childish comment, not too well thought out and I blushed when I read it again.

Caring for myself is a continuous effort. Caught myself again this morning being too hard, too rigid, too unforgiving.

"You should know more about this thing called Buddhism!" I was screaming inside. "You have been studying this for over three years now! Why are you making childish comments on serious blogs?"

No, that is not very realistic or helpful at all. That is a sure ticket to falling off the wagon. That is a sure ticket to breakdown and collapse.

Then I realized something. I am naive and that's ok. I don't know everything. This society is missing naive. We are cynical, we know everything there is to know, yet still we are very, very sad. We lash ourselves with barbed wire tongues. We are never good enough. The conditions for our happiness are always just out of reach. I know this is true for me. I see it in others too.

It's ok though. It's good to just see that. I'm going to keep trying. I'm going to cultivate this bit of naive today. I'm going to coax it out until it turns into love for myself, simple and fresh.

I'll let you know how it goes...

Speaking of Fear

It feels weird to be not actively writing the book. Yesterday was my first day off from work that I didn't spend hours hunched over the keyboard, breathing the life of me into all those pages until my lungs felt sore and raw.

But it was a good day. I found a great book on self-publishing at the library, spent hours reading it till I felt the rush of information overload pressing on the insides of my temples. Before I knew it the sun had gone down and by dinner time I knew what a pica was and leading and "perfect bound" and 50# white offset bookstock. Knowledge really is power.

It makes me feel like I'm really going to be able to pull this off. There's still lots of rewriting left to do but the bulk of the task is done. I even think that there's every possibility that I can fulfill my goal of finishing the book and printing it by Christmas.

I did a little bit of looking into promoting myself at local bookstores, pride centers, recovery groups and Buddhist centers, too. That will be so exciting! To actually get out there and meet all the wonderful people who I want to read my book.

"Hey everybody," I'll say. "This is how I made it through. How did you do it?"

But, still, there is an underlying fear. What if I alienate people instead of making new friends? My story is anything but conventional. In the closet since I was twelve years old; total and complete denial for twenty four years after that; thirty six years old and almost over-the-hill before I could even utter the words: I am gay. In the mean time, two decades of drunk and high on speed and ecstasy and porn and crack cocaine. Two marriages to two women in hopes that no one would doubt my cover story.

Yes, I'm afraid. Afraid of being ridiculed. Afraid of "you don't know what you're talking about!". Afraid of anger and hate. Afraid of being accused of not being gay enough, or Buddhist enough, or committed to recovery enough (I didn't even go through twelve steps...).

I'm afraid that I've shared too much, that people will laugh at me because I talk about dressing up in women's clothes and wanting to be a girl. I'm afraid that my friends will take a long quiet look at me thinking: "That is way more than I wanted to know about you..."

Then I'm afraid that people won't even read the book at all, that somehow I haven't done my job, that it won't compel people or help them through their own struggles.

I'm afraid that even if people do read it they'll say:

"Jeez! Yeah, I watched Will and Grace. What was your problem?"

But you know what? I'm going to go ahead with putting this thing out there anyway. I'm going to lean into the fear and the discomfort and the uncertainty. Maybe I will fail. I don't care. All I care about is putting out the best piece of writing that I possibly can. It will be authentic, completely truthful and from the heart and that's all I can ask of myself right now.