What choice did I have? “Time and time again, I would generate a certain amount of momentum and stop. I would discover some talent, and I would ignore it. I would take steps toward some—I’ll just say it—destiny, and then I’d sabotage it. Whether it was a business idea, a creative endeavor, staying in shape, or in a relationship, I’d let the voices in my head and the voices in my life stop me from becoming . . .” I thought I’d continue that sentence, but that was really it. I’d stop myself from becoming. Period. I’d stop myself from being. Period.
A friend once wrote a post on Facebook. It read: “I have spent a lifetime thinking the result of what has come of my life should be significant, but what I think ‘significant’ should be is what I put into life without fearing or measuring the result. If people want to measure how much money I have made, how far I have swum, or how fast I have run, they can, but I’m certain it will never reflect the person I am. I have never made enough money, have only swum so far, and have never gone fast enough, but when I acknowledge everything that I’ve put into those efforts, I am certain it has been significant, and for all of it, I am grateful.”
Such beautiful words. And spot on. That was me. Except I never came to grips with the significance. My friend found the “becoming.” I never did. He found belonging. I never did. Instead, I kept trying to be pieces of other people. Because I thought that was cool. It was cool that my friend, Jeff, was a mountain man and could live in the wilderness. I tried it. I liked it, and I even went backpacking several times with him. I wasn’t that guy, even as we’d taunt each other with a chant of “I’m a Goddamn Mountain Man!” I’d change my hair. I’d change my style. I’d even change my personality.
In fact, what I was, what I really was . . . was an artist. I was a writer. I was an observer. I saw the world differently than most. I felt the world differently than most. But I never knew what to do with it. I didn’t know how to manifest it. I was afraid to record it. I didn’t belong and felt like I had to fit in. How could I take something that felt so far outside the box and make it fit neatly into one? I couldn’t. And I beat myself up for it.
I saw therapists. I killed relationships. As another friend wrote about himself: “I was not perfect. Not a perfect friend, or brother, or father, or lover, or writer, or son, or . . . anything. I learned through bitter experience that I was going to be weak at the wrong moments, make mistakes and hurt someone I loved, and be arrogant when someone needed compassion . . . I was going to fall short.”
I had fallen short too. But that friend also went on to write that he had figured it out. He accepted this about himself. I never did. I just took those moments of weakness and learned to use them against myself. Every single time I took a turn that wasn’t in line with my soul, those mistakes, those pains I caused, became whips. I’d sentence myself to hundreds of lashes. The scars that remained were so thick I no longer recognized myself. Or felt myself.
I took another deep breath. “How long do we have?” I asked. Blondie was now sitting on the couch with God. “Come here, girl,” I said, patting the spot next to me. She looked at God. He gave her a slight nod as if to say, “Go.” She bounced over to me and curled up at my feet. I was grateful the couch was big enough to fit the both of us.
“Sorry, how long do we have?”
“As long as it takes. As long as it takes you to answer the question.” It kind of felt like God was challenging me. And for a flash, I wondered what Mort was doing. I tried to bring Ira back. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I was surprised to find the guy who introduced me to Ira. The one with whom I had a falling out.
“Why doesn’t that work anymore?” I asked.
“Because you don’t really want Ira to be sitting here. Your soul isn’t in it. You’re pretending that’s what you want, but it’s not really what you want.” Then, after delicately tracing the outline of my heart with this verbal knife, he pushed it all the way in. “I know you understand that. That’s why I’m here. I represent all of that.”
Ouch. The dude didn’t mess around. But he was right. I understood. My life was mostly just that.
I zoned out. In retrospect, it’s kind of amazing to think that even in that situation, I couldn’t concentrate, but I was lost in a dream. Or maybe it was a nightmare.
God was talking to me; his voice sounded like a drone or gibberish. I was wandering through my life. Through an overgrown forest of shoulds and supposed-tos. I was torturing myself with the vivid, not-so-instant replay of my lefts that should have been rights. The stops that should have been starts.
There I was, throwing the summer school catalog at my parents and telling them to pick the classes I should take because they wouldn’t pay for the screenwriting and acting classes I wanted to enroll in. What would have happened if I had learned to write screenplays when I was nineteen?
Fast-forward to the job offer I had received to be part of an exciting new event when I was twenty-six. Four years into a growing career, my parents suggested that quitting on the spot to go live in a room with four, five, or ten other guys to do entry-level work and make $200 a week might not be the best decision. I passed on the inaugural event that went on to rival the Olympics. What would have happened if I had gotten in my car that day to drive to Rhode Island to become the assistant to the Executive Producer? Would I have learned to produce TV, which was another dream? Add it to the story.
What about the business plan I wrote when I was living on my friend’s couch in Arizona? I was standing at an ATM, reading the ads while waiting for my money, when it dawned on me that securing the advertising rights to high-traffic areas could create a financial windfall. Or at least an opportunity. And, because I was in Arizona . . . golf carts! My roommate and I developed a prototype and even secured the rights to some courses. Then, an angel investor offered us $30,000, and I freaked out. What did I know about starting a business? Better to run away in fear. What if I hadn’t? CartAds became another pull on the crack pipe that was my ever-building story.
What about the relationships that I stayed in for too long or the ones that I didn’t have the balls to pursue?
The fact is that all these experiences were part of my life, but they all pointed to one fundamental truth: I had never followed my soul. Worse, I had sabotaged it. My entire life was one big game of hide-and-seek. I sought my soul, even as I hid from it. It wasn’t hiding from me. It was always there in plain sight.
I once listened to a podcast hosted by a famous author who said readers would send in long emails asking her to help them find their purpose. “More often than not,” she said, “it was all there in the readers’ words. They weren’t looking for direction at all. They were looking for validation.”
Those people were also playing hide-and-seek. We wanted the same thing . . . for someone else to make it easy for us. I wanted, no, I needed my parents’ permission—even when I was well beyond the age where that should have mattered. And when they didn’t give it to me, when they didn’t validate a job choice, a relationship, or even a car purchase, I’d run from it and blame them when my life went sideways. But it didn’t work that way. I just couldn’t accept that maybe, just maybe, I had something to offer this world. Or that world. The world. Whatever. Didn’t matter. I had never learned to accept it. I had never learned to just tell everyone around me to fuck off. I’d be going left even though they all wanted me to go right. I had never learned to trust myself and believe in myself. I wasn’t trained that way. Why?
Now I was dead because I created so much pain for myself that I couldn’t figure out how to stop it any other way. I thought it was my only way out of jail. Maybe that’s part of heaven. Figuring it all out. Then again, gaining total consciousness when you’re dead sort of feels like hell.
“Erik, are you even listening to me? God to Erik, come in, Erik.”
I opened my eyes. “Yes, sorry. What was the question?”
God now showed up in the form of my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Brown, my favorite childhood teacher. I always made a point of visiting her at her home long after I was out of elementary school. Here she was, wearing her colorful sweater, slacks, oversized glasses, and with a pencil tucked behind her ear, shaking her head. “You were telling me about—”
I interrupted. “Right.”
The colors had changed. The reds, pinks, and oranges had been replaced by greens, yellows, and blues. A hint of purple. When did that happen? I missed it. Blondie was distracted by something in the reeds, and she leapt off the couch, which startled me as much as the tear had earlier. God remained in her same spot. I sat up and put my feet on the coffee table. “Is this okay?” I asked. She nodded.
“I started to seek help from sources I felt were more aligned with who I was. Intuitives. Spiritual guides. People who might be able to help me find my way. Help me discover my soul’s true path. I was told, more than once, that I was destined to change the world. I was a level-ten old soul. I was meant to move people. Change lives. It was amazing to hear. This was how I felt. This is what I always knew. Yet, I still didn’t know what to do with all this encouragement. It felt arrogant to discuss it. Who would believe me anyway? How could I possibly explain this to my friends? Occasionally, when I would try, I’d be met with laughter. Just like when I was in Boy Scouts. It all just made me feel like more of a fraud. I had dug a deep, deep hole, and the only way out felt impossible.
“So I just kept it close to me and wondered how I would become the person I was apparently meant to be. No, that’s not it—how could I be the person I already was? How could I just accept it and honor it by following my instincts? Then I met Jess. She didn’t want me to be anything more or less than I was. She accepted every bit of me—good, bad, and ugly. With her was the only place I felt whole.”
I thought for a minute about how, really, Jess didn’t make me feel whole. She just allowed me to feel that way. I started rushing through the story for fear of boring God. I mean, she knew all of this, right? She was these things. It felt like she was making me work my way through it all as a kind of penance. At least, that’s how I justified the story. I must have told her my entire life story before getting around to my birthday. The day I died. Blondie was back by now and dreaming on the couch. Her little dog feet were jerking around as though she were sprinting. As if heaven wasn’t awesome enough for her, she still dreamt great dreams of playing with her friends.
“My last birthday was the most perfect day I had ever experienced. For the first time, I lived according to the answer I had always given to the question of ‘What’s your perfect day?’ I started out with a long trail run. Jess and I made love. I went to my secret writer’s hideaway and worked on my book, and though I was initially paralyzed by the words, I started to write. I mean, I really started to write. I felt like a writer. I was a fucking writer. Then Jess and I met for a picnic and a hike. And on the hike, we made love again. We went to dinner with friends, and then, well, when we got home—we, ummm, we, uhhh—” I stopped.
God was kind. “I know.”
“As Jess slept, I walked out onto the back deck to gaze at the moon. It was full and perfect. It seemed big and close enough to touch. I was moved by its presence. I closed my eyes and prayed. I thanked, well, I thanked you for an amazing day. A day that I had long dreamed of but had never lived. A day filled with friends, creativity, passion, and love. Deep, deep love. Being with Jess was like nothing else. It was easy. Without a care. Without pretense. I started to follow the moon.
“I walked off my deck and down the trail that leads across the creek to the street behind The Gym. My plan was to walk up the trail on the other side of The Gym and get as close to the moon as I could. I had long talked about climbing up the local mountain at midnight but never had. This day seemed like the perfect day to do it. Because it was a perfect day.”
I stopped here. I needed to compose myself. I had been talking for what seemed like hours. I needed to get some water. God told me I could simply scoop up the water on which we were sitting. Of course I could. I cupped my hands and filled them with water. Once. Twice. Three times. The most cleansing water I think I’d ever had. Like after running a marathon. Only this marathon was my life. I splashed some of the water on my face. It was time to answer the question.
“So why did I do it? As I was walking to the trailhead, I thought, just for a second, that I had done it. I had lived my perfect day. I had accomplished something that I never thought I would. I was elated. I sent Jess the text telling her that I loved her . . .”
My voice trailed off.
“And?” God said.
“And I stepped in front of the car.”
“But why? Why did you do it?”
