There are loud voices and an endless, monotonous beeping outside my window. As I look down from my blank, white-walled second-floor office onto the street scene just below, I see an elderly woman being placed on a stretcher and loaded into the back of an ambulance. I stare at a blinking cursor and know exactly why I’m seeing this scene: the Universe has a way of providing perspective when you need it most.
“Trust yourself.” They were my bigger-than-life editor’s last words to me before handing over this project.
I know they were meant to inspire me and, more importantly, give me permission to share the truth. To write from my soul. They were meant to give me consent to go to that place—that deep, deep place that can only be found under the glowing light of faith. Of loving myself. The place I’ve long struggled to find. My editor was telling me to believe in myself.
Easier said than done.
I’ve spent hours staring at that damn cursor. I want to please this editor of mine. Not because I’m desperate for approval, but because telling this story comes with massive responsibility. It’s a hard story to believe, I know. But it’s important for me to tell it. Imperative. Imposter syndrome is perhaps greatest when the words are at their most significant.
Sometimes, it’s easier to live in fear than it is to live in the raw transparency of authenticity. Fear is an excuse. Authenticity is an ultimatum: take it or leave it. Take me or leave me. No excuses available if “leave me” is the choice others take. It’s a risk to trust yourself enough and love yourself enough to choose authenticity. It’s brave. Authenticity shouldn’t have to be brave. It should be the norm. Not a special menu item, but the usual.
It’s not.
I wonder if the woman on the stretcher is contemplating the narrative of her life. Is she satisfied with the choices she made? Is she feeling regret? Can she surrender to whatever she’s experiencing, or is she fighting with questions? Is she wondering, why me? Seeing the ambulance pull away from the curb with its flashing lights and wailing siren makes me consider the urgency of this moment.
I feel tremendous pressure to get these words right. I suppose every writer does. These words, as with any, have the potential to cause others great harm. I’ve already ignorantly done enough of that in my life, so I certainly do not want to willfully do it now.
But what if I told you that God told me to write this book? That God is the editor I mentioned. Even if your God is not my God. What if your God told you to write a book? I’m not even sure I understand it. Maybe now you understand my pressure.
I’ll do the best I can.
Welcome to my attempt to trust myself.
Much Love,
Erik
CHAPTER ONE
Don’t look down.
Don’t look down.
Please, please, just don’t look down!
Pinned against the majestic red and orange face of the sheer rock wall—which, despite being only fifty feet or so above the ground, seemed to reach millions of feet into the sky—I begged myself not to look down! My heart pounded and echoed violently throughout my body. My pulse boomed like the 808s blasting from the blackened windows of a slow-moving, lowered muscle car. With my arms and legs spread wide and my body pinned flat against the wall, I desperately gripped the smallest of natural shelves.
Just hold on, I prayed.
Don’t let go, I begged.
Only the toes of my new knobby hiking boots—the ones with the Vibram soles, the ones I just had to have—were connected to Mother Nature. Why did I need these big-ass boots? I wanted to throw up. Breathe.
I think I was fourteen at the time. No, twelve . . . Eleven. I was eleven. Come to think of it, could I have been younger? Doesn’t matter. What matters is, that was the first time I remember consciously thinking about my death. I had experienced death with my goldfish and my dog, but on that rock was the first time I had ever considered my own.
Who would come to my funeral?
That’s how eleven-year-olds process thoughts like death. As if there were some right answer that would make it all okay. As long as he’s there, I’m cool with letting go of this rock.
I was in Joshua Tree National Park with my scout troop. I had wandered away from the others to climb on some of the world’s most famous rock formations. I wasn’t much of a daredevil and certainly wasn’t a skilled climber, so I played it safe. I always played it safe. That was exactly why I was all alone and my predicament was particularly ironic.
My fellow scouts, who neither realized nor cared that I only joined their troop because my parents thought it might be a good idea, were fearless. And, because I didn’t want to face the inevitable hazing that always came with declining whatever stupid thing they wanted to do, I got proactive.
“I want to check out that rock over there,” I told them, pointing to the beautiful yet harmless formation that was more Brontosaurus than T-rex. “Who wants to come with me?” I invited them, knowing full well that nobody would want to join.
They looked. They laughed. Not enough danger. My rock ate plants. They were carnivores and had something else planned. Something that couldn’t possibly end well. The bloody race to the ER had happened enough times before that I knew I wanted no part of it. Like the time they tried climbing a redwood tree. A redwood! I’d watched from a safe distance as Billy Stevens lost his grip a few feet from the ground, fell awkwardly, and broke his arm. Keith McDonald ended up with a concussion.
Undaunted, it only strengthened their resolve to continue the quest to prove Darwin’s theory of evolution. They thought I was weak. My scoutmaster didn’t exactly help. He once hiked six miles on a broken leg. “I’m fine,” he’d told us. Even at eleven, I thought that was fucking idiotic. The others thought his mangled bone was legendary.
They declined my invitation and mumbled something about a faraway crevasse. They wanted to climb to crazy heights and then jump across some silly crack high in the sky. Back and forth. Over and over. Slip, and they wouldn’t just break a leg or end up concussed. They’d die. Fun! No way I was doing that. No chance at all. I quietly made a bet with myself about the number of guys who would get hurt and the total number of stitches they might collectively need. Smart money is on Keith. Smart money was always on Keith. Over-under on the stitches: 150.
With a couple of hours left before sunset, they scampered off in a chorus of hoots and hollers. I tried to ignore the insults they threw at me under their breaths. Loser. Why is he always such a pussy? Our troop would be so much better without his lame ass. I heard them all as I made my way to my gentle herbivore in the exact opposite direction. I didn’t look back as I walked away, convinced that I didn’t care. A single tear suggested otherwise.
If I had been able to understand myself back then, I’d have seen that my fears and that tear were rooted in self-consciousness. I was shorter than most of my classmates. Not by much, but just enough to notice. And while I wasn’t exactly fat, I wasn’t fit. I remember sitting on a desk wearing shorts, and my thighs flattened out like two big life rafts. A girl walked by and laughed.
My haircut wasn’t bad, but . . .
I wasn’t the dumbest, but . . .
That’s just kind of how it went for me. I was the other half of the sentence. The half that always told me I wasn’t quite enough.
My boulder wasn’t giant. Navigating it was less like climbing and more like hiking. It was that easy. That forgiving. The footholds were as big as kitchen tables. I didn’t even need my hands as I scrambled toward the low clouds.
At what was essentially only a few feet off the ground, the view was, I don’t know, kind of hard for an eleven-year-old to describe. I hadn’t yet learned the words that could truly capture how I felt in that moment. I didn’t know too many words that could describe how I felt back then. I didn’t know I was allowed to feel.
Just a few feet up, I could see giant, granite dinosaurs guarding the hallowed Joshua Tree grounds. They took on mystical forms that seemed to vibrate and glow. They were alive and painted with a majestic palette of time. The monsters were surrounded by beautiful prickly cacti. I suppose that’s how many people are too. The rocks guarded the grounds; the cacti guarded the rocks. A perfectly symbiotic relationship. The desert’s version of sharks and remora fish.
Because that was before mobile phones, I couldn’t take pictures or share anything on an Instagram story. I could only experience the moment as it was. The images burned into my brain. I sat in silence and felt a sense of accomplishment. I loved being alone. I wouldn’t have appreciated it all if the others had been there. They wouldn’t have allowed for that. They would have been making jokes, daring each other to jump, or throwing rocks. They wouldn’t have cared about the colors or the textures. They wouldn’t have noticed the sun reflecting off the clouds or heard the sound of desert silence. They wouldn’t have been aware enough to discover that cool air has taste. Like ice gripping your tongue. The fact that I was able to acknowledge those experiences added to my outcast status.
