the moment i let go of it was the moment i got more than i could handle

i don't believe in coincidence, necessarily.

i don't think life happens randomly. i sometimes think it's been planned down to the second, and even when it seems spontaneous or unpredictable, it's all written essentially in stone. it's just a very detailed sketch.

i've always had that bumper sticker slapped on my ass that everything happens for a reason, that there is a purpose to the bad as much as there is a purpose to the good, so much as that the bad is not "bad" at all, just bearing more weight, more lessons to learn, more opportunities to grow, more necessity to push yourself, to keep your focus on the light. it's so much easier to run with these theories when things are going well. much like how the last two years were "the worst two years of my life" but at the end of those two years--this passing american summer--I could just say they were very "important," we can always reflect better on the storm that passed through our lives when the sun has come out again.

that being said, i think regardless of the emotional weather we're experiencing, life is always giving us signs, hints, clues to the password. sometimes, you can even outright ask for it. like in "eat, pray, love," which you may remember as being my life story, when elizabeth gilbert finally puts pen to paper and just asks god to put an end to her divorce so that she can move on, or at the very least, start to move on. i know there are much more literary or even deeply spiritual works i could refer to, but i have not read those books. i have only read "eat, pray, love." and call me commercial, call me tacky, but at least you can't necessarily call me pretentious. and at least i'm not referring to "the secret." which i could, but that's far too much of a commercialization of these ideas for my taste.

and while i've kept it as something of my own spiritual guilty secret, i think for the sake of honesty i must admit: i wrote my own petition. and it was fucking answered.

i don't think i'm feeling quite so open to bearing my soul as to transcribe what i wrote, though i do have it saved as a word document on my computer ("my petition.doc") but i can give you the basic story. this was probably towards the end of may, which was, appropriately enough, right before the grand enlightenment and subsequent love affair with new york truly got some wheels under it and i wasn't just floundering through life wondering if i'd ever find the key to filling in the great gaping void in my chest i had been walking around with for so many years.

a little less than a month and a half before this, i had gone on the entirely restorative vacation to florida with jay and laura, where i fondly remember sitting alone on the porch one morning just writing for pages about where i had arrived in life, and what i could quite possibly do next. i was already tossing around australia, and saying, "i'll go in october" and asking "why october?" now, when i re-read what i wrote on that morning--that incredible, warm, serene morning when the tension had finally flooded away from my entire physical self for the first time in what could have either been any number of months to well over a year--i can feel my willingness to "get it" running through my words. i was being patient with myself. i was already well into but not finished with "the power of now"--pass the kool-aid, eckhart!--and i must remain unabashed in saying it was truly informing that moment. i was also reading this fantastic book called "a brief history of anxiety," which was both a comfort and a confirmation of what i believed about anxiety (the sociological effect of work and modern relationships, the general awfulness of medication and ruthlessness of pharmaceutical sales, truly what a nervous breakdown feels like) and so i think overall, what i was arriving at was a willingness to get my shit together.

all of this to say that i was trying for a while before i finally wrote my petition.

and yet, i would stare blankly on the subway trying to find a space between whatever unexplainable malaise i was feeling and myself, grasping desperately at the supposed peace of "now." i'd sit at my desk at work listening to something peaceful and heartfelt, trying to breathe away the constant fervor in my chest. i'd stay inside all weekend trying to figure out how to get over the brick wall between myself and the world i should have been experiencing. falling asleep was impossible some nights.

i was already into my to-do list for self-improvement, having gotten the dreaded hiv test, gone celibate, and sent a fairly conclusive email to david of all that was unsaid, whether he needed to hear it or not. none of it was working--or rather, it was all working, but it was missing something. at some point around now, i started reading "eat, pray, love" and basking in those snotty bathroom floor cries. i just wanted to read an entire book about crying on the bathroom floor, or in the car, or on the couch, or in the supermarket...

at that point, i could have written that book.

i said it before, and i mean it: i have no intention of modeling myself or my life's recent journey after a book resting on the new york times bestseller list for an obscene number of months. but as i said before, i don't believe in coincidences. i think we are meant to arrive at certain points, see certain things, meet certain people, at very particular times. and i was meant to read this book. i was meant to get to the part where elizabeth gilbert says, "i wish i could just petition god to make this end already!" and her very spiritual friend asks, "well, why can't you?"

we had the same answer. you can't just ask for it. you have work for it, earn it. we both seemed to believe that the only way to life's goodness was a personal war. and that's if you win the war. that's, essentially, if you kill all of your opponents, and neither she nor i had that option without a prison sentence and/or a guilty conscience. and i didn't need that, i was already having a hard enough time sleeping.

i couldn't believe she wrote a petition. and i couldn't believe it was answered--and so quickly! i had forgotten, by the time i had sat down to write my own maybe a week later, that she had dozens of people, alive and dead, sign this petition. she just said, "my parents have signed it. and my best friend. and abraham lincoln!" she had the support of the entire known world on this petition. i didn't think to ask for so much. i just signed my name. i guess in the spirit of learning that i'm enough.

i asked for clarity.

i said there was this boulder on my chest, and i didn't need the strength to lift it, i needed the clarity to recognize the strength i already had to lift this boulder. i asked for health. i asked for my life. i insisted, a number of times, that i must have been asking for too much, but i pushed through it. i said thank you. it seemed the least i could do.

and i think my petition was answered before i even finished writing it. and then it was answered a little more the next day, and then the next. a little more than a week later, i was able to sit down and write the letter to my father that had been waiting to be written for twenty-three years. i've never seen my life so clearly as when i started writing that letter, or felt so complete as when i actually sent it.

in subsequent days, the void in my chest closed up like a minor wound. the current of sadness and pain running under the surface seemed to dry up completely. i lifted the boulder like a handful of feathers, and handled it just as delicately. we must have reverence for our pain, as it has the dubious honor of bearing the most important lessons we don't want to learn.

essentially, though, i got my shit together.

***

i say all of this, a little over a week after arriving in australia, in lieu of describing in detail how fantastic these past eight days have been, because none of this would mean a thing without that. i will get into australia. i have plenty of stories to tell, ideas to share, plans to discuss. i have a life down here to share. i made a petition. i said, "i want my life."

here it is.