I have been given so many gifts, so many blessings, so much grace. A beautiful wife, healthy children, a loving family and trusting friends, home work success, comfort beyond necessity, resources beyond requirement. And I am grateful. So grateful. I understand things could have gone another way. And that I have been so lucky, so incredibly lucky.
And yet.
And yet.
And yet.
I look backward. Think, reflect, and wonder. Not on all that has gone right and all that I have to be grateful for, but on the mistakes I’ve made, the hurt I have caused, the wreckage I’ve left behind. The pain I’ve created echoes across time and the years, it calls to me and I hear it, it sings a song of sorrow that lives within me, it cries and no matter how or what or why I can’t make it stop. No matter how or what or why no matter how long I spend kneeling or how long I look to heaven I can’t and it won’t I hear it and it cries a song that never stops.
I love the sun of Los Angeles. The crystal-blue sky. The warm air drifting. But more than the sun I love the water, the looming black horizon of dense sea, the crash of repeating waves endless and eternal, the depths unknown and unexplored and unfathomable. When the song of the unfixable past comes to me singing and crying I go to the water. Drive a winding road lined with privilege and manicured green through the hills and down to the sand I park as far from anyone else as I can, I take off my shirt and my shoes I wear a pair of simple black shorts I am stripped as bare as I can be. I walk across searing black asphalt my head down I don’t want to see anyone or speak to anyone all I want is to hear the song that brought me the echoes and the cries and the sadness and the sorrow and the regret, the days past that I cannot recall or change or fix or make better, I would give anything and everything if I could make them better. The sand moves beneath my feet I know when I’m closer I’m closer I am closer as the endless and eternal crashing rings I keep going until I am in one step two steps three steps I am in.
There is always a shock of cold. The Pacific vast and deep the Pacific graceful and terrible the Pacific never warms. The shock of cold with every step deeper as with so many things in life if you stop it will scare you and paralyze you so I keep going one step two steps three steps four. I shudder as the cold and the black move past my waist I shudder as they move past my chest and shoulders I shudder when I descend, diving into the crash and swimming through it and past it, I find the breaking point and go beyond.
And there I stay.
In the calm beyond the break.
It’s cold and still and deep and black.
Unknown and unexplored and unfathomable.
And there I stay.
Listening to the song and the cries and the echoes, the voices and the words and the stories, the pain and sadness and sorrow and regret.
And there I stay.
Alone, floating, lost.
And there I stay, beyond the endless and eternal, before the horizon line, on my back, staring at the sky it’s crystal blue and full of love and life and hope and absolution and paths changed and pain forgiven and mistakes corrected.
And there I stay, floating in the water and floating in my mind and floating in my past and floating in my heart and in my soul, floating in some kind of dream that I can somehow make everything okay, make myself okay, make everything right, make it easier to look in the mirror, make the yoke lighter and the burden weightless and make myself believe that I somehow deserve all that I have been given because I don’t believe I deserve it, I don’t believe I deserve it, I don’t believe. But there I stay, hoping and dreaming that someday I will.
I will be able to listen to the song and smile.
Hear the echoes and let them bring peace.
Listen to the cries and cry with them.
Make myself believe.
Make myself believe.