Part III- Looking at a Reflection
this is the unedited chapter three of ten from the book of reflections I wrote about my life in 2016 while we were living in Thailand.
One
The love story continues when Jas picks me up from the airport, wearing black linen pants, a sleeveless crop-top and red lipstick. I pick her up and twirl her around, although my two inches of extra height does little to give her vertigo. Putting her down, we look at each other as we did when we parted ways on our first days together, reminded that love cannot be defined by distance or the amount of time knowing someone.
Asking me to drive, I turn on the car and hear a sound that is oddly familiar to me. Looking down to see 91.9 playing. A contemporary Christian music station in DC that I secretly listen to and from my commute to work. Feeling both confused and excited, I comment on the station playing, the Aux cord isn’t working but sometimes I listen when I feel far away” she comments.
I don’t mention to her until later, but in this small moment everything becomes clear, I’ve seen the creator in her and she’s seen the creator in me. Transfixed on the way she’s accepted all of me, her expression of love doesnt want to change me, only asks that I give every effort to walk the path I am destined for. Her welcoming embrace invite who I was, who I am, and who I am going to be. I now seek her to hold me responsible for my own actions by looking for long hidden knowledge within myself. She walks step by step through the process with me. Asking, instead of telling, and so the space between us grows.
Two
The months that follow bring the kind of love that you’re thankful for that feels like an eternity. Every moment holds a distinct pulse, and days reframed into weeks. She inspires me all over again what it is to be human. What it is to be real. She speaks only words that have meaning, leaving nothing behind. We cook together, we paint furniture together, slowly turning the pat into our shared space. She shows me complete equality for all humans but also an inequality of some ideas, as every one is not created with the same light. She explains how as a society we have reversed our thinking to honor a portion of ideas while other divine beings are somehow seen as expendable. She reveals to me the value of life and just how treasured it really should be.
I can’t help but see all of the parallel and blinders I’ve adopted my entire life which do not define me. Who am I now? And more importantly who am I going to be in the future?
Three
“Hey bubs do you think it would be cool if we read something spiritual together?” I ask her. “I would love too as long as it isn’t anything stereotyped”. My choices in most film, art and books tend to be a little corny.
It’s a rainy and stormy Monday, I stop at Barnes & Noble on my way home from work. Wandering into
the religious/ spirituality section, I hope to find something to feed the devoid space inside my soul. The
shelves are filled with all of the same laminate western self-help type novels familiar from my youth, I
meander over to the bookshelf “Eastern Religions”. The Bhagavad-Gita meets my gaze.
Reading in its opening introduction, “Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your
activities, nor be attached to inaction.” I am thoroughly confused but also intrigued. I know that I am
supposed to read these words over and over. Explore and let the teachings penetrate deep into my
concisouness.
Four
Seeing You reflect through the lives and works of the people around us, not forgetting those perished, we begin sharing daily quotes with one another.
On August 28th I send a declaration of the oneness I feel with her. ““I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.” EE Cummings
September she quotes George Eliot, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
I discover a poem by Maya Angelou; entitled “On the Pulse of the Morning” It becomes our anthem.
“Lift up your eyes upon the day breaking for you. Give birth again to the dream. History despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
The quotes and passages evoke wisdom, understanding and peace. A language we uncover to display our shared intimacy for You and each other. Seeing You as miniature fingerprints leading to light. Constantly reminding us You are in everything. You are everything.
Five
I cannot stop myself from feeling everything we stumble across is a tiny bread crumb of hidden truth buried deep within us. As if beckoning us to remember the true essence of where we came from reminding us where we came from will evoke the true essence of where we came from.
Jas and I binge watch Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey for eight straight hours on Netflix, transfixed on the utter splendor and vastness of You. We only get up for snacks and bathroom breaks. The bread crumbs keep falling.
It is as if the last 25 years have prepared me for the rest of my life’s journey. Dissecting moments clearly, I see the role they’ve played in creating the person that stands today.
I look into talking with a professional someonet, still afraid to open up all of me, but Jas and I talk, the lies and fears are only as large as my mind allows them to be. They become smaller with every confession, tiny blips of my history. .
“Do you think you’re able to express your feelings well? Jas gazes at me. “I think better than most but if I’m being honest, I’m only really good at calculated vulnerability. If I’ve told the truth about something once, it’s very easy to share again.” Through hundreds of question and answer exercises, we begin to unravel me. I see what is real and what I’ve been playing make belief.
“When did you feel yourself shift away from the real you? Because it doesn’t make sense that you would be one way for so long and then just flip”. “I think around the end of 6th grade is when everything began to change. Middle school was the first time I wasn’t accepted for who I really was. Praying at the lunch table and asking people not to curse quickly earned me the nickname “bible boy”. With that came teasing about my lack of female conquests. Everyone was moving into second and third base and I was still in the stands. I decided to conform, to lie about what I thought and did. To never be on the receiving end of that shit again.”
Six
We differentiate between who I am now and who I was by titles “Alex” and “Old Alex”. Trying to tear down walls that have been built up over an entire lifetime is a tedious strenuous task, but the new tastes and aromas bring with them new optimism. Beginning a journal entry, entitled “The things I am and the thing I am not”, I go through a lifetime of lies I have told; telling a group of middle school friends I had jerked off to the Paris Hilton Sex tape, saying to strangers I had been to countries I could barely pinpoint on map, sharing with Cari and Annalise I had done a drug that I have never been around, and the one that lasted the longest, portraying I had attended UVA when I went to Liberty. I frantically write it all out. Being honest with “Alex” for the first time left me very hollow. For the first time, I had a real idea of what he may look like and what he didn’t look like.
I took the next two hours to write another list and labeled “Things I Am”. I feel authentic love. Love for my true-self. Love for my soft heart. Love for a self that is not limited by what I’ve done or what I've accomplished. I feel acceptance of the fear that I have, and grace for this growth process. I see in “Old Alex” I have masked love with conditions and deceit. In tears, laughter, and harmony, the three of us reach a conclusion that Alex is peace and love and who I was before cannot cover who I am now. “Forgot “Old Alex” my love, all of our lives are filled with past shames. It is how we act now, anchored in love that will change you moving forward”, Jasmine encourages.
Seven
I’m learning my words are magic. Whether spoken, written or thought, words are the power we have to create. Opening the pocket sized Four Agreements Jas got me for my birthday, I skim, “Our Word is the gift that comes directly from God, it is how I manifest my hopes, dreams and aspirations.” Words are like seeds. They take time to grow and thrive. For so long my words have forged a false identity in myself and I can’t help but contemplate the false truths believed by others from my words. The first humbling reflection is I have been living as a parent that tells their child, “Do as I say and not as I do.” My words are false and my actions meaningless.
Eight
October continues with our love story. The growth and self-love has had some time to mature in private and change has come. The change not to conform or to appease. Change that leaves behind the philosophy that terrible things will never end and things are currently the best they will ever get. Change caused by love. I concentrate my mind on the present with acceptance that sometimes the end shouldn’t be seen.
There’s this moment when all new knowledge has to tested, “to every action there is always supposed be to an opposite or equal reaction. The positive energy resulted by my walking on a true path, also causes an equal shift of pushback. One I fully don’t expect but meets me nonetheless.
Opposition comes from family, friends of old, and co-workers. Intertwining lives with others often means realizing that you must define what your own best interest looks like. Breaking free turns out to be a whirlwind for some of the people I love most.
Action forces people to make decisions. Only two: accept or deny.
Nine
Tony and I agree to meet at Max’s taphouse in Fells and a weekday catch up.
It’s now Wednesday and I’ve have been meditating on this conversation since Sunday. I still feel overwhelmed. Riding down Baltimore St., past the red light district, police headquarters, and little Italy—thoughts are a cocktail of worry and impending unacceptance. Tony has been my closest friend since I moved to Baltimore and the first person I bounce all of my ideas off of.
Arriving at Max’s thirty min before him, I grab a barstool and order a Paulaner. Moments later, looking to the right, I see dapper Tony exits an Uber and walks in with a little chipper grin.He’s just come from a work happy hour and is a little red in the face. Hugging one another he says, “How are buddy? It feels like I haven’t seen you in forever”. Good, really good, thanks for asking”.
Flowing in and out of pleasantries he asks me, “How is work and what’s going on with Jas?” As he asks. My body is in what looks like a relaxed position but I can’t wait to share all of the amazing things that have been happening in my life. “Man everything is better than I ever could’ve expected. I ‘ve been wanting to talk to you for a while because there’s a shit ton to share. For one, my entire my life I’ve been told this really dark message that if you don’t turn your life over to God that “he is going to break you”. I’ve found out that brokenness looks so different for every single person. My brokenness is having everything that I thought I wanted, now I want none of it.” Taking a sip of his beer, “So what does that mean?” “I know Jas is the one, I say. I’m not going to accept the position to go abroad and do my MBA. I’m actually resigning in March. I have been searching for God my entire life and I’ve found him through a path I never knew existed. I can never go back.”
Ten
“I had anxious moments. I had nights waking up. Mind you, I had a secret weapon. Never is a man more of a man than when he is the Father of a Newborn. Whatever decisions you make in the first six months of becoming a father, double down on them. I mean you’re meeting the courier. You’re meeting the shepherd, the future prince.” answers Matthew McCaughey in my monthly GQ. Reading on there’s a portion where he’s asked about the process of deconstructing himself and choosing to be patient until the right role came along.
This is a moment that feels as if it were constructed just for me by You. The interviewer asks him, “When you talk about God, do you imagine him as…..?” and Matthew responds, “The Prime Moovah! The Waave Maker!”
GQ: But it’s an identifiable presence? Someone who can hear what you’re saying?
Matthew: Yes. And somebody who can help answer my questions. Someone who has a hand in all of this miracle we call life, which I believe is a miracle. But see at the same time. I completely believe in Evolution.
GQ: Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ?
Matthew: [long pause} Well, it’s a heaven of a story ain’t it?
There You are again. I began to cry alone in my office. My internal bliss doubling down on all that is good – all that is You.
Eleven
I dreamt a veil of heavy cloth is removed from its place causing a massive dust cloud to form, but the sun’s rays flash in the dark illuminating through the dust with spectacular force.
I open my eyes and look up at the ceiling. For the first time I account for what I alone am giving up. I trace a path of money, stability, success and personal ambition leading to an end of lament. I am filled with extreme gratitude, my reflections center around my former perpetual practice of self-sabotage and disbelief that nothing was wrong.
I close my eyes again, take a deep breath, and enjoy the deep solace around me.