I learned late, perhaps too late, in life that the challenges we face are lessons to be learned. I read the book, Many Masters, Many Lives, during a time in my life when I was desperately searching for answers. While all the spiritual books I’ve read have given me insight(s), this one changed my life. The idea that we are from one entity that sent out its soul to learn, and that once learned, another is presented until you become a master. A master allowed to remain removed from this earthly world unless you choose to come as a helper or messenger for others, opened my hurting heart and allowed me to search my challenges for the lesson. To identify, understand, and conquer.
I wonder now if this idea of vulnerability is either my new lesson to be learned, or the lesson I have to share (not that I’m a master by any means). I discovered Brenee Brown this summer as I searched for a book to study with my AVID III students. I’ve watched countless talks by her, read her book Daring Greatly, and discussed her ideas with my students. Now, a colleague of mine has started a blog, a website, a journey and asked me to engage in the quest to share our stories. I read her first story and commented on her courage to share her vulnerableness. As I sit here on this gift of a snow day, trying to read a book I’ve promised myself this winter break, I could not stop thinking about this charge. Not that I haven’t been thinking about her request since the day she asked. Spurred by her posting of her first blog, my mind returned to her request and so, I’ve put my book aside and picked up my computer. A computer I promised to rest this break, but I have learned to follow my yearnings more than my promises.
I’ve not been able to write my story as it would take a book. Perhaps 1100 pages like the book I’m reading now. But, I think I can speak to one of my vulnerabilities in a blog length manner.
Recently, I’ve been bombarded by the questions of family. This used to happen all the time when I would apply for a loan, a credit card, a subscription. The security questions were always, about family, childhood, the past. Even the innocuous questions about your first pet would harken back to a life I left at 17. These questions would infuriate me (pre Many Master, Many Lives). People told me to make up a family. To pick a name, a street, a pet, a life. I couldn’t. It felt like a betrayal of my life. To this day, a doctor’s visit no matter how many times I’ve visited includes questions about my families’ medical history. I want to scream, “I ran away at 17. I don’t have a family.” WRITE IT DOWN IN YOUR NOTES!” But, I don’t. I simply say, I don’t have a family. I always wonder if orphans feel the same anger or if it’s different when you had a family that only means pain for you. Or, mostly, means pain.
So, this is my story. A piece of it. I left home at 17 with my inhaler in my pocket and nothing else. I walked about 5 miles to a friends house, broke into her basement and used the downstairs phone to call her bedroom phone. We had no cell phones. I asked her to return me to Akron, OH where I was performing in a summer theatre program. My parents had kidnapped me and brought me home to Centreville, OH earlier that day threatening to kill us all in a car crash the entire trip. My friend did just that. Once in Akron, I found out I couldn’t return to college as my type of scholarship had been discontinued. I had a 200 dollar check coming from the theatre program, no car, and no job. I walked to the nearest fast food restaurant, Burger King, got a job as a fry cook. I got a letter from my boss that said when my paycheck would come, and walked to the nearest, cheapest apartment complex and asked to rent an apartment with the money I had and the letter promising that I would be albe to pay in full soon. I stole wood pallets from the back of KMart and drug them in the night to my apartment to try and make furniture. I dumpstered dived for cloth, pillow, anything that would make the apartment more palatable.
I’ve thought a lot about this singular moment of my life during this pandemic. I’ve spent my life simply putting one foot in front of the other. Shaking off one challenge after another. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes those footsteps came after a moment of standing on the edge of life and considering stepping off and out. But, I’ve always stepped back, turned around, stepped forward, and kept on.
This is a story of one moment in a life full of stories that preempt this one and the stories that follow it. But, this is the story that informs my life right now. We are born vulnerable; we live vulnerable; and we die vulnerable. How we choose to handle that vulnerability is the key to the life we will have and the example we will be for others.
Submitted by Doc
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