Today I left therapy and had the fleeting thought that maybe I’m in heaven. It was a beautiful day. The temperature was perfect. The leaves and grass were so green. Leawood, Kansas probably doesn’t often get compared to Eden, but today that’s what it felt like.
I considered the possibility that I died or killed myself in that lonely hotel room four and a half years ago and like a character from LOST have been working out the things I need to in order to feel at peace with myself.
If I think about my life logically, it almost doesn’t seem fair. My therapist. My kids. My girlfriend. My friends. How did I get so lucky? Do I deserve all this? I don’t fucking think so, but man I’ll take it. And I appreciate the shit out of it, because of what I’ve been through.
My therapist and I were talking today about grace being most understood and appreciated by fuck ups. You can’t be perfect or aspire to be perfect and really understand grace. I used to be an aspiring perfectionist. Or a Christian. Or an American dreamer. Or whatever. Man, I sucked at it.
I thought I needed to teach people a lesson. I thought I needed to take the recommended daily allowance of bible verses and that if I regurgitated them at just the right time, people’s lives would be changed. The practical application of those verses or the bigger, more important concept of grace was lost on me.
But, that didn’t stop me from trying to instruct others who weren’t as enlightened as me. Ha. I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. So, I wrote an entire screenplay about this grace thing that I’d never experienced.
It was great in the sense that it was me pursuing my dream of writing. It was me trying after years of talking about it. The feeling I got when I finished the screenplay was indescribable. But, I wrote it because I wanted to be famous, not because I had something to say.
I wanted to be clever. And profound. And win an academy award. But, unlucky for me they don’t give out Oscars for unmade movies about Christian accountants trying to intellectually explain grace.
But, looking back, I couldn’t have felt like I was in heaven today if I had overnight success as a writer. I wasn’t ready to succeed. I was a fucking mess. I wanted the screenplay to bail me out of the sinking ship that was my life and marriage and when it didn’t I got so fucking depressed.
But, like any successful writer will tell you, “If at first you don’t succeed, take a job in corporate America.” So, I tried that. I flat gave up. Mailed it in. What a fucking pussy.
Or maybe that was just the way it had to go for me. I had to feel like a failure. Because, really the story I have to tell is not going to make me the first writer to be featured on a box of Wheaties. Instead, I look like an ass hole and a fuck up. I’m not Bruce Jenner man. I’m just some guy. And I’m finally…FINALLY…cool with this guy that I am.
I get to be me. I don’t have to be a product of some religion. Or my father’s son. Or the husband of that one girl. I get to be MatthewBlakeAtkinson and I’m actually good at it. It took me a while to grow into the character, but I feel real and human these days and it’s hard to believe that’s my reality after living most of my life as an unfeeling robot.
Today my therapist and I were talking about feelings. I didn’t used to have them. But, I can experience emotions. The stuff she’s tapped into and the grace she’s given me is priceless. She had the nerve to tell me that I’m her favorite patient every week and that I’m not going to write a book, but several and I better write the first one before she dies.
She believed in me before I believed in myself. And that’s what my girlfriend does for me too. I’ve come into my own as a person, but my confidence as a writer hasn’t quite caught up with my general self-worth. But, to have my girlfriend be my biggest fan…to have her want me to and encourage me to write…it means the world.
The story I have to tell isn’t new, but it’s unique to me. I’m the only one who can tell my story. And it’s so fucking cool to me that I’m not trying to write this book to bail myself out of a miserable life. I’m writing the book, because it’s just me being me. I have a story to tell. So, I’ll fucking tell it.
I can’t imagine my life being any better than it is right now. But, holy crap I’ve gone through some shit. And I’ve learned that I’m not alone. Talking about that shit is how we heal. Finding other fucked up people who want to get better too.
And essentially that’s why I left the marriage. I couldn’t get better in that space. I just pulled up a note I started to write my kids about 6 weeks after my ex-wife kicked me out of the house. I wanted to explain it to them, but didn’t know where to start, because I was crying uncontrollably.
But, if this is heaven, that was hell. I couldn’t be the dad I am now without fucking working at it. Therapy and writing and going from a miserable, uncomfortable depressed fraction of who I was capable of being to all this.
My daughter said something tonight about loving our home. It’s a crappy two bedroom apartment. But, it’s where we do family. It’s safe. Heaven.
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