All of this time meant something.
The madness. The chaos. The stillness. The deep cracking sounds as my heart broke time and time again in countless ways.
It meant something.
Those lessons have been hard to understand. There have been many times throughout all of this that I have cursed the heavens and stood in disbelief as to why all of this was happening.
Why the pain?
Why the suffering?
Why the constant barrage of lessons without ever feeling like I could catch a break?
Why the personal struggles that seemed to increase in magnitude day by day.
The darkness raged on and consumed those pieces of me that were caught in the maelstrom of my emotions. I was a slave to my thoughts. I was without direction. Anxiety pooled within and flooded the gates of joy. There was only really one word to describe this time.
Fury.
A fury that burned so wild and hot it felt like my skin could hardly stay on.
So I screamed at the sky with tears in my eyes and never heard an answer back.
I stormed the earth with my head down building walls and fortifications to keep the perpetrators away.
I burned the bridges and watched as a lifetime of confusion and pain burned to the ground.
I didn’t care.
Nothing made sense.
There was no point to any of it but destruction.
I felt like a dead man walking. I had nothing to lose. I couldn’t see anything to gain. On went my crusade against life.
It was all noise.
And then there was silence.
…
I panicked in that silence. The stillness cause unrest. It was as if the crickets on a summer night suddenly came to a standstill and halted their orchestra. I couldn’t settle into that. There was still this desire to continue raging on and yet there was something else calling me.
Peace.
Nonetheless, conflict ensued.
Two sides of me tore at each end speaking of vastly different paths. My mind caught hold of the argument and found it impossible to sort out which way to go. Life came in, as it always does, and made some decisions for me. But all in all, there I stood, paralyzed, not able to decide.
Stuck.
So I drifted.
I drifted the land. I wandered. I experienced many places and saw many things. But none of it helped.
The beast still lay seething within.
When the night fell, it woke up and I crumbled in my attempts to face it. Courage tried to convince me to give a good fight but I didn’t have the energy for another battle. I was a victim to it. I was a slave. I was there by choice whether I wanted to admit that to myself or not.
I knew I had to find it somewhere inside of me to take a stand.
And that’s where I am today.
Learning to take a stand for what’s right and what’s true. Many wonderful things have happened in my life throughout the years. There are moments that make me smile and people who have marked my heart with their love.
Lately, there’s been an unsettled feeling deep within my stomach as I see time go by marked by failed attempts to make the stand I’ve always needed to make.
I’ve compromised.
Negotiated.
Procrastinated and protracted.
I’ve done everything in my ability to not step into the things that I know will bring me that peace.
Traveling around the world was never the end goal. As I see it now, with much clearer eyes, I’ve started to understand that the space and time that I took over this past year allowed me to see the reality of my life…
That I was meant for far more than anything that I am now and that I have so much more work to do.
That is the reality.
A reality that I’m willing to take on and face.
As these words arrive on the page, I feel that beast arising once again. It’s waiting for me. It’s hungry and ready to feed on my fear once again. But this time, there will be no running. No exit plan. No wandering around the cave that needs to be entered. There is only through.
Through the to the other side.
Only through.
Only through.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project