SMALL THINGS

I sit down to write, but first crack a beer. Yip, it’s my new thing, beer. I feel strangely adult and wildly reckless at the same time. Given the addiction history in my bloodline.

Let’s talk about addiction for a moment.

I have spent most of my life deep diving into the art world, being a creative, outdoor adventure and sport. Leaving no stone unturned. Of late, those things have subsided quite some and I’ve been deep diving into what it means to be an addict. How to find joy in the mundane and having no exciting plan for my life but to get through today. I’ve changed my hardcore outdoor adventures for reading a few good yet tough books, a whole lot of YouTube videos and some real quality podcasts of a select few pattern breakers I trust. And when I say trust I mean people who struggled with addiction themselves and have now cultivated an honest way of life navigating addiction one day at a time.

I wasn’t necessarily going to talk about addiction in this write-up but the beer got us there, so here we are.

I watched a fantastic YouTube upload from a very cool brand that interviews addicts from all walks of life. Whenever I watch an episode, something deeply resonates. And although I’ve never struggled with substance as my choice of obsession, something about the people who struggle with substance abuse felt deeply familiar. This particular episode landed in a rather profound way and it went something like this…

The substance is just the symptom. Trauma is the real culprit. What is trauma? “moments of perceived helplessness”. It opened up a whole new world for me, that explanation of trauma.

Each person experiences moments of perceived helplessness throughout life but for some reason each and every one of us have a unique reaction to it. It imprints deeply and alters someone’s life irreversibly or it imprints lightly and no consequences seem to be visible at all. I’m trying to get to the bottom of why the trauma I have experienced imprinted on me so heavily.

I’m on a path of rediscovery. For more than half my life I’ve been one way and sure of being this way was who I was meant to be but slowly but surely I am feeling that this idea of who I used to be no longer fits.

For now, I don’t know who I am. I don’t have the desire to tell anybody either. There is no charge to defend my identity. It’s a welcome place to be if you take that previously I needed to be a writer, a surfer, an adventurer, an athlete and an artist. I needed people to know that I was good at all of the above. Now I know I’m probably average at most things and just getting through the day is one wild adventure and success. Someone could literally call me a caterpillar and I’d say cool and instead of feeling offended I would go research the essence of caterpillars and try to find out if there’s some truth in their theory. The curiosity is sky high.

At first this place I find myself in was rather disabling but as time goes by it’s become rather freeing. To not know. A deep and necessary ongoing metamorphosis.

So how does addiction, trauma and every day life marry and merge you might be asking? Because we think those who look like they are struggling are the ones that are struggling and in need of help. But we have been conditioned to see trauma, addiction and other things through cultivated, systematic lenses which doesn’t always serve us or those we care about.

I’m trying to tell you that looking like I’m adulting well doesn’t mean I am. I’m at a point in my life where I know that I need help in ways that I haven’t found help and that there are certain things about my way of life that I don’t want to keep on living. It takes years of deep diving ones own inner world in order to get to where one needs to go and even then you might never find the help that you need. The bitter sweet is that when trauma deeply imprints it’s a blessing and a curse. The curse is the time it takes to untangle from the net of trauma and understand ones own deep intricacies in order to heal and let go. The blessing is that you have been given the time to untangle from the net of trauma and now can exist anew.

Here’s to beer and relating to it in a new way.