Sometimes the Only Way Out…is Through

I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er

Old Bill Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act 3, Scene 4

Yesterday I was rewriting my origin story using the principles expounded by Mike Kim in You Are the Brand. A bit of inspiration led to a revelation, which led to an epiphany.

Good so far, right?

Which led to a flashback to one of the two worst days…moments, of my life. I was back below the event horizon, past the point of no return, where I had decided to die.

Epiphany: it was my sons’ love that extracted me from that hole, the revelation was mind blowing and mind numbing, and I almost collapsed from the emotional overload.

The rest of my day was a haze, fighting the grey mist that the flashback laid.

Sometimes the only way out, is through.

A couple of weeks ago a friend was out clubbing. On the way home, the group ride got cut off into the curb, and when they stopped, four armed men jumped out and came at them.

Friend’s driver slammed into reverse and laid rubber out of there, but friend has been having understandable trouble processing it.

“Sometimes the only way out is through,” I told him.

So it has been for me. I couldn’t shake the fog, so today I spent a couple of hours watching Lorna Shore’s “Pain Remains” trilogy, and reaction videos to it.

It was a Death Metal video of pain and loss, which precipitated the moment I flashed back to, so I went to a Deathcore video of pain and loss to go through it.

And I’m almost through.