My Story

I don't know if I've told this story before…

I was in the canyons of Malibu about four years ago (almost exactly) on sassafras with a shaman on a spiritual journey.

My mind was opening up.  I was a guy in my thirties who had shed all of his guards.  I was like a child who had no filter.  I wasn't "high."  I didn't feel like I was in an altered state, but I had experienced true openness in a way I hadn't since I was young and was taught to build defenses.

I met this man who was my doppelgänger.  My ex at the time had told me about this guy.  He said we looked a lot alike.  And we really did.  We had pulled up to the site at the same time and got out of the car and looked at each other.  We were bound together for the evening.

Once the "plants" kicked in, we were inseparable.  We couldn't leave each other's site because we were  mirrors for each other.  You know how people often can't take their own advice?  Well, I was giving advice to this man who looked like me and it was like I was giving that advice to myself.  I was telling myself things I needed to hear.  And when he would say things to me, it felt personal.

He told me that I needed to write my story.  That I still hadn't told my story yet.

By this time in my life, I think I had become uninterested in my story.  The funny thing is that the play that had gotten me a lot of attention was about my grandmother.  I don't know if I saw it that way at the time.  I felt like I put myself into everything I wrote, but it was true that I wasn't writing about myself.  I probably thought that felt indulgent or I didn't understand what was so special about my story.  And in turn, I didn't know what was so special about myself.  Those lessons would be learned later.

I'm finishing work on a screenplay that's about me as a child.  Details are changed slightly.  But the essence of the story and many of the details of the story are from my life.  It wasn't until recently that I realized that I was writing my story.  That this guy who I never saw again, my doppelgänger, had predicted that things would start to open up for me once I told my story.  I went off to write a play after that that was about me in a peripheral way, but I was still afraid of writing something that seemed to come so clearly from me.

And now I have.  And I don't know what "things" will open up.  But I am opening up.

I am grateful to be near completion of a new script.
I am grateful to be experienced.
I am grateful for lessons that take time to unfold.
I am grateful for these characters I am writing.
I am grateful for the love I am able to give back to myself.