Leave Room #229

The experience of suffering is the most common theme in epic tales as well as music because whether a story is fictional or not or has mystical creatures or involves details that we have never encountered, it is still an authentic and painful emotion that we all feel with depth on the inside. It’s that honesty and truthfulness in characters, along with their missteps and vulnerability as they discover and grow through their journeys, that connects us not only to the narratives but also to ourselves. In some ways, characters in a novel and the accounts of songs as well as art help to lead us to find our feeling of hope and to see that our possibilities are only limited by what we tell ourselves when we are suffering rather than by what we are actually capable of. In other words, when we stay curious about ourselves or on the edge of our seats just like we are as we watch epic tales, we are open to seeing what could be or is possible and then the solutions to what we are suffering can be found in unexpected ways and places. When Ryan was 18, he overdosed on heroin and fentanyl and as his lungs shut down, he was placed on a ventilator. I still remember the range of emotions and how that pain felt just as deeply in my heart today as I did when it happened almost 16 years ago although the power of it has changed, and it doesn’t take my breath away anymore. On the 15th night of that desperate situation, the doctors informed me that Ryan would not be able to come off of the ventilator and I needed to make arrangements for him. So, the next morning as I stood outside of his ICU room, I planned to have him moved to a long care facility while the thought of having to eventually let him go played over and over in my mind. Afterwards I walked into his room where both the doctor and my dad looked at me with smiles on their faces and as I turned wondering what there could possibly be to smile about, I noticed that Ryan was no longer on the ventilator and smiling as well. The goal and hope had been to save Ryan and that doctor had believed in Ryan’s possibility, so he tried one more time to wean him off. When I talk about that particular part of our trail, I can still visualize the look on each person’s face and feel the happiness, the kind that makes your heart smile and you laugh until your stomach hurts because of it, as well as the relief from the ending of the suffering. The confidence that came from that big win stayed with both of us and as life continued on, we easily faded into it until a traumatic event occurred almost a year later in Ryan’s life and he went right back to using substances to cope, his objective, while I returned to the target of getting him to just stop. That was a cycle that lasted for years on our journey with all of the highs and lows as well as the feelings of pain and doubt that come with substance use, sobriety and relapses. As we all know, when we are in the midst of any kind of hell, not only is it hard to believe that it is possible to take the power away from our personal dragons while hanging on to a cliff of hope, but it is also hard to breathe in courage when fear speaks louder than any flowers we may have. Our better stories hold that honesty and openness and despite the different details, those things are exactly what connects us to the characters in epic tales and the songs that say what we feel but can’t communicate as easily. The differences, though, are that we don’t leave room to be curious about ourselves so that growth is possible for us, but we will for others or for the tales that we love, nor do we recognize that our own narratives express far more than just facts just like epic stories do and that while living our stories without everything being just right is scary and painful, that’s what makes them our unique, real-life, meaningful experiences rather than the results of an imaginative writer who could place us on another painful journey that we might hate as well. After Ryan was released from the hospital, we went to see one of the doctors who had cared for him. That doctor smiled as he told Ryan that he was happy that he was going to live, another one of those memorable heaven or flower moments, but as he continued to speak his face changed when he added that there was a plot twist as a result of the overdose and damage to Ryan’s lungs. If Ryan didn’t stop using substances, he would only have 10 years left to live. As you can imagine that was a fall off a cliff type hell moment that should have stayed with both of us but because the goal had been to save Ryan and he had been, that opinion and fact had appeared to be as impossible as Ryan becoming an addict had once seemed as well. In the last year and a half of his life our field of vision began to expand and we realized that when we leave room to be curious about each other and ourselves, what has been done fades from the light and transforms into what is really going on and what is possible. Ryan became the coach who taught me about his life, and I became the teacher who shared my perspective of mine with him and while it wasn’t perfect, because it’s not just about the flowers, our narratives together and separately became the authentic stories that we had always been capable of becoming the better writers of. You see the hope and the goal had been to save Ryan but along each of our ways the out of the blue wins and unexpected beauty, not just the sobriety, helped us to sit with the suffering that lives in all kinds of dreaded “f” moments and to know that they are only as strong as we tell ourselves they are, and that the feeling of vulnerability that breathes within them is something that we are powerful enough to change or even defeat. After all we may have lost Ryan during his substance use times as well as in the end, but we also discovered so much more of him on that journey that if his trail had only been an easy one or just in a field of flowers, we would have missed finding and feeling through those moments that made our hearts smile and the laughter that made our stomachs hurt as well as the tears that required tissues. Have the best day POSSIBLE for you and if you leave room to be curious about you, you will see that not knowing all the answers and the suffering are exactly what makes epic tales and sometime warriors so real just like you. Love Always, Heavell