In meetings, I hear people talk about ‘peeling the onion’. We get sober and we start dealing with all the stuff inside ourselves: the feelings, the memories, the thoughts and the motivations. We get to know ourselves, the different layers that make up who we are. I know I’m not alone in saying that, before I started on this path, I didn’t really know myself. One of my favorite things I ever heard a speaker say was that when you come into the rooms, the person you get introduced to is you.As I continue in my Recovery, I, too, am peeling the onion and exploring those ever-deeper layers. I confess, I get annoyed by it. Sometimes I wish I was a simpler man. I think life would be easier. But I am me and no one else. So if I may, allow me to peel back another layer here.
A lot of the ... stuff ... of me is a smokescreen. And I don’t always know that that’s what is going on, because I am genuine. I’m a personable guy. I’m one of those people who hears, “you're so easy to talk to” a lot. People tend to be comfortable around me and feel safe opening up to me. When I listen, it's because I want to. I care about what the other person is saying. I want to know them and hear them and understand. But this doesn’t mean I don't have emotional barriers as hard and thick as a stone castle wall.
Intimacy, real intimacy, means I have to open up as well. It’s something that is still very, very hard for me to do. It means I have to lay bare who I am inside. It means I have to find the courage to let out the real me, expose him to the world. I have to show others the me that I keep beneath the layers and behind the walls.
It’s ironic. I was once paid a compliment after a meeting. Someone told me how much they admired the way I really ‘put myself out there’. I don’t remember how I reacted, but I do remember thinking the compliment didn’t make sense to me. I felt there was so much more of myself that I’d kept inside. Maybe we’re like that. Maybe, no matter how much we share, there’s always plenty more that we don’t. Maybe it’s just that I’m like that.
So who is the Zach that’s on the inside? Who is the me--beyond the words, beyond the music, beyond the supportive reassurance--who is the me that’s at that deeper layer? For starters, it’s a man that looks at sentences like the previous one and rolls his eyes. He looks at the words he just wrote and says to himself, “wow, obfuscate much?” Because he sees how the surface layers are talking about opening up and yet taking their sweet time to actually do it. “What, are you stretching it out for dramatic effect? Jeez dude, just say it already…”
I’m a wonderer.
I enjoy thinking. About everything. I wonder why I’m here. I wonder why WE’RE here. I wonder at the beauty of the full moon and at the mystery of a starry sky. I wonder at a gorgeous sunset. I wonder at the insanity of those with wealth and power who go to any lengths to prevent others from taking it. I wonder at a world that lifts up liars and cheats and allows good people to be murdered. I wonder about a God that loves us so much that he gives us free will to decide even if we want to believe in him or not. I wonder why some men who don’t think are admired more than those who do. I wonder how it is that 'do something, even if it’s wrong' can be more valued than taking the time to do something right. I wonder in disgust at a culture that prizes ignorance and lifts up con artists as heroes for no other reason than the fact that they successfully scammed countless others. I wonder, too, at a world that has seen any number of prophets teach different ways, yet still insists on doing things the same.
This is the real me. To an extent, childlike. I ask questions, sometimes without even caring about the answers. I look around me and try and make sense out of a reality that I never possibly could. I am an artist who comments on what it is I see, experience, and learn. And now, as an addict in Recovery, I am learning better how to let go, how to not ask as many questions, and to just accept things that are. But that doesn’t stop me from wondering, or from being a person of wonder.
There is a difference between the wonder of being amazed, and the wonder of asking why. When I wonder, it's in the first sense of the word. Being in Recovery has given me plenty of opportunities for it, too: the wonder that a group of dope fiends can help someone turn their life around; the wonder that a group of drunks can do the same.
I believed in God before I got into Recovery, but it was only after I came into the rooms that I truly began to see miracles.
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