During the year that I ran DRR, old tensions (regarding my career, my family, my self-conception, my spirituality) all came to a head.
I’m a big believer in the concept of synchronicity.
It was not a coincidence that all of my most uncomfortable, suppressed, existential fears reached a boiling point that year.
To give one example, my family situation deteriorated after my brother’s legal troubles and subsequent destructive aggression revealed deep dysfunctions in my entire family–and myself–that I had never been aware of.
Something that had always been rocksteady–my love of and my conception of my family–had suddenly crumbled apart.
I woke up one day to find no gravity.
It put me in a position where I could not be avoidant.
In the past, I had rationalized my avoidant tendencies by saying, “It only affects me. No one else is being hurt.”
This allowed me to simultaneously indulge my self-hatred and self-pity.
A brutal positive feedback loop.
An infinitely starving, infinitely regenerating ouroboros.
Now, with DRR, I could see in the most concrete, glaring, soul-crushing way that my avoidance was directly hurting my loved ones
Worse, the only way to not be avoidant was to burn bridges with other loved ones
And to do so under the very real threat of physical violence
To be assertive and unflinching while my heart was being ripped out of my chest
It really reminded me of the Joseph Campbell quote,
"It is by going down into the abyss
that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble,
there lies your treasure.
The very cave you are afraid to enter
turns out to be the source of
what you are looking for."
I remember asking myself,
“What do I least want to do in the entire world right now?”
That was the only thing that would make me grow.
I knew exactly what I had to do.
All that was left was the actual doing.
