I’ve avoided it long enough.

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This is a tough one to write. Not because it is unfamiliar, because I’ve built my whole life around avoiding it.

I woke up feeling hollow today but wasn’t really sure why.
I slept fine. I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary to impair my recovery.
There was nothing I could really put my finger on.

It’s heavy though. Murky.
I’m dreading this day.

I approached it the same way I usually approach these states.
With self-inquiry.
Curiosity.
Honesty.

What struck me is that in this process I’ve learned that curiosity is partially how I protect myself.
If I keep searching, I don’t ever have to arrive anywhere.

Arrival means being seen. Being measured.
Maybe even judged.
Quiet expectations of myself. By myself.

Curiosity, it seems, can be just another mask – but one I enjoy wearing.
And I don’t think that’s all bad – and I will continue.
At least for now.

There is a bigger question that surfaced that I’m looking for the answer to:
Will I be who I think I am when there is nowhere to hide?

The business. The writing. The inquisition.
There is always a level of performance. Maybe not for you, but for myself.
Refining. Edits. Reworking.
Continually trying to get somewhere else.
Using struggles as evidence against me.
Passing by the victories, however large or small, like typing the password to get into my computer.

I’ve stacked the game against myself.
Quite possibly on purpose.

Anyone who has read anything I have written, gets the pattern.
Struggle.
Insight.
Movement.

None of these insights have come from the outside. It’s all been internal.
A combination of events in my life and the way that my mind interprets them –
assigning them meaning.
No guru.
No authority figure.
No system.

The person who spent years struggling in his mind, who turned it around by relying on himself, who built something from that self-reliance –
that person’s nervous system learned a very specific lesson.
I am safest when I am the one holding it together.
Needing others is a price I’ve paid before.
And the price was steep.

That’s a lot of weight to hold.
I’ve come and gone with the Atlas complex of holding up the world…
I set it down –
only to still be struggling with the one that really matters – my own experience.
Being the one I rely on. The most. For everything.
Constantly adjusting myself to maintain peace.
Safety.
I’m not saying this is bad, but there are limits… edges that seem to be coming into focus.

Reflecting on this today led me deep.
Some of the insights were difficult to surface, but they were honest.
And I stuck with it.
Not judging myself, just typing what needed to come out.

I can see clearer now why I am building Peak.
It is my deepest, darkest shadow having some light shone on it.
My vision is a place where others feel safe enough to unfold.
No noise. No distractions. No judgment. No bullshit.
Just being able to sit with someone else and truly explore who we are.
When we are alone –
and when we are together.

My journey is finding that place in myself.
Feeling hollow and uncertain.
Questioning my own why’s and how’s.
And staying with it long enough…
so the meaning is arrived at through the process.
Not assigned at the beginning.
And just being okay, even when it doesn’t arrive.

Peak is the next level. It’s where I see who the man behind the curtain really is.
That is a scary threshold to stand at sometimes.
The place where anxiety and exhilaration meet.
When you are not really sure which one you are feeling.

You know you are staring down a part of you that you have long ignored.
Tucked away in a box in the corner.
But it is calling to you, louder and louder.
It is drawing you in stronger than the gravity that holds you to the Earth.
Like a bottle of water in the middle of the desert.
You want it so desperately, you’ll walk barefoot across miles of burning hot sand.

There will be times where I realize that the person I am walking with has had water the whole time…
All I needed to do–

was ask.

And then accept that isn’t failure. I don’t have to do it alone.
I don’t have to be so self-reliant that I can’t also feel hollow. Alone. Distant.
Not just pushing through the day, pretending it is something it isn’t.
And that is perfectly ok.

Peak isn’t about perfection. It’s not about performance.
It’s not about what is right or what is wrong.

I’ve built it from how I have navigated my life.
How I’m still navigating my life.
Ways to move through situations.
Ways to face challenges.
Ways to return.

I’m still in it. I always will be.

I’m not sure who I find on the other side of this, but I’ve been looking for him for a long time.
I’ve dragged rock bottom, sometimes on purpose, just so I felt ok giving myself permission to drop the identity I had grown out of.
That may have been necessary then, but not now.
I can hear him. He’s close.
There is a pile of rubble – sounds like he may be under it.

So I’ll dig – gentler than before.
Softer.
Quieter.

Maybe what I find will be different.
Maybe the same.
Maybe some of both.

I guess we’ll see.

What I can tell you is what I’ve found today:
I express myself best when I feel like a pile of shit.
It has this texture to it that is freeing.
There is no performance. I’m not trying to hold any specific identity.
The energy simply isn’t there to accommodate it.

I just am.

Maybe I’m starting to give myself permission to unfold.

And I don’t have to do it alone.