Riverbed

hollow noun A small, sheltered valley that usually but not necessarily has a watercourse.

On my walk yesterday, I excitedly began writing a piece about my undeniably formative experience with religion. The story is one I’ve told numerous times to various people upon request, although never to my satisfaction. It’s not like I set out to be dishonest or even guarded, but I do fashion each telling to suit the listener based on their familiarity with the subject matter, carefully monitoring their comfort and interest levels so I can make the necessary adjustments. Last time someone asked me to tell it, I came away wondering if I even knew the real story anymore. Then I wondered if I ever knew it.

I was inspired to write about it partly for this reason. I wanted to clarify my thoughts, to rescue the truth before it became irretrievably corrupted by my own approximations. I was also interested in joining together the two halves of my human contacts (which can be roughly divided by those I made prior to age 21 and those made after) in a common insight into the Real Me, half of which both halves know. And then, there’s the perennial desire to lay part of myself bare, a hazard that occasionally results in human connection. Or, as I so graciously put it, a contact I’ve made after the age of 21.

As I walked, silently mouthing the words as they came to me, the flow picked up in force. Paragraphs tumbled on top of each other, tangents shot out in every direction, the deluge of memories that energized the process also threatened to drown it. Peculiar customs and family dynamics would need to be explained, motives would need to be differentiated, and complex theological ideas would need to be unpacked. It was becoming a book I did not particularly want to write.

When I got home, I attempted to commit to paper the rushing river that had become a soggy dam of leaves and sticks in an astonishingly short period of time. It was trickier than I’d anticipated. Identities would need to be protected, feelings spared, online debates unsparked, and private messages of “concern” avoided, if at all possible. My story was the only one I had any business telling. I opened my mouth to tell it but no words came. Then the fog rolled in.

I thought I could cut through it. Rather than try to fully set the stage, chronicle important events, give a detailed description of the catalyst, and summarize the preceding decade of accumulating self- and world-discovery, I decided to simply tell my reason for walking away. That reason, which I could state succinctly, is not a relic. It guides, inspires, haunts, and challenges me each day. It’s something I try to live up to, not something I’ve already done.

Alas, this proved to be beyond reach as well. Aside from the obvious challenges of writing something so deeply personal, there seemed to be a part of the story, a core truth, to which I was not privy. The part of my brain that thinks thoughts was characteristically overconfident, I suppose, in its ability to penetrate the abysm. And so it is that, with reverence for that which must remain safely tucked away for now, as well as for the things I will never know or understand, I’m pitching a tent outside this door. Holler if you need me.