I Do Not Owe Anybody a Finished Version of Me

I write about my own healing on this site while it is still happening.

Not after. During.

Some people think that is a mistake. They think you wait until the story is finished, then you tell it clean, with the lesson tied on the end like a bow.

I do not have a finished version of me to hand anybody. I am not sure one is coming.

The pressure to have it figured out

When you heal in public, people want the arc.

Down, then up. Broken, then fixed. They want to know the PTSD is handled, the anger is gone, the sleep came back, the faith never wavered.

And there is a real temptation to give it to them. To write the post that sounds like I already made it. It reads better. It gets shared more. It makes everybody, including me, feel like the hard part is over.

But I have said plainly on this site that I still go to the VA. That I still count the exits in a room. That some mornings on the water help and some mornings do not.

If I suddenly started writing like a man who was done, the people who have been reading along would know it was a performance.

So would I.

What honest looks like on an ordinary day

Honest is not dramatic.

Most days it looks like this. I did the work. Some of it went well. One thing set me off that should not have, and I noticed it later than I wanted to. I did not make it anybody else's problem. I will try again tomorrow.

That is not a testimony anybody puts on a stage.

It is the only kind I trust.

The Marine Corps taught me to report what is actually in front of me, not what I wish was there. Search and rescue taught me the same thing harder. You do not radio in that the ground is clear because you are tired of looking.

Healing is the same kind of report. You say where you actually are. Then you take the next step from there, not from where you pretend to be.

Why I keep doing it in the open

Because somebody out there is in the middle of their own mess, and every story they see skips the middle.

They see the before picture and the after picture. They never see the hundreds of ordinary days in between where it was just a man getting up and trying again. So they look at their own middle and decide they must be doing it wrong.

You are not doing it wrong. The middle is supposed to look like this.

I would rather be one more person who shows the middle than one more person who pretends it was never there.

Where faith fits

People ask how faith fits into a story that is not tied up yet.

Here is my answer. Faith is not the bow on the end. Faith is what keeps you walking when there is no end in sight.

Joseph did not know how his story was going to come out while he was sitting in the pit, or the prison. He found out at the end what God meant by all of it. Genesis 50:20 is something he said looking back, not looking ahead.

I am not at the looking back part yet. I am still walking.

That is allowed.

If you are in the middle right now

Stop waiting to be finished before you tell the truth about where you are.

Tell one person. Not the whole internet. One.

Say it the honest way. Not fixed. Not broken. Just in the middle and still moving.

Then get up tomorrow and take the next step from right there.

That is all I am doing. Every day. In the open.