Who I Am (An Honest Self-Reflection)

Getting honest; telling the truth

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***** Originally written in late November, 2022

“In the last analysis, what is the significance of life? If we divide mankind into two great classes, we may say that one works for a living, the other does not need to. But working for a living cannot be the meaning of life, since it would be a contradiction to say that the perpetual production of the conditions for subsistence is an answer to the question about its significance which, by the help of this, must be conditioned. The lives of the other class have in general no other significance than that they consume the conditions of subsistence. And to say that the significance of life is death, seems again a contradiction.”

                    ~Soren Kierkegaard (from “Diapsalmata” in “Either/Or,” 1843)

I wanted to write something about Who I Am in some sort of deep, existential, spiritual way, if you will. I’m about to turn forty on New Year’s Eve. I’m over 12 years sober. I was born in Ventura, California, north of Los Angeles, but raised in Ojai, a little inland from Ventura nestled in the Topa Topa mountains.

          Growing up I was privileged; my family had (still has) money. Not “old” money. Not East Coast money. Not Rockefeller money (not even close), but, still: Money. K-8 I attended Episcopalian private school. For high school I attended the prestigious Villanova Prep in Ojai, one of the many “rich kid schools” in town.

          My mother was a master’s nursing teacher and author and my father was a former chemistry and math teacher turned computer engineer. We had an idyllic family seen by the eyes of strangers. But things were dark beneath the surface. (As is the case with most families to varying degrees. As Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”)

          There was punk rock and alcoholism and rebellion and girls and anarchy throughout high school. Then the wild vagabond-Kerouac years on and off the grid thumbing across America from 23-28 until I nearly dropped dead of exhaustion and got sober in 2010.