Where the Buddha Meets the Road

 

“Suddenly, from the Void.” by Kiley Jon Clark

 

I was alone for the first time in my life. I mean, really alone.

 

Here I was, living in a tiny apartment, because after seventeen years of marriage, she could no longer accept my drinking.

 

I was a good provider. We had the house, cars and grass to mow.  I wasn't there emotionally for her or the kids. I had become my father, I guess. So, one day in early 2005, she just loaded up the kids and left. She got an apartment. I couldn't be in that house without them, so I got an apartment of my own.

 

Learning how to be alone and sober was brutal. Sometimes at night, my body would be so hot, that my sheets would be completely soaked with sweat. If I pulled them off, it was so cold that my teeth chattered. I would hear people arguing outside, but when I'd look, no one was there. Later, I found out that these are called the 'Alcoholic DTs' but at the time, I had no idea what was happening to me.  I did know one thing, however.

 

I knew the meaning of 'loneliness' when no one comes to see you, answers your calls, or invites you over. Your inescapable, Infinite Sadness is too much for anyone to bear. And even your own soul looks at you from across the room and says, 'I wanna flee, man. I gotta go, I can't be around you like this anymore."

 

No wife telling me what to do and no kids running down the hall screaming and spilling things. I had always thought, “I wish everyone would just leave me alone!” And now I had gotten my wish. It was a big, empty, misguided wish for a big empty misguided fool.

 

My chair faced the open window, where I stared out into the hopelessness street, with the hopeless cars, full of hopeless people, and the hopeless birds flying in a hopeless sky...and sometimes at night when the clouds would part, a big sad hopeless moon weeping.

Wanting to take a sharp object to my wrist, I instead took up a pen and wrote a letter to a Guru, “You must help me, Meaningless Life, Eternal Depression. Only you can help me. Only you can direct my steps back to the Path. Only you can help me cut through this intolerable ignorance. Only you can restore my sanity and show me the Buddha-Nature.” And I signed it, “Groping In the Darkness.”

 

Walking down the barren streets at midnight, I kissed the letter and dropped it into the outgoing mailbox.

 

The next afternoon, to my great surprise, a response had already come.

Although, to my dismay, I soon discovered, that I had written the return address in the wrong place. I had written a letter to the one who could save me, and mailed it to myself.

I had written a letter to the one who could save me, and mailed it to myself.