Everything Matters So Much
On anxiety, nihilism, and beauty in a life that matters.
As kids, my younger sisters and I didn’t know what was wrong with Mom; we just knew that we hated her. It was her discovery of my journal that led her to seek therapy. She was rearranging my bedroom again while I was at school. We had a silent war going on—everything in my room was organized the way I wanted it: CDs here, books there, and so on. Yet, almost every day for a while, I would come home to find that she’d moved everything to her specifications: CDs here, books there, and so on. After weeks of this back-and-forth, she erupted. Rage, screaming, sobbing, my dad running up the stairs and wrapping his arms around her to calm her down. In retrospect, it seems comical, but in the moment, it was terrifying.
It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that my wife told me what my mom revealed to her. She’d found my journal under my bed and saw enough of my angry teenage writings to realize that I loathed her. Teenage angst is one thing, but it had become apparent to my mother all her children abhorred her. After undergoing testing and evaluation, as well as meeting with a therapist, my mother was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder.
What I remember most about her time in therapy was how shocking it was to discover how much of not just her behavior, but my relationship with her, was dysfunctional. Things that were just the norm in the house were now “symptoms”; the ways we talked to and saw each other were “suboptimal”. Other than medication and therapy, which were extraordinarily helpful to her, one of the most eye-opening paradigm shifts my mother experienced was how much of her distress was driven by perfectionism. This wasn’t perfectionism in the way you and I would talk about combing over our writing or cleaning our desk; this was perfectionism that was so pervasive, so intense, that it caused her noticeable mental suffering, often culminating in breakdowns and something that looked like insanity.
I realized how much of my own behavior I needed to unlearn, not just because my mother was making the effort, but because I had ignored how much distress I’d carried from day to day as a result of years of conflict, anger, and hatred for her. If I had to sum up the lens through which I lived life up to that point, it would be something like:
Everything matters so much. I better not mess anything up.
The pain of everything mattering so much through this lens had weighed on me in ways I didn’t understand until I went to therapy later on. I can recall the first panic attack I had in third grade, the problems with bedwetting as a child, the tearful breakdown when I scored a B on a test for the first time in fourth grade, and so on. Imagine playing Beethoven on the piano with the knowledge that if you played one wrong note, you and everything you love would suffer excruciating, horrific deaths. When everything mattered so much, even the thought of getting out of bed carried intrusive thoughts with it—thoughts of how unloved I’d be, how much trouble I’d be in if I messed anything up.
I was 15 when I tried pot for the first time. My childhood best friend, the pastor’s kid, (never trust a pastor’s kid), and I snuck into the church’s basement and used the gas stove to light our joints. Sure, hallucinations and everything being hilarious were fun, but what made me smile even more was how nothing mattered at all. The relief I felt, the complete release from worry, was like crumpling life up into a paper ball and throwing it into a trashcan, and it was wonderful. Being that carefree, liberated from anxiety, was like experiencing a warm, soft love for the first time. Even now, I don’t think there was anything addictive about the pot itself—it was the emptiness it invited.
A year and a half later, this nihilistic adventure had exploded into something more powerful. At 17 years old and 5 foot 9 inches, I weighed just over 125 pounds. I used spice almost daily, experimented with pills, and drank, all in the name of chasing the first time I’d felt love at 15. My grades in school were awful, my friendships with people outside of my druggie circle were ruined, and my relationship with my family, including my mother who had done a complete 180, was obliterated. The lens through which I viewed life had changed into something like:
Nothing matters. Burn it all down.
At first, this seemed like a statement of freedom, releasing myself from having to worry about life. But the further things went, the higher I got, the more I became aware of the trap. After taking things too far one night, I had a near-death experience in the passenger seat of my friend’s car. Black circles formed around my periphery, enclosing until I’d no longer see. My limbs trembled and went numb, and my breath felt like at any moment it would slip away. I remember staring at the stars mid-seizure, listening to two voices within myself. The first said, “Let go. It doesn’t matter.” The second said, “Not like this. It matters too much.” Thankfully, I listened to the second voice, even though I immediately regretted it, taking another hit when I came back. But, even though I hadn’t admitted it then, something had changed. I’d experienced firsthand the only logical end to my fascination with nihilism. If nothing mattered, then surely my life didn’t matter either.
The next several years of my life were spent in a war between the two voices, two lenses vying for my belief. To this day, I know it’s a miracle that my wife stayed with me through my ups and downs of anger, anxiety, alcohol, and despair. I asked God so many times whether He cared if I lived or died, and was tempted at times to test Him. To my dismay at the time, I never received relief or any sort of burden being lifted from me. As much as I prayed for it, I never truly had an epiphany or a moment of awe-inspiring clarity. Instead, I found glimpses that reminded me of beauty in the midst of suffering. Some of the most divine moments in life were experienced in moments of tension, like drops of color in a puddle of gray.
I didn’t realize how deeply my mother loved me all along, and how much she’d endured in her life, until I admitted out loud how much I used to hate her.
I didn’t realize how much I truly craved the love and approval of my father until our family fell apart after several awful things he did.
I didn’t realize my wife was who I wanted to marry until she sat across from me during visiting hours at a psychiatric hospital when I had confessed my plan to kill myself.
I didn’t realize just how fortunate I was that I listened to the second voice that night in my friend’s car until I was holding my firstborn son in my arms, and my second, and my third.
Today, after years of internal fighting, I’ve come to see life through a third lens:
Everything matters so much. Isn’t it beautiful?
This lens doesn’t have everything figured out, but it’s given me peace in ways the first two never could. Unlike the first lens, I don’t need to take on the total burden of life mattering. Unlike the second lens, I believe everything matters. And maybe if not everything, it still has to be at least some things; it certainly can’t be nothing. I can’t look at my wife, my faith, my children, and the beautiful world around me and say none of it matters. Who’s to say even the smallest moments aren’t meaningful? How could we feel the sun’s warmth or pet a happy dog or listen to a baby cooing and say these don’t mean everything and aren’t transcendent in themselves?
Admittedly, the nihilistic voice still creeps in now and then. Though it speaks more softly, I’m sometimes tempted to play with fire, to wander down the rabbit hole and see if the rock bottom I hit before really was rock bottom. Other times, the voice of the child in me asks me if I won’t mess everything up, if I’ll lose everything and everyone if I get something wrong. “It’s just that, everything matters so much,” it warns.
“Yes, yes it does,” I remind myself. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” - 1 Corinthians 13:12
What a journey, and an ongoing one at that