The Messy Middle

I read a story recently about Rob Reiner’s son.  Rob Reiner is a pretty famous director.  He’s the guy behind When Harry Met Sally and The Princess Bride (and he made one of my favorite cameos on 30 Rock).  His newest movie, Being Charlie, was co-written by his son, Nick, and is loosely based on Nick’s 17 stints in rehab (all before he’d turned 20).

Nick’s first stint in rehab occurred when he was 15.  The years that followed included addiction, homelessness, rock bottom.  Once he’d made it through recovery he wrote this film and now he and his father share this story with the world.  

I thought about this story and the Hollywood ending of it all.  Prodigal son gets clean, movie director father makes his movie, all the happy tears.  I wondered what film Rob would have made in the middle of it all.  When his son was still addicted and homeless and Rob was probably scared out of his mind and also unclear on exactly how it would all end.  When, for all Rob knew, the story could end tragically with an overdose or arrest.

So often we share our stories once they’ve ended.  After we’ve gotten perspective and clarity and we know how everything turns out.  There aren’t many stories written in the messy middle when we’re scared and confused and don’t know exactly what to say and can’t write with the hopeful optimism because we’re not sure if the story is going to turn out happily.

There is value in sharing our story once we’ve gotten perspective.  Hindsight is an important wisdom and I’ve learned so much in the past few years about how much time can heal and change a story.  And the hopeful optimist in me wants a story to end with something positive.  Even the saddest story should have redemption and hope.  That often only comes when we see it through, get to the end and then tell our tale.

But I’m finding myself drawn to the messy middle of people’s stories.  I’m impressed when people can share in the thick of things and offer up whatever wisdom they may have in the moment or share with great vulnerability that they have no idea what life looks like. The deepest intimacy I’ve found with friends has come when they’ve opened up about whatever is true and terrible or hard right there in the middle without worrying about wrapping things up with tidy, hopeful optimism.

There are a few big things in my life that I don’t quite know how to write about.  I’m in the middle of the story and I don’t have the ability to pull back with the perspective of time to wrap it up with a hopeful or positive ending.  For all I know right now this story could end terribly, or at least not how I hope it will.

This middle place in my own story has shown me that some stories stay in the middle a lot longer than we want them to.  I keep trying to rush to the end, to the conclusion, to the moment of clarity and understanding, but life keeps forcing me back, unable to honestly claim any sort of even nuanced wisdom or concrete understanding.  I’m still mucking through my story, untethered in many ways and with more questions than answers.

I’m tempted to fake it.  To claim the ending I hope to have and wrap it up with the wisdom and perspective I’d like to wind up with.  To rush ahead and skip this mucky, messed up middle, even if the results are inauthentic and forced.  But I can’t do that.  My need for honesty and truth, even in the depths of my being trump any desire for solid ground.

And so in the meantime I find myself quiet, unsure of how to talk about my story from this middle place.  If I share honestly about where I’m at right now it feels dark and a little hopeless.  But even more than that, I’m hesitant to speak the truth as I understand it now because that truth feels a little unformed, a sculpture still in process.  I know where it’s heading, but right now it doesn’t look anything like the final product I envision.  What is true at this point in the middle of my story may not still be true in the end and that is why I’m afraid to speak it all aloud.   

And yet, I’m finding myself wanting to speak from this middle place.  I want the freedom to tell my truth in this in between beginning and end spot even if that truth looks different at the conclusion.  At the same time I’m afraid to be held to who I was or what I came to believe in the middle.  I don’t want someone to be able to point to my words in the middle and say, “but what about that!  You said that and now you are saying this!”  

But isn’t that what we are supposed to do in life?  Grow and change and transform.  Shouldn’t we be someone different in the middle and why isn’t it ok to say this is what I am right now in this moment and then however many months later say this is who I am now?  Both are true.  

I want to hear more stories from the middle, from people fully admitting that they haven’t got an ounce of it figured out, if only so that I can get braver about sharing my own.  I want to be able to accept the offerings of the middle place wisdom, to hold them preciously but loosely, giving room for the offerings that come further down the road with time and perspective and wisdom.  I want to value the hard earned, albeit fluid, truth of this messy middle as important and necessary in its own right, even though it may be dark and a little hopeless and unwilling to be wrapped up with a bow.  I need to hear these stories because I need bravery to share my own.  I want to accept those middle place offerings of others so that I can accept my own, so that I can embrace or at least hold preciously the half truths I’ve come to understand and the unknown I’m still moving towards.  

I need others’ messy middles so I can make peace with my own.

What is a story you are still in the middle of?  What momentary truths are you discovering from this shaky, unreliable ground?  Can you speak with tentative hope what you wish to be?  And fear of what you hope will not but still could be?  The middle of our hard stories is confusing and dark and fraught with doubt and uncertainty.  But we don’t get to the end without first going through it.  Today I’m looking to respect and revere this middle place because it is necessary and who I am right in this moment is just as important as who I will be at the end of the story.