Of all the changes I've been through the past few years, it's only the return of arrogance and aggression that I regret.

I understand that they came back as protection, as walls to enable me to navigate the emotional and mental battering rams that seemed to come along with the schoolwork. But I don't understand why they don't release me, let me go back to a gentler, more surrendered way of living.

Yet, they also came along with that spilt or breakthrough or death I went through. I've tried several times to explain what happened to me, and each time, the person I'm speaking with looks at me like I'm insane. Which is what they say in The Waking Up Handbook, of course :), but still, it's wildly, incredibly disconcerting.

How would you act if you saw through the game? If everyone around suddenly appeared as the scripted cartoon characters they are? If you got that this thing, this time, this culture we live in is no better or further along than anything that's come before it? That it's all the same, it's all happened before, it'll happen again, just with differently colored cultural doodads and mental accessories?

And why have I come back to this world, this culture of make believe, to romance and a career-job, to weight loss and flirting, to making friends and selling novels and finding a lover and telling my story and drinking wine and Looking For More. Why, when I know better?

Because I want to. Because I stood on the edge of the abyss, saw the drop and thought: I'm not done yet. I wanted to spend more time with my sister, my brother. I wanted to finish my book. I wanted to make love again.

And I want to be slender and athletic and strong again. I want to make peace not just with my body, but with my heart, my mind. I want to reach the place where I let it all go, not in anger and defeat and sorrow, but with laughter and deep, easy breaths and that kind of all-systems-go fusion that only comes when two people both lust and love one another.

When I ask myself what is different about wanting these things, these states, when in fact it's essentially what I've wanted all my life, what we all want, what I understand is that now these things, these states are possible. It's like when I died, something in me began to bloom, continues to bloom, lush and sweet.

Which is what makes the aggression, the arrogance, so hard to hold. They are like cancers to the forming fruit. And yet I've no clue how to release them, how to get them to release me.

I can't both hate the world and love it, then expect it to meet me with full on agape.

But until I find peace inside of myself with what I've seen, genuinely stop trying to find assurance from outside of me around it, the dichotomy will continue to hammer away at my heart and mind.

How could it not . . .

John asked if I'd do an interview on his blog for his Five-Question Interview Series. Chatter on about my novel? Why sure, I said :)

For self-absorbed gumflapping, check out the interview here.