Editor's Note: Bob Forrest is the author of Running with Monsters, a personal account of his life and the move he made from drug addict to counselor on Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab and Sober House. Here, as part of Biographile's Lessons Learned month, a month of authors sharing lessons they've learned while writing their book, Forrest recalls his experience preparing to write his memoir and shares how learned to cope with all of the unanswered questions.

What happens when you go digging in your own closet in an attempt to make sense of your past? You find a very painful, interesting, confusing ball of a mess, that's what. Or at least that's what I experienced during the year-long process it took to write Running with Monsters. Looking back on your life can be a minefield of Why did I do that? and Why'd I fall in love with her specifically? What was so 'n' so's motivation? This is what I would lay in bed at night thinking about after a day of rummaging with my partner Mike Albo through the details of my life. One of the biggest learning curves I've had in my life happened as a result! Our lives and the lives of our friends and family are all tangled together and interpreted from our points of view. We see what we want to see. Believe what we want to believe. Push and insist on our vision of ourselves. I have been sober seventeen years. I was in therapy for eight. Since then, I’ve maintained a pretty stable emotional playing field, but after this experience I was shaken. Is my life important? Meaningless? Am I an asshole? A hero? Can all these questions be answered with a yes or no? My life certainly didn't seem as fun as I had remembered. This is where I was left after we had finished the book. Pondering. Insecure. Anxious. And then with time came clarity and peace. "It’s just what happened, Bob." It’s not right or wrong. Good or bad. You’re not a hero or a saint. It’s just your story. And there are six billion of them going on all over the planet. Now carry on. Chop wood. Carry water. Or as David Foster Wallace so elegantly put it towards the end of his life: This is Water.

Bob Forrest is the lead vocalist and lyricist for the band Thelonious Monster. Below is their album Beautiful Mess.

For all Lessons Learned articles, visit the archive here.