Review of "Life and How to Live It: Near Wild Heaven (Volume II)" by Chaz Holesworth

Score: 92+/100 (9.2+ out of 10)

Life and How to Live It is a thought-provoking, brutally honest memoir about what happens after the breakdown, after the deconversion, after the church and the school and the girl are gone and you are left alone with your brain and the 90s.

This volume (Vol. II: Near Wild Heaven) drops us into Chaz’s life in 1995 and 1996, right on the heels of his collapse at Bensalem Baptist and his forced separation from Laura. Instead of a neat redemption arc, we get the long, messy middle: couch surfing on cat pee furniture, cutting, obsessive ruminations, R.E.M. shows, endless walks through Philadelphia, pyramid schemes, LSD, fast food jobs, and a rotating cast of friends and alt girls who keep him alive in between panic attacks.

It is heavy. It's quirky. It is chaotic and oddly compelling. Chaz is not trying to look cool. He is trying to tell the truth about being a traumatized kid stumbling into adulthood with no map.

Now, there's an immense irony to the title of this book, which would typically be the kind of title for a self-help, instructional, or motivational book. While aspects of this book are inspirational or motivational, like the author surviving all of these traumatic events, it certainly isn't a self-help or instructional book. In fact, it's more of a real-life cautionary tale.

Another aspect of this irony is that, while the phrase "Life and How to Live It" implies that there's a structured way you should live your life, we're shown how religious dogma and institutionalized structure actually scarred the author and set him down a dark path of self-loathing, guilt, rebellion, self-h*rm, fear, and resentment.

Instead of telling you how to live, this book shows you what happens when someone else tries to tell you exactly how to live, right down to what you are allowed to think. Chaz’s childhood prayer rituals, his terror of “wrong” thoughts, and the way he is taught to start his prayers over any time his mind wanders are not just quirky anecdotes. They are the foundation of a lifelong battle with intrusive thoughts and scrupulosity. When the theology finally collapses, the wiring remains. God leaves the building, but the fear stays.

(By the way, we later realized that this title is also the title of an R.E.M. song, the band that the author is a huge fan of).

One of the most striking through lines in the memoir is how those early religious habits get repurposed into secular compulsions. Where kid Chaz once repeated Bible verses and begged God to make his thoughts pure, teen Chaz repeats the names of people and bands he loves in his head, trying to seal them in with a mental “forever” so the universe does not take them away. He knows it is irrational, but the alternative feels even worse. That is a powerful, unsettling insight into how religious trauma can linger even after belief is gone.

Balancing that darkness is the book’s other great pillar: music. This is, in many ways, a love letter to 90s alt rock. R.E.M. in particular is practically a character here, a guardian angel in thrift store clothes. Chapters framed around songs and albums give the whole memoir a playlist feel. The long sequence of R.E.M. shows, the radio station party where Chaz dances alone to Tourfilm, the front row nights with Sandi and Nancy, and the infamous T shirt that accidentally smacks Michael Stipe in the head all read like the highlight reel of a young fan’s life. For a kid who has been told that nothing outside Jesus can truly satisfy, those concerts become living proof that art, community, and shared joy actually can.

The relationships and friendships are another strength. Uriah, Ray, Donna, Kathleen, Cheryl, Denise, Sandi, Nancy, and others do not blur together, they feel like real people with real quirks and limits. Some are lifelines, some are bad influences, some are both. The revolving door of alt girls and older fans is handled with honesty about his own flaws. Chaz is very open about projecting rescue fantasies onto these women, wanting them to save him from himself. The book never fully excuses that, but it does contextualize it as part of a larger trauma story, not simple selfishness.

You can really tell how the loss of Laura and being traumatized by religious fundamentalists really scarred him. He walks past where Laura used to be, half hoping to see her again and patch things up.

Chaz also digs into the obsessive religious rituals that still echo in his mind. As a kid he was taught that before praying he had to purge all sinful or doubtful thoughts. If an “impure” thought appeared while he was praying, he had to stop, confess it, and start over. This became a vicious game in which he tried to outrun intrusive thoughts so he could earn the right to ask God for help.

Even after he deconverts he recreates the same pattern with non-religious objects of devotion. Instead of pleading the blood of Jesus he mentally chants the names of people and bands he loves: Tori Amos, R.E.M., friends, crushes, and anyone who feels safe. He seals these little mental prayers with the word “forever.” For a moment he gets a hit of relief, like he has done what he must do to keep the universe from turning against him. The relief never lasts.

He describes his mind as a cage of recurring loops. Any time he tries to pray, meditate, or simply think, his brain flips into a torturous pattern. If he prays for something, he worries that God exists and will cruelly deny his request to teach him a lesson. If he does not pray, he worries that God exists and will punish him for ignoring him. If he declares he does not believe in God, he worries that God will retaliate for that too. Every option feels bad, so he compulsively cycles through them.

Quite frankly, this is the most amusing part of the book, even though it couldn't have been much fun for the author to experience it.

Chaz sees that his anxious brain has swapped out overtly religious content for a secular version of the same compulsion. Where once he mentally repeated Bible verses, now he mentally repeats band names. Where once he obsessed over hell, now he obsesses over fate, karma, and cosmic irony. The wiring is the same even if the surface has changed.

We wouldn't exactly say that this was our cup of tea. Yes, there are relatable aspects of this book like Chaz's lifelong crisis of faith, his longing for the one who got away, and escaping into music. However, there was content in this book that went beyond discomfort into I want to stop reading this territory.

Perhaps you will enjoy it or find it engaging.

Check it out on Amazon!