Feeling in Grays

I have been questioning my ability to really feel at the far end of the emotional spectrum, the black and white of feelings.  I have loved, but I question whether or not I have "really" loved.  I have disliked, but I don't know that I have ever hated.  I am beginning to believe that my gray emotions are the reason that I am attracted to women and friends that are passionate and that bring their colors into my world.
I need people to fill the holes.
I am drawn to these people. 
That is why I was so drawn to her.  She is passion.  While I sit in the middle, she is the extremes.  She came to me when I was stuck somewhere, when I felt neither happy nor sad.  She smashed holes in my walls and reminded me of the possibilities.  She was my heroin who took me to new heights and deeper depths saving me from a supposed dullness that I believed had crept in and taken over my life.  I can't say that I have ever felt or had feelings with or for anyone that I had with her. That was her gift to me and perhaps it saved me.  Looking back and seeing the waves that rocked my world, I am starting to see the ocean again. 
For all of the storms, for all of the black, there were moments of sunshine and yellows and reds that were nearly blinding.  Maybe it was timing, maybe it was all me or all her, or maybe she was right when she once told me that I couldn't handle a Sagittarius.  I don't know yet.  As with all experiences, though, I have grown and learned. 

I have seen the extremes and now I am in a weird place where the colors are there and I feel like I can place them where I want and when I want, but I am scared.  I am always scared.  I have found a safety in myself that is comforting.  I am in my house and I am piecing my life together while I piece together the remnants of this building where I broke myself.  I plan to paint walls and fix holes and fill in the spaces that could use a little something and I feel like I am doing the same thing to myself, just with infinitely more caution.  An chair can be moved, a painting hung on a wall and no one is hurt by the change.  My fickle heart has hurt and has been hurt enough times that the thought of letting someone in is frightening on so many levels.  But the colors are there and someone new has brought her own pallet and I like what she has.
She has fire, but she has calm.  She has passion, but it ebbs and flows and fills in the spaces slowly and leaves quietly.  She does things for me with out needing anything in return.  I give to her and she accepts, but does not take.  Her colors are bright, but easy on the eyes. 
So where do I go now? 
I keep taking careful, premeditated steps so that I don't fall again.  My heart isn't ready.  I know that.  As much as I say that I am not ready to give myself to someone, I am not ready to see her go either.  There is comfort in knowing that she is around and in my life.  I need comfort.  But I still need space and I still need time.  It is a balance that I feel like I have to maintain.  At the same time I know that I have to get over it and to lighten up.  This sabotage that I am so fond of, the one where I over think everything and plot and have a relationship in my head, is a challenge for me to avoid. 
It is confusing. 

With all of my fears and uncertainties, I do know that I am not scared of her.  That is an amazing thing.  It lets me know that I am not as emotionally fucked up as I was.  I also know that I am comfortable with her and that I like being around her.  As simple as these things are, they are complicated and difficult for a damaged heart.  I don't know what is next, and I am not really planning.  I am not ready yet.  But I know that I am getting there.  I am finding my footing and am beginning to feel something other than down.

I still don't know if I feel in extremes (or why I thought writing this would tell me).  I don't know how important that is either.  I know that I have had a few moments where I felt the warmth of my passion stirring and it is that warmth that reminds me that there is still a whole spectrum of things for me to feel.  Knowing now that I don't have to feel all of them all the time is a burden off my shoulders and a huge step forward for me.  I felt that way once and it was one piece amongst a handful that pushed me over a scary edge.  We all love the warmth of a fire, but do we need to jump into it?  I like blue, but do I want it on every wall in my house?  It all seems to come back to the balance.  Balance in feeling, balance in life, balance in color.  Balance in all things. 
My challenge now is balancing myself and the new relationships in my life and painting my walls to balance each other. 

Freed From Memories

I am so much better now than I was only a few months ago.  Instead of spending every waking moment trying to keep a grip of the ledge, I am taking steps away from that chasm I was teetering on for so long.  I know that life exists ahead of me and that there are choices and plans and love and sex and school and concerts and drinking and friends and all of these things that make life life.  But I have a new struggle.  The memories.  It's the memories that threaten the strength of my new legs to keep walking.  I wish I could say this is new, but I have lived in the past and in the memories for a long time.  Doing this has prevented me from seeing and living in life as it is.  I have lived in life as it was. 

While cleaning my house, I found pictures...so many pictures.  Old scars opened a little again, reminding me of good times.  And not just good times with my ex wife, but of the past 20 some years.  There were pictures from high school when life was little more than an open highway waiting to be driven, pictures of college and girlfriends and summer camp when I was in shape.  I dug through photos of Europe and laughing with the woman I would marry and pictures of the day we did and the life we began for the few years that followed.  The memories are what made it so hard to see where I was now, where I had been recently and where I was when it was all falling apart.  I sat in the closet where the albums and the bag of loose pictures were waiting for me and I sobbed from somewhere inside me that had been closed off, somewhere that I thought had healed.
Behind all of the relationships that go sour are those moments that we treasure, those moments that kept us moving forward with the people we have grown to love.  It makes me sad that the pictures are only captured moments that have passed.  I can see the happiness, but I can't reach in and pull it out anymore than I can go back and relive that time.  It is frustrating to think of all of the what ifs that come along with that.

What if I could go back and play basketball in the snow with Jme and make out during Wayne's World?  What if I could go back to BG and drink a pony keg with Mario or tell Dave he can party at my house if he brings the money and the girls?  What if I could dance with Jill again?  What if I went back to being a camp councilor and Hannah and I would have our summers again?  What if I could spend every rainy night running and dancing in the rain and making love in the newly wet grass?  What if I could be in those moments of real happiness forever where things were simple and were only what they were?

But I can't....we can't.  We can't live in the moments that are gone and I don't know if I would.  If the things that hadn't happened as they happened I wouldn't have experienced all of the good that I have.  To trade in those moments we regret and would rather forget would mean we have to trade in many of the moments we wouldn't lose for our lives.  I am who I am because of all of the things I have done.  I suppose that a good thing about the bad times is that we can learn from them making them something else besides just something that we would like to do differently.  

Life is suffering and each moment of adversity is a moment of growth.  Any runner will tell you that the last mile, the mile where every step is pain and every breath burns, is the mile where you grow the most.  Every time you push through and finish is a time that you have gained something. 

I don't think I can honestly say that I wouldn't go back and have another night in college with the guys in my dorm, or that I wouldn't like to have gotten into Josie's bed instead of sleeping on her couch, or that I wouldn't have stopped and taken the time to talk to Hannah before deciding we were done.  The thing that I hold on to is that I have learned lessons I would never have learned otherwise. 
This past year has been the hardest I have ever experienced.  Parts of myself that I didn't even know existed have been revealed.  I blindly walked into experiences, but have come out able to see more than I ever have before.  I relive flashes of moments every day, and each time I can see things that I could have done differently and that I will do differently if faced with that situation again.  As much as I would like to be 25 and carefree (to be read as "blind"), I am not.  I am growing and aging and learning and seeing things differently and I am realizing that that is okay and it is necessary.  I am not trapped in my memories any longer.  I can look at the pictures in my hand or in my mind and laugh and smile at what was good.  I know that there will be more moments like that and that there will also be more moments I would rather wish away.  That is all okay.  I will grow from every moment, good and bad. 
I am not who I was.  I am who I am. 

Ron, What's Love?

As a romantic, I am constantly in search of great love.  The kind of love that burns in everything I do.  The kind of love that means you would give up everything for someone else because being with them is the air you breathe.  That person is all you need. 
Sometimes I smile at the thought of that person.  Sometimes I laugh at myself.  I laugh at the ridiculousness of the notion.  In this world, it is ridiculous.  This is not to say that it is impossible.  I am not saying that it does not exist.  I am beginning to say that perhaps it is not what I have thought it is. 
I feel bombarded by stories of love so great that everything is sacrificed for it.  Movies and stories of two people who fall in love and lose themselves in each other.  The happiness they experience is the stuff of legends.  Then I remember that these stories only show us the times that these people are together, creating that love.  What happens two months after they have declared their love?  Where are these people after the credits have rolled and the book has been closed? 
Besides the obvious fact that the story has ended so the characters no longer have anything to say, we don't know where they are.  We are never shown the reality of love and relationships in these stories where true love is the moral. 

I do believe that real love is true love.  I believe that this love is the reason that you sacrifice.  I believe that this love burns in you.  But some of my thoughts or feelings on love have begun to change, to realign themselves with what really happens.  The love that burns when you first find it never goes away.  I know this.  But it is not the inferno that consumed the heart when if first sparked.  It is the constant glow at the center of your life.  It is the reminder that there is someone who is there and will always be there.  It is the reason you spend two months salary on diamond earrings.  It is the reason you clean the floors, do the laundry or cook dinner.  But, we don't always think about it that way.  Daily life takes our eyes away from glow, but our hearts know it is there. 
My mom talks about the things my step-father does.  She laughs and shrugs at the way she is annoyed by them.  She scoffs at the collection of violins and guitars.  She shakes her head when he starts a new hobby.  And she loves all of it because it is part of him.  Great love is looking past all of the little things that you shake your head at because the person behind them is who they are.  Great love is knowing that even though you have your quirks and idiosyncrasies, that person still loves you.  There is never a desire to change them, but to accept it all as part of the gift, which is what it is.

I am not saying that everyone we meet can be that great love because with enough work blah blah blah.  I am also not saying that there is only one person that will be the one.  There are so many souls out there that to even believe this is insanely depressing.  But I have known enough women and have experienced enough love to know that there will always be someone else who will come along that you connect with in a way that makes you want to look past the little things.  Love is fickle, though.  To learn to respect that is to begin to understand it a little better. 
Committed love is a decision.  It is a balance between heart and mind.  The heart would have you flitting off to anyone that moves you.  The mind would have you turn the other way because it knows that with love there is hurt and confusion and that life requires more than just love.  The balance is where you find happiness.  The adage of "too much of a good thing" comes into play here.  But we can't deny ourselves either. 

As a single man, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the concept of being with one person for the rest of my life.  When I was married, however, I didn't really think about it.  Life was just life and we moved through it without that daunting thought.  That thought is left at the wedding, at least it should be.  It's like the initial fear of diving in the water because it is too cold.  Once you are in, that fear is gone and now you are just swimming.  The cold is still there, but now you have the choice to keep swimming and playing and splashing and seeing how deep you can go, or you can get out and watch the other kids laughing and living. 
There are marriages where the waves are too rocky and show no sign of levelling off.  If you have tried to swim and navigate, tried to work it out and it is not getting better then perhaps it is better to find the shore.  There is no sense in drowning.  But to get out without even trying, which I believe is an epidemic in our culture, is cowardice.  I was a coward. I will never fully forgive myself.  Karma has and is paying me back for my cowardice. 
The people like me lost sight of what love is or maybe have never really seen it.

I got lost in the idea of love.  I got lost in the stories of love.  I got swept away by a dream.  Love is not the tree in full bloom.  Love is staying around when the leaves have left the tree.   
Real love is the love you hold on to.  Real love is the love you work on.  Real love is that calm that settles inside you.  Sometimes I know that I have had that.  Sometimes I am not sure.  At this point, however, all I can do is move forward and hope that it finds me again.  Real love is certainty.  If you have that, it is not worth just giving up on.

Twenty-Five and Holding

I have been 25 for almost ten years.  Living in the irresponsibility of my mid-twenties was pretty fun for quite a while.  If I could stay there, I would.  But it seems that age has different plans for me.  There was a time I could play a game of backyard football and laugh as the rest were complaining about knees, backs, shoulders, and any other joint that was aching or creaking.  I watched from a safe distance the growth of families from friends that I grew up with.  The guys that played tag and had snowball fights and played basketball and got wasted when the parents were out of town are now raising their own kids who will do all of those things.  I get pictures of daughters off to kindergarten.  The kids are getting older which means my friends are getting older which means I am getting older.  I don't know that I can avoid it.  I don't know that I can keep responsibility for my life at bay.  I am constantly reminded by the gray hairs that are sprouting from my head.
These gray hairs are a reminder of all of the things that I have been through.  The memories of our lives are part of us and the experiences we have had make us who we are.  I regret some of the things I have done.  I regret a great many things I have not done.  But all of that is past.  I can't change it.  The hardest part for me has been to face it, to admit to it.  I look at some of my unwise decisions and it can be hard to look in the mirror.  Every time I do I have to see the skeletons that are stacked up, reminders of an idiot who didn't care as much as he should have about the people around him - or himself.  Facing the ugly truth about me has altered the facade of who I thought I was.
I used to be an Aries, born in the year of the snake.  I used to be a middle child who was the product of a divorce.  I used to be the eternal 25 year old. 

I used to be a series of excuses.

The thing about being made up of all of those things was that I carried no responsibility for my actions.  I blamed my looming boredom, which threatens every relationship that I enter and everything I do, and the resulting fallout on my birth sign.  When I got tired of a person or a hobby or a job, it was not my fault.  I am an Aries.   I could blame my parent's divorce for my own or being a middle child for my need for attention.  I could blame everything I did on something that was out of my control.  If I can't help it, I don't have to accept blame for it.  That was my mind.  That was a major part of who I was. 
Seeing that makes me a little sick. 
Seeing the way that I did things, unthinking and uncaring, makes me sad.  There was a time when I was a "nice guy".  I propagated that little mask of mine because I believed it.  I don't think that I was as nice or as good as I would have liked to believe.  I have kind of been a shit.  And I can't do anything about it.  Or is it, "But I can't do anything about it"?

The past is done and gone and is unchangeable.  A major lesson learned for me.  I have done shitty things.  Those things were my fault, not my sign's or my family's or any other outside influence.  Mine.  I made choices based on what I wanted, or believed I wanted.  Sometimes those things kicked me in the balls and left be crawling on the ground.  Sometimes those choices left me drunk and suicidal.  Some of them sit in the closet as skeletons that will never come out.  All of them have made a part of who I am.  I have actually started to see the lessons to be learned. 


Maybe age is slowing me down a little bit.  I am seeing what is important and I am learning from my mistakes and I am finding my own truths because I know that my life is my responsibility and I can't blame my unhappiness on anyone else, nor can I blame my happiness on anyone else.  It's all mine.  This seemingly apparent revelation is freeing.  I have control.  My life is mine.  This is both daunting and elating.