Remnants of Drowning

I am struggling with the confusion of my thoughts and feelings.  The swirling of another few days living with melancholy and nostalgia has left me with a sadness that I can't seem to shake and that I don't understand.  It stems from something outside of my grasp.  I don't understand it even as I am looking at it.  My microscope of rationalization is failing me and I am left waiting for clarity. 
It started on Saturday. 
I was supposed to have a date.  The date turned into what would have been a dinner with her family.  I couldn't do it.  The weight of anxiety pressed on my chest, shortened my breath and sent my head spinning into a snowball that picked up every stress and piece of emotional baggage that my train of thought came across.  The final avalanche that threatened me is a warning that I am still not ready. 
The frustration is nearly overwhelming. 
I admit to my part in the anxiety and hope that someday I will actually learn.  Instead of talking to her before it became an issue, I waited and tried to find a way to still spend the time with her but in a way that I might be able to handle it.  The most frustrating part is that it was just dinner with her family, but that act means so much more and I think we have placed a certain importance on it and on its significance.  Is it that I don't trust myself to take that step and to survive it myself, or is it that I don't know what I want with her?  I have been happy being with her when us being together was relaxed and unassuming.  Just two people having fun together.  That was easy.  It is when I consider opening myself to her that the levy threatens to break. 
Part of this comes from a fear to trust women emotionally.  Not being able to trust is a new thing for me since I trust right away with the assumption that everyone is basically decent.  We talked about this whole situation and she said she can cool it for a bit to give me some time to work shit out.  I want to believe her but my new baggage brings with it mistrust.  I am angry with myself for allowing the past to creep in so deeply and hold my heart.  We all have a past that defines us and that we have to deal with.  It is times like these that wading through it seems so daunting. 
I am still dealing.  I apologize to myself and anyone who finds themselves in the way of this storm for the things I have done that have brought me to where I am now. 
Where I am now is the other part.  Sometimes I think of friends raising families and I am sad.  They seem to have found something, part of the answer.  I don't want the physical part of it, the family and ties.  Still, I am envious of the calm contentment that I feel coming from them.  I am envious that they know where their love is.  Marriage does offer comfort in the form of security that you get from opening yourself to another who fills the spaces between you.  Sometimes I feel like my space is still partially filled.  Before I can allow another in to add themselves I have to make room for them.  In order to make room I have to open it up.  In order to open it up I have to be ready to face what comes out.  Just opening the door feels too daunting right now.  Doing this in time will make it easier, right? 

The relief from her telling me that it was okay to take my time was like stepping out from a stuffy room to a cool breeze.  Her honesty and candor about what she was feeling and what she knew she would want was refreshing.  I have told myself that it is okay to believe her. 
I came into this relationship with a lot of hope.  It felt right and it was easy to be with her.  I didn't feel the fear of being with another person.  Controlling the pace of this thing has not been easy.  My head wants to run, but my heart is not quite ready.  I thought it was.  I am struggling with the fear of the tidal waves that once broke through my walls and left me flailing.  The water still fills my lungs.  I suppose it's like facing an ocean after almost drowning.  At some point you have to dive in and find you can swim again.  I don't know how to know when that time is.

Maybe I just have to jump in.......just not yet.  I'm not ready.

Drinking Life Light

The younger me was a kid in need of meds.  One game done, next one please.  Or maybe a college kid with a case chase, a party to go to and one after that and then after that as well where the women are plentiful and the sights and sounds fill the room and the night and every night.  Stimulation overload.  That was my brain.  That still is my brain.
I am constantly running around like a little kid high on sugar, or at least my mind is.  Hyper and out of control, this brain is constantly on the move and in need of stimulation.  Since it is one of my goals to slow myself down and to experience the moments that are constantly flying by, I recognize my ADD state of mind as a problem.  I am missing so much because when I stop to smell the roses, I have already begun to think about the smell of chocolate cake or what I might do later that day or whether or not I would like to take a nap. 
This is not good.
When I am at work I am thinking about music and video games and girls and sleeping and writing and anything else my brain travels to.  Walking to my car at 3:30, I stare at the ground and watch the thoughts of what happened in the day, what will happen later, what happened when I was six and what might happen in two weeks.  But what about the trees?  What about the blue sky over head?  As a resident of North East Ohio, blue sky is a precious commodity and I am wasting it with thoughts of the past and possible future. 

Is it the way I was raised?  Could it be this culture, this current state of the world?  Could it be run off from college and the few years after?  Could it be that I need Ritalin? 
It is nearly impossible to focus on one thing while the world is sending messages and sounds and warnings from all angles.  Stillness of mind is like an up-current battle against a tide of stimulation that flows around us all the time.  This head-on-a-swivel is affecting everything I do.  Even my relationships suffer.

Beyond my ineptness at emotional stability and letting people into my heart, it is a constant challenge to focus on one person at a time for a long time.  This little brain of mine is moving on before my heart has had a chance to settle in and make friends.  It's like the kid whose father is always moving.  That moving has become the comfort.  Never planting roots means it doesn't hurt as much to pull them up and move again. 
I guess there are traces of this reality in all things.
 By not focusing on any one thing I can see all things and not miss those that have passed me by already.
So, where does this get me?  What do I get out of this but experiences that are watered down?  My lack of mindfulness has made my life "Life-Lite".  Great taste, but less fulfilling.  Am I missing out on the slow savoring of all the flavors that one moment can bring?

When I spent the week cleaning and straightening and doing yard work I found an odd sense of joy in the moments that I was doing those things and a sense of relief at their completion. I wasn't worried about what else was going on.  I was doing what I was doing.  When I started this new relationship, I worked hard at focusing on where I was and who I was with.  I laughed hard and didn't worry about things said, not said, could be said.  I was enjoying the moments I was in. 

My mind is slipping again. 
Old mental habits are finding their way to the surface and I am losing sight of what is in front of me.  Sometimes living in the moment and savoring the things that are happening is so easy.  Breaking the chains that are my old ways of thinking is not.  We are where we are when we are there.  All the rest is conjecture.  Even thinking about the past is recalling stale emotions, thoughts, and memories.  It is impossible to get the full taste from that moment.  Filling the future is impossible.  All we have is right now.  I find it too easy to forget that. 
It's difficult to know what to see in a moment, though.  So much is happening, what do I look at?  Or should I let it all wash over me? 
I think Siddhartha would tell me to watch the colors, but fill my room with none for they are all beautiful.  Or maybe to look at each one, but focus on none.  I am not really sure what this means, yet.  I struggle with these new philosophies; even though their ideas make sense,  I don't yet know how they make sense for me.  What I do know is that I am missing something and what I have been doing hasn't been working.  So I take my daily reading to heart today.  Practice mindfulness in all you do so that by itself the mind is settled, calm and focused*.  Because, while it was fun in college to pound a case of beer, at some point my tastes have started changing.  The cheap twelve pack of Bud Light has been replaced with six Yuengling.  There may not be as many and I don't drink them as quickly, but they are so much better.



*buddhanet.net

Moments Already Passed

Life has a funny way about the way it is.  The ups and downs and all of the little things that bring us to where we are.  It wasn't that long ago that I knew what the next five years of my life would hold.  At eighteen I knew that I would go to school and teach.  That was what I would do.  It was everything after that that was shrouded in a fog.  I couldn't see what my future held.  I didn't really worry about it. 
The beautiful thing about being eighteen is that it didn't seem to matter.  Life is something we ride with possibilities and excitement found in change and moving and dreaming.  I made the choice to let go and float along with the breeze.  Looking back I wonder if I missed something that all of the happy people have.  The dreams and goals and the desire to go after them at the expense of everything else.  Too often I feel like a leaf watching the seeds planting themselves and growing into something more as I drift along on this breeze. 
But I can't be the only one. 
I can't be the only person who doesn't know what they are working for.  The picture book story of a man and a woman getting married and having children with a little house and a dog and cat and a 9-5 is not the story I want to read, let alone live in.  I work a job that doesn't draw out my passion and bring me joy.  I know I can't do this forever.  I will get back to teaching and I will find the pure peace of looking over a crowd of students who are discussing and writing and reading.  I can't sit through a job that I hate for the rest of my life.  I feel stuck here for now, but that is only for now. 
I have been married.  Do I really want to do that again?  The institution that absorbs the lives of so many, and spits far too many back out, is a strange creature.  We are told that getting married is what we should all want and that a family is what we all want and that we should go to school to get a job so we can raise a family and spend our lives raising children so they can do the same thing.  This goal feeds so many people that I can't help but to question myself. 
The institution of marriage is a piece of paper.  It's a tax break.  It's permission to the spouse to be able to go places and make decisions for the other.  Marriage is not love, but love can be a marriage.  Can't love be unmarried too? 
My thoughts tend to push me to think that two people who are together because they want to be and don't have to be based on any legal or religious obligation are two people who are really in love.  Their commitment is one of the heart.  I realize the idealism of that scenario and I recognize that, although my romanticism has been tempered under fire, the thought of two people staying together like that is a romantic thought.  But I like it.  It doesn't feel forced. 
I feel like life shouldn't have to be forced.  We all have to do things that we don't want to do, sometimes.  I have a hard time believing that we all have to do things we don't want to do all the time, though.  There does need to be a balance.  The thought of living a life with a job I hate and a relationship I am bound to is my version of hell.

I don't hold strongly to visions of grandeur anymore.  I have grown substantially from that child of a year ago.  I don't feel the need to do something amazing and earth shattering to find my happiness.  But I don't pretend that I can live in a numb misery either.  Life is always whizzing past us.  Even as a moment is passing us, it is already gone.  Realizing this, I am looking for value in all the small things.  Shopping for a shower curtain to hang in my bathroom, fixing my toilet, deciding what color to paint a room, looking over a freshly weeded front yard - these are places that I find a contentment. 

These are the places I was blind to not that long ago. 

The difference between me now and me at 18 is that I was able to see five years ahead.  I can barely see what my next year holds.  The thing that is still the same is that I don't mind not knowing.  There are goals and plans, but they will change or drift slightly as life introduces the next thing and the next thing after that. I suppose it is part of life to see where it takes you.

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.