Blah, Blah, Blah…

I may have mucked up the last 20 some odd years of my life, by making left turns when they should have been right ones, I have made decisions that held me back. I am not regretful of these decisions, I stand by them. I truly do.

BUT…

Where I am now in my life, seems to be fraught with indecision, self-sabotage, equivocation, and vitriolic self-inflicted mind fucks. I have, now in hindsight, realized that I am a certifiable late bloomer.

There have been many “crossroads” in my time here on earth. Many open doors and divine opportunities that I either walked passed or talked my self out of. In one moment, with one trip out of the city I love, I have come across another. But this time it has not been laid out so neatly for me. This time it will be messy and difficult and mountainous. I do realize that the best choices are the most difficult, but I think this is what I have been avoiding my whole life. And now, without making them, I feel I may feel stagnant forever.

I had to move in with my mother while I tried to graduate school and once I finally did, I moved on and struggled–struggled so much that I am still leaning on her. Mind you this is four years later.

I have been without a job for 8 months now, the unemployment is done and I have not been able to get a job, though actively looking. I have been beating myself up, day by day losing confidence in my abilities, my strengths and my resilience. For a year I have been depleting myself of any power I once possessed.

I had a lover who I pushed away. Due to health issues that depleted my sexuality and my good faith, I cruelly and coldly pushed him away from me. Hoping he may one day return, no questions asked. This has not come to pass. He was my first demonstrative love– My first sex–My first “all in” guy. I ad no libido or desire to connect and after surgery my body collapsed. I gained 40 pounds, and felt horribly about this new body and my lack of desire for him. I fooled myself into believing that I fell out of love with him. But it was the chaos in my world that had fooled me.

I lost my virginity quite late in life. I think the reasons developed into something quite simplified from ideas that were quite convoluted.

At first, my virginity was a badge of honor, then a license to misbehave and slowly it matured into an amalgam of the two “schools of thought”. I used it for power and I used it to avoid accountability.

Ultimately, I chose to fall in love with someone and surrender to what ever hurt or bliss that might come with it. I was deathly afraid of pain; figurative, physical, emotional—all of it. I was deathly afraid of being vulnerable and perceived as weak. I swallowed it and surrendered to all of it just so I could experience the physicality of love; what ever that was.

I still have no idea what LOVE is. Believe me I have been up my own ass for several years trying to pick it apart, ruminating its mysteries. But our recent and brief encounter has only confused my insights. I guess the most frustrating thing about being an adult is coming to terms with the fact that I know nothing at all. I thought I had at least some of the more important questions answered, but even those get convoluted under the guise of equivocation and context.

I left the city to get away and all of the heaviness that I had been carrying had suddenly disappeared and in one brief moment I felt new doors opening in random succession. Opportunities that I hadn’t even thought of had surfaced and I felt calm. I cried for two days, while I was there. I cried because I pictured myself in a foreign city, with no friends or support and I saw myself suffer and struggle to make my own way on my own terms. I saw myself struggling to make new friends, to find a job, to go back to school, immersing myself into the city’s film and art culture, trying to find a voice there. I saw myself struggling with the rent, spending nights at home alone, being shy and awkward in new social situations, I saw myself eating alone at a restaurant, watching other people having a good time, I saw myself dateless and lonely. I saw myself trying too hard, not trying hard enough to fit into my own skin. I saw these things and I cried.

But then I saw myself, maybe a year into the struggle, after all the hard work was done and I saw myself, well…Just Fine

When I came back to Chicago all heaviness once again returned; all the cynicism and angst and self-doubt came rolling in like torrents of heavy wet blankets.

This is not the place for me anymore. I have to make a big and bold move and I have to do it blind, without friends, family or any moral support, I have to do this one alone.

I guess what I am rambling on about is everything that I had believed to be true, that I had etched out in my life to be was just me cornering myself against the wall, making the box that I am so comfortably sitting in now. I am alone in a box against a wall—both of which I have constructed each time a blow came at me full on. It’s time I make some choices that celebrate me and what I have to bring to the table. I am ready to know the power I possess again. I am ready to find me.

~ by Timbre on March 6, 2008.