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Thank You đ
Mood
Iâm in such a weird, terrible, mucky mood I *almost* wrote a poem about it. (Haha.) I say this not to mock poetsâthough admittedly sometimes itâs temptingâbut to demonstrate my feelings of alienation, frustration and turbulence. (I was once a published poet, by the way.)
I donât know why, exactly, Iâm in such a mood today. I just am. It happens. It strikes randomly. Itâs not my fatherâs cancer. Itâs not my family. (Typical culprits.) It has something to do with my interior, so to speak spiritual condition. I feel as it were emotionally exhausted. Some of it is relationship-based. Some is the constant driving. Some is dog-walking fatigue. Some is living in the gorgeous paradise of Santa Barbara which is nevertheless not where I ultimately want to live.
Like much of my life, I feel displaced; untethered yet constrained; unable to be where I want to be. But then a deeper, harder truth settles in: Where DO I want to be? The honest answer is: I donât know.
Sometimes I feel life-sick. Iâm not talking about typical existential anxiety, nor am I referring to suicidal ideation. What I mean is: Sometimes I just want to throw in the towel, not by extinguishing my existence, but by giving up. Giving up internally: letting go. Being harshly in the moment. Accepting things just as they are. Finally saying Fuck It and slicing my ego in half like a giant pink grapefruit.
Alcoholics Anonymous loves little pithy sayings. Many are silly; some are brilliant. Most are obvious and yet easy to miss. We also love acronyms. One I love is FEARâFace Everything And RecoverâŠorâŠFuck Everything And Run, depending on your emotional landscape at any given moment. Right now I want to run. From myself, mostly. From uncertainty. From facts. I am forty years old. My thirties are gone; splat, like a bug against a windshield. Iâm afraid of myself sometimes. Maybe itâs because during my decade of drinking I consistently broke my own heart. Maybe itâs because in those years I hurt myself and so many others. Maybe itâs that, even now, twelve years sober, I often feel ashamed at who I am, what I am.
I know deep down I am a good person, a good man. Iâve gone through these feelings a thousand times. And yet wounds are tricky; they both heal and reopen at will. Youâre never truly entirely âdoneâ with your past, not until itâs very much done with you. I donât think my past is yet done with me. Not fully. Not completely. That doesnât mean I think some sort of carnage is coming, only that I still have the biting interior monster within me. The monster of fear and anger and shame and desperation and despair and desire. Iâm so hopelessly humanâweak and fragile and sensitive. I want things to go a certain way. I have expectations. But this isnât how life often works. Another little AA quip: We make plans and God laughs. Such is the nature of existence.
I long for international travel. Itâs been almost 4.5 years. I long for the end of my fatherâs sickness and the cessation of my credit card debt (getting close). I long for less driving, more time with my cat, more reading (shocking, really, since I already read constantly), more hours alone on my couch or quiet time gazing at literature while holding my loverâs hand. Less argument and more calm understanding, compassion, forgiveness, for myself, for everyone.
How bizarre is it? To be the product of two strangers, forced out of a physical body, ejected into the world, crying, scared, confused. Then to grow, with full human self-consciousness, knowing what youâre up against; knowing we all suffer and one day die. What a thing. What an experience. What a wondrous, awful reality to be gifted. Donât get me wrong: Iâm glad to be alive. I hope to live a long and healthy life. A fulfilling life. I love my parents and my family and my girlfriend and Iâm grateful for all Iâve been given. This isnât the whiny, teenage complaint: âI never asked to be born.â No, simply what I mean is: Sometimes being human baffles me. Perhaps thatâs why I read. And write. To try to understand; to try to somehow explain myself to myself.
I myself am an odd bird. Intelligent yet often impractical. Messy yet ordered. Disciplined yet lazy. Angry yet always laughing. Sober yet with an addictâs mind. Loving yet sometimes rebelliously selfish. Anarchistic yet firmly a believer in capitalism. A wild, lurid, uncontrollable, uncontainable brew of emotions and wounds and skills and sociological drives, instincts, motives, fears.
Really I donât know what any of this fully, truthfully means. I think writers like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Moshfegh and (Zadie) Smith come extremely close to explaining humanity, or the experience of what Iâll call âhumanhood.â One might call it The Experience of Having a Conscious Mind. We all possess this. At times this is glorious; at other moments itâs sharply painful, like swallowing sulphuric acid, or slicing a tiny section of your finger off.
In the end Iâm just a typical, run-of-the-mill artistâhighly sensitive, deeply insecure, half broken, talented, smart, driven, ambitious. I am incredibly uniqueâŠjust like everyone else. (Another little AA ditty.)
I feel better already, just having written. Putting down the truth always feels good.
Thank you for the gift of your raw honesty here. It felt like a good release. Maybe by putting these things out there, we invite guidance/new ideas/provision/solution/freedom (etc.) to rush in... or something like that. Maybe that's exactly when the shift comes: when... well you said it- when we are finally "Giving up internally: letting go. Being harshly in the moment. Accepting things just as they are. Finally saying Fuck It and slicing my ego in half like a giant pink grapefruit."