I'm shmacked

One step ahead

Running. Consider it. I did.Considered it and chose it, truth be known. If a guy runs hard enough, fast enough, he can get so caught up in the mechanics and the rush that he forgets himself. Running. The wind in your hair, the rise and fall of your chest, the burn in your lungs and your legs…it clears away the clutter, the complications. You throw yourself fully into it, and no explanation or justification or additional consideration is needed. All the truth you need is right there in the moment. Somewhere inside, depending on the kind of running you’re doing, the questions might bubble up: Why are you running? What are you running from? What are you running toward? No worries. The answer is, “Screw that; I’m running.” What else is there? What else needs to be said? Or thought? Or felt? And when you hit the zone, it can even escape your notice that you’re running. Talk about something being its own reward. Talk about something being its own justification.

And I ran. Ran from the memory. From the memories. At the top of my head, I was happy. At the top of my head, I was too busy running to experience “unhappy,” for the most part. Running from interest to interest, from fixation to fixation. From distraction to distraction. Running from “unhappy.” I walked through life with a sense of mastery and invincibility. I felt as though nothing could touch me, and if I ever began to feel a reflective mood sneak up on me, I hauled out the line, go out once in a while, or raise hell with a couple of friends around town. It was all on the surface; I was determined to avoid anything below the surface. After all, there there be dragons.

Bummed and venting!

I had a lot of things hitting me at once; problems at home, family, friends, a new attraction, and a focus on a not so pleasant time of my life that I haven’t confronted in a long time, and the realization that I had to address a broken, very broken, relationship of the past. I have a long way to go before I think I can have peace of mind, but I am working towards that. But the fact that I am facing all this, and I see that it will all turn out for the best, puts me in a much better frame of mind than I was a couple of years ago. 

The last couple days or so of have caused me to do some reflecting. I’ve been avoiding some stuffs that are pretty much into my face but was too naive to notice. “Avoiding” is an odd way to put it, I guess, because it deals with managing a friendship that has become incredibly important to me. Anyway, it’s taken a good deal of concentration and resolve to handle this. It’s been harder than I thought it was going to be, but it’s going as well as it can go. I realize at this point—some 4 weeks  and 1 day after the new year—that this is not going to be a thing I resolve quickly and move on from. So I can’t keep putting problems and decisions on hold, I can’t keep keeping things at bay, until I’m past this. What I’m dealing on may have to be incorporated into how I cruise from this point on. It’s like when you lose a finger. You can wait a while for it to grow back…or you can realize that just maybe it won’t grow back, and guess what, you can’t hold off on feeding yourself until your hand’s whole again. You just have to deal with the new circumstance and get on with it.

So, in the spirit of all that, I’m saying “eff you” to the missing finger and getting on with it. I actually have one on this someone who’s lost the finger; mine will grow back. Just slower than I wanted it to. And it probably won’t look like it did before. But hey, a finger is a finger if it looks like one and works like one. So enough of the bitching about losing it, and ima be like that guy on Les Miserables and choose Always To Look On The Bright Side Of Life.

I’m feeling kind of restless now that things are threatening to cold up for good down here. I’ve been in a state of some agitation since 2011, finally as 2013 began, I started to see some promise of resolution and relief from all that agitation. It’s better, though it’s slow-going, and I’ve about decided that if I re-engage on some of these other things, I won’t get so impatient for things to resolve more quickly than they are with this challenging situation. Also if I do that, I won’t be as likely to keep bringing up all that crap to my friends like I have over the past years. It’s funny; up until this weirdity, I’ve always been a guy who wanted to handle his difficulties completely on his own. You know, strong and silent. Then somewhat before all this trouble began, I had another little family-related crisis that I tried to handle in the same way, and I nearly had an internal implosion because of it. My family had to confront me over this, and I started being better about not keeping stuff to myself. Then all this Other Stuff started happening, and I’m telling you it Effed Me Up Good, and the next thing I knew, I couldn’t keep from talking and talking and talking and talking about it online. And I began to realize I was becoming one of those people I really really really dislike. Bitchers and moaners and malcontents and whiners about their personal life. I’m not very good about finding that Golden Mean. You know, sharing your bad stuff with a few important people and the focusing on other things. Medium ground, in other words. But I’m back on the quest for it. And if I err from here on, I’m hoping that I’ll err in the direction of playing strong-silent. I’ve said too much to too many people about my woes, and I gots a red, red face to show for it. But I still decided to write and get these monkeys off my back. It’s been such a great relief to jot down randomness of life, and in some way it’s weirdly therapeutic.