Posts tagged with "reflection"

nothing's burning

I feel so dis­con­nect­ed from the world late­ly. It’s not like I don’t have friends who care so much that they make me feel unwor­thy of the atten­tion. I just don’t relate to any­one around me. People with their lives on rails when I feel as uncer­tain as ever. It’s like I haven’t joined their world yet, this world of sta­bil­i­ty and reg­u­lar­i­ty, where every­thing just falls into place.

shadows outside a pub

Do pix­ie cuts ever make up for smok­er’s hands?

I watch the movies that used to stir the depths of my emo­tions, lis­ten to the songs that would grab my heart and clench to the beat in hopes that I’ll feel some­thing more than this. Every night, every snow­fall, every pho­to­graph is telling me that some­thing needs to change, and I’m left try­ing to fig­ure out what or when or how it’s going to hap­pen.

this modern love breaks me

My vice-of-the-moment is instant decaf cof­fee with loads of sug­ar and French vanil­la non-dairy cream­er; a chem­i­cal sludge I have every morn­ing like dessert for break­fast. That and long show­ers (and maybe a bit of the sauce every now and then) are the only things I indulge in nowa­days.

It’s a sign that instinct has tak­en me over. I do what I want, and I’m start­ing to sus­pect that you’re an adult when that also hap­pens to be the right thing. Not when you hit an arbi­trary age, or have kids, or a career, or a house. It’s when you start to take con­trol because part of grow­ing up is under­stand­ing that you’re respon­si­ble for the results in your life. When you dis­cov­er that there’s no room in this place for old-school roman­tics, so you’ve got­ta play the game. When you lose your inno­cence after accept­ing that the world isn’t the way you thought it was or the way you want­ed it to be.

Still, it’s unset­tling to be ven­tur­ing ahead amidst such uncer­tain­ty. I’ve learned that you can’t wait for every­thing to be per­fect in your life before tak­ing a risk, or you’ll be wait­ing for­ev­er. There will always be cycles of stag­nan­cy and change, calm and storm, hurt­ing and heal­ing. I don’t mind the changes, but part of me resents the inno­cence lost. Quixotism has always been a part of me, some­thing that’s defined so many of my thoughts and pas­sions and work. It’s like I’ve lost a part of myself — and a part I’ve always liked — to mes­sages unre­turned and the days in between.

homeostasis

Everything is bal­anc­ing itself out. I’ve stopped try­ing to pre­dict or con­trol my cycles of intro­ver­sion and extro­ver­sion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and pro­cras­ti­na­tion. As Oscar Wilde once said: “The only way to get rid of temp­ta­tion is to yield to it”. By doing what I want when I feel like it, every need is met in turn.

Life does­n’t get more com­fort­able than this. It’s been a great sum­mer.

baby eating on high chair

Now on mashed solids. Ruby at 11 months.

I’m glad I got here by myself, with­out the help of a friend, or lover, or wind­fall. It was some­thing I had to do on my own, so I’ll always know I’m strong enough to pick myself up and con­tin­ue grow­ing.

The only thing that’s real­ly miss­ing now is anoth­er cat (or two), but I already blew my kit­ty bud­get on Leonard’s vet bills. I’m not at the right place for a new adop­tion any­way, and I’ve decid­ed to wait until my major projects are fin­ished (hope­ful­ly some time around the end of the year) before I take on anoth­er life.

father and baby

It’s offi­cial; Kyden has the soft­est, pinchi­est cheeks ever at eight months.

I’ve been back from my trip for about a month and a half, but it feels more like a year. I’m so dif­fer­ent now from the per­son I was before I left. I was dying then, but I’m liv­ing now.

The only way I can tell how quick­ly time is tru­ly pass­ing is in the faces of my friends’ babies. Each time I see them they’re mak­ing new sounds, say­ing new words, more con­scious and coher­ent. I used to envy the care­free inno­cence they have when run­ning about naked, the sin­gle-mind­ed­ness they pos­sess when engrossed with a new toy, but now I feel like one of them.

everybody's gotta learn sometime

It’s strange to feel like I’m ready for a rela­tion­ship at only this point in my life. It did­n’t seem right that any­one should love me if I did­n’t love myself, and that did­n’t real­ly start until recent­ly.

It also took a good round of ther­a­py to fig­ure out that I was sab­o­tag­ing my rela­tion­ships so no one could have the chance to hurt me. If I con­sid­er which ones would have worked out had that not been an issue that caused me to break up with my girl­friends in order to pro­tect myself, I can only think of one. But that was a long time ago, and while we may have worked then, it’s no guar­an­tee for the peo­ple we’ve become, as I’m sure there’s been a lot of growth on both our ends. It’s only now that I feel like my per­son­al evo­lu­tion has reached a peak, a place where I’m sat­is­fied with who I am, and there won’t like­ly be any more dras­tic changes that may affect the dynam­ics of a rela­tion­ship.

I’ve been able to rec­og­nize that the risk of get­ting hurt is insep­a­ra­ble from the trust we place in the peo­ple we love, and that risk is always worth it. I’ve left behind my bag­gage, some­thing no one else should have to deal with, and I’ve had enough expe­ri­ence to know exact­ly what I’m look­ing for in a rela­tion­ship and what kind of peo­ple work with me.

Took me 30 years to fig­ure it all out, but every­body’s got­ta learn some­time.

warm divinity

Music sounds so good. It’s like every­thing has a beat I can dance to.

Sometimes I start writ­ing an entry based on notes from a few weeks ago, but I end up dis­card­ing most of them cause I don’t feel the same way any­more. It’s like I’m con­stant­ly shed­ding skin in the words I delete.

I tend not to over-think things now. My deci­sions are based on what I want at any spe­cif­ic moment, instead on the future, or the con­se­quences, or what may hap­pen as a result. This regres­sion has been one of the most impor­tant (and dif­fi­cult) things I’ve learned to do. It feels like I’ve been going in the wrong direc­tion for 30 years, but at least I was able to fig­ure that out before much longer. Now I under­stand Picasso when he said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a life­time to paint like a child.”

Pat grilling

Pat on his new grill. He’s still fig­ur­ing out the hot spots.

I don’t even prac­tice gui­tar any­more, but I’ll put on a song I’m addict­ed to and pre­tend I’m play­ing with my favourite singers for hours. It’s not help­ing me improve (which is usu­al­ly what I enjoy), but by god is it fun.

The weeks lead­ing up to my trip were full-tilt cause I could­n’t stand being by myself. It was nev­er that bad before. I even bought an iPad app that lets me watch ran­dom web­cams from around the world, just so I could have some­thing hap­pen­ing live next to me, even if it was two-thir­ty in the morn­ing. Usually it was a buf­fa­lo chips restau­rant in Florida with mus­tard table­cloths, a beach resort by the sea in Italy, or an over­head cam of a sushi chef in Tokyo1.

Nowadays, I don’t mind the soli­tude or the com­pa­ny. I’m feel­ing unwound and have set­tled into old habits; not get­ting enough sleep, eat­ing at the wrong times, nev­er going out. The main dif­fer­ence is that I get so much less of ____ nowa­days, which means I feel so much more alone, but I’m strong enough to be okay with that now.

The days are bright. Like a boy, I find it hard to con­cen­trate on work when the sun fills the house with warm light.

  1. This is how I learn that sushi chefs puree wasabi using only a chef’s knife and a great deal of patience. [↩]