the unfuzzing

There inevitably comes times in your life when certain circumstances, certain behaviors, certain reactions to the outside world make sense. When one lives their everyday life in a mire of answerless questions as to the why do I do this, how can I be that, where did I go wrong, when did I choose to be this way, what have I become and who am I, they invariably grow tired, sad, discontent and may even start to shun the people, activities and happenings of everyday life. That's pretty sad, n'est pas?

But I can safely tell you that it happens. It happens far more regularly and to far more people than any one person can fathom. The fact that I have been one of those people is probably common knowledge, that for most of the last two years (or more) I've limited myself and my interactions with the outside world in a two-fold effort to both save the world for the problems I felt I caused it and to seek the answer to those questions I enumerated above (and more). I can tell you from experience that it has minimal success. 

However, success can be had. The answers to those seemingly unanswerable questions are available, perhaps even readily, to a person who is willing and able to find them. I myself was unwilling and unable to find them for a long time. That's a choice I, presumably, made at one point in my life and have forgotten I made; probably as a way to deny fault and abdicate responsibility. 

But that's a story for another day. The story I have today begins there; a man, searching for his place in the world, burdened with the history he sees as a tangled mess of trouble-causing, pain-dealing and heart-breaking; all in his search for answers. Locking himself away and destroying the key to safe the world from his disaster until "an answer" to him can be found. Stuck, in a seemingly endless loop of work, sleep eat, work, sleep, eat; slogging daily through a closed-off existence yearning for a way to connect with others with little fear of the dire consequences such an interaction has entailed in the past. And through some strange, convoluted, almost unperceivable, mix of consequences all taking place seemingly coincidentally all within the same week, the past begins to clarify, the present unfuzzes and the future looks a lot less bleak.

I've been able to nail down a few of these things and in order to help me remember their importance and to flesh out their further significance I'm sharing. 

On Monday, an episode of Battlestar Galactica. Laugh if you must, but one thing I’ve learned is that compelling tv is compelling for a reason; good scifi especially is composed of believable characters driving or being driven by events in a world not our own, but so like it that it’s difficult to NOT relate and connect to the message. Anywho, in this particular episode Giaus is explaining god to a bunch of people, basically saying the whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, whatever you’re going to do, no matter what, so long as you are YOU, god loves you for being YOU. Period. Now I don’t believe in god, I never have and I probably never will unless he pulls some Bruce Almighty stunt on me; but for someone who believes he is quite unlovable and believes he doesn’t deserve to be loved and has difficulty believing he will ever be loved; the idea that you can be loved just for being yourself not only touched the desire and need and yearning I feel every single day for that love but also made me feel as if it is possible for it to be had, even for the likes of me. 

A conversation I had with someone Tuesday. In which I felt compelled to warn her of the trouble I present to any individual willing to get close to me. It wasn’t the conversation itself that did anything but the realization later that evening of the lengths that I’ll go to in order to warn others away, and frankly that everything I say about myself is total crap. The truth is, I’m not so bad, which is harder to say than you might think, and the revelation that I automagically stab myself in the back to lower the expectations of others is a tough pill to swallow, let alone digest. It left such a nasty taste in my mouth that I’m taking it upon myself to watch and correct that behavior when it recurs. In fact I even went so far as to apologize to this person for being that way, and for being disingenuous as all get out; something I would have been ever so scared to do a short time ago. 

During a group session on Tuesday. I was trying to discern why and how I could go shopping and share with the retail people, who were helping me out, stuff that I probably wouldn’t share with people that I know “closely” whatever that means. That I was somehow comfortable with nameless people such that I could unabashedly say what I think without fear of reprisal, judgment, or consequences. Why would I do that? The short answer is boundaries; boundaries and the roles and expectations we place on the people we make contact with. I’ve always had a problem with boundaries, where to place them, how to explain them, how to enforce them and I firmly believe that a lot of my difficulties with people come in the form of those key things. I need to have some sort of line to draw in the sand as to where I’m comfortable but I don’t know how to explain to you what it is and I’m afraid that if I need to enforce it that you’ll be hurt in the process. I know that appears to be fairly straight-forward and quite simple, but it’s far more difficult for someone who has so much discomfort even in his own skin. 

And finally, yesterday, while looking out the window. I was quite content, after having eaten the fettuccini alfredo with chicken that I had prepared myself not 20 minutes earlier, to look out the window and just get lost. The tv was on but I didn't hear it; the rainy snow pellets were hitting my east facing window and making quite the racket, and there I was, awash in a dream trance seeing the life teeming below on LSD, hearing the tick-tack of precipitate on the window and oh so aware of exactly how I was feeling. Now, being someone who knows every trick in the book to separate himself from feeling anything and everything when he so desires this is such an uncomfortably eerie place to find myself in. But somehow the discomfort wasn't there, the eeriness was absent, and I sat there feeling every emotion that hit me, knowing yet unconcerned with every though passing through my mind and utterly content with what was happening in and around me. If there is such a thing as a moment of zen and if it can be reached by our complicated, convoluted and busy minds, then I was there; and for those few moments the world was okay, I was okay.

Now each of these taken one at a time don’t amount to a whole lot, but to have all three happen within as many days to even a person who is only partially aware of them can indeed have a profound effect. I feel quite different today. Unconcerned with the mistakes of yesterday, unwilling to blame myself for transgressions I unfairly believe I've made and quite assured and secure in believing I can move forward.
Cheers.