change

Change is fucking awful. Humans are terrible at it; terrible at recognizing it, terrible at accepting it, resist it to the detriment of themselves and terrible at changing themselves when they have to, need to or even want to. I considered myself fairly decent at change, I lived in a new place every year or every other year, I was able to go in and out of relationships without too many difficulties and I could be quite flexible when it came to new and different situations. But those things aren't change; they're quite the opposite, or at least how I handled them wasn't change. I lived in a new place in an attempt to change something, anything about myself but never really made any personal shift; I lived in the same town, had the same job, had the same friends (read: zero) and kept all of my old stuff. Except for that one 6 month period that's a subject of many other stories. I never actually did any changing though, the crap I attempted to leave behind came with me. As far as relationships go I never really learned anything about myself or about other people and really just went through them, again with few exceptions, like I was changing my clothes. I never learned anything, I was never a better person for having gone through them, I was probably worse for the way I often treated people, and I went on to the next one in the hopes of relieving myself of the burden of loneliness without having looked at the root cause and done anything to change it. 

In essence I just shuffle the stuff around on my desk to make it look different without actually accomplishing any of the tasks laid before me, or getting rid of the stuff that can be thrown away. It looks new and different but it's still the same crap. Change, however, eventually forces itself on you. It will sneak up from behind, turn you around and plunge the dagger of loss and grief of the past and the scary uncertainty of the future right into your heart. Change always confronts head on. Always. And eventually I did change. It took me losing the woman I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with to start the process, but it did happen, and there is a lesson to be learned in that statement: If you don't change as life or the situation requires then life or the situation will change for you, and you'll likely be less than happy with the results. And after years of spending time with myself, learning about myself, I did change, I adapted, I think I got better, and I was happier. 

Unfortunately change doesn't just visit once and is never heard from again. I find myself in another situation where change is required. A year and a half ago I decided to change my life, to move away from Chicago, toward my family and toward the potential of making my own family. I think I did everything as right as I possibly could, I had taken the stepps to ensure, to the best of my ability, that this change would go smoothly, but life, as it so often does, takes our plans and rips them apart. My life didn't go according to plan. My hopes of how the next year and a half would go were not fulfilled. After a year and a half of spinning my wheels with no idea of which direction is forward, no longer sure of what I want out of my life, and frankly questioning who I am now, what defines me, what's important to me. Mixed with the nagging feeling of regret at having changed what was probably the happiest I had been in my life in an attempt to move forward and having it all fall apart, I feel stuck. There have been few times I have felt this lost, this insecure, this scared of what's going to happen to me. Change is the obvious answer. But change into what?