Coloring in the Lines

I lay out tobacco and dark liquor in hopes of luring out inspiration to write. I sweat because work creeps up closer and closer with every minute that passes and dammit, I still can't write. But my good friend, Hana, won't hear such excuses-- she says to leave what I feel on the paper ("paper") and stop waiting for the right moment. I know she's right, and I fight off temptation to apply that 2-minute lesson to other areas of my life. One battle at a time I tell myself.

I disgust myself for as much as I can feel others' misery, and my much smaller portion of it, I can never seem to connect with my own good fortune and blessings. It's as if I were to realize how fortunate I am, I would wake up from this dream, and so I act accordingly. Though, I can empathize with the cruelty of this neurosis because I also know how hard I worked and how much I wanted exactly my position once upon a time. But for as long as I can remember I haven't known pride nor its little brother, confidence. After all, I think, my eyes are entirely too large to not see the luck-- or divine intervention-- in my life. So I devour the days as they come as if they were prepared for me rather than if I had whipped them up myself. So if someone compliments my cooking I feel compelled to tell them I had nothing to with it. And perhaps the first lesson of the coming fall is to take my fair share of the credit. The truth is I'm afraid to embrace the reality-- my education, my job, my friends, the girls who find something worth seeing in me-- I'll never feel worthy. And that bit of uncertainty, restraint they sense in me is just that-- guilt, while I want their affection I still feel like I'm misleading them. Like they are buying something defective.

My ideal self doesn't just sit there and watch on, he yells that I can do better. And for such a contradictory and troubled person, I've done a good job of not destroying my life. And the way I see it, I have an outline that simply needs to be filled in with substance. I have interests that can be pursued, I have a job that I can learn to build a career out of, I have friends that I can appreciate more, I have a family that I can communicate with more, a healthy body that can be better taken care of. I take comfort in the fact that whenever I am mentally ready, a stable, healthy, and successful life awaits me. And I am racing against the clock before the expiration date on my outline passes-- I drink or smoke myself to illness, I lose the opportunities I've been blessed with, my friends find someone more reliable.

I'm tempted to believe I can turn it all around in one day, but I have to remind myself that is simply the mood's unrealistic allure. And to get too excited would only mean a nasty discouragement on a bad day or setback. So I've been learning to grow at a slow, steady, and deliberate pace. Although, recent lessons have not been lost on me, and I haven't missed my little graduations. One very notable one is the lesson of letting go. My inability to let go is the reason I started this blog in the first place. Back then to find my own affection unreturned was an accost to my very being, and I would react viscerally. Now, I am happy to report, I've come to let go far easier. I realized that if I graciously decline the courtship of one girl, I must be prepared to be graciously turned away just the same. I found a certain beauty and fairness in the circle of love-life. And I found that I could now relate with my never-to-be-paramour's position far more easily as I would most likely have to play the same part in the future just as I have had to in the past. Now rather than looking to my unilateral feelings for a girl as the signal that that girl is worth fighting for, I wait for a mutual agreement before falling in love. It makes the pursuit of the girls I have an affinity for all the more pleasurable and the bad news that I deliver to others bearable as I truly believe now that no one really loses-- at worst, we're all forced to wait for that bit of heaven a little longer. But my degree was not only in the area of relationships, but also in the visions I had for myself. For example, I've learned to let go of a dream I stubbornly had when I was younger, to allow it to be replaced with something new and foreign. I used to see that as giving up, now I see it as simply growing up. Of course, I'm still only a student, and in certain areas I still have trouble, I still get frustrated, I still muster false hope for a lost cause, but I know-- oh I know, that no matter what I feel like I lose out on, there is something just as good I will get in the future and so my pangs of jealousy, regret, and frustration are merely flare ups of a disease that I have just about defeated.

Yes, in accordance with the previous post, something is growing in me once again. My therapist and I agree that my depression was no illusion, but he believes that it can be the intermission that leads to a far better second act. And though I'm tired of hearing the words echo in my head, I do still want to be a good person. And lately, too many people have been treating me as if I already am. I won't take their faith in me in vain. For an eternity, I have had this ultimate vision of who I want to be. At one point in my life I thought I was working towards it, I thought I was on the right track, and soon enough the weight of the world showed me how little I knew and how unprepared I was to be that person. I went through a phase where I was convinced I would never become that person-- indeed that there was no such thing as good in the first place. Now, I am emerging from that quiet despair and seeing the path in a way I didn't see it before, better yet and somehow, I find myself in an even better position to attain it. A rare occasion where I'm glad to feel like a hypocrite.