"I stood stone-like at midnight
suspended in my masquerade
I combed my hair till it was just right
and commanded the night brigade
I was open to pain and crossed by the rain
and I walked on a crooked crutch
I strolled all alone through a fallout zone
came out with my soul untouched
I hid in the clouded wrath of the crowd
when they said "Sit down" I stood up-ooh, growin' up...
I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere
and you know it's really hard to hold your breath?
I swear I lost everything I ever loved or feared,
I was the cosmic kid in full costume dress
Well, my feet they finally took root in the earth
but I got me a nice little place in the stars
And I swear I found the key to the universe
in the engine of an old parked car..." - Bruce Springsteen
Back from a great little visit to Austin, Texas - with a side trip to San Antonio ... so, love love LOVE that place and had a great trip. Plus I got to share the road for a few moments with a Bondmobile :D (yep, an Aston Martin)! But, once I got out of Houston, towards Beaumont, and headed toward home ... got to all kinda heavy thinking.
Bad/Sad part first. At least for today, I am so frakking DONE with trying and trying - time for someone else to "man up" and make the effort to be with me. Reason for that Cliff's notes version of the rant? Ok. So here's the thing ... I have long approached life, love, and faith in much the same way as one another - whichever way, I consider it a daily decision. I wake up every morning and, whether consciously or not, I make the choice - will I live as best I can a life that speaks for itself today? Will I love ________ (insert individual's name here) today? (Whether I am capable of so doing is hardly ever a matter of question for me) Will I choose to move forward in the path before me as best as I can recognize it, trusting that it is a path G-d is leading me along for my good, for the good of those around me, etc - today?
Well, I keep making that faith and life decision every day, and it keeps frakking up. For today, while I still affirm that life decision (if for no other reason than that I refuse to abide in denial of it) ... Today that faith decision is just, flat-out, NOT happening. Can't, or won't, believe it today. Every step I've tried to make to move forward in that frakking "path" or whatever, for YEARS, I get knocked back on my butt and I am sick of it. Sick of trying, of losing, of where I end up - feeling abandoned and forgotten even by the people I once could believe had been brought into my life for a reason. I don't like the feeling that I've been fighting with today that I just regret having involved several people at various times, for whom I've felt a great deal of warmth and respect, in what still - for today - feels like a wasted, failed life.
Now before anybody flips out and hits the panic button, please don't. As the Springsteen song this post's title came from puts it, "This too shall pass, I'm gonna pray - Right now all I got's this lonesome day - it's all right, it's all right, it's all right ... let kingdom come, I'm gonna find my way." This is part of what differentiates me from the average chick with a certain personality disorder - I can, and hereby do, acknowledge that all this is a feeling. No more, no less. I will feel different, perhaps not tonight, perhaps not first thing tomorrow morning, maybe not till Monday - but I will feel different, and I've felt differently recently enough to remember what it was like. Ya homegirl can hang tight till then.
But - all that said, back to that third "decision" - love. For quite some time now, whether there has been anyone specifically to make that decision to love, as best as I am able, or not, I have seen myself as capable of affirming that decision in principle every day. That too, has bitten me on the butt way too damn many times. For today, then - no. Time for someone ELSE to make that decision about me, someone else to decide that in their almighty frakking opinion ya homegirl here is worthy of that daily decision, and of the sort of words, actions, behaviors that flesh out that decision. If that sounds selfish? Oh well. Nobody can honestly say that I made the decision not to love in their case until and unless sorely provoked - until *their* words, actions, and behaviors for a LONG time made it clear that my decision was meaningless to them. So I can put this out there to "God, fate, time, the universe, or whatever" (Quantum Leap shout-out there) - if somebody "mans up," makes that decision to love me, speaks, behaves, and acts accordingly, that will not go unnoticed or unrewarded. But until then? Forget it. "God, fate, time, the universe, or whatever" - for today - has something to prove to me. Again, tomorrow or the next day or the day after that I may feel differently and get this burr out from under my saddle - but yeah. Just sayin'.
However, on the good side ... I have joined the ranks of the so-called "cycling culture" - notice I did not say bicycling :D ... Got a recumbent tricycle, rode it around Town Lake in Austin a little tiny bit, and planning to ride around home and/or work as the opportunity presents itself. The interesting thing about this, to me, is that I'm already noticing a barely perceptible shift in my thinking because of it. Ok yeah some of this is probably because this daggone trike cost a boatload :D! But - I catch myself suddenly thinking a lot more carefully about where I choose to go, what my reasons are for going there, what I will or won't spend money on ... It used to be almost a matter of course that if I was passing anywhere near Houston, I was *going* to spend an hour - or two or three - wandering around the Galleria, daring myself to find something I could rationalize paying some crazy price for. But today, on my way back from Austin? Didn't even pass myself by the Galleria. Went down the road to the Houston outpost of Central Market for a last hurrah with my new favorite grocery though ... and was fairly picky there too. No dash to the candy aisle - instead, stuck to a very few items that I know I can't get at home, healthy sorts of things that I want to put to use proving to myself that healthy food can be tasty as all get-out. Same sort of principle kept being the background of my thinking in the past couple days - more practical, more interested in not just that little frisson of the pleasure of acquisition, but rather the potential for longer-term improvement of my life.
Then again, I've talked off my a** long enough here, right? But yeah ... interesting bit of different ways of thinking.
