More of the Same

More of The Same

[I didn't do one of these for my birthday, and I guess I haven't written much in a pretty long time anyway. So! Here!]

2018’s been a weird little year. A year mostly of stabilization, after a lot of change. I feel like I’ve been running since I was 10; 3 years ago I finally starting collapsing. And now, I’m breathing a little and learning how to walk all over again.

It’s all pretty basic stuff. I have a pretty stable job. Parts of it I enjoy a fair bit (mostly the ones involving physical labor or distracting my coworkers from the work they should be doing [a role I have enjoyed since infancy]). I traveled a bit; I dated someone for a few months [my longest anything since starting grad school].

I’m more grounded. I have a couple of good friends. Which, honestly, is so so nice. I’ve always had good fortune to know many great people. But, last Friday, I just hung out with my housemate and we talked about our lives for awhile and then she said we were getting too serious and needed to laugh some so she farted and I died and it was just so *nice*. I have a coworkerfriend I eat lunch with every day and a coworkerfriend I talk about video games and play Overwatch with. And a few area-friends I see every once in awhile and we do fun things.

All pretty mundane stuff. But, for me, it feels really new. Like, I have some pretty healthy stable relationships. I talk to them, *about myself*. Not too neurotically, and with some restraint. I listen and respond to them. We ebb and flow. It feels nice. And sometimes I feel sad, that I haven’t been as successful at doing this with so many wonderful people I’ve met over the years. But I’m glad I’m starting now.

Other things have been pretty hard. A lot of my evenings, I just don’t do anything. Not even Netflix or video games. I just sit there and wonder what there really is *to do*. I have a strong yearning to do something, to make something, to go somewhere or live something. But I don’t know where to direct any of it, so it just kind of… goes in circles. Like I’m starving for something I can’t seem to find, and so am eating myself instead.

I think about things I wish I’d done differently. Sometimes productively, sometimes not. I see people with babies and careers and joie de vivre. And much of it still seems pretty impossible.

But I took an improv class, which was *amazing* (part 2 starts next week). I was honest with myself when dating that person and made some decisions with my mental health (and not my desperation for connection) as my first priority.

And when I visited home, I went on a walk through the woods with my mother. And I met her friends and swept her floor. And when I visited my grandmother (who lives alone in her 90s), I asked to see her wedding photos. And I saw my father at age 2 and my grandparents starting their own lives together. And she seemed genuinely happy I cared and genuinely happy she could revisit these times too.

So there are downs and there are ups. And I have so many things I want to change. And while some moments, I feel defeated by all the things I haven’t done, there are others where I am grateful (like a child who may not know where the next meal comes but is thankful to have one now).

***

I know New Years are generally about resolutions. But honestly, most of the things I want aren’t things I can “pledge to do.” I want more intimacy and consistency in my relationships. Despite my friendships, I do feel pretty lonely and want to have better connections. Figuring out how I’m playing into that disconnect is pretty hard and just work I’ll have to keep on doing. I want to have a more positive attitude and more energy to do more things. I want to watch a lot of movies and have a lot of conversations. I, mostly, want to enjoy life while feeling like I’m moving forwards in a meaningful way.

So, I dunno, pledge to keep going to therapy? lolol

Honestly, I guess, if I’m really looking at what has helped me feel better, I kind of want to resolve to keep trying to just do what I want?

I mentioned going to improv, and what was so great about it was just how much I liked it. I got to be emotive and creative, and I mostly just wished I could keep doing it every day all the time. I, predictably, had some fantasies about where that might go. But I was also just like, “I like this. Yay!”

I’m going to take a class on Gloria Anzaldua with some grad students and other faculty/staff. Because I want to. I’m going to take out trash and rearrange furniture at work, because it’s honestly great to be physically active and not have to think sometimes. Mostly, I just want to find more things where I think “I want to do this!”

So maybe that will continue to be my task. I’m pretty good at reflection and soul-searching and pushing myself to change and improve (to a FAULT). I’m just now learning how to enjoy life.

I don’t know. Here’s to that?

Resolution

Change is hard. It’s hard to shake off the comforts of complacency, hard to take risks, hard to get hurt. It’s hard to fail. To fail and then to keep trying and to fail again and maybe eventually succeed a little bit and fail again and then… It’s hard to know we have limited time, limited abilities. It’s hard to compromise. Hard to try.

But, if I’m really honest, it’s hard because there are not easy answers. If change was as simple as saying “I want to be different,” we would do it. We would change in a heartbeat. We wouldn’t even need to “change,” we would just… be.

But change is hard because in the face of every new direction is a swarm of ambivalence. Part of me wants to message that cute girl on OKC. But part of me is afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t reply. If none of them reply. Worried about what it will say about me, worried about what it means for my life. And then, part of me is afraid she’ll actually respond back! What unique brand of horrors that would be. She might like me. I might like her. We might… god, I don’t even know.

So it is with yoga (and awkwardly flailing about in a room filled with limber angels). And meetups (EVERYBODY IS A PERSON AND I’M A ROBOT). And jobs (you want me to do WHAT for HOW LONG with WHOSE TAX DOLLARS?!).

It’s fear, sure. Of failure. Of success. Of the incredibly stilted pain in between. Of actually trying and worrying about what you might find when you do. Of not being ready, of never being ready. Of everything. It’s the accumulated sadness of decades of disappointment. It’s anger and hurt you buried so deep you hoped it would never rise again, only to find that it’s right there in the way. New faces on ancient monsters born again.

***

But there’s another side, too. This past week, I returned to Knoxville for Christmas. And while I was there, I took a little bit to visit my old elementary school. I walked around the fields we played in, the space where the Playground That Probably Should Have Killed Us once stood. I saw old classrooms, old ball courts. Imagined myself back there, 20 years ago.

And the thing is, it was so different than I remembered. The field where we ran the mile, which had seemed so daunting then, was now so *small*. The huge play spaces we ran in were cramped. The kickball court was half a parking lot. I now noticed the neighborhood it was built in. I remembered safety patrol and friends I’d forgotten and what felt like agonizing waits to be dropped off in the morning which couldn’t have been more than minutes now. I climbed a fence that would have been a wall.

And I did the same with my middle school and high school and college.

I even visited my dad, for the first time in years. And I was still scared. And I was still upset. But I wasn’t as scared. And he wasn’t as bad. And he said some nice, sympathetic things about me. How I wasn’t a disappointment. How he appreciated the choices I’d made. I got to see my old room. And how small it now was. I found my old stuffed animals. Even left a few behind, to keep the place safe.

And I kept on seeing how things were different. How I wasn’t a child anymore. How the people and situations I was in weren’t as I remembered them. How I was bigger, the world was smaller, life less mean. How I could make choices now I could never dream of then.

And none of that is to say that it was great. I still had some distinct periods of wanting to go back to Seattle and swim and swim into Lake Washington until the shore was a dream and I could swim no more.

But it was new. And different. And hinted at a world of possibility terrifying and so so beautiful. That maybe failure wasn’t as bad as I remembered it. Maybe success wasn’t either. Maybe love and touch could be endured. Could be lost and still found again. Maybe I was not so powerless, so broken. Maybe none of us are.

So when I think of New Years and times for new beginnings, I think not of willpower and discipline, but of change. Of reframing the old, envisioning the new. Of persistence while faltering. Of doing things different because I want to. And letting that be my guide.

Maybe all that will mean is going to yoga for a few weeks before I get so self-conscious I can’t stand it. Or it’ll mean messaging two or three people on OKC before disabling my account again and idly wondering “Hmm, what *is* X up to?....” for another year. But maybe it’ll mean more. And many other new things too. And maybe no matter how any of those things go, it’ll be ok. Who knows? Maybe it’ll mean picking myself up from disappointment and trying again. And again and again and again.

At least til 2019. ;)