Me and Mildlife and...III

[CT1118]

Andrew/Mach1 - if you two fine gentlemen don't mind, I will return to your comments shortly. I just feel like writing the lucid while I can hang onto it.

Might be the holiday, might be the very long drive I face with my son tomorrow to see my parents (who retired in Nowhere Near An Airport, USA), but I was really banging my head against the bricks today. If I was depressed, I would have a name for it. If I was seeking to divorce her, I would have a name for it. If I was still using drugs, I would have a name for it. If I was who I was 10 months ago, I would have a name for it. I am so damn classified, I want a name for it. There is not one, but since I feel so compelled, its name is self.

How I really feel right now, as in 'these days', is in one part exhausted. Its like I have been searching, searching hard for a reason to get rid of her. To just say 'enough' and tell her to f^ck off. But I can’t. I have encountered so many painful things and I just can't say that is enough, I can't say, "this is the deal breaker, right here, this is it." There does not seem to be a deal breaker. Sometimes I hate it because it feels like I want the relief so damn bad. Sometimes I take hope from it because I am not ready to cry 'when'. She has not told me a lie yet, that if I sought the truth I have not been able to find it. And still, still I am willing to fight. I gave up on the lies, and what I though of the truth. Both those things live behind me now, thy are the past.

Sometimes I think in figures. Like, I want to lay down in the arms of a mother, like a literary or classic painting version of one. A mother scarred by work and loss, a mother humble and resolved. I lay in her arms, bloody and damaged, and just feel her tender hands caress my cheek while she weeps inside without showing me anything but courage and compassion, she has all the strength to let go, to tell me to rest my way out of this world and into the next. Because as much as she loves me, she knows my suffering has earned relief, and that I have earned the right to sleep. I can hear her words as firm as eye contact, "Rest. Rest. Rest." And then my tired hand tightens grip on my sword..."not my time mother". She raised a brave boy.

That is a daydream for my tired mind, but my soul is not yet retired. I knew from the start I could have chosen to let ego reign, to turn my back with both middle fingers straight up in the air, with a false sense of self confidence, with full sense of self justification. I chose what I chose knowing it would not be easy, but also not because it would be hard. I chose a journey at the time because I felt it would lead her back to me. I learned quite quickly the journey was about leading me back to me. Actually, leading to me I should say.

I am out of the wilderness so to speak, but more like a break in it. An open meadow, a stream, sunlight - here I stand right in the middle. The jungle at my back and a swamp before me, comfort all around in this meadow though. I could make a life for myself in this meadow, but that would ignore the fact that I am still surrounded by the wilderness. I could stand in this place of peace and scream her name. I could hope she hears it and decides to do the hard work of slicing through that jungle. That's one choice. Going back and searching for her might be another, but she would only hide from me. Or, I could decide to see what's in that swamp.

Between headbutts to bricks today, I realized I have entered a new temptation. Another choice point, and I will not choose the easy, but I will not choose what I choose because it is hard. I will choose what leads me to me. Waiting is fear. Waiting is loneliness. Waiting is depression. I have never chosen waiting. I want to keep moving forward. Its not leaving her behind. Its trusting her to her self and its trusting me to my self. I get tired, I get dizzy, I get tempted. I cannot argue my way into her. I can not impress my way back to her. I can leave footprints. Even then, I don't want to leave them so she can follow me. If she finds them, she might know she can find a way out. She does not have go out the same way, but she knows there is an out. And if not, I guess not. I trust my future self enough to know what to do with the lost.

The other part of how I really feel right now, as in 'this moment'. I got a little too comfortable in a safe place, surrounded by all that decision, which is to say surrounded by all that fear. That jungle, that meadow, that swamp - those are all inside of her as they are me. If I could leave a sign it would say "I am a better man because of this journey, because of you, because of this gift". Nothing to write on in that meadow, left some footprints. I got somewhere to be. I feel like I can be someone. That someone is going to wake up somewhere and pack a 5 year old boy into a cold a$s Jeep at 5am and be a damn good someone to that little boy by being a damn good someone to himself, one day at a time into forever, for as long as is the long promise of ever.