sometimes, i am so ashamed of myself that it is hard to breathe. and at the same time, i’m angry with myself for asking so much OF myself.
i’ve been carefully, slowly unwrapping myself over the last three years. the process has been greatly accelerated thanks to the events of 2005, 2006, and the encounter with Buddhism.
i have an issue that is core. and i’m not sure how to resolve it. i’m not sure i can.
without going into all the gorey details, suffice to say i’ve been through the grist mill in life. and despite it, i live a fairly normal and usual life.
it has never felt like ‘enough’. not in the materialistic sense. in the triad sense. i have never felt that i have truly lived up to my potential. i have never felt that i have truly done ‘as much’ as i am capable of… and i have never been satisfied with the things i have accomplished. they are never ‘good enough’. for me. against that infinite line called ‘what i could do.’
so i am often completely disgruntled, pensive, morose, and discontent. when i can manage to remember how much i’ve overcome, i find brief spots of contentment. but, for the most part, i am eternally dissatisfied with myself.
the stupidity of this is that i could still choose to do any of ‘those things’. there’s absolutely nothing stopping me.
except me.
it’s hard to explain. the best i can manage is to say, ‘i’m tired.’
in truth, i’m beyond tired. and have been for a while now.
it’s funny in the way only something truly ironic can be… in that suadade way. i’ve written about it before, here and there… but in this moment, i’m thinking of someone who told me how they wish i had ‘known them at their best’.
i remember how those words made me ache for them. because they didn’t realize how clearly their best was seen and how clearly their aspiration to be their best was known. i identified with that so closely and deeply. and it hurt. and it felt good to hurt. as odd as that may sound.
sometimes, i wish i could find the way back to the determination i used to have. stars. nothing could stop me then. and i do mean nothing. it was just unbelievable how much i was willing to do, how far i was willing to go… a goal wasn’t just a goal… it was life.
i’ve never been much good at doing things by half measures. i often consider it a flaw. so do others. (wry grin) but i’ve always preferred it. even in the dark moments.
if i must be happy, let me not be simply happy… let me be ecstatic. if i must be sad, let me not be simply sad… let me be pure sorrow.
and regardless being anything in any moment, dare not to tell me that i cannot just as easily and well be anything else.
i remember the fire of that. i remember how it felt to burn in every way. i remember the bliss of that burning.
i haven’t felt that in a very long time. here and there, i find it… for a moment. or i think i do. but i’ve been wrong a lot. and somewhere along the way, i’ve forgotten how it was. i’ve lost something important, something necessary to be as i used to be.
i’ve been looking for it ever since. but i’m starting to feel like whatever it was, it has truly departed. in many ways, it feels like i’m clawing at the ground as i slowly slip over the edge.
from what? into what? i have no idea.
i keep telling myself that’s ok. that whatever it is, it’s ok. i just can’t find the way to believe it. and i’m not real sure what is going to happen once it really settles in that it’s gone. when i make the transition from thinking it may be through realizing it is to accepting it.
i do know that’s the problem. i’ve been trying to avoid accepting it. i have been trying to deny it has happened. whatever ‘it’ is. i can’t even say i can identify it clearly. i know it by its absence. which isn’t really knowing. sigh. hard to explain.
watching someone else writhing in the grasp of it really highlighted it to me. there was part of me that thought maybe, if i could help someone else find it, that i’d be able to figure out how to do it for myself.
doesn’t work that way. all that came of it was torment and grief. suffering.
i’m back to weeping nightly. brave smiles and chin up and shake it off, shake it off, shake it off, girl all the live long day. but when i get home and there’s nothing but the quiet and the entirely too insightful stares of the cats… the river rises and i’m tired of denying it, too.
so i don’t.
actually, i think it’s the facing of the lie that’s the hardest part. the lie that i can ‘do it again’. i’ve been shoring myself up with that lie for a long time.
sorry, world. i can’t do it again. tapped out. hear that scraping sound? that’s the bottom of my barrel. tired of pretending. no, actually, i’d pretend longer if i could. but there doesn’t seem much sense to it. has it not become completely obvious by now? maybe just to me, eh? that would be the supreme humor of the multiverse at work.
hah. baby mammoth ‘danger of the rocks’ is playing on the stream. fucking synchronicity.
i think i’d be willing to be on those rocks if it meant what’s here would go away. or if any of those glimmers i see flying by at supersonic speed would take me with them.
but that’s silly, isn’t it? you don’t take on ballast when you intend to soar, do you?
wish i had known that. i’d have flown much longer and higher. but there’s a part of me that understands how many flew at all for the choice to take them with me. hah. booster rocket. i fell away long ago, shoving them higher as i returned to earth.
though it may sound otherwise, i don’t regret that. truly. but it does neatly display the conflict here, doesn’t it?
it is an odd feeling — to think of a phoenix burning out. i wonder what i’ll be next. suppose there’s only one way to know.