Two Years Later, Part 2

For completion's sake, I thought I should at least enter something into an entry that continues upon the themes of my initial return entry. But I don't feel the need to go in depth about the happenings of the last year and a half. The scabs of some wounds--those both inflicted and caused--still haven't healed completely. It would be unfair to too many to elaborate on them.

However, I can say that, on the whole, I have been geniunely displeased with myself and my conduct during this time span. Some terrible mistakes were made and some bridges were irrevocably burned. And now I'm left to occasionally sift through the ashes of my mistakes and try to find small semblences of meaning.

It is hard when you find yourself in a position where the only way to make yourself happy is by causing pain to someone else. My mom tells--in words that hint at a maternal wisdom I had not before fully contemplated--that hurting someone else is not always the worse thing in the world. It's never a good thing, understand, but when you're truly unhappy in a situation, you can never fully give yourself to somebody else. In those situations, "hurting" someone may actually be the best kind of help.

Maybe that's a selfish way of looking at things. I don't know. I find myself replaying events and conversations in my head daily; wondering if I made the right choices, if I said the right words. And the truth is that I don't know what to think of those things I've done. I hope that time finds a way to cast a positive light on the choices I had to make; that time softens the bumps and bruises caused by living. I hope.

I've been single for four months now. In that time, I've learned a lot about myself; things I had forgotten or stored away over the course of the previous five years and three relationships. I'm learning to be comfortable in my own skin. I'm learning to own up to who I am, accept it, and strive for things that heretofore seemed out of my reach. It's lonely somedays. I can't deny that. Sometimes I find myself longing for someone to share this life with on a daily basis. But those feelings come and go and I usually don't dwell on them for too long.

I don't know where things will go. Truthfully, I feel that it is unfair for me to get involved with anyone, or to make any radical life changes, while I'm still in such a general state of perpetual motion. How can you be stability for someone when your own stable-ness could be called into question? I feel that I'm starting to get my head screwed back on correctly and that process will continue to take some time.

I think things will be better for me once I move back to the area. In about a month or two, my brother and I are going to room up in the house my father owns. I am excited beyond words. The chance to live with my brother, to continue to connect with him, is thrilling. He has become the kind of person I always knew he was. He is growing up and the thing I love is that hsi spiritual maturity has grown exponentially. I feel as if--and this has always been the case, but if feels even stronger now--that I will learn far more from him than he will learn from me. But I think we both have things we can share with each other and I look forward to that.

And I look forward to trying to reconnect with some of the people I have lost touch with over these past two years. I hope my words convey strongly enough the sadness I feel for losing touch. Words mean shit. I know that. So I hope to show it with actions. Give me time and I will make amends, or do my best to do so.

The last two years have been a strange, beautiful, devastating trip. The wheels have stayed on the bus, so to speak, but that doesn't mean the bus hasn't come dangerously close to careening off the cliff from time to time. But I think I have made it through and this period of learning and growing--that I overestimated to begin with--is coming to a close. I'm glad. I want off this track and back onto some sort of stable ground. I want to return to my roots and continue my journey in a setting that is not so hostile and threatening; so unfamiliar.

And so that is where things stand, two years later. Keep me in your thoughts and I will keep you in mine. And when I learn how to pray again, in a way that has real meaning, I will think of you then and make up for all this time lost.

If you're reading this, know you have my love. Always have.

Until next time...

Be safe and sound.

with all the ? marks

This is a question that will float into the air, like a balloon in the wind...but maybe that's what questions are meant to do...

How is it that we reconcile with those things our brain tells us to disbelieve?

It has become, in essence, the defining question of my twenties. I can't seem to let unbridled faith play the integral part in life that it once did. I was never strong enough, of course, but it had its place in the past. And yet, these days, I can't seem to disconnect my "knowledge" of this world (whatever that means exactly) and those things that I want to believe. There seems, to my eyes, to be too great a gap between what my mind knows and what my soul wants to feel.

I've often wondered if spiritual faith is actually just the greatest sccare tactic ever forced upon me. It has become almost impossible to escape the thoughts and beliefs that were instilled upon me at a young age. You know what there are if you've ever spent any time in the church. You are told to believe these things because they are righteous, true, real, important, and the only reason for living. And yet, the subtext, whether implied or verbally spoken, is that you are to believe these things because if you don't....you will pay prices greater than you can imagine.

The fear factors of Sunday school.

The problem with this for me has always been that the fear seems to overshadow the faith. Even now, when I'm struggling with religion and spirituality and Christianity more than ever before, I feel and hear things in my psyche. Things that say, You know this is the truth! Come back! I feel and hear these things in my head and in my heart, but how real are they?

I've been so inundated with fear over the years that I can't determine if these voices are geniune calls from a creator or if it's just my subconscious, ever so softly reminding me that all that I was taught says that I'm going to hell, and hell is coming soon, if I don't turn this ship around quickly.

The fear of being wrong is slowly overpowering the joy of being right. And that's what I'm struggling with and have been struggling with and only feel comfortable bringing up on this page, which as we've already established, is probably not being read. For the time being, that's probably a good thing. I can use this as my sounding board. Maybe I can talk some things out for myself.

We'll see.

Two Years Later, Part 1

For two days I have battled the urge to return to my blogging home; to return to my writing roots. And here am I.

How long has it been since my words danced on these pages? How long has it been since I wrote something honest? Something from the heart? June of 2006. Sixteen months. Countless days. One lifetime ago. I don't even know if it matters anymore, but here I am.

I feel as if I have a story to tell but no way to tell it. I've been away on some kind of journey and I feel that it is time to try to re-familiarize myself with the world I once knew. I have tried to write on MySpace, but those entries strive to entertain a different kind of audience. I need a place to go that is for me. And if someone stumbles upon this again, the way we used to stumble upon each other's occasional ramblings, then that is great. If not, I will relish the solitude which is afforded in writing for oneself. Because I don't want to write for anyone else anymore.

And yet, honestly, if I did not truly want these words to be discovered, I would have written them on a new webpage, hidden deep in the catacombs of the world wide web. But obviously I didn't go that route at all, did I? I am like a perpetrator who wants to be found, leaving all the tell-tale signs in the wide open.

I often wonder how great a document this blog would have been had I stayed with it. Fox sixteen months, I sat mum on my life, at least on this blog. And I would soon be approaching four or five years of solid writing had I stayed with it. I guess these are the regrets that don't help things much, considering they mean nothing. At least some others have stayed with it.

Yet, there seems to me a dedication invovled that I just do not have. And how does one continue to lay things bare in written form when all the demands of the world chip away at his or her time? It takes an appreciation of expression, a stamina which I apparently do not possess. I wish I did.

It will soon be two years since I moved to the city. While I am still home often (primarily on the weekends), I still consider myself to have moved away from home in January 2006. And now I can say with unparalleled clarity: I've made a terrible mistake. It's not the kind of admission that is easy to make or hear. And it's not the kind of admission I would have been able to make in any other form of writing for fear of offending those whose path I have crossed.

But I know now that I made took a jump and fell into a crevice. I've missed so many things. I've lost so much time and I don't know how to get it back. Is there a map for these sorts of things? Can I rewind time? Can I un-age a child so that I can watch her grow up? Can I make up for time lost and misspent?

And on what? I thought I was going to move here and grow up. What an interesting misinterpretation of the truth, of the way things are. There is this age-old cliche that says you have to move away to find yourself. Yet I didn't lose myself until I moved away from you, my friends, my family, my center. How do I make amends for that? To whom do I apologize? I failed. I failed.

You know why I moved. I was convinced that in order to save and strengthen a relationship that couldn't be either, I moved in hopes of proving my love to someone who never proved love to me. Is this the mistake we're all bound to make at some point? Has everyone fallen, even just once, for the sweet-taste lies of perceived love? I moved here because I wanted to be a husband. I moved here because I wanted to be a father. I thought that if I showed my commitment to this, all things would be made right.

For a time, all was right. Although I had trouble securing a job at the start, and I couldn't ever seem to plant my roots here, I was getting along with her. We were happy. We were just a few blocks from each other and all was right in the world. EXCEPT there was always that glowing hole in my heart, the hole which was once occupied by everyone I left behind. I couldn't shake. The happiest days still weren't as happy as they should have been.

--To Be Continued--