(Written 6.June.2019; almost 3 years since my previous post)
Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a white room. The white room was filled with rats.
Rats?! They make me crazy!
Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a white room. The white room was filled with rats.
Rats?! They make me crazy!
Crazy? I was crazy once…
When I was a kid, I all too often engaged in idiosyncratic behavior. Such as repeating a phrase over and over and over and over and over (whether under my breath, or simply in my head), or twiddled my hair until I ended up pulling pieces out.
Things didn’t change as I got older. I just got better at hiding it. And then I simply found new ways for it to manifest. New outlets.
Count stairs.
Make sure volume was numerically on a prime number.
Get my hair or my beard or anything appearance-wise to EXACTLY how I needed it to be before leaving the house. Well…before leaving the bathroom.
Checking the locks on every door.
And then things…kinda settled down. I…kinda settled down.
Things became relatively…okay. I found that having kids did manage to kick up my anxiety, but it also quelled a lot of it. Especially my OCD. You either become even more obsessive, or less. And I found myself becoming less. I didn’t need to get the dollar amount of the gasoline tank a prime number. Then volume didn’t necessarily have to be prime. Appearance, I felt free to not have things perfect. That, or I was simply coming into my own. Door locks were something I didn’t think about. Sometimes I didn’t even lock the car door after getting the kids out (GASP).
I found myself accepting more, being present more, letting go more.
I used to write scripts in my head of how I cinematically desired my life to play out, and then tried my damnedest to make them do so. And as life went on, that wasn’t the case. I took a backseat to my life and began to just let what happens, happen.
And I was fine with it.
To just let life happen to me.
But then…life seems to decide that maybe, perhaps maybe, you’re becoming a little too complacent.
Remember that book you were writing?
What about that album you were set to finish?
Remember how often you used to create, and write, and share and just…put it all out there?
And then…remember how Fuller Seminary said they didn’t want you?
Remember how your acting fizzled out after really taking off?
What about your music?
And your garden, and your backyard, and your longing and yearning for that…SOMETHING.
And that’s when life decides to basically end for you. Nah, your old life is done. Time to start over. Guess what. Remember all those idiosyncrasies? Remember that anxiety? Remember how easily your thoughts drift to suicide? Well those are all going to come back.
Because your life is over.
…but it’s not over.
It’s just that what came before is over. And now it’s something new. And it’s not like you’re new. Because this has happened before. Your life has ended…before…
Quite a few times now. And every time it has, it’s this weird mix of you being the same you, but becoming something else. Like…a Doctor Who…regenerating. Same person, becoming different persons.
I wish I could go into details. And looking back, I oh so often do. But this time, it’s this multiple front that involves SO much that’s in flux, and varying family in my life that I just don’t feel I can come right out and say. If /when things get resolved, then I’ll probably end up editing this. And I’m more than happy to share personally, so message me if you’re genuinely curious, cause it involves some pretty heavy and ridiculous shit.
So here’s where I’m at: I have this overwhelming feeling that I SHOULD be titling this post “Trust Issues 2.0”. Because it feels like a new beginning. “Trust Issues” was my very first post on my website. And it wasn’t as thematic, it wasn’t as clickbait-y as other posts, and it was a bit more freeform and just stream of thought and consciousness than any of my posts became from there on out.
Since then, I wrote (read: contributed) for major online publications, I switched career goals at least 3 times, I moved, I became a parent (twice), I began professoring, and got ordained as a reverend.
In fact, THIS POST is the first I’ve written since those last two have occurred.
…
I don’t have any pithy or profound endings right now. But I can say this, I really and truly, actually think it’s time to “lay down the melancholy burden of sanity” and conceive the strangest project ever imagined.
It’s time to get back to it.
Time to go to work.
->and the world WILL be better for this…
Leaving La Mancha 