Enemy Imagery

If you thought my last post was whiney, well, brace yourselves; it's gonna get whinier.  Don't call me, text me, email, facebook, or whatever else to check in.  I won't answer.  I have nothing good to report.  No bacon to bring home.  

That's what I do.  If there's no pleasantries to share, no victories in which to relish, then I'm not going to hide it with bullshit chitchat.  I don't know how.  I hate lying, even at the most mundane conversation filler fluff.  

"What up?  How you been?" 

"Shitty."

"Oh."

Yeah.  I'm was that kid who ruined every group project by talking about how stupid group projects are the whole time.  Yet, I could be found bothering all my peers during individual work.  I was the kid who rejected every profession presented on career day.  Not for me.  None of them.  I still don't know what I want to do "for a living."  The very question was always repulsive to me.  I want to find my center.  Peace.  I want to do what it is I am meant to do.  

I hate the question, but I beg the question.  

I've tried a lot of paths.  I've experimented, taken risks.  I never last long, though.  I get bored, so I push the envelope.  It backfires, so I recoil.  Then I clean my gun - a shoddy antique, not fit for modern warfare - pack the powder and reload.  I've been told I'm old fashioned, but I just feel rusty and putrid.  

I've always known, all along... All I ever wanted to be when I grew up is a dad.  It was a commitment I made.  It was my only dream.  Now I am, and it's my one and only source of happiness and purpose.  

Every now and then, I encounter a person in my life who convinces me that they see me for who I truly am.  My true self.  They have grasped my nature and they value it!  They even let me know they do.  They remind me that some people in the world appreciate authenticity and vulnerability and axiomatic love.  While these personal encounters are somewhat reinvigorating and give me glimpses of what the concept of "Home" is and means, they can't be parlayed into a new career or "making a living."  

It must appear pretty rotten of me to reduce these few admirers of mine to mere salt licks.  I didn't mean to.  They're much more to me than enticing bait for self-approval.  Why do following my bliss and making a living have to be mutually exclusive?  

What I want to give the world, I don't know how to monetize... And, I don't want to.

No Direction Home. Complete Unknown.

I'm supposed to write a letter to my child self giving him the empathy he so dearly needed, and which I now so desperately need.  It scares me just to think about it.  I don't want to take myself back there emotionally, even if just to try and give my child self the great gift of rescue he so deserved.  

I always valued endurance through my pain above all else.  Never give up.  Never quit.  I drilled these into myself, or they were drilled into me.  That much is the only foggy part.  Now I wish I not only had "quit," I wish I never started.  I have been under the self-delusion that there is a nobility in resignedness to emotional pain and suffering.  Either that, or I confused emotional paralysis for patience.  So, now I can't quit suffering, because I don't know how.  Paralyzed is a good description of how I feel about embracing real resolve, genuine worthiness.  I see it.  I want it.  But...

I used to always tell myself during the darkest times that one day it would all be worth it, or the things that incessantly traumatized me would be ameliorated.  That I would emerge through the fire hardened and glistening.  Right now, I feel burnt to a brittle crisp, and have probably been denying it for a decade plus.

A few years ago, when I felt similarly broken and lost... jobless, listless, hopeless... I found some solace in reading and journaling, and a little blogging too.  I read Walden, which was perfect at the time.  I was in the remote wilderness of a tropical paradise for about six weeks, and I was determined to self-reflect and locate a piece of my mind I could stake out for some peace of mind.  I didn't find it, but at least was able to use that time to remind myself that it exists and it's worth finding.  I accepted that as progress enough, at the time, to return to civilization load lightened.

Except, I abruptly stopped writing.  Reading subsided too, but the impetus to write my reflections - which are always steadily streaming, even spewing - was suffocated by the familiarity of the socio-cultural daze that permeates the Homeland.  I allowed myself to be suffocated.  Didn't put up any fight.  

As more time passed, I of course found it more and more impossible to expose myself to myself again.  I didn't want to go anywhere near that mirror.  Periodically, I would toy with conceiving plans to continue meaningfully reading, journaling, and blogging.  I never knew where or how to best pick it up again.  "Meaningfully."  What do I even mean by that anyway?  You know what I mean?      

I should have just done it.  No program.  No plan.  No expectations, except to learn something about myself for myself.  Whenever I felt like it.  Even a little bit.  

Should's are my arch nemesis.