in the dip

In addition to all the emotional shit this week (and last), I have been experimenting with something old. Something I haven’t done in years. I’ve been staying home alone. Not going to the coffee shop. Not having old friends over. Not running away to my family. Not having new friends over. Not keeping the computer on and chatting the night away. I’ve been sitting at home, a lot of the time watching TV (which isn’t like before, I used to watch very minimal TV—at least compared to most people I know). This week, I’ve started reading downstairs with the dogs again (the new Kelley Armstrong book—fantastic, so far), and then falling asleep with the dogs. I think before long, I might even be able to sit at home and write again in the evenings—which would be good, as I need to finish editing and revising the fantasy novel, and writing is such a healing thing for me. I haven’t sat down and read a book in my house since before he left (we used to do that together frequently, each reading our own books). It’s amazing how scary it is, and how I have to force myself to start. One of the benefits is that I am older now, so I find I can only make it forty pages or so before I discover myself asleep with the puppies, which helps a little bit with the perpetual exhaustion.
I’ve always been an extremist, not as much as others in my family, but I do tend to be all or nothing a lot of the time, and the pendulum seems to have to take a wide arch several times before finally coming to rest in the middle. I can tell it’s not done swinging yet, but I seems like it will soon find its place. The emotions that go along with each station of the arch (including the middle ground) have differences but are similar. This journey with the pendulum has taken me places I’ve never gone before, places that are daring and liberating, dark and risky, strong and grownup, weak and childish. Things I’m amazed of, things I never thought I’d be bold enough to do, and things I will treasure forever as well as things I may regret for a long time. Actually, that’s probably not so true, there are very few actions I truly regret and those all revolve around severely hurting others—I don’t think my actions will hurt anyone but myself at times as of late, and I go by the belief that the choices I make (good and bad) turn me into the person I am, the man I will be. Granted, I’m not in love with the shattered man caged within me right now, but whatever. My gorgeous little sister, SH (not really sister, but yet she is), told me yesterday that she thought I was in the dip before the wave. (The wave being a good thing.) I don’t really think I believe her, but she put it in a way that I hadn’t been able to really feel before, and it made me cry—as revolutionary as that action is for me.
As ever, I hate the process of change, and I don’t go by the theory that all change is good or for the best, so I’m not convinced of the final outcome of this particular change. However, I know I am in the midst of some of my chapters of change. I don’t know where I am, if I am in the middle or nearing the end—I pray that I’m not still at the beginning. Of course, I like it better when the choice to change was just that—my choice. Obviously, these chapters of change were the farthest from my choice as possible, leaving me ever more convinced of the very real lack of power we ultimately have over the twists and turns of our lives—despite my weakness, these changes are leaving me stronger, as well as harder and more bitter. Maybe they are leaving me a little more in touch with reality—although if this is reality, fuck it—give me my delusions back please. If there is no Arizona, if there is no semblance of lasting, I need to come to terms with that and figure how to deal and who to be within that truth. For better or worse, I think that may be starting to happen.