I took my shower tonight while listening to my “Can You Dance?” mix, which I hadn’t listened to in a while. I was searching through my playlists for something full, something that would make me feel, just a little. I’ve been a little restless, and I know why – since coming to my parents for Christmas, I haven’t been running. That always makes me moody and restless. And of course, that
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When I started listening to my mix, the most beloved mix I have, I did feel something. I suddenly began breathing harder and reflexively ran my hands over my face as I was flung back to heat and running and freedom and “before,” the before I knew before school struck and I lost all joy. And that’s what made my eyes smart with tears – the remembered joy. I had it in that glorious August, the innocent calm before the storm, when I woke up every day looking forward to something, looking forward to getting dressed nicely, cleaning and tending to my new, lovely house, and going for glorious runs in the evening. Everything was so good then. And I thought again in the shower how long it has been since I’ve had joy. Now that I have calmed myself into an acceptance of my life and my job, I have calm, I have a measure of acceptance, I certainly have appreciation, and occasionally I have a sort of contentment. But I have a counterfeit happiness and I have no joy. I am numb once again or I feel the restless unhappiness and dissatisfaction. It is those two choices. Either bad or nothing. And I am spoiled, selfish, and terribly ungrateful. But no matter how hard I try, no matter how well I try to remember and focus on what I do have in my life, I can’t find a way to feel more than a dutiful, unsatisfying appreciation. I do not believe this is all life has to offer anyone – merely duty and obligation, no magic or anticipation or passion. But you’ll; be hard-pressed to find anyone who won’t tell you that some times in your life must be spent limited in such a way. It’s the toll to be paid to get through to the next good thing. But that also didn’t keep my chest from squeezing with the memory of lost emotion and deceased joy.
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I think of this summer, with its delicious excess of heat and the long, open days with plenty of room to do things, plenty of room to stretch. I think of reading the “Twilight” series over and over because the joy I felt in reading them changed with the advent of the school year from a free, happy enjoyment to a joy my hands clenched around in the growing swell of misery. I think of the perfect music-book association between those books and “Can You Dance?” and how for so many days and weeks, the music could take me back to a better place, a good place, a place landscaped with trees and heat and darkness and fresh air and solitude. I’m back in the meadow, out on the water, my feet eagerly pounding their way through my whole lovely neighborhood, before the misery threatened to chose those paths like thorns, before I had to blindly thrash my way to a calm acceptance and appreciation of what my life is so I could once again unclench my frozen fingers from around the expired joy of those runs. So much – and all of it good – in that music.
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The new year approaches. Once again. I am alone. Once again. I feel the same old way. Once again. And I struggled against tears as I thought tonight about It’s Just Lunch. And I still couldn’t stop myself from thinking, “Does it matter at all that I so desperately don’t want to do that?” You’d think I could have found a way to accept it and force hope back into me like a shot of adrenaline into a faltering heart. And I thought about this music, this beloved playlist that makes me cry with the joy it shows me because the joy is gone and has been gone for ever so long, it seems. And I thought how when one’s choices of feeling are numbness and pain, it is interesting to observe how one chooses numbness when necessary to function, but how one allows the pain just so one feels something. You go too long being numb, you start to wonder if any permanent damage has been done, like gangrene setting in a limb that has been asleep from an awkward angle for too long. You start to question your humanity if you stay numb for too long, so you reflexively allow or even pursue pain so you don’t get to that point. The questions of “Why am I here?” and “What’s the meaning of it all?” that originate in chronic numbness have their own icy pain, and few people are brave enough to take on the risk.
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I know this doesn’t sound much like acceptance, like that less lovely side of maturity. I have to call It’s Just Lunch and be done with it. I have to go through more and more dating. I just don’t know how. How do I tread that razor-sharp line between being reckless with my vision and controlling my control? I need to know the logistics of keeping the vision alive when it seems I must not focus so single-mindedly on marrying in 2009, on marrying soon after meeting, on being able to stay home when I get married, on focusing on starting a family soon after marrying, on those things which have a surprisingly strong effect on the potency of my vision. If I have to accept that he might not be financially capable at first of supporting me, so that I’ll have to keep working after the wedding, if I might have to stay in this loathsome job indefinitely, if a wedding may not take place this next year at all, if nothing I want or picture has a strong chance of working out that way, then the vision is murky at best. And dating is hard enough with a crystal-clear vision! I just feel like I’m drowning in my own vision because all of its elements have gotten rained on and are now running thick and fast down the canvas into my nose and mouth.
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So how do I do this? I’m supposed to focus only on the end result but that end result has been shown to be more amorphous, more prone to unexpected alteration, than I thought when I started. Or has it? Am I just supposed to hold fast to my original vision? Make it detailed and rich with color and movement and feeling? But how do I find that balance? And what am I to do?
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With New Year’s coming ever closer, I think on last New Year’s, the New Year’s of this year, and no doubt I refused to believe in anything happening this year. So I can’t do that again. I must make a statement of what I want to happen in 2009. And the first thought that comes is that I want to get married this year. But how can I hold to that when maybe that isn’t in the stars for this year? It’s all well and good to say I should plan with reckless abandon but not to lose sight of the essentials of those desires, as I determined a couple of journal entries ago. But how the hell do you do that? How do you plan when you must always think, “but if that doesn’t happen…” I just want to know what I’m in charge of doing. I know the universe is in charge of the how and even the when, but the when is integral to my vision. I don’t just want to get married. I want to get married this year. I’ve waited long enough, dammit! I don’t want to wait any longer! But do I just picture the wedding and not think “autumn 2009”? Or do I think that but always remember it’s the getting married that’s important. Then how does that timing aspect of the vision that makes it so much more focused keep its integrity? My brain is going round and round and I feel a burgeoning anger born out of frustration, which only makes me more frustrated because what good does anger ever do? When all of these questions swirl around and around the only clear vision I have is of having to walk through my personal hell indefinitely: going on date after date, blind date after blind date, never finding my rest. I am a stranger in a strange land. I am a pilgrim who must always keep walking. There is no rest for the weary. Surely God cannot mean to leave me so unsatisfied. But is he doing anything to clear the path between the One and me? Is he guiding our footsteps? And do I still even believe in the One’s existence anymore?
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Surely it must do something that I’m not the only one wanting this. My mother, Margaret, Jess, to mention a few, all investing energy, heart, and belief in my meeting the One at last. Does that all do any good? Is it smoothing or shortening our paths? Is it lighting our ways? As for me, I’m just tired, and heartsick that I must continue with a dating service. I guess it doesn’t make a difference how desperate my desire not to do something is. Now, if I can only stop thinking it does.
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