Heal and Recover

I am having a wonderful time and a miserable time here with B. I am on the edge of tears and yet so happy to be here. I am at a nexus and I don’t know if I’ll survive the eddies any more. The uncertainty scares me worse than anything I’ve ever known. This has been the best and worst year of my life. It’s exactly what I’ve always wanted and nothing like I ever expected.

I think I understand now but it hurts worse. And I don’t know how to make this better.

Part of how I heal is by writing. If I can find a way of writing out my feelings correctly, I can excise some of the poison. It also allows me to take measure of how bad the damage is because the harder it is to find the right words, the deeper the damage goes. And the more important it is to find those words.

Still chinks in the armor. Still open wounds. It’s ironic that there are some types of injuries where a doctor will tell you to push things even tho it is painful and other injuries where the same doctor will tell if it hurts, don’t do it. In life, without a doctor to tell you which is which, how do you tell the difference? How do you know you are getting better? When should you push and when should you hold back?

I’m letting D a little back into my life and finding it hard. I’m also finding it hard not to have him in my life. So I walk the razor’s edge and try to find a balance. Such a fine line, but of course, life is full of fine lines…

M told me on Sunday that I’m about 10 years ahead of where most people who’ve been thru this would normally be. The problem is that all of the other emotions I’m supposed to be dealing with aren’t ones that I’m feeling. So now I have to figure out the best way for ME to put my demons to rest because I’m always the exception. So here’s me, peeling back the onion, flaying open the wound. Analytical as always. Searching for the simple answers to my complex questions…

It’s much easier to recover from a being stuck in a rut rather than being trapped in a hole. Even if you’re in a rut, you can still see all the horizons of opportunity around you. When you’re in a hole, the only horizon is up and most of us forget to look in that direction. You still need to look at the walls of the hole to assess your situation, but never forget to look up on occasion to remind yourself that there is a way out as well.

When I read Stephen King, I feel whole. I feel understood. Yes, there is a darkness in his writing… It echoes the darkness in my own soul.

I found him when I was 15. I had to give him up within a year. I was too young and inexperienced to understand how to deal with that darkness, especially when it was amplified by King’s stories.

It was more than a decade later that I took him up again. Now I find peace in his writings. I feel at home in those stories. They feel truer than most things in life.

So now I’m reading Duma Key, the story of a man starting on a second life. A reminder that many of us start over, and often for less than pleasant reasons or by our own volition…

I want nothing more than to talk to D, to hear his voice on the other end of the phone and get the peace that comes with it. Was a long day and a fucked up evening. Crying my soul out… Knowing where peace is and knowing too that if I choose that option, I may loose all the ground I’ve gained in the last 9 days. Not caring. Only missing D.

One of the things that will be hardest for me if D and I cannot remain friends is that there is a large chunk of life for me that only he and I share. So if D goes, no one will understand, let alone laugh, when I make an off-color remark about plates and their possible inappropriate uses.

This is the risk of making friends and having relationships, that some one will share a significant moment in your life and not be there later. So that the stories you shared are now like the sounds of the ocean in a conch shell on an empty forgotten beach… Haunting and unshared.

Today, I doubt my decision. I live with the specter of a moment’s failing. There’s no escaping it. Mostly, I believe that the choice I made was the best possible. But there are days that I understand there was no escaping what happened, that either choice would have marked my life for the rest of my life. And because of that, I think, perhaps, I should have chosen the other option and risked what might have come of that. Today, I doubt and there will never be answer that truly silences that doubt. Only good days and bad.