September surrender: Day seven
what i’m letting go
There’s a weird vibe out there lately. It’s like I’m walking to wherever I’m going and getting hit from all sides with all sorts of shit. And it’s not like I even care or am particularly angry about it. It’s just how it is right now. And it’s fine. Because where I’m going, I can’t take any of it with me.
Tomorrow I take off for the country. I’m driving upstate with the cat and taking a long weekend to myself. I didn’t want to still be traveling alone at age thirty-six, but this time I feel like I need to do it. Because the world I’m currently in right now does not need me. And so I’ll go find my own to be comfortable in.
It’s not that I mind what’s going on. I’m just finding less of a need to complain about it. I’d rather comment or point something out, hoping some living person may hear me and want to join the conversation. I’m watching something else going on that I’m completely not a part of, and it’s fine. People who’ve been political institutions for decades are more and more in the news lately, and it’s getting to a point where I’d like to never hear their names uttered ever again for as long as I live. They are the ‘elite’ people who are somehow worthy of praise and adulation simply for existing. They may as well be inanimate objects for people to worship. Being in awe of another person was always odd to me. I could never do it. But something tells me these people are getting their last taste of the good life. And I couldn’t be happier to put them all behind me, too.
There’s a world I’m ready to live in, and it’s not the one I’m currently sitting in. It’s just been a bit of a maze in finding my way out.
what i’ve discovered
Everyone I ever interacted with as a kid, I considered my friend. Even if it was just a brief time together. I remember being at the shore with my family when I was around eight, and there was this kid named Bryan who I met while on the beach. We hung out, dug holes in the sand, and went in the ocean together. He had sand in his hair, which I initially thought was seagull shit until he showed me it was just wet sand. We spent the whole day together, and ran into each other again the next day. It was his last day down the shore, so we only hung out for a bit. I never even came close to seeing him again. But he was enough of a “friend” to me that I wrote about him during a third grade school assignment of what we did on summer vacation.
I kind of like that childhood innocence about making real connections, however brief or random they are. I still say “friend” to this day because that’s what it was. It’s as though those memories become glorious statues in the labyrinth of my mind, forever preserved in how I remember them, standing as a sort of shrine, not for worshipping but remembrance. They’re there to revisit when the time is right or necessary, and the memory never has to change. It can just be carved in stone for all time. It’s the right kind of tribute; a respite when searching for a new way out of the tangle.
Also wanted to note that a seagull ended up shitting on my head that trip, which I was later horrified to know it wasn’t just a bunch of sand.
What i hope to find
My two-year therapeutic relationship came to an end over a year ago after one-too-many pandemic-era telehealth appointments. I felt like I had come to my natural conclusion with therapy and found a way to say goodbye to the process. But the conclusions made during the sessions are still present in my life now.
There was one time we were speaking about how miffed I was that my relationship wasn’t going in the direction I wanted it to. We were coming to the tail end of the session, but I had one final thought before she ended things: “Sometimes I think reality will never be as good as what’s in my head.”
“Aha,” she began, “That’s something we’ll have to speak more about in our next session.” And off I went, that thought on my mind for the rest of the day. It plagued me. It caused me to rethink literally everything I was working so hard to unravel. It felt like I was creating scenarios that weren’t based in reality, and therefore could never happen. I was wasting my time on something that would never be. It became a mix of disappointment and “what’s the point”ment. There was no need to chase the impossible, so I may as well have forgetten about it.
Now, while I do feel like I’m consciously idealizing what I wish to happen, I no longer think I’m wasting my time on it. I’ve spoken of this before, how we all manifest our own reality. I like to think that’s what I’m doing, even if I don’t see the results right away. I know I’m a wide-eyed idealist, but I think it’s all possible. I’ve gone outside the hedge maze and am taking an overview look at my path, noticing all the spots I’ve manifested along the way. It’s okay to dream it, and it’s okay to find how the real world works with me in it. I’ve seen enough shit to know I don’t want to bring it with me into the next plane of existence.
I’m not mad about it, I’m not disappointed. I’m simply moving on from all of it. What I’ve sculpted will still live on no matter what. There’s just less of a dependence on the memory of it all.
balanced & fair 