Day Three hundred and thirty two - Step by step

I didn't want this year to end, and me having made the decisions that will be in effect as of next year, without feeling that I had at least  tried. That I had given it all I got, that I had shot my shot, that I had seen the possibilities of what could never realistically never be again. So, to that end, this past month I went on two dates, and those went just as I expected they would. It ended with me paying for dinner on both occasions, something which I don't mind, but I knew fairly soon that nothing else would be on the cards. More than feeling that the person I was with was wrong, in some way, for me - I felt that I was absolutely wrong for them. It's a feeling I have, that I have had for a long time, even when I was at my prime I still felt that bitter pang deep within my core. And now I feel it doubly so, what with me being so far from my true self still, not myself but an echo of a whisper that knew my name, a ghostly apparition gazing forlorn at distant shores, and there am I, so far from shores I've yet to reach. What, in me, can be found appealing? Nothing, and it truly matters not. 

I came home yesterday feeling tired and sad, and to keep my mind from going haywire, I buried my head in work - I only stopped to start writing this because my company's system closes down for updates for a couple of hours. If I'm busy at work, I am not lost in thought, but what do I do now? I think, and overthink. And I'm remined of something I told my last date as we walked about after dinner, where I told her that my midlife crisis had occurred - I'm pretty sure - when I turned 30. There were two concurrent things that were causing me stress back then : my budding relationship which wasn't budding at all, but rather maybe ought to have been pruned at a far earlier date; I wasn't ready to settle down, in any way shape or form, and that would have been my fate, should I have chosen it. I did not. But also I had decided that, as I went into this new stage of my life, I would do away with all negative things I had been carrying, and that meant forgiving some very bad things that had happened to me family-wise. Even before I got to do that, though, what happens? I get into a tiff with my brother, and all those resolutions fell by the wayside. And that left my mind in a not really great place - at the time I was unhappy with pretty much everything in my life, especially with myself. And I thought, fuck it, I'll just become a robot, I'll just become this emotionless, uncaring machine, that looks like and thinks like everyone else. I'll happily accept the role of the cog on a wheel, undistinguishable from so many others. I never did give in to those urges. I could never, ever be content with being something other than myself, though even then there were already some important bits missing. I only felt whole in my life once again after that, and never again since those long gone days.

What sparked my train of thought that led me to this post was, in fact, me reminiscing about the second date I went on, where - besides the midlife crisis talk - we discussed matters of faith and belief. When I wrote this post some four year ago, I wrote a little about my relationship with higher powers. My belief remains unchanged, I know where I see God, and where I feel God. But since the time of that writing I've felt somewhat disconnected from the divine, and I am certain that it's something that has deepened due to absence of love in my life. That's something I've come to accept, and understand, and in the future must come to accept completely. But there is yet love in me, and there is yet a connection to the divine. There is yet a hope that hope might bloom, though I do not actively hope for it. It is in those solitary moments where I find myself engrossed in verse or prose, or in the melody of those Euterpe has blessed with her light, that I find solace. Solace, but not true peace. Quiet, but not true purpose. Contentment, but not true happiness. There is love, yes, but not true love. Though I read and re-read Gerard Manley Hopkins's 'The Windhover', and feel my heart swell with love, and feel connected to something higher, feel moved, feel lifted, I realize more and more that maybe only a severe form of asceticism will take me further towards where I have to be. Where I want to be. Where I need to be. Away, alone, northwards.