Day Three hundred and thirty six - One month off

So here we are, with a month to go until the end of the year, and until the completion of this endeavour. I'm not sure whether or not I shall be writing about the year's outcome, though I do know what the final two posts will be. But as it stands, and as I look back, jesus - this year has not been easy so far. It has been, by no means, a bad year - it's just been hard. And it needed to be hard, I realize, because had I gone on the way I was going I don't think I'd be alive right now. There was a very bad month - May - where I almost lost myself again, but I managed to pull myself from that abyss. And that took a lot, it took a lot of me, and from me. But it did set me on a path where I'll be on the way to finding myself again, though I know it may yet take years before I feel like my old self again. Before I look in the mirror and recognize myself again. It also opened up for me the opportunity to really consider the changes I want to implement in my life from next year on, to trace a new and different route away from here. 

And change has been on my mind. Especially after the events of these past few weeks, especially after this last week in particular. When I wrote about the date I went on, and how about I had spoke about what I thought had been my midlife crisis, there's something important that I didn't mention. And I don't even know how to properly explain it, and it has do with change. There were two opposing views about change, inside me at the time. On one hand, I do feel that by my nature I am very averse to change. On the other, I've always had the desire, the will to change - but not necessarily the resolve to do it. So back in 2007 it seemed that everything was changing, everybody was changing, and I only wanted to be me. I raged against change, I loathed the notion of change just because, change without any proper impetus to move someone forward. I then understood the change I saw all about me as a form of complacency on others to fit in, to be just a part of something, to belong, whatever. I didn't see it as anything positive. But hey - that was me, that was then. I've grown, and I've changed, I'm a very different guy from who I was back then. I don't like who I was, and at the time I didn't like myself either. 

And obviously, I now view change in a wholly different light. At 30, I wasn't mature enough. I just wasn't. I was already breaking, at the verge of broken, and pain still informed a lot of my actions. The shit I did back then... well, if where I've been is the penance I pay for those sins, then it's a penance earned, and a penance deserved. But even that I can change away from. I couldn't see then, when I was younger, that we're always changing, and in some cases staying still in the same place doesn't mean we didn't change one bit. This year alone, I changed a lot, and so much of that change came from me being right here where I am, writing, thinking, pondering about what I was going to do next. I knew that somewhere along the way, I had to start taking chances again - and I did, even if only for me to understand that there are some things that are just not meant for me. Those are lessons, lessons learned, and catalysts of change. It will be those changes I've implemented - and will follow through on - the will fuel my way to where I intend to be. But this doesn't happen quickly, and this doesn't happen easily, and not without a great deal of pain.

I had a pretty bad day this week. It destroyed me so much, that it took me two days to recover from it. And I came out of that day with such pain inside me that I found myself pushing me far beyond what my body can physically handle right now. For two days, I went above and beyond, and today I find myself on the brink of exhaustion. I punished myself on account of that bad day, and now my body punishes myself. It's still koyaanisqatsi, for me, and that balance, that needed balance will take a long time to fully arrive. And I have to change how I handle my bad days, how my mind deals with my bad days. Instead of punishing myself, I have to learn to accept that one bad day doesn't mean that I have to plunge myself into the depths of a fathomless chasm. That has to change, and as a song that I absolutely adore says : 'Just look at the stars above, things that seem still are still changing.'

One of the great loves of my life lived by a motto : 'Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis'. Everything changes, and we change with them. I didn't understand those words. I didn't believe those words. It's only change, and I'm only changing.