An Addict's Pennance

I want to be punished. I don't want things that give me pleasure. Friends, good food, a warm bed, hot showers.

I have been invited to join a business venture in something that I enjoy. Something that would also be quite reputable. In an industry I admire, using a lot of the talents that come naturally to me. That I've honed, and that bring me joy. Writing among them.

Besides the 'normal' (if there is such a word) factors that would slow someone down when being excited about going into a business (e.g.: the need for capital, proper research, thought-out plans with various contingencies), there is another conflict. I'm not excited about it.

Its fun to think about. Its great to long for it. But to think of it as a possibility feels undeserved. I shut down. I get gripped by a cocktail mix of anxiety, apathy, irritability, mistrust, and regret when I think about it. I don't want to commit energy to something that could potentially fulfill me or make me happy because, contrary to personal evidence, I don't believe it will fulfill me or make me happy.

So I make myself out to be this suffering martyr. "I cannot enjoy life because I'm paying for my sins." Very romantic. Very self-indulgent. That is what bothers me. Not that a goal is out of reach, not that I lack the capital to simply throw myself into a project and see where it leads. What bothers me is that I feel unworthy of prospects that might make me happy.

Its a lot like flirting. Its fun to flirt, fun to dream and hope for a meaningful relationship. But when things begin to involve any kind of commitment, other people seem to lose interest in me. I was about to write that last sentence the other way around, stating that I lose interest out of subconscious fear or unworthiness that translates itself into apathy, lack of attraction, or boredom on the surface. But it just hit me, just now, that it has been the opposite. I do step out. I do open myself to where something might lead, even if I'm not convinced that they're right for me, or any variation of the "the one" philosophy. And something happens, the littlest thing. A rescheduled date, a week or so without return communication, things that I interpret to be a sign of the same disinterest and apathy I sometimes put on others or on things. And then I violently recoil.

I turn back into a shell and surround myself with things that hurt me in order to reinforce the idea of undeserving. In order to run away from the here and now, and simply archive the presently perceived rejection as part of a macro-cosmic order of things pertaining to the undeserving. The accursed. Again, eager to romanticize reality. It is like a religion used to explain war, or a drought, or a childhood/genetic makeup that results in addiction, or heartbreak...anything except the combination of accountability for choices and the fact that some things, like weather phenomena, just happen.

Perhaps that's what I like about diet and exercise so much. It isn't what I crave, and involves a light amount of physical stress, pain, and self-denial. It would feel like being punished.

Things could have turned out differently. I might have ended up dead, or in jail. Forced into a rehabilitation center. Somewhere that someone else's orders and not my own discipline or motivation keep me clean, and learning, strengthening my body, mind, and spirit.

I'm too exhausted to examine these thoughts. To identify the assumptions and look at them from different perspectives. And I think that's okay. I can print this out and go through it later. Its likely an important step to just put all of this down. In any case, for better or worse, this is how it happens. This is what I write. This is the day that I have.

I'm writing here what I cannot tell you in person. In a world of reality, a person does himself no service by fanciful dreaming. But realistic optimism takes much temperance and restraint on my part. I am a fanciful dreamer.

Every day I exercise. I work. I study. I create. I do everything in my power to temporarily avert my mind's gaze from your eyes. Your voice. Your thoughts. It helps. It helps marvelously. And just when I had begun to forget you, miraculously, out of character, you appear again. More than likely, just as a friend. Realistically, that's the most probable outcome for our continued relationship, if it is to continue at all.

At my best and strongest moments, that is enough for me. In fact, the thought of never seeing you again is a reality as acceptable as a sunset or a debt needing repayment.

But at my weakest, at my vulnerable moments, I would wish for the opportunity to get to know you all over again. To introduce myself to you. To assume that the old strengths I've unearthed from myself as well as the new strengths I've discovered and developed would somehow change the way that you see me. And as we both recovered from lifelong wounds, we would forge a friendship that would become a bond stronger than most.

Yet I dream. And I know that upon awakening I'll find what I've always found. Life isn't ideal.

This no longer depresses, me, however. I do not need an ideal life in order to love living. In order to work towards building myself a true, honorable man that I can be proud to call "me."

Still, healthy habits are exhausting. Living honorably is exhausting, and seldom rewarded by anything outside inner peace and the love of close friends and family.

I am filled with gratitude for the people that make up that group. And still, a quiet calm voice whispers longingly for you to be among them. So that when I'm wounded, even though I myself possess the strength to heal and rise and continue onward, I might still have you to help tend the wound. To sing to me of your own victories and travels, igniting heart and aiding to focus mind on the battles at hand.

It may be vain to think of such things. But what child of the sun has ever had full control over their dreams?

I now only long to quiet that longing for a new beginning with you by setting these words to type out my emotions onto this digital confidante. That way, I can continue living and surviving, building mind and body and heart and household, unencumbered by those fanciful dreams that would take the place of a more realistic optimism.

"I cannot stay within these walls, gaze upon you every day, and be denied your touch. I've never turned from challenge, yet I am without strength to face this one."

How well those words hit close to heart. And from such an unlikely source. It seems the world is not yet without good writers in different positions. That brings warmth to heart as well.

It pains me to let go of you. But I know its for the best. I will not force anything to bring us together. But I won't hide from it, if it should happen, either. I won't hurry towards us meeting, but I won't run away from it. I will live with the assumption that we'll never meet again. And if we do, that cordial friends is all we'll be able to be, all you'll see me as, and I you. As much as I'd love to shout from my chest that if ever an accidental spark was reignited, I would move heaven and earth within me and in the world to make things work, those are empty words. Words of a dream.

I will not build my life on that hope.

But I will build a life. I will build a man. A man ready for whatever happens to come his way...