The fray

Lying awake in the heat of another dry California night, the ceiling fan doing its best to combat the oppressive airless evening, it takes everything in me to think of reasons not to be concerned with the future. 

In a spectacular display of fireworks and nostalgia, past has collided with the future and is wreaking havoc on my present. A wise woman once told me I have a high need to control. Ha! Tell me something I don't know...

Like the tug of war I feel between coasts, my heart feels the tug of war to decide the undecided out of fear that my fate has already been decided, and round and round the circle goes.

I try so hard to bring tomorrow into today hoping I can cushion the inevitable fall, the inevitable disappointment, the knowledge that eventually I will wake up and be 45, married with a minivan full of kids, another in the long line of cars driving off a cliff of monotony and meaningless existence. 

I want so badly to have someone read the next chapter in my life and tell me what to prepare for. So much for enjoying the journey, I want to read the last page. For the first time in my life I am beginning to understand how fearful I really am.  

An inflated sense of self leads me to the fun-house mirrors of my own power. Distorted, there is a decided exaggeration of either my unimportance, or my power to destroy and basically fuck up. The pressure breaks me too easily. 

Alone, alone in a place of isolation, its much easier to battle the voices. Its much safer for everyone. Others are not subject to the danger of my choices, and I... I am much safer from theirs. My baggage is my own somewhere else. Alone, I can carry it easily, hiding it when necessary, or bringing out for a purpose. When my space is invaded, when I am forced to interact, to speak, to make conversation... to love and be loved, things get complicated. 

How do you involve someone in the push and pull and of my tides? Tides that are less subject to the moon and more subject to the unknown, and thus, much less predictable. I fear taking chances myself so much less than allowing someone to taking a chance on me. I know how insane I am, do they? 

The past keeps pressing in, pulling me back into the fears, the emotions, the inertia of what I used to be, what I once was, what I was able to leave behind.  Like shadows trailing close behind, it continues to remind of the mistakes I barely survived, propelling me to chase the blurry image of the "what-ifs" around every corner. I fight the change I want so bad, fearing where it will take me, what it will require for full expression.

I guess at the end of the day, the hope, the secret hope, buried deep inside, reveals itself in the prayer that who choose to risk are not only aware, but strong enough, stable enough to handle the outcome of betting on the long shot. The grandiose, illusory vision of myself prays that they see the whole picture, and in sober consciousness join the fray.