A Lull for the Time Being

I'm not sure what I'm feeling today.

I was confrontational with one of my best friends yesterday. On her 30th birthday. I kept thinking about how smoking weed is really bad for her, makes her depressed in some way, and I couldn't get it out of my mind. Then she and her other best friend went on to say that I should just tell them at the brunch table; I was hesitant, but relieved to tell her what was on my mind.

I don't know if I truly regret telling her what I did; I don't really feel like I hurt her; It feels more like we had a difference of opinions. I think on some level she is disappointed with what I said and that, "I am against recreational marijuana usage." She went on to counter that she "had been smoking for 15 years," alluding to that she wasn't about to quit.

It was a standoff between friends, between differences in beliefs. I was hurt; she was hurt. We usually agree on most things, have feelings we identify in one another, have life moments that seem totally parallel.

I don't know, there are things that just are not meant to be said. Not out aloud, not to another person. I now believe in keeping secrets, that they can protect, make people feel safe. It's change in my thinking, really, a complete 180 degrees.

A time when I felt liberated and supported when telling a professor the truth about my sadness and frustration with a sorority system--it had been my first time fictionalizing a big life event, and in a college level writing class--but it was also a major story for me about marginalization in an organization, an organization that espouses racial equity between minority groups with that of and in the midst of majority cultures. It was actually a pretty ground-breaking essay for me, come to think of it.

From that moment on, an impressionable 19-year old self, I felt that there was nothing better than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I soul-searched in college, tried to analyze my life calling, or at least settle on something I was truly good at. I didn't really succeed in finding any of that, but it was the journey and experience that mattered more than the grades by the end of my college experience. Not sure if that approach really helped me in reality or real life situations. Hmm. But, I do treasure that academic pursuit that I was on, had owned in some way, but never fully appreciated in all its beauty--that I had the choice and freedom to learn what I wanted to learn, take my own directions and choose my guiding lights. Mentors even? Maybe.

Curiosity drove me, or maybe just escapism from the life I had known growing up in boring ol' Michigan. I escaped into books, into theory, poetry, and into student life. Philanthropy events were the best feeling I had ever felt. I don't know, it was just a time of coming of age, of exploring sexuality, of feeling things for the first time, as a young adult, and of learning what it meant to make your own decisions.

I was supported, always, by my family. Though distant they might have been with their own worries, and wrapped up in dysfunctional family life, they never said "no" to any of my life pursuits. Just sort of a, "are you sure you really want to do that?"

I don't know. I just always came up with these "life-changing plans" or these great life experiences that I just had to do that I thought would be my next big adventure, or eye opening experience. I traveled nearly every chance I got in college. I was so young, full of bravery, and shy excitement.

And somehow I did make it out of my rabbit hole, my psychotic thinking, and my paranoid thoughts that I was hurting a close friend all the time. True, today, I no longer fear how I treat people, I no longer hide when I'm changing clothes in a gym locker, and I am no longer waiting in anticipation of the next word I'm about to say in public.

Confidence? Bravery? Or just darn experience. I don't really know how I got here, or how I was able to pop up from a 5-year long extreme depression. Life was confusing for many years, and very painful for a few. Realizing that I had endured abusive situations was a learning moment, a pivotal lesson in this long, incoherent narrative.

Learning that I, too, could be abusive--even without purpose or intention--was just as equally humbling, and leveling. I never knew, or will know, how I could hurt other people. Only have them explain if they even have the breathe too.

I don't know if I've risen, or if I've really fallen. Fallen out of misery, lack of hope or just fatigue. I feel more like I'm at a plateau, a resting point. What will my next big adventure be? I'm not sure if there will be one. I feel hesitant to think too far into my future anymore, for fear of disappointment now. Where has the wonder and curiosity in the world, and of strangers gone? Where was the wide-eyed, confident coolness that I had matured into after high school? I'm not sure.

Some days, I don't really feel a sense of who I am, or what I've really been through the last 10 year. I feel uncertain for sure.

Instead, a sense of reality, or realness has set in. Maybe that is my next big phase. "Realism," or whatever other agenda I create for myself, really.

I'm living day-to-day, have people that deeply love me in a complex, confusing, nexus kind of way. In a very, utterly flawed and human sort of way. I feel supported and cared for. I feel giving and generous and fair. I feel level-headed and in control. Confident, but not too much. Just the right amount. Yes, I'm trying to be uplifting, but I'm actually lying. Keeping a secret from someone.

Really, I feel somewhat disappointed at all that has happened until now. The dreams I dreamt aren't even that much closer; the mind I wanted to be--a future brilliant mind--no where close. A failure? A feared and hated person, perhaps. A body, broken, unhealthy and abused. No where near the model athlete I once was. The epitome of health, fitness, a badge of my elite athletic talent. Completely gone.

But a soul, I have created. A mind, that is flexible and understanding. Health, that is hopefully not to late to mend, at the least. And in truth, a life that I would never, ever give up.