Still no dinosaur-post. I promise, I'll get to it this week, though. Just not today.
I'm going to Dallas on Wednesday. I don't really want to say why because I'm not quite to the "put it out in public for all the world to see" stage of dealing with it yet. Suffice it to say, there are times in life when the metaphorical crap hits the proverbial effing fan and it's good to get the band back together while you all figure out what to do next. As much as I hate Dallas, it just seems like a good time for a show of solidarity and togetherness, or at least whatever reasonable facsimile that will pass for such among my crew. It's one of those instances where the degree to which one person can affect another kinda makes me wish God had designed people to reproduce asexually, like sea sponges, but the need for compassion and understanding from others makes me simultaneously thankful that he didn't.
I've been thinking a lot about the metaphor-with-legs I talked about in Saturday's post ever since it happened and the only thing I can really land on with it is just simple and sincere gratitude at having experienced it at all. I don't know how everybody else processes reality, so maybe I'm not that special, but it seems like there's no end to the number of things I've had to learn and re-learn about myself since I quit drinking. It's like I spent 27+ years thinking of myself as a particular kind of person with a specific set of needs, only to wake up one morning and realize that I had totally gotten it all wrong. I mean, other than an overwhelming affinity for the Derek Trucks Band and turkey pot pie, there's pretty much nothing about who I thought I was and how I thought I was wired that hasn't been or isn't subject to change. I always wanted to be a super-relaxed person who never freaked out about stress and difficulty and, once I realized I couldn't just decide to be that, I turned to alcohol and other, harder substances to try and level those emotions out. At first, it worked, but it came with a cost: not only did I not freak out about anything, but I wasn't passionate about anything and I lost the ability to really want anything at all for myself. Everything about my life was just an effort to get out from under any type of painful experience as quickly as possible with as little effort as possible and get back to being relaxed and comfortable. If I had to whittle it all down to a motto, it would've been "Just go with the flow and don't make waves."
What's really interesting is what a hypocrite I was. In avoiding problems from outside sources, I would create problems for myself, basically saving myself from being shoved into a ditch by jumping head-first into it on my own. You never really spare yourself any hardship, you only remove the question of when it's going to happen and whose fault it will be when it does. It's such a stupid and petty quibbling of pride, but one I took very seriously and wasn't prepared to let anyone talk me out of.
I guess that's why Saturday was such a surprise to me and why I'm still at odds with myself about how to handle this trip to Dallas. The climbing trip was so out of character for who I used to be and the trip coming up will be something of a litmus test to see whether or not that character difference is evidence of genuine change or just an arbitrary fluke. Historically/statistically, I don't go anywhere without a plan, even if it's a terrible one that will screw up everything. At the very least, I've always felt a need for some sense of what I'm walking into, and not knowing has only served to make me more irritable and unwilling to stand up and face the music. But I've changed a lot in a relatively short span of time and I keep finding myself neck-deep in situations I wouldn't have gone anywhere near over a year ago. Stepping into something without having made up my mind in advance how it's gonna go rubs against the grain of every instinct I have, and yet it seems like I do it all the time now; like something in going forward with it is calling me out of my suspended adolescence and helping me grow into the man that my body makes it look like I am.
It's just hard not to fight against it so much. I know it gets easier the more you go along with it, but I'm just so inundated with and enamored by the idea of being self-sufficient and trying to work things out for myself. It's such an automated response for me to immediately react to stress by dreaming up these intricate machinations and battle plans for "What we're gonna do now" and start informing everyone around me of what their role should be, regardless of whether or not they asked to be included in it. It's difficult to shut that mechanism down once it gets going and wait for something else to come along, particularly when that something else is a vast and invisible God with his own plans and purposes for which he has asked neither my input nor permission. But he makes very clear promises in the Bible that he will never abandon me or bring me harm which, taken on the whole, is good news, as it seems he is resolved to make a man of me, with or without my consent.
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