Notes from yesterday... some stream of conscious stuff I did before bed. Just now having the opportunity to post. After I get this typed out and published, I think I'm going to get in bed and try to get a little rest. When I kept my regular schedule two weekends ago, I had a much better outcome...
I am nearly seconds away from a Bachelor of Science, a degree in the study of Addictionology, the treatment of substance abuse and dependence, and an understanding of the recovery process for which I also have first-hand experience. I've been awarded the top prize of a scholarly arts competition for my submission of a short story that beat out the odds statcked against it, and I've worked as the editor of multiple professional publications.
Somewhat well read and ever seeking more gainful successes, I am always on the hunt to be better informed. I've been student of the year, member of the year, most likely to, and the peer reviewed employee of the year. By no means do I consider myself perfect, but I'm smart. I work hard. And I never give up until I've won Monopoly.
All that being said, I have an admission: when it comes to love and romance and knowing what to do to make something work, I'm a babe in the woods. A novice. A frightened new arrival at a middle school otherwise well populated by hundreds of millions of students who all seem to have matriculated to this point together since infany.
Everything I know about how to make a relationship work is what I learned from the everlasting bond between my parents, while all that I know about what not to do is that which I've witnessed in everyone else.
I was raised on Shakespearean sonnets and knowing that I'm to compare thee to a sun-stroked day, the odes, the Brownings, Jane Austen, and the Brontes. I still believe that Romeo and Juliet did the very best that they could have considering the circumstances and that just because Kate Chopin's heroine swam listlessly and soundlessly into the cold waters of the Gulf doesn't necessarily definitively imply that she wasn't subsequently rescued by the perfect cure to all that ailed her aching heart. I think that Rhett and Scarlett got back together, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy were M-F-E-O, and somewhere, someday, somehow, once upon a time always concludes with a happily ever after parenthetically infused with the understanding of no matter what...because I know that people are basically good at heart. Good always triumphs over evil. No matter what, people always pull through when they stick together.
Maybe it's the rose-colored glasses I want to wear all day and all night - not only because I like that lovely shade of pink, but also because I want my world to actually be rose-colored all the time. Still, I confess that I really don't always know for sure that what I'm doing is right. Is it the right thing forever or just the right thing for right now? And where does the cynicism and uncertainty and long-list of green jaded questions come from that has me ever second-guessing otherwise? And why does it sometimes stick around and get it's nasty, hooky feet in every train of thought? I mean, it's like ever since I found out that I was lied to about Santa Claus and sat in stunned silence upon discovering that Pee Wee's bike wasn't in Texas because there was no basement in the Alamo, I have been forced to think sensibly, to act logically, and to behave in a reasonable fashion - none of which stands a chance when one meets someone worth the time and effort and interest to spend sleepless hours getting to know and thinking of before drifting off to sleep and losing oneself in a dreamy, rainbow reverie where one wonders if maybe it's okay to question or second-guess or re-orient and redirect from. Maybe, sometimes, it's okay to just feel and to enjoy and to get a little giddy and adolescent in one's thoughts and one's actions. Just because so many road blocks are erected for so many others doesn't mean that the real thing - that think from fairy tales and Wonderland - doesn't exist if we just open ourselves to allowing it to exist.
At first, I wouldn't even give this guy much more than a passing smile and thought. Then, I just figured he couldn't, or wouldn't, be interested. And then, I allowed the staunchly Republican inner critic (yeah, it's VERY deep, but it's there) to try to put a boot-encased foot down. And now - I'm not sure. But I'm sure that not being sure is surely just fine. And the negative voice that keeps telling me I ought not to even compose this post, let alone even post this post is something I've decided to ignore just for right now, for today, just to take a bit of a leap and to see what happends. That negative voice might have prevented the submission of an award-winning story or the publication of a paper or the decision to opt to endeavor toward a career of fulfillment in lieu of one that is more certainly financially promising.
It could also be that the negative voice would otherwise prevent me from allowing myself, the babe in the woods, to get past the trees through the forest to the sunshiny Shangri-La just over the next, densely packed hill.
I'm not all-together sure where all that started or even where it was going, but I wrote it, and I kept it, so I decided to post it and give it some time to mature. Maybe there are one or two thoughts in that overly journalistic diatribe that are more worth noting than they appear to be at the surface.
I'll have to come back to this later. Just as I'll have to consider some of the information that my beautiful friend Stacy texted to me the night before last, these things that my blog has revealed to her: that perhaps I need to officially name that for which I am hoping to redeem myself because that topic is a bit unclear, that perhaps I have been fighting far too hard and far too long to make up for a comparatively brief period of irresponsibility in my early twenties for which I carry undue guilt, and that perhaps I eat far more pasta salad than I realized.
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