Excruciating Change

*please remember these are My Opinions and not hard fact.

Change, most fear it and run from it as fast as possible, some accept it as a part of life and some welcome it with open arms.

I'm in the middle genre, with more of a leaning to the latter than the first way of viewing it.

Change isn't pretty or a comfortable thing to go through 99% of the time, it means drastic shifts in being, in subjective paradigms, in how we interact with the world and the entire universe. The one thing we cannot do with it is stop it from happening. Our bodies change over time, even if we keep the rest of our life on an even consistency - the same routine day in and day out for the entirety of our adult lives. As children and adolescents changes take up most of our time - there is no way to avoid them. As adults we are lulled into the idea that we are now done growing physically and so we can leave those torturous years of constant change behind us.

It is a fallacy to believe so and it is those who hold onto this idea the most who go through the "Mid-life Crisis" when they wake up one day, look in the mirror and no longer recognize the person staring back at them. The scramble to "find themselves again" starts.

There is no need to find oneself, we are always there completely - we just put on blinders to parts and pieces, especially those that have had to change to facilitate continued existence.

I have an advantage, I have had a hard time accepting the person in the mirror as who I am since the first time it dawned on me that this reflected being is what everyone else sees when they look at me. That happened around 4 or 5yrs old I think, but that's neither here nor there.
I simply have never, truly, believed what I see in the mirror. That is not how I look to me without the reflection, nor how I see me in my mind's eye. Possibly this is another sign that I am "crazy" - if it is I do not mind.

Changes can hit hard, they wake us up and drag us out of stagnation. They can make us see parts of ourselves which are downright ugly and force us to apologize for terrible behavior or else go back under the blinders once more.

I have been under a forced major overhaul these last two years. In the process, as more and more of the mud from my stagnate pond gets thrown out onto the banks, I have retreated into a deep and extremely dark depression. I have gone through major relationship problems, surgery, moving, losing many friends and family to death, stepping onto emotionally unstable ground with my teenaged child whom I gave up for adoption after she was born.

I have changed my career path focus 180 degrees and shut myself up like a hermit. I feel as if I have been slapped by my peers in my want to walk away from the community dream and I no longer want anything to do with that life, at all. People are amazed at my new views and wishes in regards to participating on any level in all of it. This is not the place for that and I refuse to say anything more against a group of people I still love dearly - even if we parted ways in less than favorable terms.

So now what? I am single, in a new home and neighborhood, carless, careerless, having had a benign tumor removed from my body, my hair all cut off and I isolate myself from the rest of the world almost completely.

I search for ways to improve my life, but I feel as though I am stuck in quicksand, with no real lifeline to pull myself back up by. I haven't been this close to suicide since I was a teen. My child was always the reason to pull me back long before I got that close.

People who seem closer to enlightenment have told me to let go, to think positive, to meditate, to do this or that, to not do this or that. That my bliss will come from following this path or that one. I let go of everything and found I had nothing to live for anymore, that wasn't exactly blissful. So I reached out and grabbed one of my support system, asked for reminders before I left this world completely.

That is not supposed to be the response to exercising proven methods towards bliss.
I went from "I want bliss, I will try this" face pointed towards optimism to looking around me and finding I am sitting in the front pew of the Chapel Perilious. The exact opposite from where I actually wanted to be.

Well Fuck, now what? It is said when you find yourself here, you must do away with your escapist delusions, face the things you fear the most and dive in further. It is symbolic of a
nonstop catastrophic romance with self-destruction. That this loop will continue until you get a grip.

I do have these problems and I want them to stop. People say to do something about it instead of whining. Well I faced the first hurdle - that I keep trying to escape into fantasy, I've turned my back on the thing I fear the most (my mental illness) and that I need to get a grip.

Talk about hard, when I read what it means to be in the Chapel Perilous I cried for a while, I didn't want to face that I am that far gone from my main raison detre - to be honest, open and willing to change for the better, with and for myself. I have become the exact opposite of my motto for life.

That, my dear readers, is a big slap in the face from the universe.

I want to love, to be open to what life has for me, to meet new people and do exciting things.
If I hole up in my home with my cat and fish, I am not doing any of that.
So I must face my fears, clean myself up and give life another try. At this point it is still like pulling teeth.

I walked away from one life without having anything concrete to move onto, I'm drifting and it's uncomfortable. I need to stop being lazy, grab the bull by the horns and start doing something with my life that's meaningful without depending on others to help me accomplish anything. Yet I also need to learn how to include others who want to be a part of it.

The right road is never easy, that doesn't mean one should give up though and I almost had.

It feels good to write, I'm glad I started this blog.