i'm trying

Trying to step back. Trying to get some perspective. Trying not to jump to conclusions. I'm trying to act from a place outside of my feelings, outside the emotions that are telling me to feel a certain way, a way that is not appropriate or deserved. I'm trying to trace back the steps of my assumptions, my leaps and emotional linkages and triggers.

Because I shouldn't feel this way. Or at least if I have to, if I'm stuck here for the time being, feeling uncomfortable and unsettled and disconnected, I can at least hover somewhere above the uncomfortableness in relative peace, knowing that a storm is brewing down below, my emotions all entangled and thorny and swollen.

Perhaps that's just it; was my ego bruised? I started out at a deficit from the moment I woke up, arising from a startling dream that was interrupted by the alarm. In it was an old friend, a person who is not longer a 'friend,' a person who, on multiple levels in our mutual past, betrayed me. She was so vivid, she was so real; I felt violated. She was there, we were talking and I was telling her how I felt, why she was wrong and how she had hurt me. Before she could respond we were split open by the incessant dinging of my alarm, and she vanished, forever emblazened in my memory as just another person who, yet again, will never be held accountable. As far as my subconscious knows, I'm permanently vulnerable, forever standing in front of her, wishing for consolation. Needing her to acknowledge my pain. Needing her to pick me over them.

Why do I need her, though? What is it about my last memories of her that compel me to seek and desire her acceptance, even now? For various reasons I shall not explicate here, I cannot contact her; it would be dangerous, it would be threatening and terrifying. But she (as a metaphor for many) is holding hostage such an important and instrumental part of my mind, a part that gets accessed and sparked daily as a result of my current friendships. She needs to be uprooted.

In summation, I'm trying to step back. Release and breathe. It's so much harder to do than it should be. I'm trying to remember that my thoughts and my feelings aren't necessarily reality; that I don't have to succumb to them if I don't want to. I'm trying to be mindful about it.

I'm not a religious person, and generally I'm okay with that. Sometimes, though, I find myself wanting something. I want a community, I want to believe in something bigger than me, I want to make self-improvements guided by some larger philosophy that is logical, and plausible, and which doesn't denigrate me or anyone else in the process. A practice that doesn't influence political groups; a practice that truly and inherently advocates for peace and unity, and doesn't just preach it and then spend its efforts causing strife and hostility.

I had a practice for a while, a certain Buddhist group. It just never quite struck me, I could never allow myself to
siiiink
into it,
the way everyone else seemed to. The way I was expected to. There was always an edge, there was always a cognizable air of superiority, indoctrination, and prosthelytization that warned me against fully submitting to its teachings. On its face it was practically perfect, based on my parameters and desires for a spiritual practice. It spoke repeatedly about the value of world peace, about a culture and a world of collaboration and determination and working through personal and shared struggles. It seemed to stress egalitarianism, community, study and mutual appreciation between leader and follower. I kept getting stuck though, on why there was a living leader at all? Isn't that why I navigated away from Christianity, these fellow humans relegating themselves to be above everyone else, one step (or a quite a few) closer to god than I? My question was always, how does he (because aren't they, 99% of the time, male?) know any better than me what god wants? Why do I need to worship through someone else, another regular person (because under the garb and ritual and incense and self-aggrandizement, that's what they are) to get to god? So it lost me. It's not my truth, and it was never a positive force in my life.

I shed it, I denounced it and I went floating down the streams of agnosticism, philosophy, atheism, and my own belief system, a collection of observations and conclusions about human behavior, hopes about humanity and about what any sort of god would be like. And, if I never find another suitable practice, I'll be okay with that. But because I feel like I want something there, something more than there is, and because I haven't exhausted the possibilities, I think I'll go searching. I'm hoping my summer in Thailand will inform this part of my life, will expose me to otherwise unknown and unknowable practices, will teach me whatever lesson(s) it is I'm yearning for, whatever I've yet to figure out, and will be positive. And will help me be positive. Because, ultimately, isn't that why we all, on some fundamental level, ascribe to a certain religion? Isn't that what each deity sought to convey - that this way, that this practice, is the right one, the one that lifts you up to sainthood by encouraging best human practices? I'm not sure; perhaps many would disagree with this analysis, but I think that's what its ultimate purpose should be.

So I'm searching. Yearning maybe, a little. I feel like my heart is opening up in anticipation of my upcoming experience, my three month hiatus from the life I've built here. It's trying to be positive, trying not to focus on what I'm leaving, but on what I'll be gaining and on making it as good as possible. See, my fear of being stagnant and resigned to my place compelled me to take this leap, this risk and adventure, and I'm doing my best to embrace it and keep my mind on the positive, rather than ruin what hasn't even begun by letting the sadness and fear shade and color what I hope will be one of the most important and memorable experiences of my life. What will open doors for me and my sweet, in our careers and our lives, what will create a new baseline in my life about what's normal, what's acceptable, and what ultimately will make me happy. Feeling conflicted is the worst; I'm trying to head-off the bad and revel in the wonderful.

Because it's just so apropos: Lives, by Modest Mouse, recently touted as one of six songs that best embody our humanness.