Only In Dreams

It’s some time before 9am on Saturday. I woke up with some recollection of a dream I can barely remember because life always starts out that way. Needing my attention immediately for some trivial act or noise I couldn’t help making this early in the morning. It seems like lately every thing I have to do somehow becomes a major issue to everyone else around me, and right now tbh, I wish there weren’t anyone around me.

I have not had the easiest time assimilating myself back into society. I come from a broken social scene, one where we express how we feel about something like I was taught to, but my words seem to fall on deaf ears, or impatient minds that can’t take a second to listen to what I’m saying or even allow me to finish this goddamn sentence in my head.

So I write it all down just in case the cancer that is forming in my brain needs an avenue to escape from. I wish there was a road I could walk down where I felt confident in the direction it’s taking me, but I seem to be stopping every now and then at almost every exit wondering if that’s the way I should go right now.

Not everything in life that works for me now is a sustainable act that I can keep up for a long time. It feels like the new challenge is living in a situation that is bearable, but could use some improvement that I know would work, but I can’t get the words out before I need to be able to pivot and keep going on.

I just wish I knew where the road is taking me. If I’m going to be one year older in one months time I want to be able to look back on the past year and really feel like I have evolved, and made some solid connections, and that the issues I had then were just faded memories now. I guess in some way it is like that, but why does it always seem like when one problem gets resolved, another murder mystery pops up begging for me to solve it.

Is there no one else around who is able to figure things out through deductive reasoning? Am I ever going to find peace of mind and body at the same time, or is this just a pipe dream that someone sold to me back in the day when I used to believe in my dreams?

The truth is, I kind of believe my dreams more than I believe my reality. Maybe that is an adolescent or immature way to live, but this is coming from someone in their forties who looks like they could be in their twenties, but who has enough life experience to convince someone that I’m in my thirties.

BTW, have you met anyone over the age of thirty lately? I have. They are like big kids who refuse to eat their vegetables but who also have mortgages, responsibilities and children, but who still refuse to listen to reason from another human being, unless that reason comes from that rectangle in their living room.

My dreams don’t lie to me, they have no idea what a lie is. My dreams don’t keep things from me, like what they are thinking, or the reason why they chose this course of action. They do, however create a cypher in my head that I spend the next few hours trying to decrypt, but by then the obstacles of the day have taken center stage and I stand there wishing I could just go back to sleep.

The Trade Off

It’s been about a year since I moved here. I can’t believe it’s only been, one year. You would think I have been living here for awhile since I know my way around,I have friends who think I’m a good person, and I hold a job where everybody knows my name. It takes ten years to become an overnight success, is what they say about Hollywood, but it only takes a year to be a success in Santa Rosa.

I don’t know how I’m doing it, but I think it’s a choice I have to make every day. Thing is, my life is good now, maybe even great, but even though the big things fell into place quite quickly, it’s the little things that fall to the ground, with help from gravity.

You might see me smiling at nothing when I’m stopped at a red light, or tapping on my dashboard to the beat of the song on the radio, or perhaps I’m holding hands with an attractive girl in the mall and you might think I’m happy, but don’t think for one second I didn’t earn it, or that I don’t have to work for it, because I do. I work for it, by making the little things a challenge. A challenge I don’t remember choosing to accept, but at this point I think it’s a trade off.

Yes, the struggle is real, and as soon as I can grip the tips of a plastic grocery bag and open in less time than it takes to write out this sentence, I will continue to have issues with the every day obstacles life puts in my path. Have you ever bought a box of band aids at a CVS, only to lose them in your car on the way to the Safeway, after you spent a good ten minutes looking for them with the flashlight on your phone and been unsuccessful? Then, when you finally give up the search and go into the store, you come out fifteen minutes later and the box of band aids is laughing at you from the dashboard where you swore you looked. That was just earlier tonight for me. Just one debacle in a series of simplistic routines that go awry more often than not.

Still…I can’t complain. And that’s not good for a blog with complaining in the title of it. I mean, truth be told, I’d rather have not much to write about because I’m out living the good life, then stringing together a bunch of depressing words and phrases to try and explain the pain, hurt, and aloneness I’m feeling. I guess it’s hard to feel like a loner if you don’t really feel alone.

I can remember a few months back where I asked to be shown the way. It wasn’t like some scene out of a religious scripture where I got down on my knees and prayed to God, but it was kind of the modern version of that. Maybe I asked the question out loud, or I sent God an email, I don’t know, point is, the last few times I’ve come to a cross roads and don’t know where to go next, I’ve been shown the way to go by someone coming into my life. And for the record, most people have exited my life the last few years. I didn’t understand why, they all left, but I get it now. It’s how we change as people.

I have stayed out of the spotlight for many years now. I went underground at some point in 2017 and since then I kind of got used to my life. It was safe, and controlled and only I knew the combination to the file cabinet with all the bad stuff in it that can hurt me. You know what stuff I mean, talking about things, human interaction, a healthy social life, love, trust and hope. All of those things were absent from my life until these last few months. So I don’t know when I went from being a loner to not having to be alone to know who I am, but I’m sure as hell never going back there anytime soon.

There’s something about this life that won’t let me go too far without knowing the safe word, and there’s something to be said about that. I guess for the first time in awhile I feel safe, and I feel ok with how it all went down. But I still have to work at it, which is why I have had to adjust the position of my laptop twelve times in the last three paragraphs.

I know what you’re thinking….Is it worth it? Is having the perfect life, one that you have always thought was possible but not a reality until now worth the trade off of dropping things on the ground or having them fall into your lap just because you moved an inch to the right a bit? Yes. It is worth it. It’s fucking great up here, and it feels good because I don’t miss anything or anyone anymore. I’m in it.