Therapy

Continuing on with the Forget And Not Slow Down run-through...

"I never thought I'd be
Driving through the country just to drive,
With only music and the clothes that I woke up in."

I had some pretty interesting experiences this summer.  My emotions were running haywire.  One day I felt on top of the world, and the next I was pondering the apparent meaninglessness of llife.  I got a job in Kansas (and subsequently resigned), traveled the country, reconnected with old friends, ended relationships, (re)built new ones, and celebrated true love.  I was happy, sad, angry, depressed, elated, confused, and surprised, sometimes in the span of a few hours.  I walked the streets of Las Vegas, climbed to the top of Yosemite Falls, ruined my car, ran along the Irish Sea with the standard Ireland mist clouding my vision,  shed a few tears at Juliet's balcony, and got a brand new teaching job just miles away from my residence.  It was, as Chuck Dickens wrote in a succinct summation of my life, "the best of times and the worst of times."

It was those times, driving through the desert in Arizona, or through the mountains in Colorado, or at the top of a roadside rockpile in Utah, that made me feel truly alive and aware.  I was alone in the social sense of the word.  But I wasn't truly alone.  I was swimming in a pool of thoughts and feelings.  I was reestablishing my identity.  I was changing, for better and for worse.  The moral of the story here, though, is that it is a personal process.  Oftentimes we forget to be who we ourselves want to be.  We become consumed with fulfilling expectations and fitting into that box that somebody else crafted for us.  But where are our own boxes?

It's taken me a long time.  Too long, or so it feels.  But that's not really the case.  It would be so much worse if I had never figured out that I must answer to myself.  The protagonist was once me.  It could be me again. But, as so often happens, it's up to my personal perspectives.

"This is my therapy,
Because you won't take my calls
And that makes God the only one that's listening
To me."

We are not alone.  We can call it God, we can call it a caring friend, we can call it anything, but we're never alone.  I wholeheartedly believe this.  We will always be cared for, even when our circumstances spiral out of control.  Sometimes we need that reminder.

This is all so familiar to me.  I went through all of this during the summer.  The ups, the downs, the ins, and the outs.  But it was my therapy.  Being alone allowed me to synthesize my thoughts into one coherent life statement.  Of course, I didn't realize it at the time.  It's been a recent development, but I attribute it to my personal reflection periods.  Being alone, being shut down, not being answered...I was, over time, able to channel those initial feelings of abandonment and self-resentment into something much more powerful and contributory.  It sucks, but it's worth it.  Hard to believe I know...

"Loneliness and solitude are two things not to get confused."

I've addressed this before so I won't spend too much time rehashing it here.  It all comes down, once more, to perspective.  If we feel abandoned by a former loved one, it can be so simple for the Loneliness monster to set up camp in our heads and hearts.  His friends Depression and Regret will inevitably set up shop as well, rendering us incapacited until we, at long last, decide to break off the shackles of emotional repression and leap into the next season of our lives.  That's where Solitude comes in.  Being consciously aware of our plight and yet still yearning to reflect and achieve more is what can set us apart.  It is a true pathway to success and eternal happiness.