Wind

I woke up to a beautiful but very cold day, the last days have been getting increasingly colder, but now the open blue sky that didn't have more than a few floating feather clouds when I walked from P.'s place minutes ago became gray, low and menacing, and rain is streaming down the windows. I am in my living room, I left P. sleeping his weekend sleep at his place.

It was a hell of a week. Somehow I lost inner balance. But only somehow, because I didn't lose control. I mean I lost control, but not uncontrollably. One of the things that stuck with me from the "Do One Thing Different Book" is that the author says we all have limits. Obese people maintain a certain weight. Junkies stop at a certain level of addiction. We bully and torture ourselves, but up to a point. We travel the rut, back and forth, repeating our errors, our pains, our remedies, and the rut deepens gradually, but rarely do we push out. What happened this year I think, and that is why it was the most beautiful, yet difficult, year of my life so far, is that I stopped doing that. Not all the time. I still go back to the comforting stink of self-abuse (mostly verbal/mental). But I was forced to try something different. And it is terrifying. I am so scared sometimes I feel frozen, but I keep moving on, and somehow with the movement, I get over the next hurdle.

I remember when I used to rollerblade, I'd go into these vacant underground parking lots on the weekend, five or six or more levels into the ground, and they would have these black rubber speed bumps I would jump over, which I would strain to see in the growing darkness of those pits as I ventured further, picking up speed, going down slopes between levels, rounding corners and never being quite sure whether the odd random car of a productive weekend worker would appear or not until I passed on to the next level, and I would be so scared, gaining momentum in those creepy spaces so far from sunlight and air. I would be so scared that a patch of petrol or engine oil would send me slamming into the cement, but I kept going. My knees were sometimes shaking before I set, my pulse was eccelerating and my hands got clammy even as I fastended my blades on. I was so scared. But afterwards, when I was done and emerged into the fresh air and sunlight, I was exhilirated. And whenever I got over my fear, I felt such a buzz, even when no one was there to watch me, because I often went alone. But that is a theme in my life, fighting the fear, because even the simplest things sometimes scare me, like facing my bosses, my friends, even my bosses, asking my collegues to move some social gathering into my apartment, inviting people over for a birthday party, facing P.'s family, childhood friends and neighbours over Christmas and New Year's, speaking publicly about my work to a room full of strangers or worse, competetive collegues, speaking a strange language in a strange land, another strange land, going home. Sometimes I get tense making love, I get performance anxiety, I fear taking too long to come, or sounding wierd, or looking wierd and unattractive, pathetic, no matter how many times I have been told that I look incredibely sexy.
My bosses are talking now about sending me alone to a massive Asian Giant I have never visited, to manage my own project, and I fall back on my disease, and rightly so, but I wonder how much of that is an excuse, because I am afraid, just like I would be if I did anything else, and there are no guarantees in life, and the only thing certain is that we have to live it to the full, and the wind gathers me and places me in different places, with different people, situations, environments - so many in the last years, so many in my life - sometimes it lays me down softly, sometimes it smashes me so hard I break something, but keep going like I did when I broke my arm, like the sun that just reappeared after that short violent downpour that started and finished while I was typing these words. And the whole planned year lies ahead, the timeline I made with my bosses, schedulled full of events, conferences, trips, and my own personal timeline that I never verablized - love, family, friends, hospital, writing, work with all its many dimensions, learning new things, unlearning old, trips to new and old places, homesickness, laughter, love again... all clouds drifting in and out of my life, raining on me, letting the sun shine through, keeping me open to change, to flow, to the wind that is now coming in gusts along with the sunshine, rattling the window, shaking the yellowing leaves off the trees planted neatly in my street.