Truths Spoken Aloud

So its been….  well… a while since I last wrote.  I tend to be honest here and let my inner feelings out.  And I’ve been denying those inner feelings and pushing them down for a while now.  I think I’m done with all that.

Last weekend was Settle’s wedding in Notre Dame.  Beautiful and wonderful.  Lovely to see everyone, although I nearly killed Manny.  Two weeks prior to that I had gone to Arizona for Spring Break to see Megan.  The week before I left for AZ I was seriously considering dropping out of seminary.  I was miserable and unhappy and terrified of the student loan debt I was sinking into.  My mother somehow convinced me to stick it out and get my piece of paper.  Part of that is because I was still denying what I was truly feeling.  Being with Megan was wonderful, but I was still pretty sure I would just stay at seminary.  I had some interesting and good talks with Megan and her husband, Jacob and a lot of food for thought.  Which stewed until Manny flew in for Settle’s wedding.

Aristotle once said, "A probable impossibility is preferable to an improbable possibility."  West Wing explains this the best. 

SAM
He said… what he said was this– he said, "A probable impossibility is preferable to an improbable possibility." The impossible is preferable to the improbable. What did he mean? He meant that it’s okay to have a broomstick sing and dance, but you shouldn’t turn on the radio and hear the news report you need to hear.

In that light, I ended up also going to Indianapolis to see my dad and cousins.  Totally unplanned, improbable and nearly impossible.  Seeing those friends and those family members reminded of what it felt like to be really happy.  To feel wanted and a sense of belonging that is totally lacking in my life.  Megan was wonderful, but we haven’t lived in the same state for over 10 years.  Its just different with us.  It was a different kind of happiness with her.  Couple all that together and now add in my most recent road trip back to western NY.  I had planned this trip to see Mouse’s recital which got canceled. So I wasn’t going to go.  Save money and all that.  Then I thought I should, then I thought I shouldn’t.  Not until Tuesday did I decide I would leave on Friday, spend the weekend and return tonight.

By Thursday, I was so unbelievable miserable with life I was seriously considering suicide.  By this I mean I was arguing with myself about getting help before it got any worse.  I’ve been through this before and I knew enough of the signs to know that things were getting really bad and my ignoring them  was not helping.  There is a level of "Fake it till you make it" that needs to happen.  You have to push and keep pretending you can do things, until somehow they get done.  But its a tight-wire act of balancing the tricking yourself and accepting the idea that you need help.  I’m no longer fooling myself.

These people – Megan, my cousin Matt, Manny and the gang, James, Justin, Mouse, Stephanie, Rhonda – reminded me of what real happiness was in little ways.  It was not until I was standing in Fredonia with James did everything start to really crash down around me.  The paper mache house I had built just crumbled.  The bricks I’ve built up are still standing strong, but the illusion I’ve been living in finally fell down.  That night, after eating nearly nothing all day, I started drinking.  Opened up the vodka bottle and dove in headfirst.  Somewhere between that third drink, painting the reed room and singing in church it finally sunk in and hit me.

I’m miserable.  I want to just end it all.  There is no happiness here for me.  There is happiness for others here, and thats great.  I’m not being smart or snippy, it really is.  But this place is just not for me.  This degree, this school, this life is not for me.  It is killing me.  Completely destroying me from the inside out.  I can’t change this place to be what I need or want it to be.  And that’s okay.  If nothing else, Jenny and therapy taught me that I can’t control other people or their actions.  All I can control is me.  If I am this miserable, I need to do something to change it.  I need to be proactive and make changes and get out of here.

I’ve been talking for a few weeks now to various people about how unhappy and miserable I am.  And I don’t blame any of them for not always knowing how to deal with it.  I wasn’t being completely honest about a lot of things, not just to them, but to myself as well.  Standing outside James’ apartment, saying goodbye, I asked him if he honestly thought I should return to the seminary next year.  He had heard me vent all weekend and I knew that whatever he said would be an honest opinion.  He also has the advantage of knowing me as well as he does.  And he said no.  That was not the end of the conversation, but a huge turning point for me.  As I drove down the highway, I started to cry a bit.  I realized that what he said was exactly what I needed to hear.  I needed the validation of what I already wanted to do.  I needed to know from someone like him, that this wasn’t me punking out or giving up.  This wasn’t about me screwing up or fucking up again.  I tried something and it didn’t work.  So I need to move on to something else.

I stopped in Bowling Green and saw Sarah for about 45 mins over ice cream.  She understood as well and just continued to validate what I was feeling.  I feel like this huge enormous weight has been lifted off my life.  I don’t know exactly what will happen next.  I have some ideas and possibilities and clearly more decisions to make.  Going back home over Christmas break made me realize I don’t want to return there.  That made going back to MI that much easier.  Going back to the old gang for Settle’s wedding made me realize I don’t want to go back to them either.  Not that I leave them behind, but I don’t want to move to Brooklyn and try to recapture what I once had with them.  That, too, is in the past.  Going back to Fredonia this weekend made me realize I don’t want to return there either.  I loved it for what it was while I was there.  But that too is in the past.  Just like "home", the old gang, my parents, Fredonia doesn’t hold anything for me anymore.  I can’t go back and I don’t even want to.  So where do I go from here?

I do have somewhat of a plan of attack.  It just needs to be set into motion.  The hardest thing I can see right now is trying to tell my parents.  I’d prefer to leave them in the dark until I have a better plan laid out.  Whether that means moving to Holland or to Iowa with Sarah, I don’t know yet.  I need to sort somethings out and figure it out.  When I left Calvin the first time, I just packed up and returned home to do that.  It took me a number of months to make a plan and implement it.  I do not want to do that this time.  I need to prove to myself that I can stand on my own two feet and figure it out.  Make my own decisions and lay out my own plans.  I’m terrified of what my parents will say, or even do.  But this is my life, not theirs.  And they can support my decisions or not.  I’m just not ready to discover they aren’t willing to support my decisions.

This is going to be perhaps the most terrifying and freeing week of my life.  But I am going to do this.  I’m going to survive and thrive and move forward.  I refuse to get stuck in a past that can never be recaptured.  I refuse to get stuck in a cycle of unhappiness so deep that I can’t get out.  I refuse to give up.