Sunday, October 4, 2015

I'm Not Ready to Write Yet. I'm Having a Conversation with Disappointment

I'm not. I'm not ready to write yet because it feels totally unnatural for me to do what seemed to be effortless when it was effortless.

It feels jagged and choppy and uncomfortable to sit here and write. It feels like my life! I'm not ready to write because I feel the ick of my life spilling out onto the screen. I feel it's stickiness pulling at all the words, except it is not pulling them out, but rather preventing them from moving at all.

I'm not ready to write yet because I feel exhausted with my life. Every day I wake up with optimism (the level of which is entirely relative to the amount of optimism I woke up with the day before or hope to wake up with tomorrow) only to be shown new levels of low.

I am learning that disappointment may be the most challenging of states to work through. Going on nine months of being so keenly aware of disappointment is both a blessing and a curse. It blesses me by forcing me to be grateful and find moments of joy and celebrate them. It curses me by throwing me into stints of anxiety and depression. While most states I have been able to work my way out of with the tools that I have, disappointment comes out of no where, takes me by surprise with a guise of hopeful charm and then tosses me down and laughs at me.

Nowadays I get up much quicker and its laugh isn't quite so taunting. I half expect it now. Sometimes I wonder if I put myself in the way of disappointment just to see how much I can take; how strong I can become; how fast I can get up and keep moving; whether I can become agile enough to play it's game and perhaps one day be able to throw it down. Only if I was able to reach that state, I would not laugh. I would just look disappointment in the eye and say, "Are you done...because I am." And I would hold it down there, like a misbehaving dog, until it submitted and said, "Yes. I am done. You win." At which time I would remind Disappointment that it is not about winning and losing, it is about coexisting and understanding. I haven't decided if I will leave Disappointment down there or if I will offer a hand to lift him back up. I'm not ready to write yet.

Can I forgive Disappointment? I'm not ready to write yet.
Can I tell Disappointment that I'm ready to live a life with him in my existence yet? Not ready to write that yet either.
Do I understand that Disappointment is inevitably a part of life? Yes. And what I need from Disappointment is a helping hand back up after he knocks me on my ass! I need Disappointment to look me in the eye and say, "Are you going to keep going?" "Are you going to go live life anyway?" "Are you going to let it go?" "Are you going to work at it?"

Maybe I'm ready to write now.

No comments: