Progression

On December 18th of last year, I sat on the steps of an empty house on Lafitte Ave. and thought 'I am bitterly unhappy.' The sun was setting, dyeing the western clouds purple, and the air had that cold clarity of early winter. The trees were bare, their geometries exposed, and maybe that nakedness nudged me a little closer to being able to be honest with myself.

I had that thought, and then I buried it and got on my bike. I buried it because I'd spent twenty-nine years burying it; because to acknowledge it would be to recognize that all those days (hundreds of them) getting myself out into the world through sheer force of will were a failure*.

On March 28th of this year, I went to Super Sunday. I drank a beer and ate cookies and watched and danced and reveled in the pretty suits. And then I came home and burst into tears. I think the beauty broke me; I think the pride and freedom and joy on display along Simon Bolivar made me realize how inaccessible those emotions were to me.

In most departments** of my life, I can't believe anything good about myself. I can't even remember nice things people have said or good things I have done. I completely forget them or don't even notice them in the first place. I don't know where or why these habits started. All I know is that it is automatic for me now to put the bleakest possible spin on anything that happens to me or anything that I do.

I have an opportunity now to retell my story. To recalibrate myself. To alter my trajectory. To open up and let go and play and build and create and to feel at home in myself. This is hard. (This is abjectly terrifying, is what I mean to say.) Some days are better than others, and some days are very bad indeed. Some mornings I wake up with my heart racing, and retch at the thought of food, and spend the day choking with anxiety.

But some days I dance across my kitchen***. Some days I am able to laugh fully. Some days I am able to read**** constructively. Some days I can really, truly concentrate at work. I am still struggling. But now I am struggling towards something.

* I am holding close these days some words by, of all people, Cornel West: "Yes it's a failure, but how good a failure?" I did learn a lot before now about courage.

** We run no risk of intellectual modesty here.

*** Whole other topic: New Orleans brass band music as the absolute tops for feel-joyously-triumphant-in-the-face-of-all-life's-grinding-struggle therapy.

**** One of the more recent revelations: Part of the reason I read so much is because it is the only reliable way of getting outside of my own head.