Stasis

I feel like I'm just now waking up from a 2-year long one-night stand with the ugliest snaggle-toothed monster you can imagine. What the fuck was I thinking? What the fuck was I doing?

I lost something, though I didn't know it at the time. I don't even know what it was, or the precise moment when I lost it, but I realize now that something was missing. I was just so complacent. Nothing mattered to me. From time to time, people would ask if I was depressed. I didn't feel depressed - on the contrary I felt quite happy, but who really knows? God knows my mother has enough fucking crazy to spread around, I'd be delusional to think I didn't pick up some of that. I've never exactly been one to wear my heart on my sleeve. For the life of me, for all the downward spiral I've been in lately, I still can't let myself cry. It's like some weird dysfunctional machismo. Clearly, there's nothing wrong with me. Nothing at all.

It's like my life was a Jenga tower, and there I was delicately removing the foundation piece by piece. Kicked out of school... hell with it. Fired from my job... I give no fucks. Debts piling up... oh well. Lost my girlfriend? At the time, I don't know that I did care. In that moment, it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. What the fuck was I thinking?

Looking at it now, Vicki was like that one crazy Jenga block that seems to hold up the tower in utter defiance of physics. When I lost her, the whole mess came tumbling down in dramatic fashion. It was my relationship with her that was keeping me stable despite my myriad fuck-ups. It was a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it kept me feeling happy and fulfilled when I had no right to feel anything but disappointment in myself. On the flip, it also meant that I took no initiative to fix any damned thing. The relationship sustained me, but it also enabled my perpetual stasis.

None of that occurred to me at the time, up until maybe two weeks after Vicki finally moved out. I thought I was mostly fine with it. Of course, it wasn't really real then. Cut to five months later... and oh, is it ever real. Again, it's a mixed blessing. When I finally came to terms with the breakup to a degree, it became the impetus to better myself. I'm working my way back to Geneseo. I'm trying to get into better shape. I'm trying to expand my interests. I started reading again, and I'm trying to write again. I'm putting pieces back together, but I'm terrified that that one piece - that one special piece that defied all logic - isn't going to fit anymore.