what is and what will never be

Who knows. Not I. I do know what is, to the extent that I am able to limn it with my limited consciousness and my narratives. I try to keep in mind that what is may in fact be quite different from what I think is. Because we tell stories and are "unreliable narrators," sometimes glaringly so. Scare quotes not actually needed, much of the time. Of course, most of our lives, we're walking and we're not thinking about what we're doing. We're just doing it. I think we tell our pet stories in a similar way. 

Imagine if you had to make the above stages of walking happen consciously, the entire time you are walking, maybe having to say to a person next to you, "Okay, initial contact. Loading response. Mid stance." This is something like what therapy and step work does to me. The unconscious processes that are operating without attention are brought into the light and each step or phase gets articulated. The narratives that I have fixed, or that unfold in habitual ways, get interrogated. 

In particular, I've been noting that I usually assume a person has a problem with me if they are silent or take a long time to reply to a communication. Silence=negativity. The worst. Any gap or opening, any lacuna, and I fill it with shadows and foreboding. This is my habitual set. It's the way that I weave narrative. 

In general, the stories I tell about the future are worst case scenarios. What if I am unemployable because of my age? What if I get sick and can't afford treatment? What if the cavity in my lower left molar gets worse and  have to get it filled and it's $500 and I don't have $500. I'll just be in misery. I'll just suffer. What if.

A long distance relationship that is fraught with other concerns provides a lot of opportunities to encounter my catastrophizing self. I think the payoff is that it is a form of control. If I expect the worst, then, when it happens, I won't look like a goddamned idiot. And I won't be surprised, because I will have already told the story or one a lot worse. Of course, I spend a lot of energy trying to keep my look good, a part of which is my sense of competency and awareness and savvy. I probably do not seem all that competent, or aware, or savvy to people other than myself, but I am quite ego attached to these qualities. 

This phase of things, this segment of the katabasis tango, enfolds more resignation than before. I would like to think of it as acceptance, but it feels more like resignation. Throwing my hands up, shrugging, thinking "whatever, I'm done. I've done my best. I have no idea what will happen and I'm done trying to control and manipulate it." It would be acceptance if it were accompanied by a feeling of equanimity, which it definitely is not. It feels more like "whatever the fucking fuck."

Maybe this is a stage on the way to acceptance? Maybe it is a kind of encroaching self protection, hardening of the heart, closing down and armoring. That seems more likely. I think generally when we say "I don't care" the saying of it means we actually do care, at least enough to say it, but usually a lot more. If we didn't care, we wouldn't even say it. We just...wouldn't care. 

I know from past experience that I am capable of a completely frigid, shut down, unapproachable coldness. Heartless lack of compassion, complete disappearance and total indifference. It's been rare for me to go there but I have. It used to be aided by alcohol, for sure. By numbness and distance induced by ethanol. But in sobriety I've gone there too. I can feel myself slipping into it, and then I catch myself and realize I'm doing it. 

a fox frozen solid in the Danube River last winter

I don't want to turn hardened, frozen in a block of ice. But what will never be is sometimes painful enough maybe it's better. One wonders how to get from here to some other time of more freedom and less heartache and uncertainty. I think one just waits. But waiting can induce that cooling, that exponential removal, erasure, absence, the chasm, the slowing down of molecules, the entropy, the loss, the hollowness. 

I can feel it on the horizon. Dante would say it's the Ninth Circle. Or it's the wind from Satan's wings. 

But I am determined to keep my heart open, to not go there, to remain warm and kind, compassionate and available, vulnerable and loving. I am determined.