The combination of waking up and realizing that I’m actually thoroughly happy and then reading Maymay’s post about how things for him are so so jumbled has gotten me reflecting on just how much things have shifted in the past six months.
Back in December and January I wrote a few posts about my sadness, my sense of loss and confusion, and my hopes for things not sucking in the future: Growing Up in Public, Liabilities and Assets, and Self Aware. It’s kind of cliche, but time has really been doing its stuff. Last week I started waking up and realizing that I’m not just in a good mood, I’m actually happy. And holy shit, that is awesome.
Part of what’s making me happy is my gleeful obsession with the work I’ve been doing, with the added spice of starting to feel inspired to create new projects outside of work. But more than that, I’d started to see how intimacy is done in different ways – and I’ve started to let go of what I had, what I thought fit me just so. For the past few years, I’ve had a few relationships that involved phone calls and emails several times a day – all about updates, annoyances, small and large victories. That’s gone. And last fall, I felt that loss so strongly, felt like I could disappear into my apartment and no one would know, I was invisible and detached and absolutely hating it. Constant contact – talking, thoughts, touch – was intimacy in that piece of my life.
But recently I’ve started to see intimacy in a different way (it’s been pointed out to me that I am probably moving into the late 20s and 30s version of friendship and intimacy and maybe that’s it). Less frequent contact isn’t making me sad or crazy anymore, and I can have in depth, intimate times with people who I don’t see everyday. In fact, I feel like I can be truer and more present with intimacy with it isn’t a daily thing. A few years ago, I chased intimacy and connection (or sometimes thwarted it) with sex – now I foster intimacy with food. Living alone isn’t terrifying anymore, and I think I’m moving forward in a way that I can give and receive love in awesome and new ways. Things aren’t perfect by any means, but I’m not waking up feeling like I’m running on empty, alone, and freaked out about what the fuck I’m supposed to do next. I’m not suffocating, I’m not feeling like being awake and alive is impossible.
So, cheers to what’s coming up – I’m actually looking forward to the future, and looking forward to pro-actively making something of it. And damn, that is one amazing feeling.
12:41 pm
I need to write a post one day that explains some of my eccentricities in more explicit detail. Most of them are centered around the notion of actually being a 40 year old in a teenager’s body, how living alone, working for rent money, and all of that was something I was able to do as a teenager and how lonely that made me feel because no one my age was anywhere close to that kind of independent, and how now as a 24-year old, I have a solid direction and goal and purpose in my life and how I’m hugely happy about that, but that that very thing makes me once again alone and isolated and unlike my peers (and my relationship partner[s]).
Bah. Sorry. End rambling useless comment.
10:57 pm
If you used the same tags I use, you would tag this post “yay for personal growth.”
So, yay!