if I grab it while it's happening, however - then, I can stop it. Or at least delay it long enough to remove myself from a large group of people. For so long, I've compartmentalized my emotions - the way people do with traumatic events. It has been my survival mechanism. Because boys don't cry.
Another lie I have checked off my list.
As this year comes to a close and as my birthday approaches, I'm forced (by habit) to take serious reflection. Even in typing this, I know my interpretation is near-sighted. My faith is compromised. My understanding is limited by my circumstance. But I'm human. Flesh and bones, nerves and tissue. A being who was made to live in order to die.
In reflection, I find myself questioning how much worse the year can find itself in my eyes. How much more can I lose and legitimately not lose my mind. How many times I'll stand on my own to feet only to be knocked down to my knees. Why I try to lead by example only to be ridiculed. How I can build up a reputation of excellence only to destroy it in one fell swoop.
yada.
yada.
It's traumatic - for me, at least. Someone who has always been successful and great at most things I did, to lose at a task hits me like a sledge hammer to the face. Somebody please pinch me. I want to wake up from this reality and return to that place of success. The irony in it all is that every fucking person I have talked to and met, always seems to think that because I have degrees and am pursuing my doctorate that this justifies me as 'successful.' Nawh, not quite.
I've always been accomplished in school. Life, now that's a different matter altogether. Success for me is surviving the day-to-day without crumbling or falling apart. Making a comfortable life for myself and family and managing the alienation therein. Establishing an independence that at some point justifies me as a man.
I'm just not there yet. In my eyes, I'm far from it. From it all.
And unfortunately, I have no solution as to how I should go about developing these deficiencies.
I would hate to start 2012 in the same slump I'm ending 2011.
sigh.
no fancy ending. just a sigh.
