TheBanyanTree: Preoccupied

[Maria Gibson]

It's weird.  This summer has flown by in a way that no other summer 
has.  Summer of personal inner turmoil, summer of questions.  I have 
been largely unaware of a lot of things going on until the last minute 
it seems and then I am taken by surprise.  I am surprised that I didn't 
know and a little disheartened by how much brain space has been devoted 
to screwing off my life as I know it.  Could this be the beginning of 
the end?  There is a lot I don't know and this is one them.  Stack it up 
next to also not knowing if I want it to be the beginning of the end and 
we are left with a set of bookends whose middle is a cess pool of mixed 
emotions.

I have learned lessons I never learned when I was younger.  Of course, 
some of them would have required that I be a certain age to learn them 
and that was negated by my having been seventeen when I got married.  
The opportunity to learn some things just never was.  I don't think I 
understood how much I felt they were missed opportunities versus just 
non-existent until I ventured into them at this late and  forbidden 
hour.  I have tried to explain  how it is I am able to rationalize these 
ventures but I'm afraid that the explanation is lost on the listener; 
probably because it is ultimately lost on me.  There is a part of my 
mind just busy as hell telling the other part what a jerk I am, what a 
wasteful and ungrateful asshole I've become and asking how it is I can 
continue on a path of destruction with such deliberation.  I do know and 
I don't know.  I know but I don't want to put words to it, most 
especially to myself.  The ungrateful jerk just stands there taking a 
beating knowing how wrong she is and yet there is a rebelliousness and a 
recklessness that is undeniable.  Undeniable because of the stark 
indifference that some of these mistakes take.  As much immaturity as 
this level of selfishness requires, it definitely isn't child's play.

It took a few times to see it but I've learned to recognize desire in a 
man's eye.  I could have been hit on the head with that anvil and never 
have seen it coming before this summer.  I have learned now what it 
looks like and how it is administered.  It's very flattering.  I've 
learned that just because the desire is there doesn't mean I have it to 
give it back, doesn't mean I will and doesn't mean I have to even 
acknowledge it.  Those lessons are just as monumentally important as the 
first.  If this is not the life that a person is familiar with or have 
ever lived there may be perceptions that were wrong and it has been very 
satisfying to learn how to deal with them and to learn that some of the 
core values I always cherished in myself are still there.  Not all of 
them.  Perhaps the more noble of them are on hiatus.  There have been 
moments I have given into the desire to some degree, although not the 
ultimate degree, and they, too, were very satisfying.  It's shallow to 
admit but I really like knowing the desire is there and that I have a 
choice to follow it and that if I do, even to a limited degree, that it 
is as physically exciting and satisfying as I imagined.  If it weren't, 
I wouldn't keep doing it.

When I told one friend that the beginning of the end may be here she 
said the end would only come if I allowed it to.  Touche`.  Well said.  
I'm not even sure I'm ready for it to end.  My truest friends will stick 
with me during this ugliness and put the perfect words to me with a 
great loving force.  I'm very grateful for that.

The world continues to turn, with or without me.  My world turns and 
churns.  Despite my choices and because of them.  I still don't know 
where all this is going.  I haven't ceased caring, I've ceased searching 
the light at the end of the tunnel.  Just as so many other details have 
zipped past me like a rocket and left me breathless, so has the notion 
that I'll be able to predict anything.  This is a story that cannot be 
speed read, cannot be skimmed.  I can't read the last chapter first and 
there is no safety net.  The urgency and pull to continue until I'm done 
is stronger than my sense of survival, of self preservation for life as 
I know it.  I still wish that wasn't the case so maybe all is not lost.  
Who knows.

This is life with eyes wide shut.

Maria