Deeper Dreams

I'm enjoying a hot cup of tea right now. It's been several months since I've had a hot cup of tea. I just felt like it might be a good way to end the day. Seems to be a little bit more chilly than what has been common for the past week or so. It rained as soon as I got off of work, but I didn't really mind too much. I wasn't really expecting to be outside for any reason other than riding, and I rode my motorcycle enough this past weekend to subside the bug, so again, no bother. I've been feeling happy for several days now, and as I tell Paul, it seems to be a rather irrational happiness. I have a lot I could be upset about. I still think about Lindsay and what she is doing and experiencing without me, especially at night, but it hasn't been having the same drastic effect on me as it usually does. I can only account for her memory as a fading aroma, something that will dramatically dissipate once I move out of this apartment in a couple of weeks. I'm really looking forward to that, though it is no permanent fix. I'm moving in with Matt in a house at Sylvin Park on the west side of town. It's a rougher neighborhood, but the house itself looks out over a beautiful golf course that I really enjoy walking on at night. I've written journals on it before. I think that side of town better fits me in general. I mean I suppose where I live now has its ups and downs. Lots of my friends live around this area, and in the warm season, when you drive down the street, there is never a shortage of beautiful women out jogging for miles and miles. I'll miss those things, but there are also plenty of good things to be said about West Nashville too. I actually hope I can find a place over in that area when I have to move out of the house in October.

Paul has been helping me dig deep into my head about the issues I've been having with women lately. We talk about it for at least a little bit every time we go to the gym, and he's very observant and insightful on how I behave. I can see the road I'm on now going nowhere good. I have begun to understand to a small degree the objectification of women to men and men to women. It comes from pain and numbness. A lot of my "confidence" which has gotten me a good bit of attention lately, is in all honestly a sense of apathy and my thinking that these women couldn't possibly hurt me because I don't care about them, therefore, why would I not have confidence around them? Women love confidence, but confidence has several faces. And then Melissa called me out. She saw some things in me that didn't quite add up. She and I have both been hurt in a similar way, so I think that's what tipped her off. But she really knew how to drive it home, and so I've been spending a fair amount of time every day since Friday thinking on that.

Ah, but here's the kicker. Saturday night I had a dream that reminded me, along with Melissa, that I'm really not as cold as I make myself out to be. I've seen down that road, but that's not who I really am. So the dream, yeah.

I have a friend who I really care about and who I've been interested in before, but I just didn't get the feel that the interest was returned. Anyways, she paints, and in the dream she painted this beautiful picture for an art exhibit. I mean it was really vivid and I remember what it looks like and I'm trying to draw it out even though I have no drawing talent at all. But she finished it and turned it in and for some stupid reason that had nothing to do with the visual integrity of the picture, they wouldn't accept it. She was really hurt and she just cried really hard and I held her and legitimately and unselfishly felt pain for her and wanted to comfort her. The whole time she was crying I was just holding her and looking at the picture in awe of what she was able to create.

Now in a way that dream was a little unfair. It was vivid and seemingly real, so when I woke up the emotions didn't die off. I spent a good part of the day very concerned for her and hoping she was okay, even though nothing actually happened. A part of me hoped that she had the dream too, but that's stupid, a lot of our interaction in the dream wasn't even her personality. The important thing to remember is that these dreams aren't real, they just show us things that our subconscious realizes that we wouldn't necessarily recognize on the surface, especially about ourselves. What this particular dream told me is that I still have the capacity, buried somewhere under all of this failure and pain, to love someone genuinely and without hesitation. I didn't even have that with Lindsay. Every interaction between us was compromised by doubt in my mind. She knew it too, which made things rather awkward.

So why am I happy? I've realized that I have the ability to control what it is that I dwell on during the day. I don't have to dwell on such serious things all of the time. I can just think of the good things and smile, and I can do that whenever I feel like it. It's going to take some practice to get started, but I like that direction. It has really lightened my load.