Night Mayer

I had a pretty intense night mayer last night, one that kept me tossing, turning, waking up, sweating, all the works. I don't know where it came from. I was thinking on it all day and I just couldn't figure it out.

It was about a virus. If you got infected by this virus you would die in a matter of minutes unless cared for. In a summary, people around me were dropping like flies. The virus would super dehydrate you and you would be left a wrinkly green sack of skin and bones. I was curious as to how it was all connected so I investigated at the hospital and I found a crazy lady in the basement who sacrificed an animal every day and put the carcass in a pile of dead animals, poured something over it and then would go about her business. When I found it she was coming in behind me, so I hid in the pile of dead animals until she was gone. I went home and showered and the next morning when I woke up I had all of these veins visible in my arms that were turning forest green and my eyes were bleeding. I had my dad rush me to the hospital but I was trying to tell him how to get to Baptist so I didn't have to go to Vanderbilt where the infection was spreading from. When I was in the car I flipped down the visor to look in the mirror and my face was turning green and my eyes were brown and wrinkling with large cataracts forming over my pupils. When we go to the hospital they were actually trying to process me through triage... I was so pissed off that I woke up.

I had over slept my first alarm, but I set my other one and it woke me up on time. I need to get more rest. I'm so tired in the mornings.

I have a good bit I could talk about right now, but I'm too tired. I think I'm just going to go to bed for now. Peace and love.

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.

Blunt Truth

Through this weekend I feel like I've really come to an amazing place in my heart. I feel a bit different and a bit more aware of the changes that have taken place in me over the past year. What I see in myself laying here on my bed right now isn't perfect, nor is it close, but I'm happy with it.

Friday night I spent some time with Melissa, and she told me something that she saw in me that threw her off a little bit. It caught me off guard because of the way she worded it, but I realized that there was some truth to it and that I had let it go unnoticed. She's the first girl that's ever pointed it out in me, and she really hasn't known me that long. I was hurt when she said it, but after a little while I started to have a peace come over me about it. It opened a few doors in me that needed to be explored and until then hadn't been available.

I realize that I've been a bit vague as to what "it" is, and I think for now that "it" shall be sufficient to remain just that.

I've gotten the rest I think I need to get this week started off right. I've still been consistent in working out and as of now I've put on one more pound of muscle this week. I think with a fluctuation of water weight in consideration that I'm somewhere around 9lbs heavier than I was last month. I smiled today when I put on my sports jacket and it felt a little tight. My motorcycle jacket is also starting to get a little tight, which is not good. That thing cost $250! I don't know, I doubt I'll get THAT big, but we'll see. I'm going to keep this up for a while.

I wrote this whole long paragraph about politics here. I looked it over and I decided that I should end this weekend on a high note. I'll do that by not talking about politics at all.

Failure Free

When we attach to ourselves the identity of being a failure, that is when we truly start failing the most. I've been rather hard on myself (big surprise) about my recent failures. I don't tell a lot of people about them because I'm afraid of hurting them. Lots of people have these preconceived ideas about who I am, and some of those notions are a bit unfair in my opinion. I am not above failure, I am not above stupid mistakes. If anything, people should expect me to fail often because I am one who is prone to learning from his mistakes and not taking advice for law. But with many people, sometimes the closest people to me, I don't feel like I can share my failures because they are too caught up in worrying, regretting, or having a sense of failure to me to actually sit, listen to, and help me. The one thing that they should know about me if they know me at all is that I am resilient and hopeful to learn and not make the same mistakes twice. I am not a lost cause. But it starts with my own opinion of myself. It starts with me being able to forgive myself for failing and not confuse my failure as the end.

Otherwise, today has been nice. Work went a little slower than usual, but I don't really mind all too much. I have no reason to be off work early. I don't have anything other than working out that I would be doing with my time, even though if I had the time I could probably figure something out with little difficulty that would be constructive. I don't know, I'm kinda plain right now, not very exciting, but I'm planning mostly. The excitement will begin sooner than later. I'm getting more and more brave.

Riding my bike has been amazing lately. I won't talk about all the close calls I have because there is no use worrying all of you. It's safe to say, though, that every time you get on a bike, you should realize that you are going to have to stay far more alert than if you were in a car. I love the air though. I just went on a night ride, and it was amazing.

I'm going to bed now. Meeting at work tomorrow morning extra early.

Don't Read, This is just the Same Ol Thing

I'm figuring out what it means to believe in something even if you don't necessarily feel it. I believe in love, but I can't feel it right now. I know people love me, but I'm being honest in my pain. I can't engage in a man to woman love right now at all. It just feels empty and unreal even though I know it exists. And I could try to cover my feelings with petty things, but I can't do that either. I have to feel the pain of not feeling.

If my life were a book, I would gladly rip out that part of it by the pages. I see nothing anymore that is worth remembering because all memory does, even what might be considered as good, is remind me of failure, loss, and suffering.

"Don't embrace the past." I heard in a song today. That's hard for me. To think that I would let such a small fraction of my life dictate so much of my emotion. I have so much more to build off of, so much that wasn't even touched by her. When it comes down to it, she didn't even really know me all that well because I kept so much of myself hidden from her. Why can't I see it in that light. There is a great deal of worthwhile me left to be salvaged from this wreckage.

Gains

I'm really excited about my results in the gym today. I have gained one more pound of muscle in the last week and I bench pressed my high school max four times without a spot. That means that I'm now stronger than I've ever been. In college, I wasn't even close to as strong as I was my senior year in high school, even when I was working out regularly. So that means that this diet I have been on is working. I did 14 pull-ups when a month ago I couldn't even do one. My cloths are getting too small now... which I thought would never happen. I feel great all the time, plenty of energy, I sleep better, I think more clearly. All around, I feel better. I'm determined to not stop here though. My short-term goal is to reach 150lbs. For my body type, that is a big deal considering that on the new year I weighed 135lbs. I'm already 10lbs heavier at 145. I'm going to have to work even harder, and be even more disciplined to get to my goal though, but it's great. I love doing it. Paul comes with me every other day, and Catherine might start coming with me too. We don't do the same things, of course, but it is good to have company and good conversation in the gym. I can get so lost when I'm there sometimes, so captivated by my struggle that I get really intense and seemingly angry. I'm not, but I know people have not come up to me before when they see me working out because they are too worried. Haha, to imagine me worrying someone else with my intensity in the gym! Silly. I'm not that kind of person at all.

So I'm looking forward to going to NC in a couple of weeks to visit family and friends in Asheville on a men's retreat from my old church. That should be pretty fun and an incredible change from the normal weekend. I look forward to that. I also will be taking my motorcycle which should prove interesting.

Peace and love.

The Shot

I wanted to take some time to write down the details of the realization of my pain today. It wasn't a brutal hopeless pain. It was more of a pain of a realization. In all of the intimacy and depth that Lindsay and I shared, I fell to my knees and cried so hard for her when she turned and walked away with complete indifference after all we had been through together. My realization was that this is how God must have felt about me this year when I chose to make all of my own decisions, completely disregarding all we had been through together. I'm not trying to say that Lindsay was wrong in what she did. We can't break things apart and wish that they be handled better than they were because they can't be. What is done is done. In all practicality, had she not left, perhaps things would have been much much worse. That is the best I can do to settle my heart over what happened, to be able to move on knowing that someone I shared so much with is no longer a part of a picture that I can see. It is the ultimate feeling of rejection, the ultimate feeling of pain, worse than death because death is greater than man's desire to stay or leave. Death choses for us. But this is a unique and deep scarring pain because it was by choice, by not being good enough, by not trying hard enough. It comes about by human error, whether in the scope of reason or outside of it.

Life will continue to be difficult and painful, and I will continue to grow more strong, more brave, and more wise. I am sorry that I fell so far away from what the Lord had planned for me. I have wasted so much time chasing my own desires. I knew from the very start, but I did it anyways. But the Lord knows how to break me for the best in me. I am reminded of my phobia of shots when I was a kid. It used to take several nurses to hold me down in order for the doctor to give me a shot. I tied myself to the waiting room chair once to get out of it, and it worked, but it wasn't for the best. The pain is going to come, but it can be such a good thing. It wasn't until I got really sick that I understood this. I remember being so sick that I begged for the shot. I wanted the pain because I knew what was going to come after it, relief. I can see Jesus in this. For my entire life he has had to hold me down to give me something for the best in me, and though I know this, I am too shallow to understand. But in great sickness I have begged for it. During the dusk of my relationship with Lindsay, I begged for it. I knew I was so far away from who I have always been, even if she and I stayed together, the man she knew was not me. She could have never known me, and I knew that more and more each day. We had no communion there.

So the pain has come. It lasts much longer than just a shot from a doctor, and it will scar to be a constant reminder, but it will heal. I will be strong again. I will be restored in believing that love does exist again. Perhaps now I can accept these trials as a gift instead of kicking and screaming.