Mood:
mischieviousYesterday Mom, Mike and I tried to climb the mountain again. We saw several groups of kids going up and down along with a whole gaggle of other hikers. Did we make it? No. We went up further than I'd ever been before but at one point we turned a corner and I saw a long, steep rocky climb ahead and I lost my nerve. Said I didn't want to go any furthur. On the way down my Mom said that I had held out for a long time and had done really well. It felt like I was a kid again and being rewarded with kind words and milk and cookies. This illness really makes me seem juvenile I guess. Mike and Mom were twittering back and forth like two birds, one making a silly joke and the other laughing. Good thing that they had each other because I was mostly stoney and silent. Not that I was in a bad mood, it was just that it took all my mental effort to keep the physical effort going. We had to turn back not because I was physically spent but because I had no more emotional endurance to push myself.
Now Mike and I are wondering if London might leave us sometime soon. She has a new boyfriend. We are wondering if she is going to get an apartment with him. I guess we both sense that freedom is a big thing for his daughter right now, but I think there is something darker here too. At her age I was always moving around, so much so that I ended up in a homeless shelter twice. And this morning I've thought about it, in ten years I've gone through three significant relationships that I was committed to and intended to last forever and moved through six different towns. I've got a problem with perminence, and it has finally dawned on me that the running around and changing my life from top to bottom is now getting me ragged around the edges. I have got to, absolutely, stay put for a number of years.
What is the same about me and London? Trauma. I got really traumatized with the onset of my illness and the two years I spent locked up in an Institution. London has her own history which I won't go into on this blog. I've always felt like I was an adventurer, a risk taker and gambler who always came out winning on the bet I made, be it on a man or a career move. Well, now I've finally got the right man and I've got a little bit of a career as an artist and writer. But I also feel like a dog with gaping wounds that just wants to curl up and wait for healing to occur. This energy and need for change must be directed into creative product. In the arts it is restlessness that makes you paint the next painting. I despise the feeling of any glory lying in past accomplishment - I'm always looking to do the next "big thing" that will top the rest. My mind wants to go searching, and too often the daydreams of mine are of a different town with a different life.
But if I think about what was the happiest time of my life, it is always these two narrow pockets of time in my twenties when I was deeply involved with and commited to either writing a book or producing art. I would go on walks and think about my project, the days revolved around my project, and peak hours were always devoted to furthering it's accomplishment. My happiest memories are of times when I was walking a lot and working a lot. I felt free and alive.
