2011 has been the year when my black and white personality finally started to feel wrong. When I made the decision to shed the polarised version of myself, the only self I have ever know, my world cratered. My self worth vanished and everything I valued began to change. In short I became a crumbled version of myself, and when things were at their lowest I would reach for an ultimatum. I would search for the opposite. In my desperate and sad mind I believed that the only thing that would get me out of my self loathing must be the opposite of what I was doing. It was the old me trying to survive. Kill this, stop that, never, always, must, everything, completely, or nothing, nada, forget it.
That's who I am and always have been. The road to who I need to be, want to be, will be, has taken me to sorrow so deep it deconstructed my being. It crushed me. I have never been so sad, I have never looked so deep, and I have never come so close to setting it all on fire. Maybe that's what I did. Maybe now 2012 is the phoenix rising. My god I hope so. One of the moments I will never forget - when a friend told me to remember that for every mile of road there is two miles of ditch. It's an old saying, but it smacked me in the face. I have lived my adult life black or white. I have lived my adult life trolling the ditches and missing the point. It made me sad, and it made me angry. I thought I was smarter than that, and I didn't realize that by being so far to one side or the other, I was making my life far more difficult than it needed to be. I have not given myself the opportunity to live on a balanced path. I thought making hardcore decisions and drawing a line in the sand without compromise was who I was, and by being that way it was my version of taking the high road. living to a higher standard. When in reality it was me taking the easy road. It's easier to live in the ditch. That may not seem right, but it is. When you only view things one way, when there is only ever ONE right answer, you absolve yourself from living life. You tie your hands and stop paying attention. The hard decisions are easy because there is only one way forward in your small ridiculous mind. What a waste of time, what a waste of life.
2011 was the year I died. It was the year that everything was lost. Everything.
20 years of my life, the part which brought about my mid-life crisis, talent and excess, waste and regret so great it was an atomic bomb that laid waste to a good life. I lived through it. The worst year of my life will eventually be the year I stopped accepting bad habits. The year I decided I was too important to settle. The Year that felt like it would kill me, will be the Year that makes me a new and better version of myself.
2012 will start with a plethora of challenges, but I am looking forward to the first year of my life that I work hard and travel on the road. No ditches, just pavement. It may not be straight, in fact I can't possible see how it could be, but the turns in the road can't be as hard to navigate. The ditches are riddled with landmines. They require a compass and a machete, a shovel and a pair of dark glasses so you can't see the way out. Getting out has not been easy, and throwing myself back in takes but a second of lapsed judgement.
2011 I lost friends, it was my fault. I was callous and self-important. I said things that were ridiculous. I felt things that were wrong. I have no defence. I was a bad person. It doesn't matter what I did, what I didn't do, what I thought, what I said out loud. By my own estimation and admission I was just not a good version of myself. By my own standards I was an ass hole. As much as I tried, I couldn't help it, but it doesn't matter.
To everyone who stood by me - I thank you. To everyone who I misunderstood or who misunderstood me I apologise. If I lost things this year then I needed to. There were no gains. I was selfish and mean, indignant and self absorbed, over honest and ignorant to any ones need but my own. I can't take that back now. I have to live with it all, but that's the point isn't it? I have to live with it. I have to think of me. If I don't fix my mistakes now then it will be too late one day, and I'll still be the one who has to live with it.
My amazing, brilliant wife told me that if I wasn't willing to be true to myself, and do whatever I needed to do to make my life the life I wanted, then I was living a lie, and because there were so many other people in my life, that if I was living a lie, then they were living it too, and that would be on me. That's a big sentence. It was a truth so hard to take, a statement so honest, and an admission so brave, I will never cease to be blown away by it. Said at a time of rawness and insanity (on my part). I still to this day cannot recover from the balls-y-ness, and the candour let alone the accuracy. It was when I realized
Here is the only thing I can say for sure:
My wife is the strong one, the gutsy one, and the intelligent one. I think this year she may have learned that I am more of an idiot than she ever imagined. I am weak and over-sensitive, but I try hard to improve every year. She is an amazing person and a great friend, and I haven't deserved her company since the day we met. I will eternally be the lucky one. I am always in a good place, and one I don't deserve, because I share my life with an incredible person. So there it is, and where it goes no one can know...
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