I accept back responsibility for my life.

It’s been almost a month since I drove home from Eugene, car fire on the side of the I-5, shaking myself out from the tension of holdingeverything in – and it still hasn’t quite sunk in that it’s finished and I’m okay. There is an urge still contained in me to spill open fears that remain best unsaid, still slipping silent around the cracks in my heart when I least expect it. And the emotions still threaten my self-discipline when I think about my friends too much.

And yet, there is a rapid movement in me, a hand that has reached in to help me to higher ground; as much as it feels like I will never cease to be these stories, I am also sensing a greater possibility for being outside of them for the first time since their inception. Wow. Huh. That’s something to look at; even as I write it’s amazing to me to think about it being the truth.

I have long (and secretly) suspected that a great deal of my behaviour in the past year or so, particularly as regards my impertinent dating life, has been a coping mechanism for stress and grief. Rather than drinking or getting high, the rush of sexual connection – immensely enjoyable and uncommitted. Easy. Briefly amusing. A means to an exhausted end.

And yet, as quickly as my desire to engage in that world came on, it seems to have ended. Whether for a month or for good, I am not exactly sure. But at the moment, it seems very over and I am in the process of cutting off all of my liaisons (of which there are several, vague and scattered). I am polite and yet unequivocal with each: this is not healthy, there is no other way, I am on a different path at the moment, I wish you well.

I have not yet finished the task, though I expect that by the end of this week I will have.  It’s not at all painful, though, and that is perhaps the most interesting thing about it. I suppose I know that if I want it again, I can have it – and that’s a part – but mainly it’s the absence of wanting it that secures me in my motions. It’s also the recognition that the time for some things has simply come to an end as I accept back responsibility for my life and its direction towards greater and more interesting things than empty connections and late nights.

And so it goes. I know not where except that I am feeling pulled back to the woods and ocean and desert like I haven’t felt for a long time. And I am finding myself more often in meditation and prayer. And I sometimes feel as though I am losing my marbles entirely. And I expect there to be a lot more questions than answers right now. But I also know who I can turn to for help. And I am grateful.

So fucking grateful to be alive and loved and free. It’s like getting a do-over. It’s like remembering where to look.