E is for Everything...: e's yEar-end brain dump

It has been a year of epiphanies. A year of hope. A year of change. It has been a year of desolate heartache and a year of light. It has been a candle floating upon a turbulent sea, lit in spite of the storm because no storm could ever put this candle out.

It has been a return to dreams and dreaming; something I've not done in a very long while-- not that I remember, of course. I've begun to dream again. And what better way to ring out the decade? After all, it has been a dark decade and it's getting darker still, but in the midst of the darkness is that candle. Hope... and the promise of change. No not the kind Obama promised, but rather real change; the kind you know is real because you effected it-- You set the stage, you set the ball to rolling, and the top to spinning. Not some ephemeral promise that things will get better, but instead the change you make for yourself.

That is where I find myself on the last day of this year.

I spoke just now of dreams? I had a dream two weeks ago that is still playing in vivid living color... I dreamt she held my hand. I dreamt I reached for her, and she took my hand and did not let go.

You can't imagine how wonderful that was, to wake up and remember that, even though a mere dream, someone thought enough of me to hold my hand. The trick now is to make that vision a reality. I don't know who she'll end up being, but I know she's there.

* * *

I've changed twice now in little more than a year. Same company, different posts therein. If anything, I can attribute my new ability to dream, in no small part, to these changes. Sit in one place too long and walls begin to climb about you. You don't see them but you can certainly sense them, they're the sure knowledge-- understood as such or not --that you're being penned in, that some force is keeping you from being what you were meant to be. Think of the feed lots, how the cattle are confined and forced to dine on a diet contradictory to their nature. That's you. Taught to eat from a trough when you were created to graze freely. That's the way I've felt for good many years.

But that all changed this year. I've been thrust out of the lot, and made to roam... so to speak. I'm not yet comfortable with my new station, but I'm getting there. I've had to make adjustments; some painful, some absolutely delightful.

One, both painful and a bittersweet (at present) kind of joy, is the decision I made to get out of a relationship of 20 years; one that has gone nowhere despite all my efforts to see it bear fruit. Knowing she doesn't wish to marry me hurts more than I can ever express, but I also feel at peace with my decision. I'm out of practice socializing with women, but I'm looking forward to it. I, like everyone else on the planet, just want to be loved. And if one woman doesn't want me, there's someone else out there who does. I just need to find her.

I've become more introspective this year, which is either an utter amazement or extremely distressing depending on your point of view, since I have already been a deeply introspective person for these past thirty-five years. I'm not sure what that portends but it's been a personally noticeable change. There's more of a determination than ever before to build a bulwark of personal honor and self-determination; to project strength in who I am in relation to the rest of the world. There was none of that twenty years ago. None whatsoever.

How this will stead me in the months ahead? I can't say. But everywhere I turn I get, and am given, encouragement... inducement to keep moving forward. And that's what I'll do.

For now, I need to begin work on my New Year poem. I've thought about it all week, and now it's time to begin writing.

i will find
and you will find
and we shall find together here
underneath the bunker...

But that's not really how it goes, is it? Like the song to which you thought you knew the lyrics, only to discover you had it wrong all those years.