Existential Crisis Day

I’m not happy with my hair. I don’t like my clothes. I feel hideously fat and revolting, like a two-ton Elephant Woman. I can’t wait to move out of my apartment but am resisting the task of packing. I don’t want to live in this city anymore. I want to go back to school, after which I want to begin The Great Career that I’ve been visualizing for the past several years. I don’t know, however, what I want that career to be. I want to lose 40 or 100 pounds. I want to eat nothing but healthy food and treat my body the way she needs and wants to be treated instead of settling for McDonald’s for dinner because I’m too broke or too tired to go to the store and get something healthier. I want to get a lip ring and more tattoos and work with some queers.

I feel like I’m walking about six feet from quicksand. I’m not close enough to get sucked in but I can see the mire calmly waiting for me to let down my guard and get too close. I know that a great, shimmering, pulsating greatness awaits me just over this little mountain I’m climbing, just beyond this last little uphill battle. I just can’t seem to get there. I climb a hill, win a battle, rejoice in my victory … and then I turn around to find another hill waiting for me. I’m not tired of fighting but my sword is heavy and I want to be able to rest without feeling like I’ve given in to the curse of inertia.

I have been working on healing myself from a lot of crap in my past – a good deal of it the shitty way I used to treat myself – and I have made amazing strides. I’ve changed *a lot* in the past four years, which in turn changed the way I interact with everyone and everything. I am flexing my Standing Up for Myself muscle on a regular basis. I know better what I want out of my life than I did six months or a year or three years ago, and yet I’m in this holding pattern of not being quite ready to leave the city I’m in and wanting *desperately* and simultaneously to get the hell out of here.

If I leave now, I will be running away. I’m just not very patient and it seems easier to box up the remaining issues to work through and just move away, convinced that problems or issues or drama won’t follow me out of the city, out of the state. I know it’s not true. I’ve run before and suffered the smackdown. So I’ll stay and work on the issues and leave when I’m mostly wrinkle-free and start anew. I’m just standing here in a slightly rumpled shirt, holding onto my atlas and the promise of new and great adventures, knowing in my heart of hearts that I’m not inert; I’m working on a few, small repairs.