“How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads, to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.” ~Bram Stroker’s, Dracula
Today is September 16, 2012 exactly 47 days since I step off of a plane and into a new life. I have started working, met someone special moved into a new apartment had a crazy person threaten to call the cops, signed up for my first Italian language lessons and finally got all the previous tenants crap moved out of my apartment.
Nothing has gone smoothly. In fact I have had to readjust my plans so many times that I barely remember what my original plans were. I wouldn’t call myself overly religious but turning to God has become a daily ritual. In truth my faith is the only thing that brings me comfort as the world continues to change without warning. Each day brings with it a new obstacle to navigate. A life without answers is as uncomfortable to me as a pair of shoes two sizes too small. I try to navigate towards certainty but drift further away from the anything that resembles anything familiar.
Each obstacle takes something away from the person that I have been slowly stripping away my soul. The melodrama of my words does nothing to dull the discomfort of my uncertain future. This journey towards something new is costing me everything that I every have been. The reality of my daily grind fills me with fear at times. I put on a brave front for the masses. Smiling on cue is now as second nature to me as coming up with clever quips to deflect my uncertainty. Who am I is a question I no longer ask because there is no answer. My name is not really my name and yet it is the one that I choose to start my life anew.
They say the best way to hide something is to place it in plain sight. It will go unnoticed by the masses. So that’s how I live in plain sight. My blog is in plain sight. The people closest to me will never know my confusion or doubts because they will never look in the most obvious place. I started this blog on a recommendation of another but I maintain this blog as a public diary of where I have been, where I am and where I am going. I tell myself that no one will ever bother to look.
At the moment looking towards the past is a luxury I can ill afford. I continue to struggle to see what’s right in front of me. Like most I have lost my ability to see what is most obvious. It is a skill that I am struggling to redevelop as it’s a necessary tool if I am to navigate this transition successfully. The remnants of my old life appear as artifacts before me like in a museum they separated from me by a glass partition. I can look at them but not touch. They are there to be appreciated but never held. One by one I examine each artifact searching for clues only to discover more questions.
Normally I would hesitate to express my doubts and uncertainties so freely. Somewhere along the way I came to believe that acknowledgement of my own humanity is mortal sin. Any acknowledgement is paramount to complaining and to complain I am being ungrateful for the many good things that have happened in my life. This faulty reasoning on my part has left me ill prepared for what I am dealing with now. My uncertainty is compound by my own lack of empathy for myself. Stubbornly I refuse to acknowledge my own feels as if to do so would change the inevitableness of the inevitable. Again, this too is a painfully reminder of how I am no longer who I use to be but, uncertain of who I am or who I am becoming. The world is a vampire.
In the Footsteps of Hemingway 