at the beginning of 2022 my fathers death forced me to confront what harboring anger had done to my life. and so the fist part of the year I wasn't allowing myself to carry any anger, without taking the time to evaluate if it was "worthy anger" or not. I simply didn't have the space for it at the moment. time has passed and I'm not running so close to empty. The last part of this year has also marked a decided upturn from the long descent I was in for the last few years. Correlation isn't Causation, But I'm going to keep putting effort into not carrying hate. The comfortable feeling of being right and righteous isn't worth it.
A little over a decade ago, I had made a choice to try and un-distance myself from everyone else. I thought that if I tried I could stop feeling like an outsider. By simply becoming invested in my interactions I had hoped I could feel like I belonged in them. And its worked. So there is more than a little trepidation that my “cooling” could be the wrong plan. Not having time for the anger, not having space to carry it does seem to be quite closely linked with not having time or space for those that are causing it. I don't want to feel as alone as I did before. And the fact that that distance was probably a side effect of my misunderstood anger in my childhood also adds to the feeling that I'm wading into potentially unsafe water. I’m sure most others have learned the balance in grade school. But here I am. And I’m just now trying to find a way to balance the joy of being involved in the lives I interact with and the benefits of refusing to interact, or internalize with those who would sap my energy and make their deficiencies my focus.
When I was learning to involve myself, my life had gone through a real upswing, and now as I’m learning to distance myself it appears I'm going through another upswing.I'm too far distanced to know if when I first developed my distancing behavior if I was going through an up swing or not. But I do know that for the first time I’m making conscious decisions about who and when to allow it, and to put the effort into refusing to accept the burden of anger when it's hoisted on me.
I mean my brain is essentially an electrified bag of meat, and the universe may be predetermined or random, or an unsatisfying mix of the two, so all of this naval gazing is probably emotional masturbation at best. But that's how the end of 2022 feels to me right now. I hope 2023 will continue my feeling of coming back to living my life rather than surviving my existence. And I hope the same for you…. If you're not one of the people I’m relegating to NPC status as a method to make my interaction with this world work for me. ;)
