Trajectory

Every time I run into an old friend (which has been happening disturbingly often in the artificial realm of myspace), I have an existential crisis. I imagine myself through their judgement and see myself as a too young for her age, confused, doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up kind of girl. I see someone who hasn't figured out even how to manage her hair or settle into some sort of style of clothing. Someone who's house is as messy as her room was when she was eight. It is a hard thing seeing through these people's eyes. Especially considering the view I get examining them after all these years. For the most part, I am finding that the path has remained straight for these pals of old. What they imagined themselves to be when they were young is precisely what they have become. They went straight to college, never changing major (especially not changing it three or four times), and became proper professionals upon graduation. They married when they found the person that they knew they would meet and they will continue on to children and houses and everything that is necessary for the good life.

And I have no response for them. If I were to try to justify myself and my decisions, it would by definition be laughable because most of my decisions are indefensible. The one decision I have been sure of has linked me to another wanderer and therefore also has no creedance for these surefooted friends of mine. I also had no idea who he would be until I met him and the quickness and sureness of my decision with him would only point to recklessness as far as most people are concerned. But it must be said: we don't happen to be most people. There is something very peculiar and uncomfortable about Tom and I, and I don't think even the boxes of society would bring order to our dishelvement. I also could never explain that this is just how I would have it and that I hope to have the courage to continue my life with such recklessness. That I hope to feel this frightening expansiveness when looking towards not only the future but also the past. To be constantly re-examining what I have known and letting it fundamentally influence what I would like to know and be.

No, I don't know what I want to be (which means I don't know what profession I would like to have) but my own trajectory has been straight in its own undefinable way: I want only to learn to love and to be loved. According to this criteria, I have been wildly successful thus far (well, on my good days anyway, but let's not be picky). Marrying Tom is probably the most obvious. Living with someone I am so wild about but that can drive me as crazy as I drive him, and letting the chaos form itself into the many faces of beauty and wonder. Terrifying, and sometimes I remember with fondness the perfect safety of my onetime dream of just being a nun. But day by day we crawl inside each other's skin and let the awkwardness of shared lives blend with the joy of knowing love and being love to one another.

Even this job I now hold, this job that I hate, even this is teaching me something about love. Loving people that irritate my sensibilities more than they have ever been irritated. People that share nothing but time and space with me, but whom I am given the opportunity to learn to care for. This I have not been so successful with yet, but a few have moved from the hated status to the tolerated and from the tolerated to the liked. The very fact that they are so different from myself has allowed me to watch them in pure curiosity, wondering how they have been formed and what motivates them. A few have proved my preconceptions of the evilness of this insitution, seeking only power and recognition and abusing that power once it's in their hands. But most seem to be trapped by one thing or another. One is putting in his twenty so that he can afford to go back to his ranch in Utah and be with the animals and space that he loves. His longterm separation from this identity and dream makes him behave bitterly and spitefully, but just imagining him on wide open plains with a hat shading his eyes from the blaze of sun and too green grass...There are the mothers working to support their babies, doing everything for their children, yet hatefully separated from raising them essentially by the work they are required to do in this profession. Deployments being the extreme of a job that is taxing even without that hardship. There is also a man that seems only to want to sell tires and see his wife get her doctorate instead of waiting around for him duty station after duty station. With very few exceptions, I have discovered that everybody has a secret identity that fuels their work and their bitterness. Making my own bitterness somehow easier to deal with (again on my good days).

It is the only path I can see clearly, although not in detail. There is no way to define love except by forcing yourself to remain in each moment and wait for her to show herself. And she always does, it's just a matter of wanting to look and wanting to find. Which is the hard part, because she always demands another piece of yourself as if the supply was infinite. So I either hope that she is right or that I will have the courage to look forward to the end of myself in her pursuit.