It’s going to be another junk drawer post. And probably one I’d feel more comfortable with writing if my mom didn’t know about this blog and hadn’t passed it on to my childhood piano teacher. But be that as it may…. Here I go.
I’ve been meaning to post for quite some time but I realized that the majority of posts were taking a sad tone and while I would like to be honest about the range of human experience – I prefer to remain hopeful. Hopefully (like that?) this will.
I have been trying to come to terms for myself with what it means to move to Denver and live among these glorious mountains, to define who I want to be moving forward, what to keep from my past and what to let go of and how to feel okay even as life continually teaches me that I need to listen to its plans for me rather than imposing my will and ignoring what i know inside to be true.
So the first part o this title. Swimming. Yesterday I packed my old green and black TYR swimsuit into a bag, cap and goggles thrown in for good measure, unsure if it the suit – now 8 – 10 years old – would fit over my bottom which has expanded and painfully aware of the upper part of my legs, white skin from lack of sun, contrasting with the stained brown lower portion, visible under bike shorts.
I had memories of triathlons, back in those glorious days when my body did what I told it, and the awful swim portions, people kicking me i the face and swimming over the top of me as I struggled to remember what I’d learned in the adult swim lessons and to keep breathing.
Breathing, that simple natural thing we do, the stuff of living, # 2, something I don’t seem to know how to do naturally at the moment. I can’t hear myself and this job is so exhausting I can’t really hear anything. Ivy, my boss overwhelms with constant meetings and anxiety, smiling and winking all the while so you will not hater her.
She is an intelligent woman in some ways, but in others completely inflexible and speaking a separate language, slow to understand anyone else’s. It’s frustrating, but again she’ll smile and wink, and beg your patience all the while trapping in you in a 2hour unnecessary meeting and scheduling a follow up so that work piles, nothing gets done and 10 – 12 hour days and weekends become a necessity.
Have I mentioned that this is really soul-sucking? So remind me of this, when I doubt leaving this job. I just want to leave it for the right one. Because i knew in my gut this one wasn’t right, but I wanted it to be because I wanted to live in the mountains, I had fantasies about climbing, laid back people,beautiful trails and rugged men. Love. ahhhh love. I think deep inside something inside me believed I’d find it here. But there hasn’t been love in my life – well, ever.
And I’m 38, so I’m not so sure what I think is going to change. It’s not about location, I guess it’s about me. And I’m not entirely certain what it is about me I need to fix, but there must be something. I just can’t seem to find it.
For a long time, I fixated on my weight. It was an obvious and easy thing to do. And Occam’s Razor would have you know that the answer to a problem is the obvious one. Except I’ve never actually been objectively that overweight. At my worst, 20 pounds, at my best, downright thin, just muscular so I still think i’m fat.
Why women do this to themselves, i’m not sure. Why I do it? I need something to fixate on. A reason living hasn’t worked, living as equated with loving.
So while in my fantasy, colorado would be this place I would finally call home, and oh have I yearned for a place to connect to, a place to call home, it isn’t so far that place at all.
And as an acquaintance said to me the other night – she said, i think you had some ideas about Denver before you came. And it’s not whatever it is you thought it was. It’s just a city like any other city, with some mountains around it.
And she’s right.
Last night i went on a date, an OKCupid date. He was witty and interesting but I suspect dating websites – of what I don’t know – but something. And I suspect anyone who is interested in me of being flawed in some fundamental way of course – because that is a productive cycle.
It wasn’t a terrible date, but he’s 40 and works at Costco. He’s cute and artistically and musically gifted and quite articulate and funny. So why should Costco matter? Should it?
But more than that, he doesn’t do the outdoorsy stuff I wanted to do in Colorado and that I envisioned a potential partner doing.
Am i ready to let go of that?
Sometimes it seems like I need to. My job is so busy I think I need to drop out of the backpacking class I signed up for and I know Ivy doesn’t care that the job encroaches on my ability to have any life outside of work.
As she smiles and winks.
I should name this a smile and a wink.
But I can’t help but think there are lessons to be learned here and a way through it all. And it makes me hopeful for the future. That it will get better and that I will come out stronger and knowing myself better. There’s my hope.
But still, I am afraid. Afraid that I am wrong. Afraid of depression. I’ve felt it before, i’ve lived there before. It’s not a great place to dwell, it’s darkness enveloping you in a coccoon of sadness, no one getting through. Sometimes it’s numbness.
I’m afraid none of it’s there for me, not the life I dreamed of, not the love I dreamed of, none of it.
So…. the question is, do I embrace swimming instead of backpacking and learn what Denver has to teach me, even if it’s unexpected. Do I let go of my dreams and just be.?
Filed under: Faith, Friendships Tagged: career, career change, Colorado, dating, Denver, existentialism, friendship, growing older, life change, living, love, meaning, moving, online dating, philosophy, relationships, swimming
