Heal thyself

[vicarz]

In a rare burst of not crazy, I've decided today is revisionist history day (as originally declared by Dr. Ronald WB Reagan).

To that end my plan is to go home for absolutely no reason. Home home.

I'm fresh out of a nearly 5 year relationship that included a (brief?) engagement. I'm potentially moving into a new house, the largest purchase and investment in my life and the biggest location transition (my first city residence ever). I'm applying for jobs after working the longest job of my life. I also still am haunted by stupid, fuzzy, unimportant memories from my past. Daily.

Many years ago, 12? 14? I went -home- with someone who became my girlfriend and had grown up in that area. I do hear it's ghetto as fuck today (lakes, walking paths, townhomes, and ghetto). I have no reason or purpose, but I've decided that as many times as of thought I should go "home" and walk around to see ... to what I have no idea ... but to chase ghosts - my ghosts. This time I won't be flirted with / flirting and then dating a married fucking woman (lessons you shouldn't have to learn 101) (dating after separation but still).

Ugh (pause) can we just give in and make up some conversational pauses punctuation? Pause for effect, sigh.

I don't expect any giant revelations, but I'm definitely searching for something. Answers. Perspective. Accurate data from which to formulate plans of action.

I am confused. I don't know what I want: in relationships, love, humping, career, money, athletic life plans...I mean I have all choices to make, and not overall unhappy choices to face either, but I have some areas I have to pick a direction and then stick with it; or I think I do. I don't trust my feelings, I can't read anyone else's feelings with any degree of accuracy, and the more I think about it the less I trust my "data," my memories upon which so much of my life, so many of my overreaching priorities, are based. What if my entire value system is based on faulty data?

How will walking around trees correct faulty memories? I touched Cindy Keener in the fort...how is this helpful information? Was her long blonde hair why I loved Jane my 2nd fiance? Ugh, now I'm making fun of myself. Here's an argument smart man - your options today were shopping, working out, playing video games all day (which would seem lame if fb didn't tell me how many of my friends spent all day watching miserable dying people dodging walking dead (spoilers)). So walking around nothing, chasing ghosts, is no dumber than doing virtually nothing. If I chase ghosts and find none in that there is a lesson.

I think there is something to be said to going and finding nothing. I think that's a validated discovery in and of itself, if applicable. "In the search itself is discovery." Perhaps the reoccurring lesson is "I'm an idiot." There would be some release in that - why try to date someone at all then? Why not just be a giggidy forever, a physical alcoholic moving from empty sexual experience after empty sexual experience, happy drunk and sad in varying degrees based on the last sexing?

A dumb course of action is better than no course of action, says me, right now.

Comments

[seaopaque.livejournal.com]

When I moved to Saskatoon in 2012, I did this.

I never lived in Saskatoon as a child, but I visited so often (my maternal grandparents lived there) that it became part of the fabric of my childhood. It was also where only happy memories were created (to generalize). Saskatoon was vacation, Saskatoon was a bus trip on my own, Saskatoon was my favourite grandparent, Digestive cookies, talking books, the library, the pool, Kinsmen Park. Home was... sad. And my sense of place was shaky from eight years old on, because we moved for the first time then and I spent the rest of my child life feeling homesick (I'm not joking).

Shortly after I arrived in 2012, I wandered the long way to Grandma's old neighbourhood. I had my notebook with me. I was ready for returning. The returning didn't happen. It was a depressing, sad venture. Nothing could be found there. My brother and I went back a few months ago, with his son and wife. He pointed to a very slight rise in my grandmother's lawn. He said as a child it was a huge hill. He said there used to be a tree there; I said, "Really?" I wandered in the vacant lot at the end of the block and remembered grasshoppers, reams of them.

The other night I went to a writers' talk here in Toronto. The panel got talking about travelling for inspiration, and how that's a recipe for failure. They also talked about going back to old places to get the details right. But you get there and you find it's nothing like what you remember, or, like you've mentioned, it's turned into a ghetto, it's turned into someone else's home, someone else's memory. One writer suggested not going back. Just go from memory, he said. Nothing "real" will ever match up. After the experience with my grandmother's house, I'm inclined to agree.

The memories are not faulty. The "facts" of "In reality, Grandma's lawn had only the slightest of inclines" or "I thought that was a lake; turns out it's a pond" aren't "truth." Our perspective is what creates truth.

I think this is coming off as critical. I think it's a good exercise, especially when in a state of self-questioning. And I kind of hope you have a better experience than I had when I was chasing ghosts. Ghosts are so rooted to place; we forget they have no place. They exist only in our minds.

\tangentbutyoudidmentionit: How many fiancées have you had??

[vicar.livejournal.com]

No, I like it, thank you. If it is critical, I like it. I think that there is writing in the memory and writing possible in exploring the inaccuracy. I would welcome new people making new memories, however.

3.

[alumiere.livejournal.com]

I hope your day helps. If it's any consolation, the last time I went home to NYC everything was so fubar (holes in my city) but it was still a good day.