Mexico

(12-13-08)
Things not going as planned: The trip an analogy to my last day in Chapel Hill. I didn't eat when I needed, but then I ate too late. I missed out on things I wanted to do. I missed certain pathways because I never started walking. Now that I have begun, it feels like I'm just wandering - the privileged wanderer (no better than the Frugal traveler), the yuppie seeking New Age medicine for his 'lost soul'. I can't seem to find what I want, do I need to wait a couple of days? But once again I will become that indecisive brat. In my indecisions I have harmed many, I have broken promises. I have broken trust, I continue to do this as long as I don't confront it. I confront and confront but answers never present themselves. I am utterly lost now. I need something new to wash away the old scars - to set me back on my feet. I'm afraid now that where Amy has been mostly light, she will now turn heavy. Understanding broken - I can't lean on her like that, or at least I feel like I can't. The path ahead will not be easy for me-- for if it is too easy I believe I will have disguised much of the problems. Get in a routine that numbs those parts of me. I don't want to, I want to fill it with light, My openness is at stake, I feel the orders for a wall to be put up, separating me from the world, leaving me only able to interact through its protective screen. I want to scream and shatter the glass explode it into a million pieces. But most of all I want to stop its (re)construction. -- It is already there, it has been for sometime. After first recognizing it, I began to think that awareness was enough. A mindfulness of it, that's all I needed. But it isn't so simple, this wall lives hidden inside my emotional core. Like a nasty tick. The mind is not enough, I must focus on my heart, but not just use the mind to think about things like love. To practice it. Step through and from the heart feeling its rhythmic beats.
At some point when I was a boy I started disliking cartoons that placed the heart - or say love in the chest. Some character would fall in love and then their heart begins pounding out of his chest. I began thinking it was silly - can´t love from your heart, it is in your head- this is stupid. I taught myself wrongly then, but never once did I voice to anyone this opinion. Had I done so, it might have been otherwise. Perhaps I would have been freer, would have developed around championing love, instead of fighting agains it. I never said it much, not to my parents, not to anyone. I became afraid of its power afraid of what it might mean. All my focus on love, I still don´t know it. I´ve seen glimpses of it - but how much better it would have been to never experience love, then to compare everything else in my life to those moments -- they don´t amount to much more than a handful.

Normally I´d try to go back here and say that it was worth it - vale la pena. But how can pain be worth it - that´s all I really see now from my futile quest, pain. I´m just lucky that I didn´t cause more of it. And I´m lucky that those who have been the closest to me - have been the strongest. Even though I brought them down I know they will bounce back. I hope to God they do, for I cannot live with that weight. Let my mistakes be my own. I do not want them to be left like a plague on their souls. My failures cannot make others lose hope. I pray for this. I now know what the beads around my neck are for. They are not for me, but rather they are to protect others from me. I should never take them off, nor forget their reminder. A thousand sorries isn´t enough. It may never be enough. I just hope it is enough for now. Until our next embrace.

Brian