Season

I don’t want to be a bummer.

Nobody actually wants to be a bummer, I think, but the thing about wandering around and exploring new territory is that you sometimes get lost, fall into holes, or get caught in traps. Introversy is one of mine, and it displays one of the many things I like about English, you can sort of make up words, and they’ll make sense if you keep the context, but I switched context for fun, and now I have to switch back for the mileage.

Quests for identity are fun to look back on and see all the quirky avenues you explored as you tried to figure yourself out, but in the present it’s about 50/50 as to whether you’re feeling excitement or dread at your current prospects, even without the holes and traps.

Anyway, a couple of years ago I embraced introversy, the state of being an introvert. It worked wonders for me. I went on trips alone, I took myself for dinner alone, I went for runs alone, I slept alone. It was a very important period, as I got to live for myself for the very first time, and I liked it. My health improved in all sorts of ways, and my confidence levelled up with a new sense of who I really was as I came back together in the wake of the Positive Disintegration. Sobriety was a key element in this process, of course. Without it I would have just stayed the needy mess I had always been, and completely unable to be alone. Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration; I was certainly unwilling to be alone. Misery loves company.

I embraced my introvert nature and learned how to cope with solitude. It takes a lot of practice, and you have to get comfortable with saying No to people. As it happens with these sorts of things, it usually becomes easier with practice, and it becomes way easier if you just never say yes to anything social ever again, and disappear which, of course, I did.

I deleted all social media, and lived with the bare minimum of social contact for quite some time. I’m not sure how long exactly. It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re engaged with that much solitude. It was at least a season, maybe two, and it was truly wonderful until it wasn’t.

My main point of contact during this time was my counsellor. I have known her for a very long time, and it’s pretty easy for her to discern when I begin to stumble, and I start to lose...I don’t know...lose whatever it is that I’m fighting for at that period of time. Fighting for. I think that’s an important distinction to make as opposed to fighting against. When you’re fighting against something, you are essentially deadlocked, or under siege, when you are fighting for, you are engaged in a learning, or training process.

The other night I heard a friend describe his meditation process as a surrender process, and it got me to analyzing how I approach my daily struggles, because I flinch at the notion of surrender, and I’m now curious as to why.

I view everything as a fight, a struggle against gravity, sink or swim, never float. It’s an instinct that became a habit that just might have become another addiction, and I have to watch out for things like that.

I don’t THINK I am a good environment for surrender because it’s too dangerous to relinquish control, but I FEEL like I am, and that I have been practicing surrender, and since that night when I heard about the surrender process, this dissonance has been bothering me.

It’s pretty simple, really. My feelings tell me where to look, and then I go there and figure it out, even if it takes years. One bonus of this approach is that you can usually sort out some other conundrums along the way.

The fight is inevitable, no matter what you call it. Struggle, challenge, goal seeking, whatever. The thing is, though, that surrender is also inevitable; the beauty lies in that you have the ability to make them allies instead of opposites.

Fights are always for, never against. The illusion of a fight against anything is what locks people into hate because it surrenders the control of their lives into the hands of the monsters they have created. When you instead accept that your fight is for you, you win, and anything that you surrender along the way wasn’t meant for you, wasn’t serving you, and you’re better off without it.

Here’s an example:

I brought my rather austere form of introversy into my relationship. It’s fair enough, really, I’d been a practicing isolate for a couple of years, and some time to loosen up was expected. But I didn’t loosen up, and I began to fight for my right to maintain the identity of Introvert that I had claimed, validated with memes, and felt safe with. I was safe with it, and I had come a long way with that identity, and I didn’t want to let it go, but that level of solitude and isolation is the death rattle of a healthy relationship. Guess what happened. I became very depressed, and my relationship suffered great, and unnecessary strain.

I can’t pinpoint when the shift happened-well, actually I can but I’m not going to tell you about it-but it started with a moment of surrender that became the start of a process of surrender, and the realization that I was now fighting against what I was once fighting for. I wasn’t wrong before, but I did it for growth, and now I had outgrown that identity, and needed to move forward, so Hez and I got all dressed up and went to a Christmas party. We had an awesome time with a group of wonderful people, and I heard a fellow talking about surrender.