Burnt By The Sun
Coming back to reality. My chest cavity had been emptied and replaced with dead air. Almost like a protective numbing agent had been introduced into my system. I felt weightless. Exhausted, with a subtle mixture of relief, excitement, and a new respectable fear of my future. I'm a wanderer. Or at least I had been for a long time. As soon as I start to feel settled in one place something happens to shake it, threaten it, pull me out of it. I was finally in my own space…for a month. And now…my attention had been pulled so drastically to a place I never expected to gravitate so heavily towards. I had spent so much of my energy being somewhere else. When I returned to my new world, it didn't feel mine anymore. My ownership had been diluted. Now, my desire to be somewhere had crept in to almost fever pitch level. Was I trying to get closer to where my father was? Was I escaping to the arms of a new person…what did I want from that? What did I want in general. I had taken so much of the previous year healing. I got lost a bit. Lost so deep within your own shit…
My father was fine after a small hospital stay and adjustment. And returned to a hotel room. With my panic subsiding, the crisis wavering to close, an interesting aftermath became the disillusion of conflict. Internal conflict looses it's hard grasp. Sometimes I think we hold onto it for…meaning? importance? It truly isn't something that I think is impossible to overcome. But somehow we don't…sometimes for years and years. Why? I think most of us have felt what affect "release" has on your state of being. I understand it takes both sides to work towards it…and that can be frustrating, and uphill battle sometimes. Hmmm. I held onto mine I think…for energy? Sounds weird but it is fueling to have something of a certain level of intensity working through you…family stuff is always a good "ember". An ember I was keen to keep burning. I didn't want to deal with it. any of it. I was fine for letting my deeply conflicted feelings towards my father and I relationship sit for the time being. There had been enough weight for everyone. This wasn't the time. I think maybe I tried to let it go. Just reset. Maybe this was a chance to finally release. But maybe also I was looking for more from another person than could've hoped to expect. You can't force change out of someone. Change has to come from them…and if you live just waiting for those changes to happen, you may only be living for disappointment. And it's hard to be the first one to change. You want the other person to jump first, take that risk. It's so…vulnerable to open yourself up to another possible disappointment, which gets associated with pain all to easily.
My lingering responsibilities drifted back into my life over the coming days. I was working on shooting a short film that summer and was trying to get into the groove of producing. Right now…I was hating it. Hating hating it. Logistics is not something I like to do. Especially when I was trying to stay in a creative mindset. I understand I needed to learn how, but with the traveling and stress of the last two months I was fuckin' OVER logistics. The idea of taking energy, negative or otherwise, and turning into creative energy is a nice thought, very difficult in practice. While acting like a transformer, trying to change one form of energy into another, I could see where I put my energy, how I used it and what I used it for. And right now…I wasn't using enough of it for the short film. I was using it for everything else. Essentially giving away what I needed to keep. I wasn't being fair to others or myself. I was waiting for a reason to escape again, looking for it. I was wrought with an almost delirious backlash from the traveling. With that said I barely lasted 10 days (maybe a hair more) before I went back to LA. But this time for indulgence. "K" and I continued talking and texting since I returned, in that early connection phase where everything is impulse, exciting and new. She invited me back down for just the two of us to hang out. And I knew I could use it. We made plans to go around and do LA, check out the different things the city had to offer. And now I'm off, escaping again without a second thought.
Sometimes I think about the idea of "feeding the flame". You want to stay warm but you don't want to be burned. But you have to keep feeding the flame. The delicate use of kindling to keep fire alight, but you limit the amount of wood so the fire doesn't burn to high. I don't know if that's too obscure a metaphor but that's kinda how I felt about this LA visit. Nothing was anything yet, but it was at the same time. I ran around LA with this beautiful lady. Giggling like dorks, and just forgetting things. I felt like I already lived there, that this was my life and nothing else mattered. Everything was…activated. I needed to feel activated. But it was just a projection. I wasn't activated. I was distraction. I was living distraction. And I didn't care. But it only lasts so long. The thing about kindling is that it doesn't last as long as wood. And I was getting burnt pretty quickly.
By this point I had all but decided that moving to LA was a definitely reality. The timing was all that I needed to decide on but I was definitely going. A hasty decision maybe. But I had tried to move a year earlier and backed out. I felt I was giving myself enough time to make the plans I needed to so I could follow through this time. "K" was very interested in this idea. We had started growing into something more…legit? I maintained my hesitance to put a label on it. I wasn't ready. But we stayed "together" to see where it goes. I…could've been better with my communication with her. When I get challenged or faced with confrontation I react. I didn't want to be that way…I don't want to be that way. It was something I felt from my father, a dismissive shut down reaction. And when "K" challenged me with being in something more defined, that's how I acted. I caught my step quickly, but I should've taken the time to look into that more deeply, before hand, caught myself earlier. Sometimes the best lessons are learned in the hardest of ways.
…cutting this a little short.
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