Dusting the Pedestal my Trophy Should Sit

I am closer to the person I want to be than I have ever been, but I look in the mirror and see the longest expanse of barren wasteland between me and the ideal. The babbling promise of pristine brooks empty into muddied plains of shit, and I'm wearing brand new wingtips.

It is supposed to be a motivating revelation to understand that I and I alone am responsible for my happiness, but at times it's an oppressive burden in the face of 30 years of Hollywood expectations and hollow facades on imaginary houses. Would that I started my journey, those first steps borne on despair, many years earlier, so that now I had a back to look towards, and an appreciable history traversed unfaltering, though any date of departure would not promise this maiden journey a smooth one. As it stands my past has only had any forward momentum recently, and even that's peppered with unjumpable hurdles that instead bent and strained and stretched until finally giving way, allowing for a few steps of unhindered joy before the next restraining encounter.

It is when one meets the next of these hurdles before the previous one splinters that I – I mean “one”, no I really mean I – start to entertain the encouragements of that disembodied voice of Loki himself to stop pushing, to submit to the kinetic and experience the brief weightlessness of flight and falling before meeting violently the same path trodden already and discovering that all your broken hurdles are repaired and standing sentinel again.

It is either at the point of deadly whispers or catastrophic crashing that I find myself in tonight. I guess I've not yet stopped pushing forward against the sling, I might just be holding my ground and maybe only making prophecy of my fanciful flight, should I just relax my knees and release the tense friction between heels and pitted road. I must be there, hoping the more words I put down here tonight equate to more Newtons against my barriers. One needs not experience the fall back to fear it, for “back” is a road one already has surveyed. So I yearn to find fortuitous destruction of my constraints in this exercise.

Holy shit, I can write pretentious as fuck if I want to.

The faerie fire that draws me waywardly towards the evening woods is ever the approval and desire of other people. As if sugar-coating it in fantastical prose could make that admission any easier.

I know I'm not alone in somehow finding myself an adult, yet still thirsting for the child-like necessity of attention. I'm not the only one saying “Look what I can do!” and hoping to turn heads. In everything I do is the shameful hope that I'll be found worthy of your response. Blog posts here. Facebook statuses. Unanswered texts. Everything a preschool crayon artwork held up to the refrigerator that never has enough magnets. There is an entire demographic of me hoping to find themselves the male lead in their very own Hugh Grant rom-com because there's never been a better psychological Mary Poppins than the silver screen Ms. Mary herself with enchanted parasol floated upon.

There are plenty of ways to describe the lackluster love lives of such subjects. I don't feel myself any more advantaged in being able to distinguish myself as a “Nice Guy” as opposed to the ignorants' self-assessment of “not like those douchebags who mistreat women”. I mean, yes, there is yardage to be gained by knowing the other team's playbook, but only if one puts the mental resources to work in deciphering their plays and learning how to counter them. I feel like I'm burning fumes to generate the simplest calculations in this cunning tactic of being one step ahead of the rest.

The symptom of seeking external validation hints at the root malady: not having faith and confidence in yourself. And boy, has that never fit me more to a T than in recent years. Finding myself at closer to 400 pounds than 300 was a soul-shattering discovery, and this coming at the tail end of a shitty relationship that I willingly – unnecessarily – extended way past its shelf life meant a dangerous precipice edge on which I tip-toed. I could succumb to the emotional darkness (which, for many nights in real darkness as I laid alone in my crappy efficiency apartment surrounded by the meaningless clutter of a consumerist life, was a wholly inviting option). Or I could prove myself worthy of the 46 chromosomes my biologically-successful parents donated to me and I could plow headfirst into the beast and push through it to the end-zone.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment of eureka, the moment I took the step forward, as my moment was not near as heroic or odds-defying as many other people's inspirational autobiographies. But it was a moment indeed, or a series of moments, and after a few stumbles I found myself on the Path of Small Changes. I knew I couldn't wave a magic wand of determination and cure my ills, but by focusing on small tweaks I could develop habits and then build on those towards a grander design.

So anyone who has read my work will know I've lost a lot of weight recently (in the face of what's left to lose, I have to remind myself that 55 pounds so far is A LOT of weight). Many know I'm over a year into home-ownership, I've passed the 5 year anniversary at my career, I own my own vehicle and I am papa to a beautiful husky. I don't toot my own horn because it sounds good. I only toot it to try to keep in tune.

The contrasting colors in this potential masterpiece are a multitude of not-good-enoughs and other such personal failures. I can't seem to be able to devote any time to learn to play any of my 4 guitars at all. I cannot handle learning a second language, despite having three years of classes in it throughout junior and senior high. I cannot play my favorite games enough to be truly competitive. I have a library of unfinished books that may look like a cohesive shining whole to a guest instead only are the negative spaces of unread chapters to my eyes. And I cannot convince myself that I am deserving and worthy of being loved, despite the mountains of common sense and contradictory encouragements I receive.

This largest demon I cannot even write about here, though I don't know if my apprehension comes from caution or cowardice. Suffice it to say that Ahab never had a harder time realizing his white whale didn't live in the unforgiving azure and white of the sea but instead dwelt within the eternal black of his own heart. (And don't let me fool you, I've never read more than a chapter into Melville's most recognizable, though I've owned a copy for 10 years).

I suppose the very act of even publishing this masturbatory examination of the darkness that creeps at the very edge of composure is itself a continuation of my eternal hymn that begs for validation. But I say in whatever vanity it carries that I instead name thee, demon, and in naming thee invoke all the courage and progress found in identifying the demon inhabiting the child in your favorite exorcism movie. As the writer of this, my movie, I know the adversary I face, even if I cannot reveal him to you (yet), and all these words are ever more pounds per square inch of pressure against the limiting beliefs I contest with.

I don't know how to write this to persuade you, to persuade myself, that I'll be alright, that I'll conquer this. I want each post to have some moral or goal or happy ending, though before we can get teddy bears toppling a highly-trained galactic military, we must first lose our hand and handicapped as such come to grips with the evil discovery of our parenthood, no?