This is Your Life

Soundtrack:

You get done training and head home.
It was one of those days where you didn't even enjoy being there, but that part of you that's angry and tense and has hate on its breath needed to be there. Your anger clouds your finesse and your style of play and you are left unsated in some regards....but you feel better than if you had gone out drinking, wasting money, and risking a fade into the depths of the leviathan.
You are sore and tired but you have gotten better and pursued the only goal you have left on your list of accomplishments before you die. One goal. One day at a time.
All or nothing. The only way to live your life.

Your professional self looks amusedly upon your social self and wonders where and how this dichotomy began or from whence it sprung like some platonic vision of the self in the grand tradition of James Gatz.

You're still hashing out the divorce and bullshit with your ex-wife.
Your new girlfriend is mad you went to train instead of see her.
A stripper from the other weekend asked you to come fuck her.
The fresh-faced girl from that same weekend wants you to visit the weekend after this one.

You stretch your arms and shoulders and close your eyes while feeling the tautness of your v-neck sweater, tie, and fitted jeans, as your Chuck Taylors bely a sense of irreverance for the things society says should be this or that way but you know those rules only apply to the milquetoasts and sheep of the world....and you have spent years deigning to live not the quiet life of desperation.

You let go of outcome expectation(s).
You expect nothing and accept everything.
This is why you did not want to be married.
This is why the institution is not for you.

This is why you're glad you were married.
You had lost your lust for life.
You had grinded all the enjoyment out of recklessness and audacity.
It was time for a safe port in the storm that was the maelstrom of your unwillingness to accept who you were.
Your regret that you could not be the man your ex from before you were married deserved (you felt).
Your regret that the life of wife, kids, and marriage, and normalcy seemed impossible to comprehend and that you simply could not let go...divorce yourself from the guilt for feeling as though you should be able to make yourself want those things.
You simply had to accept and let go.

Two years of marriage......and you came to accept that having seen the institution as it is....not her, not the wife, not anyone.....not for you.

With acceptance comes peace and the time and energy to embrace all the other experiences life has to offer when unfettered by the convention and predictability of marriage.

As you have stopped fighting who you are....as you have begun admitting who you are to those you meet....the urge to drink and hide and escape has abated considerably and fades into nothingness for weeks at a time.

You come to understand that fighitng who and what you are was a large cause of much of your mania.
This is no one's fault but you own....and you feel grateful you are coming to terms with who you are.

The first 30 years of childhood have been the hardest.
You sit back and enjoy the predictable unpredictability of it all....and know that life has much more to show you in the form of red flags, long nights, tempestuous and capricious women, glorious victories and ignominious defeats.....but that is what makes it worth living.

Good luck and happy hunting,
         - Yrs. in Christ