The Year of Real Change

Is this the life, the one you imagined....?

I go and see a movie with the girl I'm seeing.
We have fun.
She acts like a girl. She acts feminine. She curls up on my arm and her head rests against mine. She squeezes my arm during the tense moments and pulls my hand between her legs to keep it warm.
We go out to eat to celebrate a big accomplishment in my personal life.
I feel normal.
Some girls seated nearby stare me down as we walk in to the restaurant, my girl's hand in mine.
Typical. They always want someone else's toy.
I don't feel the manic drive to escape, go and drink it all away into oblivion.
I'm not super excited but that's okay. I've learned/am learning to appreciate things rather than always chasing "more". I chose to get off the rollercoaster and this is where I must stay to keep my life out of jail and/or dead or institutionalized.

She's proud of me. We feel like a normal couple.
I don't feel the restlessness I once did.
I know this current state of our relationship won't last.
I know that the restlessness will return but for the time being, I simply appreciate the relative calm in my mind.

This is not the destination.
I'm at a rest stop.
--

I hit the gym and get some coffee.
Again, I feel good.
I'm not in jail.
I'm not sitting in a cell.
I've been sober for * months.
My life grows more manageable so long as I take the right steps.
--

I hit a meeting and get some dinner after.
The food is good and there's enough money in my account to make it to payday.
The times, they are a changin'.
--
As I've begun to change, I see that now my surroundings will/must change.
Before I sought the geographic change as a solution to what ailed me.
Now I know that I had to change in order for change to be possible.
---

I used to believe in America.
I believed in a lot of things.
More and more I feel like an expatriate living within the confines of an intellectual and cultural prison.
I don't recognize America anymore.
A man without a homeland.
People agreed the US should bomb citizens abroad without trial if someone somewhere said they were involved directly or materially with terrorism. It's the new McCarthyism.
I know it was twitter and propaganda and whatnot...but you could have never promulgated such an idea even 15 years ago.
Smart phones haven't made us anything other than fucking indigent and even lazier and even more addicted to crack hits of pseudo-information finally lowering the fucking bar to beneath the ocean floor.

I don't believe in any part of the system any longer.
I stay off the grid as much as possible.
We've spent 10+ years at war in two different nations, then occupied them.
Guantanamo Bay is open. We recruited detainees for some cock-brained Jason Bourne-esque project and those guys took the tax payer dollars and went right back to being terrorists.

What I'm saying is I'm done.
I have cashed out my investments: emotional and intellectual; I am no longer a patriot.
My life is now my own entirely.
I feel unbeholden to take America and my nation with me as I look to wrap up my professional obligations here. I've got some job opportunities abroad I'm looking into at the moment.

I've cast aside the programming to desire children. I was married and escaped that fool's game.
I've completed all of my life goals save 1. The vast majority of my life is now focused on that.
That and staying off the grid.

I live frugally and I have more peace of mind and contentment in a day than I previously did in a year chasing cheap thrills and enslaving myself deeper in their abyss of debt and discontentment chasing paper houses and trinkets that leave me only craving more and more of high that was never satiating, simply a powerful onslaught of serotonin that eventually subsides, and subsides more pronounced each successive time and you pour more down, smoke more up, whatever-it-is, thinking for however long the dragon's tail is almost within reach.....but it's not. Eventually it stops working altogether. Or, your body gives out. Or the legal system wraps its hands around your throat and you disappear.

There lies ahead only diminishing returns on the path they offer.
I've stepped from the cave and the pain of divorce, treatment, and jail, and debt was catastrophic.
Sitting in my car, at night, alone. You stop and wonder if you should quit. If you should retreat. Go back to her. Stay in the job and be a drone. Learn to live on their meager pay. Stay paying the car that's more expensive than you need.
Or, you decide to press forth.
Something tells you...something better,

I don't know what silent whisper kept one foot in front of the other on this path, my eyes blinded with tears, confusion, uncertainty, and rage.

Nothing changes...and nothing changes.
You have to do things differently if you want different results.
You have to do what others will not do if you want what others do not have.
Do what others do. Get what others get.

Real accomplishment. Real satisfaction....must always come with sacrifice and risk.
I live within my means. I eat exceedingly healthy. Outside of work, the vast majority of my time is spent in pursuit of my hobbies and my craft.
I don't ply myself and my iniquity with alcohol and its friends.
I don't escape myself or my situation(s) any longer.
I've done more for my personal life in the past * months than I did in the previous 10 years.

I'm reminded of Roger Dodger.
The scene with the woman who gets drunk to have sex and cries while the protagonist touches her.
I see a bunch of adults that are really tall children awkwardly holding a beer at a party, afraid everyone else will see how afraid they are.
I somehow made it to the other side and I no longer live that way. I hope that I never let that back into my life.

Good luck and happy hunting.
I'm leaving the hive.
I suggest you do the same.
        - Yrs. in Christ