Late Night Listening XXXVI: I Went out Tonight Edition

The year, and arguably a decade, now come to a close. Three and a half years have passed since the events leading to this blog took place. I can't see myself ever wanting to return to that life. Yet, the last year or so has felt like a wandering in the wilderness, a time to shake out the remains of an life before moving on to Canaan.

I have visions of what a life after marriage looks like, but I have struggled with the inertia of making it a reality. Maybe there is a part of me that feels guilty for wanting these things. Or perhaps it is fear that some unexpected negative karmatic event will visit itself upon my life, making it impossible to get where I hope to go.

Indeed I have seen shades of such things in the past year or so. STBX's extended unemployment. The major breakdown of her van. My dad's hospitalization and his further deterioration of health.

I have not come to terms with Loss. This is an awareness that I have gained in recent days. I reflect on past experiences... unreliable parents, untimely deaths of relatives during times of celebration. I think the message I have submliminally garnered from these things is that there is no joy in life that could be so utterly destroyed by an indifferent, or even sadistic, divinity.

I keep the feelings of hurt buried well, but sometimes they come back to haunt me. Sometimes it is late at night when I am alone. Sometimes it happens when I see narratives of others' losses, even in cartoons like Up and The Pricess and the Frog. My daughters must think I'm nuts for bursting out in tears.

It's during these dark moments when I realize that my attachment to this world is tenuous, driven not by love for this world, but rather the sobering awareness that I have commitments to fulfill before my time here is through.

And so I bide my time here, ensuring that my children do not do without a father in their lives. Getting lost in the Flow of work helps me to escape this sorrow temporarily. Indeed the lost self awareness is the closest I can come to resolving the Absurdist Dilemma.

I cannot work through this stagnation alone. I need to reconnect with a greater community, someplace I can feel welcome. I don't know where that is, but I know that I cannot find it by staying at home. I need to accept that Loss will come again, and that the avoiding the pain by avoiding life will mean that I have no life.

To this end, I am forcing myself to go out tonight to a music venue I have never been to. To the best of my knowledge, I will know no one. The self consciousness has been weighing on me. Can I be happy in being alone in a crowd of many? Can I open myself to the possibility of meeting someone new, without indifference to the possibility of rejection? Can I be brave enough to be who I am regardless? It is a raw test of differentiation, self soothing in the face of projected exclusion.

I will go, and I will be.