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[fivebyfive]

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
You don't know yet what you are...

*

This may call for a proper introduction.

I'm...
Speeding along Wilshire, through Westwood, he drives a small, sleek Mercedes convertible. Or maybe it's a BMW. Does it matter? It screams STATUS. It screams "I've got it!" at the top of its lungs, and whispers "...And you don

Comments

[joekest]

Well, yes, I did assume that comments would be okay, but I was trying to be polite, since I am a visitor in your journal. I guess I wanted to post something to indicate that I had read the entry, but just wasn't ready to respond yet. :)

Unfortunately, I read through the other comments and your replies, and now I'm a bit intimidated. I'm afraid of falling into the lump of people who "hang on certain things and ignore others." :)

Actually, that's not too surprising. When we hear or read about other people's experiences and feelings, I think we naturally tend to focus on the parts that resonate with what we have experienced and felt. We are usually reading through the filter of our own world view. That's why I admire any talented writer or artist so much. They can occasion those rare times when we are invited (or forced) to broaden our perceptions and see beyond our parochial blinders.

So I'll focus on the things that struck me, even if it's not what the entry is really about. :)

Do any of us really recognize most of the key moments in our lives as they are happening? I don't think I did, and I doubt that many people do. We make the decisions that we think are important, but the most telling choices often occur with little fanfare. It's the accumulated sum of our minor decisions that shapes us much more than the few major ones.

It's true that as we grow older, our choice carry more weight. When we're young, the options seem limitless. If we make a wrong turn, we can always go back and choose a different path. As we enter adulthood, our choices begin to close doors behind us, many permanently. In a lot of ways, that sucks. We can make mistakes that affect every aspect of our lives. But all we can do is ackowledge them, hopefully learn from them, and continue on. But even mistakes we make can end up having a positive end result. If I look back now and try to determine if it was a mistake for me to enter the seminary and become a priest, I would have to say yes, it probably was. On the other hand, if it weren't for the things I experienced during those years, I wouldn't be who I am today. And I like who I am, so who's to say?

In that veing, there was one thing you mentioned that I would disagree with heartily. You wrote something to the effect that "the time for forming the kind of person you were going to be has already passed." Not by a long shot! If I was still the same person I had become when I was 22, I can't imagine how miserable I would be, and how much pain I would have caused to others by now. :) Who we are is (thankfully I think) fluid and developing for every moment we are alive.

So there are some comments reflected through my own lens. Oh, and about You could always print. :) It will eventually join the folder of Chris Alexander files I printed out when you were making those lengthy posts a year or so ago. You know I enjoy your writing style and talent as much as the content, so I read back over those from time to time. On this occasion, I just started reading and didn't realize quite how long it would take until my eyes started to itch. :)

[fivebyfive]

I feel like I'm pretty aware of key moments. Even small key moments. Some have definitely gone by undetected until later, but I overanalyze everything and always think in pretty big "how is this grilled cheese going to change my life?" terms.

And I'm not saying that I'll remain exactly the same person over the next 40 years, because I know that isn't true. But there are a lot of things that have been cemented already. The recklessness of youth is gone, and being reckless as an adult is harder and comes with many more consequences. I was in too much of a hurry to grow up, and I did, but I didn't realize that it would still take just as long to get anywhere and now I'm just biding my time. In a lot of ways, I'm angry that I worked so hard for no reason, when apparently I could've done next to nothing and gotten exactly where I am now. You may like who you are in spite of your mistakes, but I don't like me, so what how does that fit in to your ideas on mistakes?

[joekest]

You may like who you are in spite of your mistakes, but I don't like me, so how does that fit in to your ideas on mistakes?

That's certainly a fair question, but I don't know if my answer will be very satisfying or comforting.

The "liking myself" phase is a relatively recent development. During most of my teen and adult years, I hated who I was. I didn't like anything about my life, but I felt powerless to change it. Looking back now, that was one of the strongest reasons that led me to study to be a priest. I felt tremendous guilt about being gay, and thought that would be a way of avoiding sexuality all together. I also saw myself as not having much to offer (sort of the polar opposite of your star view), and thought that by being a priest I could accomplish something worthwhile.

Obviously, neither of those things worked out quite the way I expected. I still carried all of my baggage, and just had to deal with it in a different setting. I continued to dislike myself and the life that I was living, but again felt trapped, with no way I could see to alter things.

Over the last five or so years that I was a priest, there were a series of experiences that shook me on many levels, and made me examine everything about myself and my world again. There was some therapy involved and a lot of self-discovery. I acknowledged my bad decisions and mistakes, and accepted the fact that I couldn't change anything in the past and would have to live with it. But I also began to learn about myself and understand myself in a way that I never had before.

One thing I began to do was to take some control over my life, rather than simply feeling like a victim trapped by circumstances. I was able to begin to choose things that made me healthier and happier, first and foremost among those was leaving the priesthood. It was incredibly scary to be starting over from scratch at age 45, but I needed to do it for me. I also recognized that even in trying to make positive decisions for myself, I can't control everything. Like the various characters you presented, bad things can still happen any time, I can't control that. But what I can control is how I react when those things do occur. That has brought me a sense of peace that I never had before in my life. Things aren't perfect, but they are much, much better than I have ever experienced.

I'm sorry if all that sounds like a bunch of psycho-babble. I recognize that my life experience is far different from yours, I understand the experience of not liking yourself, no matter where it comes from. And I understand what it feels like to believe that it will never change. I guess I am just trying to hold out the hope that life can sometimes hold some pleasant surprises and revelations in addition to the monotony and pain. I guess until we stumble upon those, then we just keep going and coping the best that we can.