(no subject)
It's the first lj post I'm making in a while because for some reason I feel like I actually have a minute, but also because for some reason I feel really compelled to write.
It's my penultimate night here at my own apartment and it's eerily surreal. I've been living by myself for a year now; been in a relationship and been single, mostly single, been actually dating for some time; have been working full time and most the time I've been supplementing my work with college, volunteering at the high school, giving guitar lessons, or even, at the beginning, doing woodshop work. I guess I keep pretty busy.
It took a while but I did get really used to not only living by myself, but also being by myself, and not in a sad emo way. I found out a lot about myself -- my hobbies, my likes and dislikes, my expectations, my values, my principles, my habits, my flaws, my character. As I lay here in my bed, i struggle with the idea of coming home to a house full of people. The idea of being surrounded by people who, for lack of a better word, care, about me, day and night. The idea of friendship oddly disturbs me to some minor degree, or perhaps only my own idea of friendship -- being constantly subject to the influence of other people, and being a constant influence on other people. It is an undeniable burden of friendship, an enormous responsibility, an internal battle, a precarious support, a daily challenge that in every way imaginable defines exactly who you are. To be a friend is to be an ideal, and even those who we are most comfortable around seem to unavoidably push us in one direction or the other. Perhaps living by yourself is an escape from that, a chance to see who you are behind closed doors; and that person that you find becomes the person you to whom you subject everyone you come in contact with. If you are a good person, you have the comfort but responsibility of aiding those that you can, and if you are less good, you can use that as an excuse for hermitry, but the fact remains.
I suppose I am frightened at the idea that I will no longer have am escape. There will be exceedingly less opportunities for me to come home to an empty house and be the bad person that I want to be, and the bad person that I need to see in order to know what I need to fix. "Be selfish in order to be generous." To come home to a house full of people expecting you, to come home and have people to talk to, to come home and share a beer, these are all things that one seems to desire until he has it. The beauty of pain is recovery, and the path the knowledge is error. Like a tempered sword, strength comes through endless tribulation, adjustment, and more adversity, until the final product pierces through action and armor. Giving up my apartment is more than giving up my freedom, it's resigning early, quitting while I seem ahead, but it's only been a sprint in a marathon. I feel like there's so much more I need to do, to learn, and though this won't stop my learning, it will slow it.
I love my friends more than I love myself because I wouldn't be who I am today without them. They've helped me walk into Mordor, but the burden is still mine to find a way to purge myself of my shortcomings, and some things you have to do by yourself.
Part of my reluctance to accept change may easily be fear. I don't exactly know what to expect and I'm dreading the worst. I'm finally peaking from the change of living by myself, and now that has to change again. It'll be ok, but it's definitely going to be a hard adjustment. I already miss it and it's not even completely gone yet, just boxed up. Wow, I'm honestly as bummed as a break-up. I'm not ready for this part of my life to be over. Not at all. I want it back. I want it back. I want it back. I want it back. I want it back.
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.