the sheer delight - a somewhat gushier post

Everything has been happening. My very mode of operating has been going through an overhaul lately. I don't think I'm going to go to Zambia on Peace Corps after all (Reasons: Too much time gone when I want to get started on my life soon; Previous existential motivations for going have dissipated with advent of new outlook on my life; Have identified a certain tendency within myself to do things simply because I feel I "have to" do them, and I always just kind of figured I "have to" do Peace Corps again, because, well, just because.), but there are other opportunities for volunteering overseas that have come to light, and both of them require a decision within the next week. Maybe neither of them will work out. Maybe I'll change my mind back and go on PC. Maybe I'll stay right here and go back to school.

I won't go into much detail about the changes, but to my wonderment, it would seem that the heart of the thing I've been doing wrong ever since my previous framework of Christianity was uprooted has been exposing itself. It has to do with emotions and thoughts that are too big for a head that doesn't have a workable way to make sense of them. What I've been doing is holding onto these thoughts/feelings and wrapping them up in a sort of intellectual blanket, rather than letting them be what they are--painful, hideous, joyful, indulgent--following them to their fruition and then letting them go. Hence the logjam that has affected almost everything of consequence that I've done for years now. Always stilted and afraid to take either fork in the road, for its inherent benefits and shortcomings. It has to do with all kinds of childhood shit, brain tendencies, and recent history. And not to say that being this way hasn't lent itself to good things, too. It's made me more thoughtful, more tolerant, and in some ways more open. But, it's changing and that's wonderful.

Since the sun sets in Chicago around 12:39 p.m. in the winter, I stepped out for a walk a few minutes ago to grab a some rays before they're gone for the next 22 1/2 hours. Towards the end of the walk I realized that the deadness I've felt for almost 3 years now, most acutely in recent months, is itself dying. I'm FEELING things again. I'm hurting, and having revelations, and getting inspirations, and hoping and being disappointed and trying to understand love again. And I started laughing really hard. I grabbed my phone and put it to my ear so as not to appear a crazy person laughing at the air.

Thank you, girl of heartache.

***

Don't get me wrong. It still hurts and there's a long mahfuggin' way to go. But the occasional swell of good feeling from being in some way en route, well that is nice.