This is not The Great Perhaps

"I go to seek a Great Perhaps" - Francois Rabelais

This is not a happy post.

I'm just going to flat out say that off the top. I pondered about even writing and posting this, but this is something I feel I need to get off my chest.
It is also me asking for help, because, I obviously can't handle this one on my own.

Here we are: A new year, a new beginning ...right?

When I came into the beginning of 2012 I felt rejuvenated. I felt free and optimistic about the future. My life had unexpectedly fallen apart at the end of 2011 and I chose to look at it as a fated opportunity. With the ringing in of the new year, would be the ringing in of a new chapter. I was terrified but also incredibly excited, and for the first time since I can remember, I had no plans. The world was my oyster and I felt energized to take it.

Fast forward a life-changing year of ups and downs and here we are entering another one. 2013 has chimed in with the usual lights and hurrah. It's been a few weeks now, but everyone is still running on that high of a new beginning. Out with the old and in with the new, as they say.

But what if you weren't finished with the old? What if you liked the old? We are always so eager to be rid of a year. That the next will be better. That it will bring bigger and brighter things. We reflect back on 365 days (give or take a leap year) of the good and the bad before tossing it behind us. There is a closure to the past where the door becomes locked and the key thrown away.

As the clock approached midnight on this New Years Eve, I found myself wishing that the universe would pull a "Groundhog Day" on me. That the clock would strike midnight and everyone would yell HAPPY 2012!! and I would mysteriously find myself back at the New Year's Party the year previously.

This thought surprised me. I didn't understand why I was longing to reverse to a time of such uncertainty in my life. I'm on a new path now, and I really love this new path... so, why don't I want to go forward? In these first few weeks of the year, this question has been bothering me. Nagging at me during any moment my mind isn't otherwise occupied. Why am I not excited about moving forward?

I've been feeling very melancholy lately. I've been dreaming of another time, another place. Sometimes from my memories, sometimes from my dreams. As the winter holidays came into full swing in December, I found myself not able to get into the holiday spirit at all. I wasn't a full out Grinch, but I definitely felt like I was walking around with a little cloud of bah-humbug hovering over my head. I pegged it on the warm weather and less than seasonable accumulation of snow. But, I knew at heart it wasn't really that. It was something else. Something that had nothing to do with my environment, but just - me.

I was the one that was off, not the weather.
But I brushed it to the side, I thought it was residual stress wearing off, I thought the feeling would pass with time. But as New Year's rolled around, I felt the same aching in my chest for something more. But what that something is - I have no idea.

I feel like I'm living two lives right now. The life where everything is happening: I go to school, I go home, I go out with friends, I go grocery shopping, I work on projects, I look for a job, I feed the cats, I repeat. In these moments I feel normal, I feel put together, I feel like I'm on the right track. Or at least a stable track if nothing else. And then there's this other part of me who is living a very different life...if one can even say that. More so, it is dreaming of another life. I imagine where I'd be if I hadn't lost my job, if I hadn't switched careers, if I hadn't moved back home, if I'd stayed in contact with more people, if I was braver to tell the truth, if I was more confident, motivated, inspired.

These aren't necessarily regrets, as much as they may sound like it. They are simply visions of what might have been. Sometimes I crave them more than anything, sometimes they give me perspective for where I really am today. But in some respects it still feels like I'm living this other life where these things are happening. A wise fictional wizard once said "Of course its happening inside your head... but why on earth should that mean that it's not real?"

I feel like I'm standing in a door way. Half of me can see a future and a presence of all of these opportunities and experiences, the other half of me is looking in a completely different direction - but I can't experience either of them fully because I'm stuck in this door way.

I've talked myself in circles about this. That I should just let it go, focus on what is real and happening. Live in the now and enjoy the life I am living. I've given myself all the talks...but I'm still grasping to this 'something else'. Even though I still don't fully understand it, I'm absolutely terrified to let go.

At the beginning of last year I decided to throw caution to the wind and chose to live life for myself.
This year all I want to do is curl up and hide.

So this is me, saying:
I'm scared, and I honestly have no idea what to do.

“Before I got here, I thought that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it didn't exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied by the last words of the already dead, so I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life.” -John Green, Looking for Alaska