X

I am sitting in my office at work, but my heart and mind are nowhere near here.  They are off on yet another tangent, wondering if X will ever happen and if it does will it be as fantastic in real life as it is in my imagination?  They are mucking about in an emotional swamp, doubt and fear swirling around them like sharks ready to bite.   They are in reach of a lifeline, just a little to the Right, but they rale against going Right, because the colours are so much brighter on the Left.  The Left is so full of untapped potential, so brilliant, so sparkly.  So vastly thrilling and dangerous and bursting with treasure waiting to be discovered.

Thirsty for X, I can only sip tiny drops of its nectar when they happen to fall on my lips.  I am teased and taunted by it, over there, on the edge of this swamp that feels more like an ocean.  One step and I’d be on dry land.  And yet it seems I’ve been swimming for ages while the shore just keeps getting farther away. 

I am distracted, briefly, by a phone call.  A decision has to be made, so I make it.  It’s easy – a no-brainer.  Oddly enough, most decisions I am called upon to make are like that.   I navigate the thing that puts food on my table and a roof over my head with relative ease.  It’s like a child; it needs to be nurtured, pampered, praised, disciplined, all in turn.  On the rare occasions that it vexes me, I have learned how to rock it to sleep, or bandage its wounds or pacify its tantrums.  Mostly, though, it makes me proud.  I wake up every day looking forward to its challenges and go to sleep every night content in knowing that we serve each other so well.  And I try not to think about the day when I will have to let it go.

I do think that if X would only reach out a hand to me I could get through anything.  But X remains elusive, pensive and vaguely aloof as if something I have done, or, alternatively, not done, continues to be an affront to its sensibilities.  I just don’t know.  And that makes me a little nuts! 

Then I wonder if having X will prove to be as amazing as it sounds.  I wonder if the fantasy is better than the reality ever could be.  I second guess.  I mentally sabotage the dream.  I invent every worst-case scenario I can think of, just to test if I would be able to survive it.  (And I can!  ‘Cause I’m Super Woman and I’m cool like that!  At least in my head.)   Envisioning the best-case scenarios, though, is something that I’m not nearly as adept at.    Those, I think, are assumed.  Or, possibly, believed. 

Belief is such a misunderstood and abused concept!  Intellectually, I know that beliefs are not real, but it acts real and that is where the danger lies!  I don’t think I really do believe in the best-case scenarios, though.  They are far too peaceful and comfortable for my adventure-starved psyche to latch onto with any kind of firm grip.  Where’s the fun and excitement in that? 

And yet… And yet, that is what I also long for.  Peace and contentment.  To be satisfied and relaxed and unencumbered by crisis - real or imagined! -  would be so… Well, boring, really!

Incoming “Aha moment”! 

So maybe I just need to learn to discern between good drama and bad drama.  Yes!  I think that might be it.  I’ll have to ponder that some more.  I can already see it’s fraught with traps.  But it has some definite potential.  Hmmm….

X has been lurking in the shadows of my imagination for… For as long as I can remember.  In my mind I can see it and feel it quite clearly.  It’s easy to conjure the formula for X, that velvety elixir, that divine potion.  It’s the mixing, the extracting, the condensing that is necessary for the creation of the perfect existential experience that is so troublesome.  X may be demanding compromise.  Or, perhaps, an ingredient that I am not privileged to is missing.  Or both.  Or I’m overthinking it, which is far more probable. 

And the pressure I’m feeling.  The X clock is ticking, damn it!  I do worry a bit that time is running out.  X has a use-by date congruent with my last breath. 

Not that I’m expecting to expire any time really soon, mind you.  I’m not finished yet.  There’s more to do.

Like achieving X!

Sigh…

I deserve X.  I am worthy of X.  I would be as great for X as X would be for me.  X and I could do marvelous things together. 

X isn’t a need.  It’s a want.  I know this because I have survived for 53 years without X and I’m still here.  X is a dream.  X is a goal.  X is that thing that, unlike becoming a ballerina, is actually achievable.  (I’m almost positive of that. [Only fools are positive, right?])  X courses through my veins.  X plagues my dreams and haunts my waking hours.  X is a bit of a nag that keeps calling to me, only to dodge my grasp just when I think it is within my reach. 

I honestly don’t know if I’m a pessimist or an optimist when it comes to X.  It’s a mystery.  X is, I mean.

And while I do love a good mystery, I sure wish that X would step out of the shadows and, for the love of Pete, either stand still long enough for me to make it mine (figuratively speaking), or bugger off all together.

(Dear Universe; Please don’t let X bugger off altogether.  Please show me how to incorporate X into my life and collaborate with it and have fun with it and be supported by it and be challenged by it and create with it and spend the rest of my life with it.  Let X know that I will always do my best and that it has nothing to fear from me and that I will never, ever do anything (on purpose) to hurt it.  So mote it be.) 

Well, that’s it.  X is still sitting just over there on the Left amid the sparkly, brilliant thrill and danger, sometimes smiling at me with encouragement and sometimes looking mystified and perplexed at my clumsy attempts at making my way toward it.   It’s almost as if it wants me as much as I want it.  But it’s unwilling to surrender, as if in doing so it will become lost, or destroyed or otherwise changed somehow.  Oh, how I would love to be lost in X.  Destroyed by it.  Changed by it.  To become found again, re-created and better than I am now.