playing russian roulette with my mind

One of the perks of having a blog is that you can go back and look for patterns. Events that are chronicled point to a certain mood at a certain time, and I see now that there is a progression, yet there is also a cycle.

The progression is a comfort. Looking back two years, then one year, then back to today, I can see how unsettled I was. I can actually feel the unsteadiness in the short-attention span, frenzied posts. I was not really processing much of anything, even though I purported to be. I think I was just nagged and pulled by an undercurrent of fear and uncertainty, and writing a post was a way to keep my head above water. There is still a lot that is up in the air, but I feel more confident of landing on my feet. I feel like I have a better idea of where I am headed, and that it is a well-lit path instead of a dark vortex.

The cycle, on the other hand, is both amusing and problematic. There is something about these last few months of the year that seems to bring out the girl in me. I am not necessarily talking about somehow becoming more feminine. It's the actual girl, the opposite of being a woman who knows what she is doing and where she is going and what time it is.

Something always seems to happen in these last few months that throws me off kilter. And yet, every year, I act like it is some kind of alien phenomenon that has descended upon me. It never fails to surprise me. But I hate to think of life as happening to me. Normally, the idea of being passive annoys me. When it comes to the XYs, though, I am just about as passive as a person can get.

I run through the internal conflicts as though they are newfound dilemmas, but they are all the same, actually. I am going to be frank for a moment and say that I just assume I will remain single. Most of the time, I am fully aware of who I am and that who I am clashes with what men would be vaguely interested in. I'd say a solid ten months out of the year, that is my baseline assumption and the assumption fits me like a warm, cozy glove. And do not think for one second that you need boost my self-esteem or any such thing, because for those ten-plus months, I have no problem with my state of existence.

But then some clown shows up and causes me to reconsider what has become my second skin. I wonder, in some ways, if this sort of thing happens to people in relationships too. Because when you are perfectly content with your life and everything is going just fine, it is easy to start taking that for granted. And so, when some flash of excitement starts sparkling at you, maybe it makes you reconsider your stable, steady life.

The difference, of course, is that the married/involved-in-a-relationship person who avoids the temptation of messing with a good thing is thought to have their act together or thought to have the proper perspective. On the other hand, the single person who avoids such temptation is called a pansy or a wuss.

And maybe there is some truth to that, but maybe there is not. In this particular case, it seems a fine line between fear and resisting drama for drama's sake. Even as I have now recognized the pattern, I still have neither an explanation nor a solution for it. For that matter, I am not even sure the pattern is a problem necessarily, or just the natural order of things. And at any rate, the whole lot of us tend to be completely wrongheaded when it comes to matters pertaining to the heart- the more logic applied, the more all theorems and laws of physics are thoroughly defied.

p.s. You know what doesn't help at times like this? Watching Pride & Prejudice. Sure, it's not the Colin Firth, completely lethal version, but it's still quite potent. Luckily, I know what does help at times like this- having a good dinner, catching up with a friend I have not seen in ages. Even if it means missing Friday Night Lights this week.