Hold Fast To Your Dreaming
My life has the kind of direction—the kind of focus—I didn’t think possible. There are still gaps in my, faith, but looking back on the landscape that has been my life, I know that I have truly experienced a kind of growth that once felt inaccessible, because I couldn’t fathom it existing, let alone being something I would posses. And yet here I am. This wild, ungroomed, strange land that I have somehow stumbled upon. No. That isn’t correct. All of this, in some way, has been very much deliberate. Purposed. How little of the “bigger” picture I was actually able to see. It’s kind of pathetic thinking about it now. To have potentially made such—life ending decisions based on the little I could see, and the whole of the emotions that submerged and threatened to drown me. It really is just a matter of sheer dumb luck that has found me still alive now.
But that isn’t the purpose of this writing. At least I don’t think it is.
The point, is that I stand on the edge of the precipice, and that I still find myself plagued with that familiar self-sabotaging feeling. The risk of stumbling and collapsing right before the finish line, encapsulates the wide-reaching feeling in way nothing else seems to be able to.
So much of my life has upended (in a good way) just these past few months of the new year. And it is so totally harrowing. So overwhelming, and aweing, and fantastic. And yet, that needling feeling presides. As though there is anything that I have left behind—anyone that I have been abandoned by—worth hanging on to. But the fear of newness is in just that, its newness. The unfamiliarity in that newness, that strangeness. Where so much possibility resides—so much more turmoil and pain and restlessness. The holding of breath where anything is possible. The best, and the very worst. Breaking new ground. That is what I am doing. Personally, and generationally. I am reminded, even more often now, that when you ask life for “more”, more also get asked of you. It is not an undertaking for the faint of heart. And yet, I undertook it knowing this. Maybe some part of me didn’t believe I would ever get the opportunity? More truly, it feels as though I am only downplaying my own self. As though I understand—can sense—on some level just out of conscious grasp, how powerful, how capable I can become. What wonders are truly capable and willing and able to happen. Destined. Maybe I am running, foolishly, childishly, from a kind of destiny. Maybe I am hoping that it will run after me. Chase me down, and then I can know, that this is the path meant for me.
Sometimes I feel as though I know myself too well. I have these constant battles of the same questions—arguments—cycling around in my head. In my heart. With no real solution or agreement reached. Just the same walls for the same cries to echo off of. Sometimes it feels lonely. Mostly it is a continued defense mechanism maybe? An underestimation of others’ capabilities. In holding what I carry, and not wavering, or having it spill from their arms.
I worry that my expectations are too great, and that eventually, in the end, I will have to compromise. All these years staggering ahead with some sort of standard, only to give it up before…where does the finish line actually lie anyway? It feels as though I have been telling myself that for a long time. That it was just ahead, especially these past few years. Years spent in strict discipline to healing, improving, growing, fine-tuning myself. In dedication to myself. To the vision of myself, to the actualization of myself. But it feels as though some part of me is falling short. Too great of expectation, perhaps. A desire for the world to be better than it is. And if not the world, at the very least I could rise to my own expectations. Social creatures require socialization. This is not a journey I can undergo myself. But I’ve always known that—isn’t that where majority of my angst has derived from?
I guess that’s the objective of this then. To gain perspective, and not lose sight of the finish line. To not stumble and give up and compromise in a way that means giving into the very things I have always rebelliously fought against and resisted. A kind of settling where I am only half alive. To take proper, accurate stock of where I have been, what I have gone through, and press ahead. To let up a bit of the pressure I am so used to placing upon myself. To give myself a bit of mercy. A bit of grace. I have been reckless in living—but I have not compromised.
Hold fast to your dreaming. That is the only thing I know to tell myself. Hold fast to your dreaming.
