Restarting A Broken Journey in Ultimate Randomness

The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu is credited with having said, “The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” It’s one of the most well known proverbs in history and simply makes a truly profound point: all journeys, no matter the length, start with our first step forward. How can we argue with a point so simple? But one thing that never is accounted for is when the journey takes a detour. Is the journey over at that point? Is the next step a part of a new journey or a continuation of the old? And if it is a new journey, what of the old one? Is it a failure or, since it came to an end, was it successful in its own way? It’s something I am having to figure out in my own way these days. These words are some of the first I have typed in years. Whether because of a lack of motivation, or ability, or hardware, or courage....well, that is ultimately the question I need to ask and find an answer to myself.

I used to write quite a bit. Whether keeping this diary of musings, loss, ponderings, or through my own little worlds I either created or built over the top of our own, I wrote. And for me, writing has always been a wonderful escape from life. It lets me work out my most complex feelings in a way that simple conversation just never has been able to do. I have no trouble providing status updates. I can tell a person exactly where my head is at any time. It lets the people around me know what to expect from me at any given time. That is easy. What is more difficult is taking those feelings and unraveling them, following the threads to where they begin and end, figuring out how to keep them from tying the knots that have been dragging me down since high school. It is one of the harder things to truly get across to folks who have never dealt with depression. I wake up every single morning wondering if today is the day that I finally go under from the damage done. All the days I could not bring myself to care about my health, my hygiene, my life. I wonder when I wake up in the morning if today is the day the cumulative effect of my own disinterest in living finally takes the ultimate toll. It isn’t sadness, exactly, but despair. Not in any obvious way to those who would watch from the outside. Its an ambivalence to living and dying. I don’t want to die and, after my marriage broke down, I knew I would never be able to take my own life in any kind of final or active way. No obvious suicide for me, not that I never thought about it. No, my death will always be by degrees through poor diet, lack of exercise and a general malaise. But no, I don’t want to die. But I am thoroughly scared of living. It’s everything I can do to deal with the pain of this disease every single day. Ever feel that sinking feeling when a relationship comes to an end or a family member or close friend dies? I feel that feeling every single day. That emotional, and mental pain that scars takes pieces out of me every single day. Considering that, how do I move forward? The idea of trying to date goes out the window knowing that any relationship is likely to end in one way or another. And even if I could get past the pain I could eventually feel, like I said, I know that one day, all the days of being indifferent to my own existence is eventually going to kill me. Asking someone to let me into their heart knowing that I will eventually cause them at least some part of the pain I feel seems both cruel and selfish. And what to do professionally? Hard to ask a company to put their faith in my abilities when I don’t really have faith in them myself.

And that is where things stand. Or is it? After all, the whole point of this was to ask whether a thousand mile journey ever truly ends if there is another step still to take. If I raise my foot, move my leg forward and complete that first step, is it just a simple step or can it lead to something greater? I guess that is the point of this entry. It has been so long since I wrote anything, can something as simple as this little diary entry provide the catalyst I need to journey those long miles? Is it the first step that is truly so important or does the importance lie with each and every step that follows? I hope to find out. I hope that this is not the end. I know, ultimately, it is up to me to figure out where this journey ends. Every sentence and paragraph and page, every character, land, and world I choose to create, every thought, feeling, and mood I commit to writing, can I make everything I have dreamed of come true with the first mile of this entry and a step as simple as the word, “The”?