The first challenge of the year. Saying No. To a person I’m incredibly attracted to, because differences in our state of mind have already appeared. I want to ignore them. I want to ignore the feeling felt toward the end of our pseudo-relationship and solely remember its lustful genesis. Mostly, I don’t want to believe that I’m in that position again. I don’t want to say no. I want to say yes, choose me, open your eyes and see how good we could be. But what follows is the reality of rules and boundaries that I would have to set, from the beginning. You can’t do this because it triggers this, when you say this I feel like that, change this, do that and then we can be together. Can’t you see?
What do you mean you don’t care what happens now? Didn’t you feel what I felt? How are you so willing to let our connection go? He already told me that that is how it would be. He warned me as he embraced me that this would end this way. I didn’t want to believe it. And I still don’t want to believe it. But what am I to do? I know exactly what I am meant to do, I just don’t want to. I don’t want to say no.
A good friend of mine once told me that the moment you are head over heels for someone is the moment you need to break away. The truth in this lies in the values you find yourself sacrificing to meet the needs of the other, a journey I’ve found myself on multiple times in the past. I have the foresight, and, as the old saying goes, fool me twice shame on me.
An odd realisation had just occurred to me. That many of the relationship experiences I’ve endured have been completely unconventional and totally all-consuming. I’ve not had time to myself. They’ve been intense, and in the scheme of things relatively short. We’ve been in totally surrounded by each other.
Rather than allowing absence to make the heart grow fonder, the absence of absence has resulted in a lack of clarity of oneself, my self. I’ve always considered myself an independent person, but what is becoming clear to me now is how readily I throw that out the door when the opportunity to spend every waking moment with the opposite sex, having sex, presents itself. No wonder I feel fucking crazy! How do I get myself into these positions? I’m not actively seeking them, they just, appear, dont they?
A tall handsome man with an incredible smile comes knocking at your door and asks to move into your spare room. BAM. A beautiful Czech spends a month with you in Mexico. BAM. A hot friend wants to bang you for a few months while you’re stuck in a small town. BAM. And now, weeks at time with a long-haired adventure man that takes you paragliding across the Victorian alps. BAM.
Zero chill. While an hour ago my heart was heavy with another loss, in hindsight, it’s a dating history that has been incredibly, um, fun? Or maybe funny? They seem like good problems to have, no? As I sit here on my couch, I can’t help but palm my forehead and shake my head. What a funny world I live in.
In hindsight, 2022 was a year of “yes” for me.
I started the year with a vista of a remote beach on Australia’s south coast, somewhere in the middle between Melbourne and Perth. Nights were spent around the bonfire, playing music and slapping knees, days were spent in the ocean embracing the empty line-up of 2-3 ft waves.
I had no idea what 2022 was going to bring. No plans, no goals, no idea of what I’d wanted to achieve. No idea of who I wanted to become, who I should become. I did not expect to be chasing down orcas on the Ningaloo Reef, or to be paid to go camping in the Pilbara trapping an endangered species. I certainly did not expect to be the acting head of an environmental department for a mining company.
What did I know? I knew was that 2022 was the year I’d turn 30. An age I’ve been dreading since, I dunno, 27?
When it happened, I was sky high. Literally. I’d spent my 30th birthday in a helicopter flying above the east Kimberly with my closest people. I remember and overwhelming feeling of disbelief. Disbelief that I could have the circle of people around me that I do, and that they all cared about me as they did. Surely this amount of luckiness was reserved for a person more deserving than I. I wanted to vomit from the amount of love I felt that day.
The East Kimberley.
I’d given that day three years too many of thoughts and expectations. I remember wanting to write something meaningful and life changing about turning 30, about epiphanies and revelations. Nothing came to mind. The closure of my third decade of life did not hold the gravity I’d anticipated.
After saying yes so many times, the opportunities seemed infinite. I could do whatever if I just kept saying yes. The issue then became, trying to do it all. Although deep in my bones I knew there were few of the hundreds of things that were really important to me. As days of the year passed by, these things became clearer to me. They became goals that I wanted to achieve and the cogs started turning, deciphering ways I could achieve them. A path was forming, winding and uncertain, but leading to these goals formed from the foundations of 2022.
Despite the covid trauma state of mind that everything you want to do may be thwarted in an instant, the commencement of 2023 has seen me hone in on these goals, and in that there is clarity about where I need to focus my physical, financial and mental efforts. I find myself believing that 2023 may just be a year of “no”. No to the things that don’t contribute to the bigger picture I’ve managed to carve out for myself.
restlessbrowneyes 