Reclaiming What Was Lost

The last year has been one hell of a roller-coaster ride.  I lost lots of spare change, a compass, shades, countless socks - oh wait that was the dryer never mind, and other stuff on this particular ride.  Understandable given that things have been turned on their head, spun around in circles and centrifugal force has been applied until the pressure is cheek flapping.  A certain amount of loss is to be expected in this case.  Most people would lose their lunch on such a ride.  It's not the small things that are bumming me out.  It's that I lost a few big things.  Mostly it seems some pieces of me fell out when I wasn't looking.  See what happens when you do not keep your hands in the car at all times?

I lost my job of 25 years.  That destroyed one of the lynch pins and made the ride distinctly less comfy and more wildly swinging. I have dated more men in the last year than in the 15 years preceding them.  And still I'm riding in that car with my hands in the air all by myself (Oh Gawd!  Eric Carmen earworm).  Those two things have shaken more than a few pieces of me loose.  I am more jaded.  I don't like that.  And the girl who used to laugh so easily has been MIA for most of this year.  I miss her most of all.  I miss the way she used to swagger and not give a rat's ass what the world thought about her.  I miss the funk of her personality.  The way she could toss her hair and move on from the small owies.  The spark of her insane intellect.  How do I get that back?

My goal over the next couple months is to reclaim the pieces that fell out of my pocketses over the roller coaster ride of last year.  To divorce the things I love doing from the unpleasant memories that circle them like scavengers and prevent me from enjoying them in the now.

My short list of things I will reclaim:

Drumming.  I used to love this.  It made me feel totally high.  It made me laugh when I fucked up, or even when I didn't.  But I let the drumming be contaminated by a number of bad relationships with drummers.  So much so that both my drums have been in storage this year where only the spiders interact with them.

Painting/Drawing.  I loved this too.  I don't know where it went.  Collateral damage to the time crunch of a busy life with only so many hours to spend in the creative flow.  That flow these days consumed always by the writing.  I am not sorry that writing has taken over most of it, but I do kinda wish that the other was allowed out to play from time to time. too

The knowledge of who I am.  Serial dating kinda made me forget to do those things that sustain me.  As my life became subsumed into one dude's life after another, I lost the thread of my own.  Ironic to me that the thing that I have been chasing is the very thing that has been nibbling away at my foundations.  I am going to honor me first and if there's room left over for someone else, then great.  What I am NOT going to do is cast away pieces of me to make room for someone else.  Gawd how this makes me radically unhappy.  Package deal.  All or none.  FYI - It's a spectacular gift hidden in a fairly average package.

Meditation.  This one kinda went poof this year as well.  My brain feels both hyperactive and sluggish at the same time.  Slow when I need it to be quick and pinging around in the brain pan when I need quiet.  If I learned nothing else in my time in Seattle it was that my essence is tired.  I need some stillness.  Yes, I live alone.  Yes, I am unemployed.  Both those things should afford me scads of still space.  But I have become almost afraid of where my brain tracks when I allow it.  money.  relationship.  money.  fear.  MoneyRelationshipMoneyFear.  MONEYRELATIONSHIPMONEYFEAR!!  Swirling until I can't sit still.  This part of the ride makes me feel nauseous all.the.time.

Laughter.  It's always been a lot tougher for me to laugh.  But I love how it makes me feel.  Open.  Energetically flowy.  I used to laugh more before things got all serious and shit.  I am someone who appreciates a good laugh.  Really clever wise cracking smart alecky people rock the earth plane for me.  What I don't like is sarcasm, which always seems a thinly veiled and protected way of saying what you would like to, but lack the balls to say directly.  This year has been full of sarcasm and not at all the funny, rock my world kind.  Trust me people, it isn't funny to make these comments and then fall back on the 'I was just kidding' excuse when called on it.  Yes, I use it.  How could I not?  Life time pre-paid sarcasm card was installed at birth.  I don't like it when I do it either.  So, I am going to change this part of me inasmuch as I can.

Music.  This is hard to admit, but in the last 4 months, there has been absolutely no music around me save the EC concerts in Seattle and Portland.  I miss it.  Some of that got lost in the tangle of other people's musical preference and the strong association of my entire ipod library with the lab.  Mostly I just let it slide away because music is a hotline to my emotions and bawling in Kroger's because they're playing I'm On Fire is bad enough, I don't need to spend any additional time with my nose buried in a Kleenex.  Music is emotional to me.  I cry at the movie soundtrack, at the opera, at TV commercials and at concerts (why yes I DID cry at EC).   Maybe the edges of me have felt too raw to allow another note in.  So why not just put on the music that makes me giggly and happy?  Mix Stray Cats and They Might Be Giants on a continuous loop and rock out?  Dunno.  It just never occurred to me to do it.  THAT despite a VG friend who uses music as a mood altering substance ALL THE TIME.  I plead insanity.  Brian Setzer is on right now and I feel sooooo much better.

I'm sure there are other things too.  But those are enough for now.

So, I am off to make a mix tape for Reclamation.  If you care to suggest some of your best happy music in the comment box, I will check it out.  And can any one point me toward the rollercoaster Lost-N-Found?