Sleeper, Awake

I see the image of her in my mind as I've seen it a thousand days since I last touched her, and I remember myself as I was. It's been a recurring theme, defining experiences sometimes before they have a chance to happen. It's a badge of courage, that memory, and it built a sobering tolerance of every difficult thing I've encountered in my life. I've struggled, I've gone head first through rejection and failure, and I faced much of it alone. That was by choice. I've seen in her my importance to another person, and though it's still there, what I never saw was the growth of myself beyond her eyes. I just set myself to pushing ahead, way ahead of the pack, stopping occasionally to see something beautiful, but not real. Because I wasn't alive, surrounded by people who constantly looked over my shoulder for the next best thing, I stopped looking and worse, I stopped hoping. No, I'm not a celebrity. I'm not rich, nor do I drive a nice car or own my own home. I don't walk into a room expecting all eyes on me, and I don't expect anyone else to open a door for me in my career. I only focused on building my life from and inside ground zero, but things are beginning to change.

I've come to a new place where I don't have years of investment. I am brand new, judged as I am, and there are no thoughts of what I once was. My value only exists in the moment, and if there once was a place to deny myself, to accept being overlooked and underappreciated, this isn't it. I am what I do. I'm trusted with difficult projects, compensated in more ways than one, and gain the exact measure of what I put in, at the very least. I'm in a land of appreciation, and this is a foreign place compared to where I have been, where I've paid my dues.

So, of course, I have to change. Darwin once said that "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." I can't speak to anyone else I recognize as older but virtually unchanged, but since I write to ask the questions I may not have answers to, and I constantly turn over the topsoil to try to figure out what the hell I'm doing at any given moment, it's not a matter of this possibly being the time for me to change. It's an undeniable truth. I have to be brutally honest with myself and begin to let go of old habits and beliefs. It's right there in front of me. It's that hill I can see from twenty steps away from my house. It's the addition of new people in my life, and the reintroduction of old friends.

I see an image of her in my mind, but it doesn't resemble a picture I've held for a thousand days since. She is redefined, with a new name and possibly...who knows...maybe a new promise. In fairness, I should hold and offer my heart with no hesitation, for I've kept it so long for no apparent reason other than fear. I'm not afraid any more. Let this be a new recurring theme for me.