86. choose

I feel I'm at a crossroads. Like there's a decision to be made and it's mine to choose. But I don't know which way to go. And unfortunately, it seems that God can't be bothered...or at least that's how it seems since he's not throwing any clues my way.

Perhaps some preface is in order here.

In the movie Crash, there's a scene where Sandra Bullock's character is speaking to a friend and she says, "I'm angry all the time and I don't know why." That's me, only I'm not angry. I'm...and I'm trying to think of the right word to use here...numb. "I'm numb all the time and I don't know why." I was originally going to use the word, "sad," but that's not it. Numb isn't exactly it either, but it's a lot closer to what I'm feeling than sad is. A more accurate word might be angst, but that's not so much a feeling as a state of mind. I mean the sentence, "I'm angst all the time..." doesn't really work does it?

ANYWAY. I've got this angst all twisting me up and it seems to be all the time and I know it all started when my dumbfucking (yes, one word) heart fell in love. See, before this, things were going well. My mood was on the upswing, I had hope for the world, and I was generally in a cheery mood for a change. But then my dumbfucking heart fell in love and I knew I was screwed (see the middle of blog 52, I predicted this) but what can you do?

See the heart is like a dog and the mind is like its master. The heart wants to please but it's stupid and has a habit of peeing on all the wrong things. And so the mind tries to train the heart, to discipline it, to make it listen to its commands. And sometimes it works and the heart is stable and happy and all is well in the world.

But then the heart sees something it wants and sometimes it wants it so badly that all the training in the world won't stop it. All the animal instincts return and you just can't reason with it. The mind tries to beat it down, tie it up, trick it into chasing something more constructive but you can take an animal out of the wild...

And that's what happened to me. My heart fell for someone and no matter how I reasoned with it, no matter how many warnings I gave it, no matter how tight the collar or how close I held the leash, that dog will hunt.

It'd be one thing if heart and mind were separated like man and beast because then you could just let your heart run free, get it's ass kicked and then when it comes whimpering back to you, you just nurse it back to health and go on with life. Unfortunately, you can't let go of the leash. You're tethered to that sum-bitch and you can't break free. If your heart starts dragging your mind down some dumb-assed dead end cliff, you may as well kiss your happy ass goodbye because you're going over whether you like it or not.

So finally, back to the crossroads bit. Here's my choice. Stop fighting, and start following my heart. Maybe it's right this time. Maybe she will respond favorably in return.

Or, keep fighting it. Keep telling myself that she's not right for me, that I'm not right for her, that any kind of relationship with her is just too good to be true (and you know what they say about things like that).

I don't know what to do. There's a line in a song by Loudon Wainwright III that goes, "I've been writing off love for so long now, I don't know what to do." That sums it up real nice. That's pretty much where I'm at right now.

My normal reaction is to write it off, to say that love and I don't mix, that I should cut and run. That's the response that I'm familiar with. It's the comfortable choice.

But I wonder...