Quoting Disney's Aladdin: "Ten Thousand Yeeeaarrrss, will give you Such a Crick in the Neck! Hold a mimnute. Whoooooooooooow does it feel good to be outta there!"
So, I now have the internet back, and for the first time in about 5 weeks, I can blog. I feel like the Genie (above) :)
So. I need to combine about 3 blogs into one. They would be entitled The Imagination Trap, the Ninja Valley (or the Anomally), and Circles within Circles. All at the same time. So here is le mammoth blog, with three seperate and intertwining stories.
So, I had asked a girl for coffee for a couple of weeks in a row, and had kinda given up hope she would ever accept. Then she did. Cool. She was just a friend, and now we could catch up.
And we did, and I was really happy that we connected so well. For the first time, I found a girl I could understand. Though we had fairly different interests, we had very similar thought processes, so I knew where she was coming from, and was comfortable assuming she felt the same. So I booked another time. And the next day, it struck.
I was at work, in the slowest week I have EVER worked, and I had a lot of time to think. My friend went from being easy to understand, to a romantic possiblity, to a committed certainty. All through the sunny paths of Imagination.
The next week we caught up, she brought her friend, and her friends boyfriend, and her friends sisters baby. Huh. No real romance possibilities with baby drool on shoulders. Epic Normality, which if I hadn't imagined anything, would have been fine. But I had, and it wasn't. I NEED MORE ALONE TIME WITH THIS FUTURE CERTAINTY! More coffee! Sooner! ... Or, she's housesitting a house VERY close to me. She wants me over for dinner one night? DONE! Yeah! All my christmases at once. I'M IN!
This is where I need to break for Story 2. I had been committed to my view from my blog "The Top of One wave, the Bottom of Another?", and although I wasn't still believing I had everything together, I was pushing on pushing in. As Life Hacker recently posted, I was Determined to keep a constant upwards graph, not a sinewave. But looking back now, to be honest, all that went out the window as I got caught up in the Imaginationship (I just made that word up). But back to Story 1
Dinner arrives, as do I with a bottle of wine. We cook dinner, watch a movie together on the couch. We laugh, talk, and generally enjoy each other's company... and then she has to be at uni tomorrow, so goodbye. Wait, what? But, my Imagination says this is the perfect opportunity. I don't understand.
The next few days, I'm crushed. What's wrong with me? Why didn't it work out? There's still a week left. Maybe more coffee will help! But her dad's had a motorbike accident, and she now has no time left for me...
No time left for a hideous monster. Because that's obviously the only answer. I screwed it up somehow. I'm horrible. I'm Second-place. I give her space and tell myself I'm a failure. 2 long weeks go by, during which my sinewave/uphill trend thing takes a battering, but averages a flatline, and I call that fair. I reckon it's kinda good, considering where it could have gone.
So. I rock up to a movie night, and she's there, along with 2 other girls (one of whom I've gone out with before) and a guy I'm friends with. The entire night, she says not one word to me. Not one. In fact, all three girls studiously say NOTHING to me all evening. Everbody sits on the couch furthest away from me, and say things all evening that make me fairly angry. Not that I want to whinge, but they were putting in Effort to ignore me.
I haven't been that pissed off in a long time. I remember I have weights, and am very close to an Ocean. Suicide is not an unfamiliar thought, and it enjoys my prescence that night in a way it hasn't for a long, long time. I eventually sleep without the heater, kept warm by my anger.
In terms of Sinewave theology, this was an epic low. Something that usually takes months to degenerate into, ninja-ed upon me in 1 night. Maybe because I had been going up for so long, it needed correcting, or... I don't know. The Sinewave theory works because the pattern fits really freaking well, and here was something I've never seen before. An Anomally. A Ninja Valley. So I slept. And woke changed.
I am burning with a cold, slow burn now. But, thinking about it for just 10 minutes, I realise I am not angry with any Person at all. I am angry with some aspect of the situation. I take the entire day to sort my head out, and something amazing happens. Normally, this kind of thing takes a month or two to fully work out of my system, but for the first time, it's happening in one day. By that night, I have forgiven all people involved - including myself - justified my actions, and realised this pain is based on an insecurity I know is Ridiculous. In one day.
The next day I wake up with just a Heartache. It takes me half a day to realise the insecurity I thought it was is just a front for a much deeper fear of being ignored. By the afternoon, I have laid down solid reasons why I am not ignored, and found myself ensconsed in God, the thermometer of my life. I look back to my happiness at the start of the year, and realise I'm right back where I started. I walk to the shops, and feel perfect. 2 days, instead of 2 months.
Again going back to Story 2, the flipside of a Ninja Valley - a Ninja Recovery. By now I am happy to say I am on a completely different pattern. I have no idea what the Anomally was, but it seemed to have been corrected. More than corrected, I feel better than I have all year.
As I reflect upon this, I see Story 3 (don't worry, it's a quickey). Before I lost my drivers license, I was in a really solid place. My life was coming together nicely, and because of that, I wasn't putting any effort into God. Looking back now, I can see where situations I thought were lucky escapes can be interpreted as warnings. So when I drive now, I make sure I am talking to God a lot more, and when I see these signs, I make sure to stop driving for a day or two and focus on God again.
This is how I feel about my some of my friends. I went from a very sheltered Christian school straight into an Arts degree, and received a sort of social Baptism of Fire in terms of what to do and not do. Most of the people were REALLY clicky and shallow, and when I look on my friends now, I see the exact same thing. Like being able to see the warning signs when driving, I can start to see the parallels socially. The only problem is - I know what the lesson is in driving, I don't know what I'm supposed to learn from being around these types of people.
Circles within Circles. All in all, a Bizzare week.
So. Things I have learnt:
1. Stop Imagining Social Things!!!
2. I am on a different sinewave pattern thing. And it changes lightning fast.
And Questions for discussion:
1. What is the lesson to learn from Story 3?
2. Is there an Anomally, or a brand new pattern in Story 2?
3. How do I explain what's happened to the girl from Story 1?
4. Is it my imagination, or could the fast bounce back from Story 2 be getting me ready for something. If so, what?
As Pooh-Bear says: Think, think, think.
Jonathan
