Frayed

The discovery and excitement are the positive points. There's always something new to see and to do. Somewhere to go, someone to meet. Whole cadres and masses of people to be exposed to. Some you pass dutifully, some you greet, some become friends, a rare few become real, deep connections.

So there's that. That's been a high point, something to be understood as a benefit and a blessing. Not everyone gets the chance to move around and have so many adventures. I've taken in and done more new things in that last two years than perhaps the last ten. I've met hundreds of people, heard hundreds of perspectives on life and love and living. The amount I've learned can't be quantified.

And yet, I can't seem to shake this feeling of becoming ... unhinged. Like the constant transience has worn away any sense of stability. To borrow a phrase, it almost feels I've become "Sort of stretched, like ... butter scraped over too much bread." A ghost.

I am in eternal flux; I think that's the root cause of my stretched feeling. It isn't so much the alteration of location, or the amount of travel, but the frequent loss of people. Every time I've developed a base of friends, people on whom I feel I can rely and talk to and even trust, I'm out the door and down the road. Then it's back to square one with an ever longer roster of distant confidantes, far away comrades, and (sometimes) former lovers.

It's as though someone keeps setting off a bomb, and the ensuing blasts rescatter my best friends to the four corners of the globe.

I've grown to abhor saying goodbye. A goodbye is always followed by long hours of solitude in motion, filled with nostalgia and longing. It often comes with a promise of return, but the return can never be soon. There are simply too many other places to go, too much else to do, too much cost. And maybe the promise of return is empty, at its core ... maybe the connection we share is already almost severed from excessive strain. Maybe this is the last time I'll see you, because the next few phone calls will be truncated, abrupt, lacking a commonality of experience that we can share and use to stay close.

I know that change is a part of life. Friends, places, jobs, love will all come and go. Everything in life is only for now.

But ... I think it's the intensity and frequency of the recent changes in my life that are affecting me. Every year has involved a complete change in vocation and focus. Every year has involved a tearful goodbye to a woman, and to friends, I've loved. Every year has ended in a solo trip over the horizon. And the general chaos, hecticity, and self-destruction between the transitions haven't helped.

In short, I feel worn. The physical strain has lessened since my return to PA, but I'm finding that the emotional strain has not. The goodbyes are harder than they ever were. Living alone, while more palatable than it was in KY, still sometimes leaves me with a feeling of intense isolation.

Worse, I can feel the looming gloom of my next move already. I can feel the sadness of having to schedule a farewell night. I can feel the weight of the boxes I'll be loading into the car, the weight of my foot on the gas pedal. I can feel what the hugs and high fives and well wishes will be like, the warmth followed by the sudden coldness.

Maybe I won't move? Maybe I will?

In the meantime, I need to find a way to feel more comfortable with these feelings. Saying goodbye is a part of life- things have fallen as they are, and we can't go backwards. I should value the fact that I have so many things from my past to miss. So many hundreds of memories and people have left me with a smile on my face and a good, if bittersweet, feeling. I must have lived a good life so far. I must be pretty lucky.

Maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on the goodbyes. Frequent loss probably instills this focus in you, to the point that you can't see beyond the things you wish you still had. But ... I'd hate to miss out on an important hello for want of a goodbye that's already past. And if I've learned one thing, it's that you never know when those important hellos will happen.

Years Ago Today II

One year ago today, I was working the Westlake outage in Louisiana and preparing for final inspections of the main process-side outlet vessels.

Two years ago today, I was in Kentucky learning how to use an IR thermal imaging gun to determine the health of impedance heater connections.

Three years ago today, I was learning the code logic to "Heatrate", a program designed to determine the efficiency of a coal-fired power plant.

Four years ago today, I was learning how to integrate the bending moment about a curved specimen for a given applied force.

Important Things

"Good morning, Cadets."

"Don't bring me back what I WANT. Bring me what I NEED. Bring me news about stuff I don't even KNOW about. The best solution isn't what I SAY, it's just the BEST. BRING ME THE BEST."

"Are you going to be legendary?"

"Greet all people with humility and sincerity. You'd be astonished who will help you if you're humble and sincere."

"A lot of men think with their dicks. Some men think with their heads. Only a very few men think with their hearts."

"I seen a lot. I ain't never seen a man who won't come to your back if you've helped him before. It takes a lot for a man to forget you that way."

"All people are people. They're just that. There's no one you can't talk to."

"Be live. Be in person. An e-mail can be ignored, as can a phone call. Be a problem, right in front of someone. Be a big, fat, live, smiling problem. Make it someone's best option just to deal with you. Make it their own best interest to help you. Cause once they help you- you'll leave them alone, won't you?"

"No one's perfect. But excellence- my god, isn't that real? Can't you be that? An excellent mom, an excellent son, an excellent person ... can't you be any one of those?"

[smelling of grease, sweat] ... "I'm home."

"Nine-nine-point-one-five."

Megaman

There. I did it. I made it back. My sole mission of the last two years- a mission I lauded, elevated to newfound heights!- was to get right back to where I am right now. Everything between then and now was temporary. A sacrifice. Something I had to do because ... I had to do it.

Yes.

And since everything was some temporary sacrifice, some transient happenstance that was never to be my final destiny, why worry? Why settle? Why focus on any of it, at all?

Of course.

The isolation. My humor a shipwreck on the rocks of a foreign vernacular, the mast of my most dependable sail snapping. When she called and told me it was over, another snap. Watching the sun set, ten horizons away from my nearest friend, leaning against the back of my car after running like something was chasing me. Taking in desperately powerful doses of loved ones to tide me over until I could get my next fix.

The hecticity. The unending travel, long days, longer nights. The feeling of ultimately hollow importance, purpose, drive. I-10. I-10. I-10. Night after night. The nights of a job, talking about nothing but the job, sleep with the job in your head, wake up and put the job back together in the shower, over eggs. The nights in the city, mindless, dissociative banter if the music isn't too loud, feigned fervor and excitement if the music is too loud. A bright spot ... a connection, but at a distance. An immeasurable, impossible distance.

And finally, here. Look, I made it.

How could I have possibly thought anything would be the same when I got back? That I'd be the same when I got back? That coming back to a location was the same as coming back to a time?

I was counting on returning to a life that was gone the moment everyone else left. The moment they left, that iteration of myself disappeared too. Months later, when I finally did leave, I was already changed. Different. And- foolishly- eagerly awaiting my own triumphant return.

I haven't processed anything since then. Not any of it. It was all just temporary. A silly story for later, about that time I went and did all those things, lived all those days. It was an interlude, tiding me over until the great grand hope of here could be realized.

It all came in anyway, filled me up. Charged my mind, weighed on my heart. I didn't want to admit it. Acceptance of those days and nights and feelings would be acceptance that return was impossible, that the period of my life I'd so treasured was truly gone. I did my best to ignore it, distract it, confuse it, dilute it, drown it.

I've spent two years waiting on an impossibility.

The only way forward is forward. Right now, forward means turning around, looking at these years, and facing all that's happened.

And I'm deathly, hysterically afraid of what I'm going to find.