Does the Dog Wonder Where I’ve Been?

I’m curious to know if the dog wonders where I’ve been. Bereft of a proper understanding, he’s left without explanation. We shared every day together, only for it to swing swiftly to the other end. There’s no weening off the drug of love. You have it, and it’s gone.

I miss a lot of people, and some I haven’t met. I’ve tied myself to Austin for a couple of years now and learned that no matter how much I love a city, it will never hold everyone I want to know. I may have up and left the dog, but if I can always up and leave again, I’m never more than a few hours away from anyone.

After unpacking all my stuff from the apartment, I felt no desire to live with things again. So, I’ve started to sell my things and replace them with people and adventure. I’m not going to South America to find myself; I’m going to meet someone else. Someone new every day. A better version of my friends with the passing hours. Perhaps a lover.

Maybe in the process I’ll find a new version of myself, but I don’t need this to break open a callous on my personality. I’ve done that before. I’m confident in who I am and what I want, and I know I won’t find it waking up in the same place every day. The same patterns produce the same habits, and the same habits generate the same results. The same results produce the same emotions, and we often find our lives to be nothing more than a stable migration to nowhere as we climb upon the stationary bike of life, yet again.

I thought I was going to find the answers in my achievements. Since I was a child, I always thought I was destined for something grand. I pictured and plotted the patterns my life could follow to lead me to the mountaintop of accomplishments, where I would stand and look over the valley of my trampled challengers.

I’ve lived hundreds of lives in my own head at the expense of what surrounds me. I became my own best friend but lost a lot of actual friends in the process. Moments that could have been spent with those who left too soon were replaced by countless hours of delusional daydreaming. I thought if I could finally churn a dream into reality then people would show me the love I so desperately sought. How funny that it was right in front of me the whole time.

Harsh lessons of my past have taught me how to be present. Skipping stones towards the future has only left me looking like a lost boy tossing rocks on the beach. The irony of my failures has lent me success in ways I never pictured. The gap between what I thought I was and what I’m meant to be is closing, and peace is easier to find in the congruent spaces of the moving universe. In order to go with the flow, I must keep moving.

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