I’ve made it to a hotel room. I’m in lap of luxury, well almost, it’s a Hampton Suits. It’s Winter Haven, Florida. It’s Florida… At least I got a good shower? I got sushi and Dairy Queen. I got to see my friend from jr. high. I got to replace the headlight in the van to the tune of $547. I got this tv that is on and annoying me some, yet I keep watching it. I got a lot of things in general and I need not go into all that. But I will go into this, I’m in a hotel room and it feels like a cage, it feels like my apartment. The tv and the bed and the carpet and no weird smells, the comfort – none of this I am now used to. I felt like I was just getting into a rhythm again living in the van and now I’m in a hotel room and I’ll be in one for the next 5 days. Heading to Treasure Island today, I guess it’s a tourist town on the gulf. It’s probly more of a tourist trap for someone like me, I’m not one for crowds or cities or lounging around.
I had been thinking about home, about when I’m going back, I cannot be free roaming forever the financial cost of living two lives will catch up with me. I’ve made a tentative plan. I think of going back to work, waking every morning, making the coffee, reading the news, driving to the job. I wonder if it would it all be sweeter with a wife? Someone to take trips with and make dinners with, someone to say goodbye to in the mornings and hello in the evenings. Would it make that sedimentary life more doable?
I’ve struggled at times to do life without someone, not wanting my happiness based in a woman, based in love. Love leaves, it always has and it’s possible it always will, nothing is permanent (which isn’t a bad thing by the way). Not like I have always let that derail my willingness to love someone, well it did after the divorce but that is expected right? But that aside, love leaves and so do jobs and people and houses and friends and money and pretty much everything in life dissipates at some point. Knowing this and changing how I attach to these things has been work. You don’t just wake up one day and say, ‘I’m no longer going to desire love’ or ‘I’m no longer going to desire money’ or ‘I’m no longer going to have things outside myself to make me happy.’ The desire to not desire is the same as desiring some ‘thing’ - all desires end in a sorrow of some sort. Even when we get the things we desire, it’s either not what we thought it was going to be, or it’s better than we thought and we want more of it, or it disappears before we are ready to let it go. Learning to find happiness without desire is work, learning to find happiness by anything outside yourself is hard work. I wish we just woke with it or that we were taught it growing up, but as westerners we are taught things and people make us happy and without things and people true happiness is difficult to achieve.
Sometimes I think ‘what if I have it all wrong’ what if all the work I’ve done to be ok alone and not buy the fancy cars, cool clothes and shiny objects, not to relationship every woman I met – what if I should have done all that, what if that is where pure happiness lies. What if that is where I could find some happiness. Like maybe my idea of all that stuff being fillers in life isn’t. What if I feel so lost and depressed at times is cuz I don’t have a mortgage, a Gucci belt, Tesla Model X and a girlfriend.
But what if I don’t have it wrong and I’ve been teaching myself important lessons. What if all that abstaining was helping me learn true happiness, the happiness of me and being in the moment. What if I was learning how to love unconditionally, like maybe now I am truly capable to love someone for them and not for me. With no attachment to them, to let them be free to do as they please and not make them mine and to really love them for them and not love them for how they make me feel or what they can give me. My recent ex loved me till I broke it off with her, then she just verbally beat me up for the person she now sees me as. She loved me for the way I made her feel, not for me. Or maybe it was both but her desire to fill her happiness with me led her to resenting me when I ended it. What if by only buying the simple clothes and having an average haircut, by searching out solitude, by donating money and giving of my time has brought me to a point where I now know true selflessness. Maybe that’s all my life has been about, not learning how to be with someone or living without, but finding happiness in the simplest and smallest of things and being happy with me…
Ya’ know, I think I could go on like this, living in the van and driving zigzaggedly around America. I took a similar trip 5 years back; I think I’ve spoken of it. On the road for 12 days, at my sisters for 7 days and after 3 days back on the road I was ready to go home. I was so lonely, and so sad from that loneliness, I had to force my self not to head straight home. Today I feel as if I could go for months like this, even without meeting up with people. That will change though, all feelings change at some point, nothing is permanent (and that’s ok). I’ll tell ya’, I thought of not coming out here to see Kacie, for whatever reason. Then the thought occurred, that means I won’t see anyone for like another 10 days and that scarred me some (see how fast fear and not living in the moment can change a person. One minute I’m all ‘I could do this for a while’ and the next I’m in fear of not seeing anyone for 20 days). I don’t know if it was a true fear or a fake fear. Like jumping off a diving board for the first time, is that a true fear or a fake fear? What’s the difference you ask? For me a true fear means there is eminent danger, like legitimate consequences and a fake fear means there is no ‘real’ danger and it’s just your mind playing tricks on you. So not seeing anyone I know for what would have ended up being over 20 days, is that a fake fear or a real fear?
No, there would be no eminent danger, well not that I know of – although I have been known to get a little off kilter at times. But needing to see someone, is that imperative? I know, others have gone much longer in more desolate conditions than my 20 days, but they’ve worked themselves up to that tolerance. Like my friend Jxxxx who is doing some time, he ended up in the hole for 30 days not to long ago. It wasn’t shit to him, he knows how to do time, he’s been doing prison time his whole adult life, in general population and in the hole. If a civilian like you or I ended up in hole for 30 days, it would be a tough 30 days. There are monks that live in caves in the Himalayas for years on end, completely alone, I think, ‘how on earth do they do that?’ And then I reply, ‘they most likely worked their way up to it, that or they started getting taught from a very young age how to live that life.’
So where are we? How did I get here, in life or as in actual form. How about both. First, I drove here and why did I, cuz Kacie invited me and it lined up with my trip. Also, I haven’t seen her in 2 years and we’ve been friends ever since I was in the 7th grade. Secondly, I got here cuz I needed a change, I want a different way of life for myself. I never ever felt like I fit in, like I belonged, the only times was when I was raising my daughter and in the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous. Now Delaiah is grown and I no longer feel like I fit in the rooms any longer, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. So here I am, the guy that spent the better part of the last 9 years and on occasion the 18 years before that searching out a spiritual life for himself. I just reread the 3rd paragraph back and it really sounds like I’ve been severely hurt by people, by life. It’s like there’s this guy who has sought out a life without a connection to anyone or anything. I can totally see that in that paragraph, maybe that’s just my perception at the moment. Maybe all this started with my parents and feeling abandoned by them, maybe it was the way I thought everything was my fault my entire life and I needed to not hurt anyone else, maybe it was all the broken hearts I had over the years and believe me there was a lot of them, in many forms. Maybe it’s all the pain I’ve caused people that pushes me in the direction of not getting overly involved with anyone. Please make your judgment now and leave it in the comments below.
I’ve had a sadness in me since before I was let down by my parents, before my heart was broke, before I caused pain and sadness in my life. I’ve known something for so long I couldn’t tell when I exactly I knew it or what it was I knew. I was born an old soul and anyone that looked into my eyes or knew me knew this. I think of my most recent friend on Facebook, I see pics of him and his wife and their preschooler, they look so happy and in love. I wonder why I’ve never been able to maintain that in my life. I’ve either fucked it off or I was fucked off. Maybe it’s all that, the old soul, the let downs, the broken hearts, the pains I inflicted – maybe all that has been accumulated and in turn I continually chosen to turn to searching out a life of happiness untouched or effected by people, places and things. Maybe I’ll never know, maybe it doesn’t really matter the reasons, maybe all that matters is that if I am happy now.
There two lives we can live, one in the materialistic world and one in the spiritual. Some might say that is not true, but all I’ve looked at just now, there is a difference, isn’t there? I always turn to Kanya West when I think of the materialistic world, why I’m not sure. Do you think he is a spiritual man, one who walks the walk? Can you live that high-end lifestyle and still live by spiritual principles? Does the world need people like me asking this question and ones like this? I just seem to run myself in circles, always unsettled unless I’m in love, love is a calming force for me. It gives me direction, gives me someone to care for – I can’t help but to continually give of myself by being of service, it’s one of my happy places. I try to think back to all I’ve said in this and does any of it make sense? I think maybe if I wasn’t born with that learning disability I would of made it to collage and learned how to write like a writer, maybe if I wasn’t so confused by life I could say some real smart stuff that you would understand.
And how many times have I used the word maybe in this prose? 10, 15? 5,632,486 times in my head. Even when I think I have shut off my head I haven’t, I don’t think it is humanly possible to shut off your head. Your mind is always needing something to think about and most everyone has no way of controlling it. Truth is that’s why I lean into meditation, I sit even when I don’t want to. Through meditation one can learn to control one’s thoughts, that sounded real heavy huh, like a fortune cookie. My mind is wild and crazy and I just would like to feel like I belong somewhere - with someone, without someone, I would just like to feel settled. This thought brings me back around to being in the moment, right now I am settled, right now I belong where I am at. I always belong where I am at. I struggle to be here, in the now, where I am always happy and content. Right now I am focusing on my writing, the computer, the letters I am tapping, looking up to read the sentence. I am here, the smooth face of the keyboard gliding beneath the sides of my palms, thinking of how to spell all the words and getting them wrong, seeing the red crinkled lines underneath them. I am here, sipping my coffee, continually noticing the frames of my reader glasses, feeling the fans blow on me, the sticky in my armpits, the sunburn on my back. The bed beneath me, the tired in my body from lack of sleep. I am here and it’s the sanest and safest place I have ever been, here, now. I like it here, not here but here. I sip my coffee, the heat perfect, the taste sitting on the back of my tingue, I spelt tongue wrong. I just want to be here, in the back of my van, writing, dreaming, being who I always wanted to be. Grateful. I strive to be that for all the experiences I have, getting all I can out of them as they arise and letting them go as they leave.
Maybe I need to stop thinking about ‘finding my way’ and start seeing this as my way.
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