I'm not much for New Year's Resolutions. To quote Dangerous Liaisons, they're "humiliating if you fail, and commonplace if you succeed." Better, I think, to make resolutions--and thereby to engage in self-work and self-improvement--all year long.
But this year feels especially weighty in its exit. 2012, as evidenced by the amount I've written, has been an especially rough year. In many ways, it's been a year of endings: relationships, jobs, over-identifications, illusions, wishes. There's a part of me that is entranced by those endings. I want to fetishize them. That's something we all do--just look at the (disappointing) drama around the Mayan calendar. We're obsessed with endings, and we insist that they be literalized in the outside world. I'm not immune to that, and in some ways it's easier to focus on the ending (as an abdication of responsibility), than to consider the profound power and implication of a beginning (unlike endings, we're responsible for beginnings and for all the future paths they embody). And I recognize that each of this year's endings allows for beginnings of a different kind.
But here, Dear Reader, your valiant writer is going to intervene!! I'm going to take a stake, and make a stand. I will propose for us a distinction between an 'ending' and a 'leaving behind.' In one, I have agency, choice, and power. In the other, it happens TO me. So as I've reflected on it these last few days, I've come to think of 2012 as a year not of endings, but of leaving things behind.
And that, Dear Reader, is where you come in. For one of the things I'm going to leave behind is my silence. This new year will be about writing. So you'll see more of me here, and more of me in other projects as well.
That's right: the choice I made for my career and my life has given me more time to write and to focus--at least for a while--on what it might feel like to actually chase my dreams a bit. What, you say? Haven't you been doing that, you Crow? You've been having a wild good time chasing a big career around and splashing around in the bird-bath of its rewards. "Are you not entertained? Is this not what you came to see?" (Points if you get the reference.)
No. And healing from the experience of the last few years will, I think, involve going INSIDE instead of acting things out in the outside world. And that means more writing. More thinking. More breathing. Leaving behind the chase in order to work on the soul for a bit.
Speaking of the chase, let's talk romance for a bit, shall we? I wonder, Dear Reader, if you'd tell me about what it means to love? I'll tell you what it's been for me over the years. Love has been obligation, responsibility, imbalance, dependence, power differentials, resentment, and sorrow. The best love has been that of my friends, and I've chased it in romance unsuccessfully for years--in fact, almost two decades since I came out of the closet, and dreamed what it would be like to find a man to love, who would love me in return. Dear Reader, I AM LEAVING THIS BEHIND. I know that's a bit of inflation--that my ego is getting a little too big for its britches when I make a statement like that--but I feel it's important to take a stand, lest this damaged version of love set the stage for the future. NO! Says the Crow!
Love will be about relating authentically with myself, and taking responsibility for my feelings, defenses, violence, and anger. That will be the foundation for relating to someone else. Love will be the act of valiantly and bravely standing up for myself, and stoking the flame of my own gay identity and self--of that Promethean flame that's burned in me for nearly 20 years. Yes, 2013 will mark 20 years out of the closet! And I owe it to that young boy, that daring and wonderful little boy who looked inside and saw something different in himself than in anyone around him; I owe it to him to embrace the possibility that he (that I!) deserve love, and deserve to be treated with respect, and with dignity, and with joy, and with bravery equal to the challenges ahead. And if I cannot find this in the outer world, then Dear Reader, I WILL EMBRACE IT IN MY INNER WORLD. And that will be no compromise, no meager substitute--for I am coming to realize that my love is my own, and it is my experience. It lives not in some other man, but in me. I love. I do not ask permission from someone else to love. My love is my own, so I am leaving behind the belief that I need to find it, and embracing the belief that I already embody it--damn my defenses.
I'm using a lot of caps this time, and you'll note that's a different tone than I've had in the past. To this I say, DEAR READER, YOU AINT SEEN NOTHING YET. As I've worked to become more related to myself, and more connected to my feelings, I am choosing to leave behind the politeness, and to embrace the REALNESS. This is my fucking, messy, angry, light-filled and shadow-laden, joyful, unedited story. This is the feeling I'm going to work to bring into my life, my writing, my love, my inner work, my career.
I am leaving behind the over-identification I've had with my external accomplishments--my high-profile job (from which I've derived a considerable amount of borrowed unjust power--and have secretly REVELED in that); my community engagement (which--like a hot boyfriend--has such overt and tempting and toxic social power); my beautiful possessions (which, I am coming to see, have owned me more than I, them). These things I wish to leave behind.
O Reader, now that I've been so inflated, the shame comes up and tells me that I'm being silly. "You'll never be able to do this, Crow. You'll fail. You don't deserve love. You'd better just focus on making money and buying things that make people envy you. That's the real love. You're a failure. Look at your life: single, unemployed, bereft, unattached, powerless, worthless. Get a big job quick so you can buy yourself something to prove your value."
To that demon I say, "Fuck you, and the shade you rode in on. I leave you behind as well." My defenses will come up, and I'll no doubt act out (consciously and unconsciously) in ways that I cannot now predict, but that are sure to be violent, anti-self, aggressive, and shadowy. But I'll face them--and their consequences--in due time.
The intensity of this year has created many occasions to face demons of this sort, where I've acted violently against my own interests and had to deal with the consequences. And--here's the magic part--it turns out I'm quite capable of facing the challenges these situations present. And more than this, Dear Reader, more than this!!! It turns out your Sagittarian Crow actually LIKES IT! Isn't that crazy!? I love this adventure, and this exploration of my own subjectivity--even my own shadow. I hesitate, and I attack, and I resist, but at my core, your Sable--like some warrior in a fantasy legend--likes the journey. That's a core ethic of mine--to explore and to improve and to be brave. In this way, I will invoke gay spirit and the very energy I tapped into when I came out of the closet--that's the energy I'm invoking here, of irrepressible spirit and a sense of self and the belief in truth--my truth--however hard it is. For if it is hard-won, then all the better to win it.
And that, Dear Reader, is the story of 2012. It has been a hard-won year. Your Crow is tired, and his feathers are ruffled, and there have been storms. But he's undaunted, and is flying away from those things that, in his heart, he's needed to leave behind. And he's flying toward the dawn. The solstice is passed, and the days grow longer, and 2013 will be a profoundly good year.
And here's a song about resisting the things we want--of struggling for the breath of life while, at the same time, hearing the voices of our defenses. What happens in a life where we leave that behind? What wonders would that life have? Let's find out, shall we? ;-)
