180 Degrees

So the rules changed again. They do that, even in the best days. By now, I should be used to it, should anticipate the shift coming the very moment I begin to grasp my place in things. But some how, some way, I never do. And honestly, this time I'm not scared. Sure I'm uncertain about how to go about it all, but I'm not afraid to fail, or slip up. I sit here and I wonder how to manage shifting the world without actually touching it, and it fascinates me. It's the truest, most clear conceptualization of what I am, of what I'm supposed to be able to do with the gift I've been given. And it makes me wonder if I've spent the years squandering the potential of it all.

I was trained to embrace the struggle, to use what I am and can do to create change in the world around me. I was taught for years that what I was capable of could shift the tides, win the fight, if I wanted it bad enough. But the man who told me that believed it in a militant sense; he stood against the direct oppression of dynamic growth in this world, and he groomed me to do the same. Our power was a weapon, impossibly sharp and always ready to be leveraged, so long as the wielder believed it could be done. I don't blame him though, I never have. It's my fault, my failing. I never looked beyond what I thought was the path, never realized it was just one of an endless number. It was familiar, it was satisfying, and that was enough for me. What I have to do now doesn't offer that immediate satisfaction, that full feeling that comes with saving a life or stopping a threat. It's going to feel like counting grains of sand on an endless beach, I know already. But I have to try, I have to believe.

Nothing is impossible, it's one of the most entrenched truths I know of. Man can dream and change the world with nothing more than fervent wishes for more than what he knows, depth of feeling can transcend what we think of as solid boundaries between life and death, memories can flow between worlds, even the soul can anchor itself without a body, if it wants to stay more than anything else. Nothing is impossible. But to achieve that truth, I have to want it more than I want the comforts I know. I have to ignore the itch in my palm that begs for a pistol's grip, block out the phantom smell of gun oil creeping in my nostrils, shut down old instincts and learned behaviors that draw my stance out and knot my hands into tight, familiar fists. Do I want to? Can I shed this old skin, this idea of a grim soldier that has his own history, his own habits, his own life? I can try, I can tell myself that I am more than what I believe until there's no silence in my mind, just that mantra.

If I do, who will I be? Will I be Doc, the willworker who severed his life free of anyone he might hurt, thinking his choices decided their lives? Doc's a selfish life on it's own; reclusive by reflex, ignorant of the two way streets that run between him and everyone he knows. Maybe I'll be War, serving the balance and walking the thin line between bearing a title and being a title. War feels lonely by itself, now that I understand the separation that has to exist between influence and interaction. Maybe... maybe Eric. Eric, who never got a chance to just live, who had to shut out the chance to smile at a beautiful woman, fall asleep in a sunlit park with someone, walk a familiar shortcut to his home... Eric, who never had a home. Three lives overlapping at the edges, wondering which one will end up on top. Do I have to choose? Can I choose all three, and for once try to keep from denying myself out of some deluded idea that it's what the people around me need? Can I convince myself that I am not the root of their problems, that my actions don't create their suffering? In that sense, I want to. I want that as much as I've ever wanted anything. I need to have faith in that idea, that belief that all I can do is try to help instead of condemning myself for every moment of pain or crisis beyond my control.

My children were born into the world with their problems already clouding the skies, I didn't put them there through mistakes or inaction. They've proven that they are none the weaker for it, and nothing I could've hoped to change would make them stronger. They are as strong as they need to be. Their mother's death was not my fault alone, it was a choice she made that I may have been unable to stop no matter what I'd done. The love I've let go so many times in my life didn't end the day I walked away, the women I was lucky enough to know and care for were stronger than that. The friends I've lost, the ones I've buried and the ones who vanished in time, all the ones whose graves I cannot visit... they chose for themselves. They didn't choose to believe in my decisions, or my leadership, they simply felt that what we were doing was right, worth dying for. I do them wrong when I blame myself, I cheapen everything we stood for when we were lucky enough to stand together. I need to let go of all of it, every piece of guilt and every moment I blame myself for. Do I want to? Even looking at these words laid out plainly in front of me, seeing them for what they are, I want to blame myself. I want that grief, that self-loathing, because it kept me going when I wouldn't let anything else. But it's time, it's almost four decades since I started this life.

Even knowing that I want to blame myself and feeling the craving for it, it's wrong. I'm not my mistakes, I'm not the failures I decided were mine alone to carry. I'm not the lives the power inside of me has been, and knowing that means knowing that I'm not just the battle. Any person in this world can be more than they believe they are, even me. All any of us has to do is learn to separate the mistakes we make from the things we cannot control. We see our lives for what they are, distinctly different from those of others', but tethered together all the same. We learn to do that, we have conviction enough to hold each other up, and in time we gain the clarity to let go of our doubts, our regrets. Fifty-plus years had better be enough for me to have learned.

I'm putting my boots away today. I'm going to polish the leather and steel one last time, clean the plates and buckles, strap them tight around empty space, and close the door of my closet. I've worn them too long, I've forgotten what a free step can feel like. Without that buffer weighing down my step and blocking out the world beneath my feet, what will I do? If I suddenly lack the professional buffer that keeps me hanging by the doorway and ready to move just so I can fight the weight, will I relax the tension in my back and neck that's kept me rigid and awake? Will I breathe easy around others like I normally only do alone? Will I let myself sleep again, unafraid and uncaring of what my dreams might show me? Whatever the answers are, I'll try. I'll hold tight to what I have, and be thankful I have it. And if my countless doubts and fears ever climb up high, one atop the other, and loom in my mind to make me regret what I do or who I might become? I'll tuck this page inside one of the boots, so that I find it again on the day I decide I need this buffer in my life again. If that day comes, I'll find this and read it again, remember this moment, and hopefully stop myself. Hell, nothing is impossible.