I Don't Know What I Want, But What I Got Ain't It

The title of this post has been running around in my head for several days, not specifically as a blog title, but more a walk-around generally overwhelming feeling in my life. Not sure I can describe it any better than that. Just mostly that I'm not happy and that if  'things' were different, I'd feel better. I get really uncomfortable now when I find myself feeling this way, particularly because this isn't the first time I've had this feeling, and the times before have led to life changes.

These were not necessarily good changes or bad changes, but dramatic changes that have seriously impacted my life and the lives of those around me. Each time I have believed that I could no longer abide whatever situation I was in, be it school, job, career or marriage, and that somehow the change would make me feel better, more satisfied with my lot or happier...whatever that means.

And each time it works out that way, for a while....then each and every time I find myself back at the beginning of the circle, feeling lost and unhappy and on the verge of leaving more wreckage in my wake. Every time the price gets higher. The toll on my health and sanity is greater and the damage to the people I love, and those who love me back, seems immense. I am really tired of hurting others, friends both old and new, and people I have yet to meet.

Every time, I approach the cusp with more knowledge, but alas, quantity of information has never equated to quality of wisdom. This time I am looking through the lens of life lessons garnered the hard way. Five years into a sobriety I never imagined possible from the inside of the bottle, yet found to be more than workable with the help of God and the support of people who believe in me, I struggle with choices that have the potential to put me back on the track to imminent self-destruction.

There comes a point where I must admit that what I am seeking isn't somewhere else. I don't want to spend my days peering into windows and turning over rocks looking for something I can't even describe to myself...trusting that somehow I will recognize what I seek when I see it. A friend who knows I am a seeker once asked me, "What are you looking for?" I couldn't answer then and I can't answer now. Sometimes I feel like my destiny is just that. To forever search, always believing that the answer is just around the next corner, or waiting in the arms of a new lover.

I have looked so many places in my life and time...... into this drug or that, into booze and sex, serious retail therapy, psychotherapy, group therapy, cult therapy, even begged for God to fill my heart and life, but nothing sticks. Relationships that seemed destined to endure have become traps ......a maze of walls built insidiously and insanely, brick by brick, with a mortar that time has cured rock hard.

Now I am afraid I will step on board the express train to the next destination, turn, and suddenly realize as I am carried away, that whatever it was I was looking for is standing on the platform with a tear in its eye, waving goodbye. I need some serious guitar time.