I sometimes ask myself, "Nathan, who are you, are you really the person you want to be? Should be?" and I look at myself and say, "You know self, not really, not even really close to who I want to be, and yeah thanks for reminding me again that the rocks toward the bottom really are that sharp, now I am going to get a beer." It’s kind of like when you get up and go to work and a completely random person comes up to you and says, "Hey, are you feeling ok?" in a compassionate tone. Where are you might have been feeling fine one minute, simply by their statement, you feel sick the next.
I am feeling a little bit sick right now. The confusion and uncertainty of past decisions has left me feeling overwhelmed. I recently packed up my car and drove 2000 miles east to a town where I know almost no one, all the time attempting to convince myself that God was with me on this, but not very sure at all.
I am not happy with this life I have found myself. It is true that this might be a temporal state of dissatisfaction, but I am not convinced. I spend much to much time thinking about how things used to be, or what I would be doing right now if I were else where. I have the third most boring job in the world, only beaten out by envelope stuffing, and being a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. I am a lift operator at the smallest, most pathetic, ski resort I have ever seen. I sit in a little box for eight house and make up stories in my head, draw fake maps for no reason except it passes the time, and day dream about being any where else, which I tend to do a lot of anyways outside of work. What happened to me? It wasn’t suppose to end up like this.
I have been living in a state of dissatisfaction since I left Moody Bible Institute, not that Moody gave me satisfaction, no far far from it. It’s just that I was on a good road, it lead to a concrete destination, and the traffic was one way. Now I never know when this road is going to dead-end and leave me hurling off a cliff, or worse, stuck anywhere. You see, that’s what my greatest fear in all this is. That I will be stuck, anywhere. If I didn’t have a lease on this place here, I would sell my car, fly back home, start working crazy hours while living at home for three months and pay off the rest of my school lone. Sign up with some crazy missions organization that only requires you go with them to the ends of the world and back again 6 times over and then I might be satisfied again, well maybe for a couple of days. The rest of the time I would probably complain about why my food looks and tastes like it was found on the bottom of my shoes, and why my bed is hard, and better yet, why I got myself into this in the first place.
Why did I move to Dubuque? Part of me was running from a few things, getting stuck in Yakima was one of them. But now that I have considered it, I would rather be stuck there than here any day. I have people who love me there, not just say, oh Nathan we love you, but the sort that when you see them they come up to you with open arms and hold you, they hold you and let that feeling of warmth and euphoric comfort fill up in you till it spills out with a deep sigh. I haven’t had that in ages and you know what, that really @%*&$# sucks.
So you might be thinking, Nathan, why do you sound almost angry in this little missive, and my reply would be yea, I am a little angry. I am angry that I have left all of you to be only sidenotes in this story of my life. I am angry that I have left so much to gain so little. I thought that I would find something, and I think I have, I have found myself out. You may have done it long ago, but if not, here we go. I am Nathan the ever dissatisfied, emulator of Thelyphron, except I have given my nose and ears so I could be more like the humiliated, because I thought it would make me significant.
Give me back everything I let go. Ohh... it doesn’t work like that. Will I ever find something that makes me lighthearted, or will the ruminations of the past weigh me down forever? Will I feel like I belong again? Will our story ever continue like it used to or is it too late for that. Even in asking the question I know the answer.
