Dawn Is Me

I am still learning.

One of the things I have learned today is that having the right friends can make all the difference in the world.

If there is a way in which I have allowed my spirit to be almost murdered over the past few years, it has been the degree to which I reneged on my promise to myself to nurture myself in all the ways I needed.

I have lost so much — in confidence, in connectedness, in the natural lightness of my own being. For awhile, just the thought of all the effort it’s going to take to rebuild my Me was enough to send me straight to bed in complete exhaustion.

How did this even happen? How did I ever end up in this place anyway? I thought I’d been here and done this already.

Today, I talked to a friend. I told him about the milestone step I took within the last 24 hours to set my feet back on the path to where I want to be, and how hard it was for me to do it.

I tried to explain to him why it was so hard, why it felt like it cost so much, what I felt I had lost and how I had somehow lost it without even realizing it.

And he said: Dawn, don’t ever forget how much you know.

Dawn, I want you to remember how many people listen to you.

I want you to remember how many people like you. It’s easy to do.

Dawn, I am proud of you.

Dawn, I believe in you.

I have always admired you and, now that I know these things about you, I admire you even more.

Dawn, you’re not alone.

(And because he is my friend, I know that I can believe all those things when he says them. That is one reason why I do not use that word ‘friend’ lightly.)

And suddenly, that simply, the game had changed.

I realized that I hadn’t really lost anything at all, no matter how much it feels like I did. I realized that I don’t really have to rebuild myself from the ground up, that I don’t need to do some mysterious something to make myself acceptable to the world.

It’s much more important that I remain acceptable to me.

It’s hard to remember this sometimes but what I really need, along with everything that goes with it, is simply to find peace.

Everything else comes from there.

You see? More than 40 years later and I’m still learning things from you, Dr. King.

Just so you know, I am still a non-smoker. Yay, me!

Spouse, on the other hand, has already fallen off the wagon. He has been good enough to confine his smoking to the outdoors but I wonder what’s going to happen in January?

Much as I would like to keep Louis CK on the front page here because I just so enjoy that Conan clip, I figure I ought to update this blog at least once a month.

So, now that the housekeeping is out of the way.

I find myself at a transitional point, a crossroad in my life. In fact, I’m feeling a bit like a chrysalis, in the process of transforming into … what? A moth? A butterfly?

Mothra? Hard to say.

I’ll have more to say about new directions on new paths and larval metamorphosis in future posts. In any event, whatever I wind up turning into, I am wondering how many of the people who are in my life now will still be in my life when I’m done?

This is about How To Have Relationships With Dawn, and about the number of people who don’t seem to know How To Have Relationships With Dawn.

An odd sort of thing. I never thought it was especially hard but, since I am Dawn, what do I know?

So, for the uninitiated, here’s the thing about Relationships With Dawn: I’m not the sort of person who likes to do things with you. I won’t call and say, “Hey, let’s go bowling!”

Or “let’s go to the movies!”

Or “let’s pick up guys young enough to be our offspring and boink ‘em!”

That’s not really my style.

If you and I are going to be friends (or have any other sort of relationship, for that matter), that means we will talk.

We will explore each others’ minds though the enjoyment of rational, intelligent conversation about things that may or may not have to do with ourselves personally. We can talk about you and we can talk about me. We can also talk about the geopolitical situation and about neuroscience and about fitness videos and about classic movies and about twitter and about our favorite books and …

Well, I expect you get the idea.

It all comes down to this: my relationships consist of conversations.

So, if we’re not talking, then we’re not having a relationship.

Ponder that … and get back to me, if you’re feeling so inclined.

I’m coming to the conclusion that most people don’t know how to make a sincere apology.

I guess that’s because most people seem to have real trouble fully admitting when they’re wrong.

See, to genuinely admit that you’re wrong, that you did something to somebody that you shouldn’t have … you have to make yourself vulnerable, usually to somebody who is justifiably angry with you. That can be pretty scary to do, because you open yourself up to somebody who you could be forgiven for thinking will grind you underfoot.

Being vulnerable can be scary under any circumstances. When you think somebody is going to flatten you like a bug as soon as you open your mouth, letting yourself be vulnerable can also be very, very hard to do.