Life, Art, & the Smile of a Beautiful Woman

If only I could relearn how to let go, how to let things happen. Not really sure I'm even aware that I'm holding on but that has to be it. Things are turned so upside down but then again they always are. I'm so comfortable with the chaos and uncertainty of my own mind. I'm a big thinker, a dreamer. Big ideas. Hard to stick the follow-through, much less the landing. I see some women that I would love to love. It hurts. It's actually physically painful. I have no idea why I'm still single and have been all these years. I forget that I'm choosing it. Sometimes with the things we don't like in our lives we try to convince ourselves that those things are being forced upon us from the outside rather than being created from the inside. We try to convince ourselves that we aren't responsible. But we are. I am. I'm choosing to be single. I'm choosing to be celibate. I want the one. I refuse to settle. It gets lonely. I get lonely. I've lost any game I might have once had. It's true. I know so much less now than I used to. I feel around in the dark. It can be exciting but it can also be exhausting. I used to be so certain about some things. I feel like I used to have answers. It was probably an illusion. So many illusions. So many delusions. Just when you think you've lost them more pop up and say, "Hey! Remember me?" Losing illusions is often a painful process but a worthwhile one. It's like an arc, a rising up of confidence and self-assuredness and then a peak and then a descending. It feels that way sometimes. It feels just like that. I meet some people that seem so sure of their lives, of their path. I've never understood this. I've rarely felt this way. I felt this way in my mid-twenties when I started to become a chef, when I got my very first sous chef position. Now? Not so sure. Take things day by day. I want to live intentionally. It's easier to go with the flow of things, to be tossed around by life. Well, it seems easier anyway. Making a decision to leave my life in South Carolina and move up here to the middle of nowhere has been a sea change for me. It's on the order of "putting your money where your mouth is" or whatever that saying is. I knew the details would present challenges. I want I want I want. A restless spirit, a wanderer. What do I want above all? LOVE. I want to meet and fall in love with an amazing woman who will become my partner in life. It seems insane that a man like me with so much love to give should be lacking in a woman to be the recipient of that love and affection. I dream of her. I lay awake nights and muse about feeling her next to me, the touch of her hair, the feeling of her fingers against my skin, the sound of her voice. Her scent! I've been in love with women all my life..ever since I was a young boy. I understand that some men are born to be attracted to other men. I get it but in many ways I don't get it. I know some men are made that way but I cannot imagine myself loving another man in that way. Women are just truly amazing to me, everything about them. I never tire of thinking of them. I never cease being filled with desire for woman. I'm up here now alone in this place and one of the reasons I am here is to build a home for her, to make a home for us. I don't even know who she is but I trust that God is preparing me for her and her for me. I can't imagine that I would be given all these feelings and emotions and desires for no reason. That would be cruel and the God that I believe in and pray to is not cruel. He is all loving and all knowing. I must not be ready. She must not be ready. One day we'll look back and be able to make sense of this separation, of this wait, of this limbo. But now it doesn't make any sense to me. Now I struggle with loneliness, depression, low self-esteem and low self-confidence (hardly the stuff that the attracts a quality mate.) But I don't give myself enough credit and never have. At times I dwell on the deficiencies in my character rather than the positive traits that I have. If I could share in words or images the dreams I have for my future, for our future...Christ it is so beautiful...it is so amazing...but it all starts right here, right now, in these moments that are the present. The details, Matt, the details...you must put up or shut up. You must get these things done. You must start living. My father's death earlier this year had a profound effect on me. It changed my life irrevocably. I'm not the same person I was when he was alive. It's impossible for me to describe or state the weight of these changes that are taking place within me. Before I got sober I was a man-boy. When I started to recover I began becoming a man. Now I am a man. I have a very strong and clear realization of my own mortality and the ephemeral and fleeting nature of this life. I feel a sense of urgency regarding my dreams and my life. I've been living the myth, writing it as I go along. But this chapter is different. This is what I've been waiting for and wanting my entire life. It's "all in." I'm showing my hand and pushing all my chips to the center of the table. It's terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time. I'm naked, exposed. This is me. This is who I am. The arc has been a covering up and an uncovering, a hiding and a revelation. I have no idea if it makes any sense to you but it makes sense to me. It makes sense to me because it is formed of the very DNA that I am formed of. It's not just an expression of me anymore..it is me. Naked and exposed. Naked and exposed. And the reason behind it all? The reason is to not just create art, but to live art, to be art...to reveal to others that they are art too. We are creators. Every single one of us. Whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not. I want to be intentional about what I am creating. I want beauty. There are days when I feel like if I pulled open my chest...just lifted apart my rib cage golden light would come flying out. I honestly feel that way sometimes. And I want that. I'm like, "Yes! More of THAT please!" Other days I become dark, sullen, brooding...this is because the world doesn't seem to reflect the purity and beauty that I feel like it should reflect. Then I realize that it doesn't reflect it because at that particular moment on that particular day I'm not shining it...I'm not giving it off...thus no reflection...but then the kindness or generosity of a stranger or friend will reveal it again to me and I will shine again. And no one...absolutely no one...gives off that light the way a woman does. A smile from a beautiful woman can heal the world.