But sometimes you gotta put the car in reverse to move forward
Gotta make it through the night ’til you get to the mornin’
Sometimes you gotta lose it all just to know what’s important
Sometimes you gotta write the verse ’til you get to the chorus, uh

If I lose myself and I go missin’
Make a couple hundred bad decisions
Do some shit I know won’t be forgiven
Could you love me under those conditions?

I feel like for the last 8 and a half months, the car has been in reverse. Life has been dark and I’ve been patiently waiting on the morning light. Well the sun is starting to heat up the sky, but it didn’t feel the way I thought it would.

This spiral really started in October of 2022, but the worst of it has been these last 8 and a half months. Losing it all will certainly help you find what’s important. What was important to me in October ’22 is no longer important to me. I thought I was the person I lost then, but I wasn’t. I didn’t lose myself in this journey, because I don’t believe you can lose yourself. I believe you only lose parts that you thought were you, only to realize that those parts that fell off as you continued along were never meant to be.

I do believe you can go missing from yourself in a sense. I think I was missing for some time. Some days it still feels like I’m missing. As the morning comes I slowly find parts of myself that have been hiding in the shadows of the night. Parts of me I’m happy to have back, other parts I didn’t miss.

Life is about conditional love, eh? We all have a breaking point, a point where no matter how much we love someone, there’s things they could do that would cause you to break. I don’t believe in unconditional love between two humans. I’m not saying it never existed, but I think we’ve reached a point where society is broken enough that everyone has some condition or another.

Hell, look at what dating is like now. People rarely meet organically, instead through an app deciding, is this person in my age range, what religion are they, what politics do they believe in. Are they witty enough to come up with good answers to the bullshit prompt questions. I don’t think it was ever meant to be this way, but I can see how we got here.

I think I’ve been hung up on this idea that maybe love isn’t for me, or maybe there isn’t someone for everyone. I’ve only ever loved two things unconditionally, and one was my dog. That dog could have attacked me, torn up everything I own, anything, the love never would have changed, the love never will change. I think as time goes by without her I fear I’ll forget her, or the love won’t be as strong, but some days it feels like somehow even without her here the love is still growing.

I don’t see myself as being fit for a relationship. Not because I don’t have the capacity to be a good partner, but because when I love something, I love it with everything I have, and it can be overwhelming, even for me. I think that could be a condition I’m not able to meet. I’ll never be a chill person, not because I can’t be, but because I don’t want to be. Because I don’t believe in kinda loving something. You’re in or you’re out. In relationships I’ve had moments where I wasn’t sure if I was in or out, and then something always came to that made me see I was in, no matter what. Hospitality is a great example. Somewhere in 2019 and 2020 I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it forever. I wanted more balance in my life. I wanted more time with my partner, I wanted more time to work on my house, and to take care of the little family I was building. I had one foot out the door. One day it clicked, that nothing had ever made me feel so good, and nothing had ever interested me so much. From then on I’ve been on all, and that’ll never change. I look forward to getting to the point where I’m in a fortunate enough position that I no longer need to wash glassware behind the bar, or bus tables, but I still do it. Not because I have to, but because I want to, because I fucking love to.

I’ve known from a pretty young age that the way I loved was a bit over the top, and that I was too much for a lot of people. In some ways life has played out exactly how I expected, even if I didn’t always see it in the moment.

As I reflect on this life I realize it was,

Everything I thought it was.

Where the skies are gold not gray,

J.

P.S. I get really excited when I’m able to finish a blog the way I did tonight. “Everything I thought it was” is the name of the album this song comes from. The play on words really makes me giddy.