As I sat on the floor of my Manhattan flat, the same thought kept circling in my brain “I’m stuck. I hate my life, I regret having come to this place, I am suffering here and now. How is this not enough to convince me of the suffering in this world? How is this not enough to motivate me to let go of my clinging?”
The answer is simple, hope is fucking me. I keep hoping I can somehow get back to the life I had before I moved. Or I hope that the next thing will be better — I imagine some life after NY, after the here and there, a time when Eric and I are ‘free’, when we can retire, when we can go where we please, travel, spend limitless time together. I know there is no happily ever after. But I am holding-out for happily for a little while after.
The problem is, I already know there is no going back to what I had before. Before is in the past, it is gone. And besides, if I am being totally honest, San Francisco was already on the trouble bus before I left — rampant homelessness, drug use on the streets, increased crime and sky high cost of living — that is part of why I decided to move away in the first place. The truth is, the thing I want to go back to — SF circa 2009 — doesn’t exist anywhere anymore.
“But, but, but” my little heart insists, “hold on and hold out, what comes next will be better.” But will it, really? Where do I hope to go where I will be free from suffering? What corner of the world do I think is exempt from the drudgery of daily life, from the uncertainty, from the loss of things I love and expose to shit I hate? And besides, even if such a time/place exists, what on earth makes me think I am some expert at finding it? If nothing else, my choice to move to NY proves I am a crappy judge of homing-in on what is ‘better’.
Up and down, round and round, my life, or at least my feelings about it, are like a rollercoaster. I am tired, I don’t really want to keep riding, and yet, I can’t seem to get off. In the blog I had just finished, Wrong Views on Suffering and Happiness, I feel like I summed-up my brand of crazy perfectly: “I will trade X days of unpleasant regular life for X days of enjoyable life” and I suppose I still feel like I’ve got enough days of enjoyable life ahead to make holding out worth it. If that is the case, if this is my view, I really am stuck…not in NY, but in continual becoming, continual rebirth, always willing to tolerate the intolerable for just a little nugget, or even just the promise of a little nugget, of joy. Fucked by hope.
But, is this really true? Just this last month, I finally changed my diet, even though it sucks and it is hard, I quit gluten and dairy. I am doing an elimination challenge to see if food may be causing my myriad health issues. For years I have had stomach issues, but I have resisted the sacrifice of the foods I love. The pain, the cramping and the diarrhea, was not enough for me to change. The asthma, the allergies, even the eye issues, still I wouldn’t alter my diet. But now, I have rosacea, my face itches, it is red and patchy and ugly. I am vain, this is my Kryptonite. Finally, I found my ‘enough point’, finally I am doing the diet.
So maybe, this is the answer. Fucked by hope, but not perpetually. I just need to keep building evidence, find the thing that finally makes me fed-up, that finally makes me hit my ‘enough-point’, with this world and with becoming.