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There just isn’t any better way to say it: I’ve still got a lot of growing up to do. It’s too easy for me to slip back into the rhythms of past lives, take up the cadences of previous versions of my self, forget all about who I’ve been so busy turning into. Living the dream, whatever form it might take on (mostly reminiscent, lately), is easier than the day-to-day.

The Velveteen Rabbit of other-derived valuation/agency is my kindred spirit in this, I’d say inspiration but that isn’t the right word. My brother gave me a calendar, junior year I think it was, or maybe my first year out in the workforce. It was my first encounter with the products of Despair, Inc. Like many of the gifts this particular brother has given me, there was no tie to a specific occasion or much of an accompanying message. It just seemed like the thing to give to me at the time, I suppose. Definitely a hammer, that one.

I had to look it up once memory served up that amuse bouche and of course the calendar in question doesn’t exist in its entirety. But as soon as I saw that broken link in the chain, I knew Dysfunction was the page that I hadn’t paid enough attention to. Perhaps the gift was timed for bewareness, as these words have proved true: the only consistent feature in all of your dissatisfying relationships is you.

That calendar, like a few others, was in my life long after its year was over. I hold on to calendars sometimes – it’s a force stronger than habit and much harder to describe, as well as justify, even if that were my game. I no longer have it but I know that I did for an extended period of time without knowing why to this day, and there is a strange depth of meaning to that knowledge and the concomitant lack thereof. It calls to me, like many parts of my history that most people would have long processed and forgotten if they were me.

So as I sit here typing, continuouslistening to the November Rain music video on youtube and realizing all over again that Slash has always been my favorite – though this preference went unacknowledged for many years – I wonder why I am like this. I have run the numbers, literally (enneagrams, you feel me?) and figuratively. The allure of the past does not submit to basic equation.

Acceptance may be the only way to combat this tendency to backtrack, this ever-circling mind of mine. Along with pointing out when it begins to live up to its potential to be my own personal tar pit. This weekend wasn’t about being a brand-new me in some old familiar places, but it left me with a few less blind spots, and a lot more determination to live it up rather than agonizing over how to ever live certain things down. Buckhorn, balls-hotness, Bones + bumpin’ uglies – I could start to prefer living in the now.