Holding Pattern

Other possible titles for this post included "Throwing a Bone"...

As pointed out by The Last Angry Man, I haven't written in a few weeks. Given that the last few posts indicated a momentum of sorts with all sorts of big things happening, it's been tough to think of anything worth blogging about as life has more or less leveled out in the last few weeks. Nothing bad has happened, but also nothing as noteworthy as recent occurrences has happened either. In short, I am in a bit of a holding pattern.

The week leading up to Spring Break just dragged on with the promise of a week off on the horizon. We all thought Spring Break would give us a chance to recharge and revitalize for the back-half of the semester, but instead we all came back just as unmotivated as before. We've all got a trip to Mexico and the excitement of a summer internship elsewhere to look forward to, and our patience for the routine has grown thin.

Intertwined with the increasing malaise for the weekly happenings on campus was the even more distracting series of romantic misadventures I was engaged with between here and Lansing. With the flirtatious phone calls and innuendo driven text messages that would lead to our rendezvous in Lansing, it was fun while it lasted.

I'm referring to it in the past tense because it could not make the transition between flirtation and substance. Though I never sought a label or a quantification beyond the simple fact that we had a good time together, it was nonetheless a doomed proposition from the start. After a recent breakup she was in no place to get involved with anyone new, and yet when I entered the picture she briefly thought that she could be. In the end her doubts got the better of her, and so here I stand.

While I am undoubtedly disappointed that things didn't work out, I am also able to take some positive things from the experience. A few months ago I wrote about my own self-doubts and self-assessment, questioning myself and my own perceptions of identity. I wondered about the changes I have been through, and the lasting impact of so many demons that I felt had found their way into my thoughts, feelings, and actions.

And I now feel like I've finally exorcised the last vestiges of those demons. The self-doubt and questions have been, at least in some way, answered and I feel more like the version of myself that I like than I have in years. In some ways it feels like a pendulum coming to rest in the middle - the extremes of nice, neutral, not wanting to offend undergraduate Brad and angry, bitter, cynical, quick to enrage post-college Brad finally finding balance with each other.

Towards the end of my college career and in my attempts at entering the real world, I was just the victim of a cumulative series of disappointments, frustrations, and unfortunate circumstances. As I saw others around me successfully moving ahead without such trouble, I began to don the defensive armors of cynicism, anger, hostility, and distance as a means to protect myself from the damage likely to be caused by all those disappointments.

It's only since coming back to college and the subsequent success I've enjoyed here that I have felt comfortable in shedding that armor. As good things have happened I have slowly removed the plates and shields I felt necessary to face things. What has helped more than anything is the closeness that has occurred in my cohort. While earlier in the year I felt like an outsider, over the last few months I have let them get closer to me, and in turn they have brought me in closer.

The last piece of the puzzle is the girl from Lansing. Even though I tried not to let myself get too close because of the ever present suspicion that things would never work, she was nonetheless able to get close enough to strip the last remnants of my armor away. The fact that things did not work out is, in the end, not as important as the fact that for the first time in a long time I thought - even briefly - that things could work out. And I think it's that feeling, that admission, that hope that I haven't felt the courage to believe in so long, that has finally brought a restoration of confidence and esteem.