Its not comfortable, not in the sense of familiarity, but comfortable like a silk suit. The material caresses, the fit is fantastic, but not at all what I'm used to, comfortable but uncomfortable at the same time. I'm talking about the natural high I've been on for over a week now. I was in Lexington, talking to the freshmen about exercise and nutrition, they loved me, asked their teachers if I would come and speak more often. The number one highest rated speaker they have, at least that's what they tell me to keep me coming back, and it works. My total body conditioning class is overflowing, some of the late arrivals don't even have weights, but stay anyway. My clients keep renewing, and others are lining up, because they have heard I'm a great trainer. Next month I sit with one of the better agents in the business to discuss my memoir. I attended a sales course for work and had to leave early. My coworkers complained they'd be bored without me. Everyone thinks I'm a riot.
But it won't last. No high ever does.
Ever since my first experience with drugs I've been caught in a vicious cycle of instant gratification, followed by self loathing, depression, and the subsequent hunt for the next high. Like all highs, this one will end with a crash. A plummet back down to earth where reality reveals me to be a good trainer, a decent writer, and lucky not to have gone back to prison, or a life of crime. When agents reject me, It'll be because my writing sucks. When my class is sparse, I'll be because I made it too hard. If my clients don't renew, it'll be because I'm an awful trainer. It's the duality of ambivalence, that tender trap. To deny it is to deny my own humanity. To misunderstand it dooms me to repeat it. My therapist tells me I can't ever be all one thing, that behind every intense emotion lies its polar opposite, lurking, waiting to center us, to balance the equation.
Thank god for Rachel. She lets me soar for awhile, tethered to reality but when I fly too high she grounds me. Sometimes it takes a a good, hard, slap to revive me. She winds me back up and sends me off into the world. She doesn't say it but I know she's bracing herself for the next crash.
Today I feel numb. Another unique aspect of living a life less ordinary. There are times, when someone really gets into my story, that I can feel that familiar pang, like before a robbery or scoring an ounce of coke. But I don't miss it.
Well, that's a lie.
I miss it sometimes.
1 comment:
That vicious circle graps hold of us all at one point or another. It's like that crappy road that you travel down to get where your going everyday. You know that theres a pot hole in the street, you know there is. But somehow everytime you travel over that spot you hit the hole. You travel the same route everyday and yet you hit the hole. It reminds me alot of my relationships with friends, family, and girls. It's frustrating to not have a hold of what you know you should be able to control. You see yourself spiralling into a repeative cycle of doubting yourself and yet you allow your actions to be the same. I think that it's time to steer away from that hole in the road and try a new route. Nice writing!
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