Act III

Backstage

For a long time, the title of this post was going to be “F**k You 2014” (yes, my language has become much saltier over the past year), but I decided to change it to something that at least tries to look ahead rather than backward.

After losing my father in October 2012, my only blood relative in this hemisphere, my idea of family changed, was forced to change. And now I’ve lost both my partner and best friend, and her mother, the only mother I’ve known over the past two decades.

The sturdy structure I thought we’d been building together for nearly 17 years turned out to be made of spit and tissue paper.

I’ve written a lot about this, some publicly, most privately. But often I’m just reduced to mute:

  • Shock
  • Bafflement
  • Confusion
  • Fear
  • Sadness
  • Loss
  • Resentment
  • Anger
  • Pain
  • Abandonment
  • Betrayal

So this is definitely not my most articulate blog post.

And just to make things worse…

Since May (when I began keeping a written record), 78 job applications, not one interview.

I look at my dwindling savings (aka the inheritance I wasn’t supposed to be spending) and for the first time, I’m actually worried that I won’t recover from this. I want to be a part of the world and I know that I have a lot to contribute. But for the last year I’ve felt a bit like a surplus human being, unwanted, unneeded. That’s definitely not me. I need to get the twinkle back in my eye.

What does Act III look like for me? I turn 50 years old in February, and if I’m very lucky, I might have 25 years left of this life. What will I do with it? How will I learn from what’s gone before and make this next year and next stage of my life better?

I’d hoped that I’d be able to make this blog post a bit more hopeful. I don’t have the answers yet. Maybe I’ll never have them. The last year has been very hard, and I am hopeful the year ahead will be less hard. But that’s a pretty feeble kind of hope. A new friend has told me that my job for now is just to pass the time. Nature will sort out the rest.

So 2015 is a blanker canvas than I’d ever expected. To mix in some more creative metaphors, it’s a clean white page and an empty stage. And I’m trying to see that as a good thing.

So, curtain up on Act III…

P.S. Strange to look back at a few older “new year” posts:

One thought on “Act III”

  1. James, I love that you’re being open about your struggles. I think about you often – particularly your job search. My heart and thoughts are with you.

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