I never expected life to be this…odd. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, and I knew it wouldn’t all be very fun from time to time, but I didn’t expect it to be this odd. And no, I don’t really know what constitutes “odd”. A collection of things, I suppose: the way it feels, the people involved, the things they say, the preeminence of “new,” the exigency to understand my own past. At times, it still feels artificial, and yet it’s so very real, so very mine.

Time for me typically moves quite quickly, and that’s why the past fifteen months or so have been so odd, as I felt stalled here at a crossroads in the road of my life. I’ve maundered for more than a year on which direction to take, or how to correct my course, or how to do whatever thing would be required in whatever metaphor I might conjure. And I’ve ultimately gone nowhere.

It was time, and it was past time, and I was truly about to lose all hope.

To that end, some decisions are made, not in haste, but after significant consideration, then delivered quickly. The motivations for the speed of delivery can be myriad, but they typically have at least something to do with a lack of desire to prolong the obvious. It is unfortunate when such decisions countermand previous ones, but life is about survival, and sometimes survival is a harsh sentence. I was been drowning, and I had been trying to rescue myself from the flood with nothing but a collection of memories, a misplaced sense of duty, and talking too much.

Yes, I lacked even a real desire to get out of the water, or step back out onto the road, or anything. I’m brilliant like that, sometimes.

It was time, and it was past time, and the flood was carrying me away.

I could have done things differently, but I actually tried all the options I perceived over the past year, and kept coming back around to that status quo out of weakness. The necessary action was painfully obvious to me over a year ago, and that it’s taken that long to drive it home, and in such a furious fashion, is simply unfortunate. And now, as I move past those moments, I see there was never even a true crossroads: a side-alley into something quite unlike whomever I am becoming, is all there really was.

Of course, I realize that’s hindsight, but by the same token, it is what it is. That cliché has been haunting me all too much, recently.

Last year, the parting from that other one was so ragged it never really let go. So this year, the breaking had to be sheer, her contempt for me complete, and the enforced distance between us void of any real possibility of repair. I am neither pleased or proud with the darkness under which it had to be enacted, but my heart (my soul, if I have one), is lighter, and freer, for having finally done so. I have done the right thing (unfortunately, in some regards, I do not doubt), for I am no longer breathing a water tainted by inaction, insecurity, and distrust. And my own two feet are carrying me forward again: forward, past this “whatever” and into a future in which I have not forgotten myself.

There is time, and there is more time, and the clock is now wound by my own hand.

I am loved, deeply, immeasurably, by someone who sees me for what I am, who appreciates my talents and accepts my deficiencies, and doesn’t want or need me to change or redefine myself in order for her to be comfortable with me. A someone who is so remarkable as to have stood beside me through these recent upheavals, fought for me through them, and who holds to me now, rightfully expecting the deepest reciprocation.

And the only oddity now is that it took me this long. Although that, for me, really isn’t all that odd at all.