goto after the fall of manila

Well, I started this blog because of a character in the Neil Stephenson novel The Cryptonomicon. Goto Dengo was a Japanese sailor who survived a shipwreck, the headhunters and jungle bugs of New Guinea, and building a mine to bury Japanese war gold that he was supposed to be buried in as well. After New Guinea, he was recuperating in a mission hospital in the mountains of Luzon. While in the hospital, he had a moment of clarity, or hit rock bottom, or surrendered to a higher power. He realized that the tools that he had for living his life were no longer useful, he was on a different planet now. That is the place I was in when I started this blog.

Now I have gone through that and learned some new tools and started making some new dreams. But it is not always easy being on a new planet. Sometimes you want to go back to the familiar. And unfortunately, people that you love and trust will not always be happy with your new psychologically healthier lifestyle. They are more comfortable working with the old you, instead of a new unknown quantity. But you can't go back to the person you were before; experiences have changed you into something new, you are reborn. It is wonderful but sometimes very difficult and painful. Painful because when you see people acting toward you like you are the person you used to be, you realize how sadly flawed your relationship with them was before. You see patterns of behavior that show that you used to have compatible illnesses. Now that you are getting better, that compatibility is not there.

I am struggling with this at work, and also with a very dear old friend that I made early in adulthood. But I am struggling with both things for the same reason. I used to not listen to my feelings, and not use my words to express my thoughts and feelings. I used to always put other people's accomplishments ahead of my own. A common ailment, and one that leads to unhappiness. Now that I am expressing myself, and probably not very well yet, people seem caught off guard, and threatened. I will get better at it. But they will have to get over it; I will continue to use my words, listen to my feelings, and do something good for myself every day. The three new tools that I have that changed my life. The three tools that allow me to survive on this new planet.