It’s wonderful to know
That I could be
Something more than what I dreamed
–Dream Theater, Octavarium

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and not just about the usual weird positions that I’ve seen the neighbors trying out through my binoculars (I salute you, by the way — my girl is creative and experimental, but I’m fairly sure even she wouldn’t be willing to do that thing you did last night with the shoehorn and the kitten). Thus far, 2006 has felt like a year of realization, of fulfillment, of life coalescing into something more … I don’t know, maybe right is the word I’m looking for. I’ve finally seen my writing published on a national level; I completed my first short film (emphasis on film; Chance’s constant elitist berating has made that seem important). Even the steps backward (returning to bartending, for instance) feel right and natural. It’s as though I’m finally clearing out the chaff of societal expectation that I’ve always wrestled with and becoming comfortable with what’s important to me.

I look around almost every day and I see people wrestling with the past, clinging to it with some sort of sickening justification. Many of my friends are embittered towards women, because they’ve gotten hurt in the past. I see people scared to chase their dreams because so many before them have failed. I see people “growing up” and leaving behind their creative passions because they aren’t “important enough” or “there’s not enough time in the day.”

I don’t dwell on the past. I think I used to, to great detriment; part of me is such a romantic, such a dreamer, that it is very easy for me to drift into a sort of selective nostalgia, ignoring the bad and fixating on the good, making me wistful for what I imagine used to be. I’ve let that go, by and large, learning to focus on what’s ahead instead of what I see in the rear-view. I also came to realize that it’s all water under the bridge, gone and past; there’s nothing that any of us can do to change what has come before, and to live as though constant obsession will correct your mistakes serves only to waste more of the present. I don’t hold grudges, I don’t torture myself over the things I’ve done wrong (to myself or to others); I do my best to glean lessons needed from my experiences, storing them away for future application, and move on.

I think that this — combined with patience, determination and a slow-burning hard work ethic, and maybe more than a little self-examination — is what has allowed this year to be so good for me. Rarely in life do we see immediate results; for those out there with an inflated sense of entitlement, instant gratification is rarely something that you’ll find.

I regret nothing that has come before. Done again, certainly, I would do things differently, avoid causing pains for which I am responsible, steer clear of situations that left deep and permanent scars on my soul (anyone who has read Vonnegut’s Timequake can understand this). But everything from then has taught me important lessons that have helped me make now better, stronger, easier.

And I wholeheartedly thank everyone who has been a part of my learning up until this point. To my parents and siblings, who instilled a lot of things both good and bad in me, but most importantly taught me that it’s okay to question the world around me (and in doing so granted me the ability to distinguish the good and bad). To my friends, past and present, even those that have long moved out and on from my world, because it is through them that I have learned the real meaning of friendship. To all the women that I have dated and crushed on and stalked (my lawyer assures me that once the case has been acquitted, it’s okay to use whatever descriptors I want), because I have learned a lot about myself through them.

And especially to Melissa, who more than anyone in my thirty four years helped me discover and change a lot of things about myself, who set the bar even higher than what I had imagined for what a relationship with a woman can be, and for raising my expectations and hopes about the world and the people in it. Some might see it as sad that we didn’t work out, but I suspect that, in a lot of ways, she’s in a much better place with the man she’s seeing now, and I’m incredibly happy myself. But my current state of mind and being is indebted to my time with her, beyond any quantification, and for that I will always be grateful to her.

When we were in the process of getting divorced, she came into the apartment one evening where I was sitting on the counch watching Buffy, freshly out of the shower. I don’t remember the exact words, but she pointed out the tattoo I have, of the Mandarin symbol for love woven into the letter ‘M’ that is over my heart, and noted that I was stuck with it forever.

She was right, of course. I hope I never forget everything that we had; without what came before, what I have now — so much more than what I dreamed — would not be possible.