I Haven't Changed At All... Or Have I?

I've been thinking a lot about change in the past few weeks. Well, I've been thinking about change since last June, but I've been considering it in a different way more recently. These thoughts started with my "Journal Project" posts on my blog. I was sitting on my bed, reading my journal, copying down the parts I wanted to include on my blog, and getting more and more despondent at the pattern I knew was there but had never been able to view the way I now do. I saw myself, the old me, that is, falling head over heels for someone only to quickly find a reason to move on. I found myself getting hurt very easily. I saw so much self-loathing and confusion, so much misguided and twisted logic. I wanted to reach through the pages and slap my old self. I wanted to scream at him, "Just stop!" I wanted to sit him down and hold his hand and tell him that he's got it all wrong, that the things he was pinning his misery on were the wrong things. I wanted to tell him how much he needs to change before he will ever find true happiness.

And then I thought about my now-self, the self I've been touting as a "new man," as someone almost "born again." I've talked about myself as if I see everything from a clearer perspective. I've taken off the muddy shame-goggles, turned myself around, and started walking in the right direction. But do I have the right to preach to the old me about "true happiness" when I still haven't found it or felt it?


Because things internally have been happening so quickly, I have been afforded the semi-luxury of witnessing alterations that normally happen so slowly as to go unnoticed until long after the fact. But I can flip back in my memory to just a few short months ago and recall feeling very differently than I do now about many things, myself foremost. But after reading so many old journal entries, I started wondering if I've really changed at all.

I brought my concerns to someone whom I have come to trust and respect and care about quite a lot. We'll call him Steven. As a pre-conversation exercise, Steven asked me to make two lists: one would have all the ways I know I am different than before, and the other would contain the ways I feel like I am not different than before. He also asked me to think about why I believe I should be different. My lists came out like this:

"How I am different than before:

- I'm more aware of myself and my actions

- I'm more honest about why I act and think the way I do

- I have a better definition of authenticity and realize that vulnerability is a part of that definition.

- I have more self-control over my actions

"How I am not different than before:

- I still feel like I'm "running out of time" and have to find a partner a.s.a.p.

- Because of that, I push everything too quickly and skip over the very thing I have always dreamed of having, i.e. marrying my best friend

- I lack self-control over my thoughts and desires

"I think I should be different because experience results in increased knowledge, or should anyway. I should have learned what works and what doesn't work; I should have learned from my mistakes. If I do not change, I might unwittingly damage or destroy something that could have been otherwise great--as I have done in the past." 

After looking at my completed lists, I still felt pretty bad. I discovered that the "old" me dated lots with the surface justification that he was looking for the person he wanted to spend his life with. The "new" me is single and celibate but still feels that exact same intense desire for companionship. So the only difference is that now I've put myself on a forced hiatus from all dating and sexual activity. But I'm still lonely.

When Steven and I talked the next day, he did a lot of listening to my ranting, he thought, and he asked some more questions. He told me about his own experiences and shared his own ideas and philosophies on change and the kinds of things that can or should be changed.

My mind, whenever I think about my desire to change and the fact that I'm single, keeps going back to that dream I had. (posted here) Almost compulsively since then, I've been thinking about willingness to sacrifice, what it is I should be willing to sacrifice, and what the result of that sacrifice will ultimately be. In the dream, I was completely willing to sacrifice my life. In the story of Abraham, he was completely willing to sacrifice his son. But Abraham only had to prove he was willing to go through with it and an angel stopped him. Nor did I have to actually give up my life in my dream: the instant I let go and looked forward to that instant between life and death, everything stopped and I was alive.

So I've been convinced that I need to be willing, truly and honestly willing, to sacrifice something that means a great deal to me, and through that willingness, I will eventually have that thing I was willing to give up. But what is that thing?? I've forced myself to be single and celibate. But does forcing myself indicate willingness to sacrifice? And is being in a relationship even the thing I'm supposed to be willing to go without?

I am now reminded of another dream I had, early last fall, shortly after school had started, I think, the one in which I married myself--not a clone of me, like two Justins, but just me, one body, marrying myself. I woke up feeling optimistic that the dream indicated I had reached some amazing milestone at which I was happy with myself, that I loved myself, and that I didn't need anyone else's approval or love to feel that way about myself. It is said that "you can't love someone else until you truly love yourself." I felt, in a way, like this dream was giving me the thumbs up, like it was okay to start finding someone to share my life with, indicating that, through all my trials and growth, I had finally learned to love myself.

Except that some days, I don't feel like I have learned. I still berate myself. I still scream at myself in my head for being so stupid and selfish, for getting upset over nothing, for expecting too much from someone else.

But so does everybody else!!

My problem, which I started to understand more after talking to Steven, both then and in subsequent conversations, is that I tend to see myself as existing in a vacuum, outside the realm of all other humans, feeling things that must be unique to me since I am the one feeling them. But this simply isn't true. The fact that I have bad days doesn't mean I'm sliding back into the old me. The fact that I think almost daily about finding my best friend and partner and husband doesn't mean I've relapsed into the Me of 10 years ago. The fact that I get hurt easily maybe just means that I'm a sensitive guy.

But the ways in which I have changed are the important ones, really, except that I haven't let myself see that because I am so used to finding things about myself to pick apart, to hate, to regret. But the fact that I read these old journal entries and see a guy who does whatever anyone else wants him to, who jumps from boyfriend to fling to boyfriend, who knows he needs to change but can't seem to make himself do it... This should all make me rejoice! Self-control is a beautiful thing. It is an empowering thing. I know that the next person I am with will not be a fling and will not be a guilt-induced coupling. It will be genuine. It will be heart-felt. It will be beautiful.

It will be worth the sacrifices I made.

On a different note, I ordered a freaking sweet-looking CTR ring the other day. I really felt like, outside the Mormon experience, this saying really encompasses the way I am trying to think and behave these days.

Amazing song. Just ignore the fact

that Kristen Stewart is in it. #barf