Reflections

I've been trying to write reflections on the past seven months.  It's quite difficult to go anywhere with it. 

What I mean to say is that I've been stripped to the bare essentials and have learned to recognize frivolities--electricity, airconditioning, a comfy chair, energy to run around or work out--as such, and in the process I have learned to distrust wanting anything.  To want something, to expect something, is to set oneself up for failure and disappointment. 

Looking back, especially after writing a brief synopsis of the past year and a half, I've actually recognized that my physical debts are paid. 
In the past year and a half, I graduated, spent the summer backpacking in Europe, had a longterm relationship blow up in the Chicago Airport, bought a car, got a job, moved back home, discovered how little I like the corporate world, moved to Thailand and an even more constricting bureaucratic climate, totaled a Honda bike in three installments, dropped to just under 80 pounds in two months, broke my thumb and damaged a number of other organs/systems without diagnoses, lost my job and was pushed into a washout post designed to break me, and managed to prove myself the best foreign teacher they've had in that post.
For the first time in my life, I don't feel any pressure to prove anything to anyone. I've given what I have, and most of it is there to see. I'm happy to change or adapt, but don't ask for more—my debts physical debts are paid, and I don't plan on incurring more.

But beyond that, I've realized that I don't have to feel guilty, either.  After confronting the abject poverty around here--abject poverty usually instigating affluent anglo guilt--and encountering pity for being alone and disconnected, I realize that guilt is for actions, not circumstances. 

What I realize is that it's time to stop feeling guilty and serving penance for what life has offered and start living and feeling grateful for the opportunity to do so. 

There's a booger in the plans, though, as I figure out how I want to rebuild and live: how do I create even such a critical want as how I want to live when I have a pathological mistrust of wanting anything at all?