What is it, exactly?

It's a feeling everyone has, to be sure. After all, nothing in the world is new, and this simple maxim provides a modicum of comfort.

However, it appears to be a feeling not everyone can control - or if I'm honest with myself, one that I haven't confronted with my best efforts at control.

I think that this would all be much easier if there were one word for all of it, the endlessly confusing, constantly changing, hugeness of it. Were that the case, when the feeling started to peek out of whatever dark corners you've tried to banish it to, you could just say, straightforwardly and unafraid, chin thrust forward defiantly and chest resolutely and bracingly pushed out, "Oh. It's you again." Being able to identify it would mean being able to pinpoint it, to hold it down, to incarcerate it, to solidify it - to keep it from being this slippery, dip-diving, shape-shifting thing. Excuse the reference, but did anyone see that X-Files episode where some invisible creature attacks the woman in the middle of the night and carves "sister" on her chest? I remember watching it in 5th grade and lying awake, unblinking, absolutely terrified, scared shitless that if I went to sleep it could happen to me. Which is pretty much where I am right now.

So I'm finally able to say to myself, "In the interest of driving away that nameless feeling and trying to get a decent night's sleep, let's try to identify the fucker in some ways, shall we? Let's flesh out all of his endless identities (telling that I choose the masculine pronomial form, no?). Then when he appears, he won't be able to hide behind the element of surprise. And I'll be able to become that strong-chinned girl who says "Oh, you again. What is it this time? Happy memories? Fearful wonderings? Panic? Intense desire? You have no influence over my emotions any longer. You make me feel nothing. You're just the trickster."

Self-reliance is what I'm after, and achieving it mandates a certain degree of emotional detachment. Since I'm pretty much an emotional open book, this will probably be a bitch.

The goal is to be sufficiently happy entirely alone. And not just generally happy, but actually pleased with myself and the path my life is taking - all of the little things that are actually happening right now, not all of the things I hope will happen. This is the gift that's come out of the current state of things. I know I'm not truly content to drift along directionlessly, in hopes that my life's path will reveal itself to me - I've gotten old enough to realize that I have a much greater hand in it than I'd thought before. And now there's nothing to distract me from that fact.

Hopefully, those two ideas - utter self-sufficiency and blissful togetherness, which now seem to be mutually exclusive - will be able to collide again one day in a less destructive fashion.

There's no more pushing anyone else to perform some self-examination - if I'm ready to take it on, there can't be any more waiting at the station. Besides, that would defeat the purpose. It's something to be done solitarily. So far, introspection offers me only gains in self.