As my wonderful dear boyfriend Ross wends his way north to Seattle, where he will stay overnight and then make the rest of the trip in the morning, I can truly say that I have done it at last.

I have initiated major change in my life, the kind that will take me far out of my comfort zone and into the unknown territory of romance. I am finally going to be in a relationship, and that is going to change everything, no matter how things turn out.

An d I have to admit, the universe met me more than halfway. I didn’t even have to date. Someone I already know and love reached out to reconnect with me, and all I had to do was say yes.

Makes me wish I had a God or other religious entity to thank. Being thanked and/or blamed is one of the most important jobs for any religious entity, whether it’s God, the Gods, karma, the music of the spheres, or Elvis.

It’s also a good example of getting on the damned bus. That’s what I call it when you make one decision that takes you a long way without having to make any more. like when I decided to go back to school, first Kwantlen, then VFS.

After that decisions was made, all I had to do was follow through. The momentum of the thing itself would carry me along, and that’s a godsend for someone who has problems generating their own momentum and then preserving it.

I have a lot of inertia and friction within me, and a very deep preference for inaction and invisibility that I have to fight against in order to get anything done. There is a very ill part of me that would prefer I did almost nothing at all, and sometimes. even less.

That’s basically what depression does to a person.

So having Ross show up for Xmas is a perfect way to take that to the next level. I don’t have to cross the no man’s land of online dating profiles, target selection, attempt and rejection, and so forth and so on to get to where I want to be.

I just have to tag along. And as the youngest of four, I am very good at that.

I am doing a pretty decent job of withholding expectation. I have no idea what it is going to happen when Ross and I reunite tomorrow morning. And that’s fine.

In fact, it’s better than fine, it’s great. I have this wonderful feeling of possibility. No predictions needed… or wanted. No matter what, my life changes tomorrow. Whatever happens, it will help me evolve, and I desperately need to evolve.

I have a whole lot of maturing to catch up on. And that’s the kind of thing that can only be done via experience. No amount of virtual experience through the consumption of media can help you grow the hell up. You have to get out there and live.

And that means exploring. And I have never been much of an explorer.

Even as a preschooler, I was more likely to stay where I was than to go exploring. That was partly because that is how I was being raised – to always be where I was left, so to speak. But mostly it was because I am, fundamentally, someone who needs a reason to explore. Exploring for its own sake never had much appeal to me.

I would wander around places I felt safe, but at first, those were few and far between. And I was always struggling with being, by nature, a very timid and sensitive soul, and rather high strung, so it didn’t take much to scare me into going and hiding. both figuratively and literally. So the exploratory urge was up against stiff competition from the very beginning.

And yet, I have also thrived (throve?) on attention as well. This being pulled forward and backward is characteristic of the astrological sign Cancer, which is my rising sign. Ambition and the desire for positive emotional energy drives the Crab forward, timidity and shyness drives it backward. Hence, it walks sideways.

Crabs don’t really walk like that, but that’s besides the point.

Of course, as I have said countless times before, my lack of explorative instinct only pertains to the physical kind of exploration. When it comes to the mental realm, I am an eternally restless wanderer who always has to know what lies beyond yonder horizon.

My mind is constantly probing, searching, developing, integrating, and synthesizing new worlds from what I already know. And I am always adding new things to the mix, so it’s really a never ending, ever-unfolding, eternally blossoming flower of the mind.

No wonder I have trouble sleeping. That shit doesn’t have an off button.

So maybe that’s where all my exploratory urge went : like everything else, it turned inward when I was abused. Instead of exploring my environment, to which I was somewhat indifferent as long as I was comfortable, I explored my mind. Not in any weird psychomachea way, just by thinking about things both consciously and unconsciously and trying to figure the world out.

And in that way, I am quite the rugged explorer. I instinctively go where other minds fear to tread because that’s where the most interesting answers will lie. I especially like going where my own mind fears to treat, because what’s the deal with that?

Plus, following my own resistance to the source always yields truly good answers, the kind like help me grow as a person. They are not always fun, but they are always worth the pain and suffering because I rate personal growth very, very highly.

I feel like I have resisted the evolutionary instinct that runs deep in my bones because depression made me feel like I I was just barely holding together and any change would cause me to fall apart like a wet paper airplane.

But I am not so fragile now, and more importantly, strength lies in change, not stasis.

You have to grow up to grow stronger.

You have to be strong to be happy.

And you don’t have to do anything to grow up.

You just have to step out of the way.

I will (probably) talk to you nice people again tomorrow.