I have been pretty low lately. That’s the excuse I’m using for not yet blogging about Nerds Rope. (Oh, but believe you me, it’s coming. Hard.)

Last night I had what probably was my first real nervous breakdown / panic attack / panic in the disco since my awful experience at Georgia Tech.  It’s impossible to peg any one thing as the cause of it, but there was a lot of fire and ice, anger and doubt, all of it focused inward.   The regret clung deep in my chest, hammering like angina, for past mistakes (financial problems leading to bankruptcy, not being able to provide for Duncan, the great nearly-six-year detour of a bad relationship) and present ones (wasting my life in a career that bores me to tears, the uncanny knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to my girlfriend,  burdening her with my shit when she is busy swimming through her own, and generally not being the strong, supportive force I should be.)

Stoicism runs in my family.  Case in point: it wasn’t until my  grandmother died that my father and I began to really use (and mean) the words, “I love you.”  It’s been hard to shed this lifelong carapace, and I’m sure I overcompensate a lot.   I’m probably doing so right now!  Weakness and pain was always something that I buried deep, but the problem is that joy, laughter and love get buried alongside.  Starting in Q4 2008, I decided to become more of an open book, one which I also took the time to try and read myself.

So, here’s the thing about my life in detours.  I may have taken a nine-year (and counting) detour professionally, and I may have taken a six-year detour down the path to marriage to someone that, frankly, I settled for and never really felt passion for.  In some sense, I may have even taken an eight-year detour to obesity.  I laugh about it now, but I definitely took a detour to the Land of Boring and Infrequent Sex.  However, they’re just detours.  Like Vicki told me on the phone last night, when she called to pull me out of the morass, I still have the choice to get where I want to go.