Let’s see.. up again this morning. We parked in a place that didn’t have reception, but I thought that maybe there might be reception nearby, so I walked maybe just a hundred yards and was able to get enough reception to get online.
That meant that I was able to get my posts uploaded for y’all to read. 😊
I’m actually staying fairly on top of things. 🥳
With Chase along with me for the entire 2 months, it’s going to be a good bit more of a challenge for me trying to use the time I have out here to figure out my life. I may end up having to come home, get work straightened out, and then head right back out. I need some alone time and was expecting to have a month by myself. I never thought that Chase was going to be able to stay so much longer.
Maybe I’ll be able to figure things out anyway? I guess we will see.
After Chase finally got up, we headed into town where he was able to mail some Christmas cards off for the girls. I’ve been sort of go go, so I didn’t write anything myself. He gave me a chance right before he mailed them, but I’m not very good on the spot and didn’t want to just write any old thing that wasn’t meaningful.
After running into town for him to mail things off, for him to get some energy drinks, and whatnot, we headed to Rawhiti Cave, supposedly the cave with the widest entrance in all of new zealand.
I wasn’t expecting all that much from the cave, so I was pleasantly surprised and wowed, honestly when I turned the corner and looked at just how monumentally gargantuan the entrance to the cave was. It was super impressive.
Pictures can’t really do it justice because you can’t even get the entire opening of the cave in frame, so you can’t gauge exactly how big it is.
Chase and I talked for a little bit inside the cave and then headed back down. It had been raining quite a bit, though it wasn’t raining while we were there, and the rain made the path to the cave extremely muddy and slippery. The result was that multiple people who started on the hike didn’t finish, turning back.
On our way back down, we ran into a woman from the Netherlands and another from Germany who were hiking the trail together. We stopped and had a pretty long conversation with them. The one from Germany was really nice, but she was also pretty pessimistic about the world it seemed, and she asked me matter of factly something to the effect of why try and make a difference when the world is falling apart anyway and will likely just fall apart no matter what you do. I had an answer for her that left her… stunned and nearly speechless.
It was one of those moments where I was encouraged in my ability to make a difference in this world for good on a larger scale.
I’m hoping that on this trip I’m going to be able to come to some final decisions about some circumstances in my life and how to finally move forward.
I’ve really got to get some things figured out, nailed down, and otherwise resolved. I may not like what I end up choosing, but I need to choose something.
Like I mentioned the other day, as far as relationships go, I’m probably just going to end up letting people know that my heart is split and that if you choose to be with me you’re choosing to be with someone who may not be able to give you his entire heart.
I may just do a lot of experimenting. But I can’t just sit around and wait anymore. I turn 41 in just a matter of days, and I can’t even describe how discouraging and difficult it is to be starting out completely fresh as a 41-year-old as though I were a 20 something.
My brain is still stuck as though I were in my twenties because that’s when I put all of my love life on hold and just started working working working working working working working working to prepare for the future that I thought I was going to have.
So, yeah, I’m sort of a 20 something stuck in a 40-year-old’s body.
It’s not fun at all.
But I made my choices. I tried the best I could. And yes, I failed miserably.
But at least I tried?
Now I guess I just walk a different road.
It’s easier said than done though, as I mentioned the other day: I keep trying to walk another road, but I keep failing in that too.
(sigh)
I’ve got less than a month left on my trip. I both want to go home and don’t.
Part of me is looking forward to going home and figuring out what I’m doing with my life. I’m tired of not having my own place. I want my own place to be able to go out and live my life and do the things I want to do without worrying about who else is in the house.
And if I’m gonna date again, then i want to get to it and get moving. I’ve been sort of practicing again out here.
How on Earth did I ever get here? How did I fail with this whole thing so miserably? How did I get it so so wrong?
And how is it that as wrong as I’ve gotten it, I still can’t just say that I got it wrong and move on? How on earth is there still part of me that doesn’t believe that I got it wrong? How on earth is there part of me still waiting for it all to come to pass as I trusted it would?
It’s ridiculous. Who am I kidding? I’ve got zero control, and I’m wasting my life waiting on a fantasy.
That life circumstance is the number one circumstance that I need to figure out. I need to come to some kind of a decision. And I need to actually believe that it’s the right one.
I’ve got to figure out how to get to that point.
Anyway… We ate lunch in the parking lot after getting down, and then we drove toward Abel Tasman National Park.
Everybody raves about the park, but honestly, it was a bit of a ho-hum experience for me. We’ve seen so many extraordinarily beautiful places in our travels through New Zealand that, well it was nice, it just didn’t hold a candle to some of the other places we’ve been.
I guess in that sense, we’ve been spoiled. 🙃
Chase and I took a walk on one of the trails, more crowded than we’d like it to be for sure, schools gotten out for the summer here. So families are out in force all over. We spent a good chunk of time on a beach at the halfway point of the Walk, only the return left. I climbed up on the top of a sandstone pillar that did eroded away from the ocean pounding it and whatnot, and I just sat and thought and stared off into the ocean.
Life.
After that, we drove Northwest up the coast and settled down rather early in a little pull off on the side of the road. That’s where I am now dictating this entry for today. It’s 10:51 p.m. . Chase has been asleep for probably an hour and a half already, and I’m up riding in this journal, doing taxes, and other stuff.
Decisions decisions. How to move the heart. How to change what I actually truly believe in my heart. I don’t know how you do that.
But I’m going to try. I think I’m going to just say goodbye to everything that I believed and just focus all my energy on letting it go forever.
The very thought breaks my heart, nearly brings me to tears, but I don’t know what else to do. I’m absolutely a shell of the person I used to be.
I’m not truly happy and haven’t been for a long, long time.
I think in this thing that’s shattered me into so many pieces, it’s time to say that I either got it wrong or was incapable of living up to what I needed to receive the promised blessings.
Either way, I’m not going to get it, so why not just accept it? What’s lost is lost, and it doesn’t even really matter why. The answer going forward for me is still the same regardless of what is or what was or what will be.
I’m still the same person. Regardless of what is true or is not true in the universe, I’m still the same person. I want to be love for as long as I exist, whether that existence comes to an end tomorrow, in 20 years, in 50 years, or if it never ends. I’m the same person, and I always will be.
(deep breath)
Let’s see if I can do this…
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 