the tenth iteration

Sometimes it takes a long time for things in life to come full circle, and sometimes it takes very little.  Pretty frequently I find myself looking for the signs that point toward healing... healing in whatever manner you want.  I think in 2020 "healing" is a pretty open ended sentiment.  Physical health, mental health, emotional health; they all sort of drop into the same bucket.  I've been looking so hard for signs of my own healing, rather proof that it is occurring at all, that I ended up sort of keeping my eyes shut to reality as a result.  And then the other day I had a long phone call and it all snapped back into place for me.

It's amazing, really, feeling that.  A year ago I wrote about how in love I was, and yet as I write this now, I'm decidedly not.  Consequentially not.  

Sadly not.  

But things have come full circle in a year, and with that phone call, I realized I had been waiting for a sign like that to happen before I sat down to write one of my favorite series of the blog. 

The Nine Year Anniversary For

Musings of a 

Self-Proclaimed Author

I kept thinking "Wow! The tenth iteration? That means TEN YEARS OF BLOGS!" but then I, an intellectual with a high school education, realized we are indeed a full year from that.  This is just the tenth one I've written.  It should also be noted how I once thought naming my book series "The Originality" was cool because I had made up the word... so that's the sort of hard-workin' science going on behind my blue eyes and it shouldn't surprise you.

So where was I... ah yes, love.  LOVE!  A love story like no other for me, your favorite(?) author! AKA a whirlwind romance that ultimately collapsed under the weight of itself, turning out to not be the love story for our generation but really just a long fart in the dark.  At this point I've resigned myself to realizing it just is what it is.

That was helped by the aforementioned phone call the other day.

I'd been watching the debate this past Thursday night with a friend and I got a text message from Andrew.  It had been just over five months since we last texted, when I took out my proverbial earrings and (later in his words) ripped him a new asshole.  In an awkward way of phrasing it through text, he wanted to talk.  So I said I would call him the next day and then pushed it out of my mind.  Because politics were on tv and we all know how much I love 'em.  Re: I don't.

I started a FaceTime with him around 11 the next morning.  A friend of mine asked me if I was nervous and I weirdly wasn't... I wanted this.  I wanted to see him and hear him and ultimately understand him, but I wasn't nervous about any of that.  It had been 8 months since he walked out of my life, there wasn't much to lose here.  He launched into a semi-prepared speech right away, himself quite nervous (admittedly, and evidenced by a shaking camera).  And though I doubted I would feel empathy toward him, I did.

I'm not going to dive into the details of the conversation we had, that's for Andrew and I.  As I said in the big 'ol breakup post back in February, this one didn't end in cheating so I don't feel privy to sharing all of the minute details.  Suffice to say it was a great conversation and it shed light on damn near everything.

You see... I don't usually get closure from relationships ending.  I don't get a reason why things happened the way they did or why certain choices were made the way they were.  So it shouldn't have surprised me that this relationship, so different from the others, would also be different in this regard.  Andrew had done the work and taken the time to understand why he did what he did.  Why he walked away.  And though he still has questions of his own that he's trying to process, he's at least trying.  Part of his own healing journey was to explain this all to me.

By the end of the two hour conversation, having touched on all of the issues we had while we were together, I felt the need to tell him "it was always good for me."  He nodded, and I started to tear up.

"Most of it was great," he answered.  So after nine months together, eight months apart, and ultimately a two hour phone call... I understood it was over.

I was suddenly sad in an entirely new way.  You see, if you talked to me about him just a day before this conversation, the wounds still felt fresh.  All this time later and they still bled.  I could (can) cry at the drop of a hat (or a $5 bill) with the memory of what happened.  But after talking to him, I realized exactly how long ago all of this was.  My heart was hurting anew only because I finally understood what he had been going through on his end.   It was hurting because he answered every single one of my questions with complete honesty, some of them with certain "oh, really" repercussions that come with the truth.  But by doing that, he proved to me that I wasn't crazy.  That I hadn't been imagining things.  

My sadness now is a sweeter one, if there is such a thing.  I lament for the past rather than mourn the loss of it.  Having my questions answered, the fog around me just seemed to dissipate and left me laying in my new bedroom.  In my new house.  With my new car in the garage.  And with all of the new friends and relationships I forged this summer.  

I look back to where I was when I kicked off the eighth year of this blog and it blows my mind.  I've mentioned my self-fulfilling prophecies before... I tend to write things down and then let them unfold through a year's time.  It is definitely not always how I intend it to go, more often than not it's the complete opposite of where I wanted it to go.  But it does go.  I wrote back then how I only wanted to move forward with intent... to do things with my heart and mind put squarely behind them.  I think I imagined it would be with Andrew right now, but it's not, and that's okay too.

Instead, what ended up happening is that I moved forward with the silent and often calm determination that makes me, Sean Parker, who I am.  Head down and struggling against whatever perceived current washes against me.  I worked my ass off and finished the complete re-set of my yard at the Manor.  I worked hard at rebuilding relationships with my friend Renae and my ex Jonathan.  I committed to weekly video calls with Jill and Katie.  I focused and had my business at Pottery Barn bounce back from quarantine and being closed for two months.  I sold my house and I bought a new one.

And that, my friends, is how you move forward from having your heart broken by a man you didn't think was capable of it.  You put your nose down, you seek out the things that matter, and you apply yourself to them.  You keep moving forward with that calm intensity and you just have to wait. The signs may not appear around you but eventually one of 'em will smack you right in the chin.

Or come as a text on a chilly Thursday night, as it were.

I'm still sad, but that sadness is changed.  I suddenly feel myself as changed.  I look around in this house that I am so much happier in, in a neighborhood that is so much quieter and safer.  There is a weird sort of "lightness" that I can feel inside of me and I don't really know what to attribute it to.  But I think living here at the Ranch helps. 

September 30th, 2020: Day 1

The Manor always had a strange sort of gravity to it.  My first time seeing it drew memories from deep in my past, ones I didn't even know I still had.  The gravity of the place was so strong after Andrew left that it felt like a black-hole, pulling me in and crushing everything inside of me.  From all of the work I did on the house, I never really documented it outside of pictures.  I felt like I was doing it all for the approval of the Manor itself... but that speaks more to the spirits in the place than anything else.  Check out the Halloween blog in a few days for more on that.

So with all that off my chest and out of the way, what would the prophecy be for the ninth year of this blog?  The big thing I've been doing since I bought the Ranch is videoing just about everything.  I think there has been (always will be) an innate desire inside me to share things.  I regret not sharing the progress on the Manor over the years and thought I might as well start here.  The Ranch is not an ugly house, and unlike the Manor had been, the walls inside are all white.  Really it is just a big 'ol blank slate.  

In the next year I want to share more.  More blogs, more stories, another book to release, and of course the videos of what I am doing in my home.  I still want to move with intent, but I also want to move with the lightness that I finally feel like I have in my step.  This year, along with telling me to slow down, I think the universe has taught me to appreciate what I have when I have it, and to just do the best I can.  I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

To close this out with the customary song, I'm gonna leave you this time with Kylie Minogue.  For... well, for reasons I guess you're not privy too.

Ciao for now (c: