Up To The Challenge

    Some things must be done alone. Faced alone. Dealt with alone. Maybe it is my nature, I am freakishly independent, and prefer managing on my own most of the time. Yes, this is an ingrained behavior that I am trying to unlearn, but years of practice makes it like a muscle memory. Even now, when there are special people who are more than happy to lend a hand, or shoulder, or strong back, I am more than likely to go it alone. Emotionally, mentally or physically, I go it alone. I know my Introvert nature makes me inclined to go solo more often than not, but I am trying to allow myself to seek assistance when needed. Even so, there really are aspects of my life that I must do alone, for my own sense of self.
    Heading into the greyness of Winter, I am inclined to be filled with a certain sense of dread, isolation and emotional fatigue. Oddly, so far this year I am not feeling as if I am looking down a long, lonely, unlit tunnel peppered with pitfalls, shadowy lurk-lurks, boobytraps, and creepy-crawlies. I feel as if I can see into the Winter with a peace and clarity that has eluded me for an eternity. Part of this comes from facing my demons, beating them into submission and banishing them into their own darkness. Part of it comes from the love and support of friends old and new, kindred spirits that have come into my life this amazing year. Part if it comes from knowing I am facing a Winter of pursuing dreams, chasing childhood wishes, making long held secret desires become reality. My life has been moving towards ripeness, filling out with the succulence of time and age, becoming full-bodied and robust like a well aged brew.
    And still I know I am facing certain journeys and challenges alone. But it is because I choose to face them alone, to prove my strength to myself. To myself, no one else. I know that I am strong, healthy, powerful, but occasionally I am faced with a challenge that inspires me to prove it to myself once again. I have been actively seeking challenges, feats of strength, innervating experiences. Seeking and facing them alone, because I feel I need to. I have long struggled with the difficulties of being an Introvert in an Extroverted World, feeling outcast, stranger in a strange land, alien, awkward, the outsider. It has made so many simple things be difficult, painful, frightening, even terrifying. I am learning to face these challenges, rise to the occasion, prove to myself that I am not to be held captive by my own nature. I push beyond my fears, quell the panic, approach my fears with a calm facade. "You are what you pretend to be, so you had better be careful of what you pretend to be," Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. And so I pretend to be calm, self-assured, relaxed, comfortable, and it becomes so. It becomes my reality. I am what I pretend to be. I make this happen because I face terrifying challenges alone, proving my strength to myself. To myself, and no one else. It is how it must be, how I must do things. It is my nature to attack solo, to overcome, to learn, to grow, to become stronger with every struggle. I am stronger, healthier and more stable than I have been in an eternity, and I am up to the challenge.