The Enthusiast

I forget myself. I have made promises that now fall to other people to keep. I am deeply grateful. It is a kind of salvation, a lifejacket that keeps my head above the water while I work out my ineptitude. While I decide whether to tread water or to swim.

I am an enthusiast, you see. I love people. I really, really LIKE them. I rejoice in connection: creative, mental, verbal, literal, emotional, physical. These connections fill me with elation, with a kind of bliss. Ecstatic, I forget myself - like a child engrossed in an imaginary game. I leave the world behind. I am happy, interested, electric, alive. I act. I turn, spinning and spinning until I fall down. Dizzy, overexcited.

It's only when I wake from the dream that the embarrassment kicks in. A sense of shame. It confuses me. Embarrassed for having been who I truly am for a little while? For letting that secret self into the world? Or is it for having made choices that prohibit my true self from being fully present? Embarrassment?! I could weep for the lack of joy in it.

I try to stand brave in my shoes, chin up, with a bold gaze. You only get one life. I am an enthusiast. I walk the line. I have done nothing, I confess everything not done. I don't kill (not even mosquitos!), I don't steal, I don't lie. I confess the stupid things (I drank, I smoked, I kissed, I danced) - even when it costs me.

And yet there is an embarrassment. Because (it seems to me) I am too enthusiastic. Because I have too many words. Because I want. Because I act. Because I spin and fall down. Because I find it so very difficult to be myself in the world. So very difficult to stand brave in these shoes.