Corvettes and Young Chicks…bring it on!

At 5:41 am tomorrow the sun is going to rise in California.
I have always enjoyed watching the sun rise, but with insomnia it was more of a reminder of my inability to allow myself to fall asleep.  Wait, I just reread what I wrote.  Let me clarify; Enjoying watching the sun rise and enjoying having to be up that ungodly hour is two totally different things.
When it’s because you’re headed somewhere to do something you love…heaven! When it’s because you spent the whole night on the phone with someone your getting to know better…awesome!  When it’s because your newborn was up crying all night…heartbreaking.

For me, it’s because I am going somewhere to do something I love.  When the sun rises tomorrow morning I will be sitting in the back of a car with one of my wonderful friends that I have known a life time, camera in hand with a goofy, excited grin.

It’s been said to me on Facebook that I am a 50 year old man going through a midlife crisis that I am doing so much at a break neck speed.  If that’s the case, bring on the Corvette and young chicks because I have no plans to slow down!

Rumi wrote something that has been running through my head since I decided to live this part of my life for myself:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

I remember the alive feeling I had when I lost my mind all those years ago.  I was feeling so many different things that I had never thought I would feel again.  The sad part was it was mixed with guilt and shame of what I was doing to the people I loved. It was a bittersweet freedom that I was holding on to with both hands.   The heartbreak I was causing mingling with the joy of feeling totally alive was causing me to not be able to sit alone with myself and I couldn’t allow myself that joy.  The guilt had won and even though I didn’t go back to the old life, I did fall back asleep and pushed aside the bees and butterflies that had taken up residence in my stomach.

This time around, I am having to find that awake feeling instead of it being thrust at me.  First was the spontaneous trip to Yosemite.  That was more for me to be able to get out of the house that the ghosts of my life were walking around in. I couldn’t stand to be here. I kept waiting for my step kids to burst into the room with a question or to look over and see my husband sitting at the computer working on some sort of design.  Every thing in this house was haunting me and the only way to get out of my head was to drive.   When I got there, I sat in my own silence and the hurt of knowing that it wasn’t the same without them there was painful, but I realized that even though I was there without half of my family, It didn’t kill me.  I was going to have to make new memories without them.
The last few weeks have been whirlwind for me.
Every Wednesday on my way home from work, something catches my attention and I decide, “I need to try that!”
1. Get on a motorcycle again. 2. Jump out of a plane.  and this last one was this Wednesday’s bright idea….
3. Go scuba diving.

Hopefully this is just the start of the many new memories I will make.  Dan is nearly finished with the Ninja and I will take my first lessons through the county on how to ride by myself.  Next weekend is my second of 7 sky dives before I can begin to start jumping out of a plane without a man strapped to my back.

So tomorrow when the sun is rising in California I will be half way to Monterey to go jump off a boat in a 77mm wet suit, BC and Reg with a tank of air and a dive buddy.

This new life suits me well. I won’t be going back sleep anytime soon.