Thirty days hath September – April, June and November…
Somehow the last day of September is already upon us – and I’m left wondering what the hell I’ve been doing for this month, other than transforming into the cowboy before you – a cowboy in name and spirit more than action and reality – for such has always been my life. The transition from September to October has often been marked by emotional upheaval – and next month will mark seven years since I stopped drinking, which no longer feels like the big deal it once did. Not that I’m not still happy with the decision, and thrilled with how much it freed and inspired me to work on myself in ways that alcohol was only ever going to mask and disguise – I’m just not sure how much more there is to say about it. Maybe I’m feeling a little tired and exposed, a little worn and weary. It’s too early in this fall to be anywhere near this exhausted; it’s too late in my life to be anything less than exhausted.
And yet… and yet. Whenever I find myself on the edge of a field – a field that stretches out into sunshine and shadow, a field that runs further than the eye can see, that disappears from sight before it ends – I find the desire and impulse to start running – as fast and as hard as I can, the way I used to run up the street as a young boy, trying to get away from everything that was wrong in my childhood. Then the exhaustion I feel as a fifty-one-year-old man slips away, and my boots strike out and into soft, lumpy stretches of grass. Exhilarated, the mind impels the body to keep going, until lungs burn, until legs sting, until I have to admit I’m human, until I have to admit I’m too old to do this, even if I’m not.
It’s strange how trying on the life of a cowboy has me finding out more about myself than when I was decked out in the feathers and sequins everyone thinks of as my true style. Putting on the damage of another persona may be the freedom from being myself that my overthinking and overanalyzing ass needs. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books: distraction and fluff to allow for your mind to unwind. When you focus on something for too long and too intently, you completely lose sight of it. You need to get out of yourself. For me, getting into the cowboy is the best way of getting out of myself.
