Clarity within the maelstrom...

Okay, so I know I’ve been flooding things out a bit heavily the last week or so, and I apologize for the deluge. I’m doing my best to keep things from getting too melancholy or negative. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify a few things though. First and foremost, I am not angry or bitter. I don’t hate her, I don’t fault her, I wish her no ill will, and I would hope that I can begin to do a better job of conveying that. I do still love her very deeply, and I would still go to the darkest pit of hell and trade my soul for hers, if it meant that she was given one more day to enjoy life. My conviction and commitment was not contingent on her being around, it transcends all things and binds tighter that any bond you can fathom. I still love her very deeply; some part of me will always be right where I’ve always been, right here waiting, with open arms and a happy smile for her to come to me. I don’t wish to paint her as a villain or a terrible person, she is not, and any indication I’ve given to the contrary is an error on my part. I wish her the best, the utmost happiness, and the highest fulfillment of her life. I do not begrudge her choice or her decision, I’m not happy about it, but in the end, if she didn’t want to be with me and I forced her into it, what kind of life would I have? I’d have spent the entirety of my existence with her struggling to just break even and appease her for having chosen me when her heart wanted to be elsewhere. I know this is brief but I should have something a bit more substantial later on. Stay tuned kids!

Just Enough to Love You...

Really not my style to just post songs, but right now I think this best sums up a lot of things:

Push me out from the darkness
To a sky that's colored blue
Somewhere someone's finding happiness
While I'm still here so hung up on you

Nothing is real
And I want you to know
That I'm not alright
When you tear open my chest
I'll try not to flinch
Won't make promises
You taught me that I'm still losing what's left out
My self-esteem
And I'm still watching the slow fading of all my daydreams

The hardest things to say are the words that mean the most
So I'll bite my tongue til it bleeds and I doubt you'll even know
The easiest thing to fake's a feeling to fool someone else
And I've been tricked for so long by you that I spent these last few months in my own hell

A failed apology
A day too late but now I see
That all you really want's to see me dangle neck first from a tree
But what would you need me for
You've got friends galore
And all you'll ever be to me's a stupid lying excuse for a person

I could call
But I know that you won't be there to pick up the phone
You don't have time for me
I could call but I know you won't get the phone
Don't have time for me

I hate myself
For loving you like this
I hate myself for hating myself
Just enough to love you
Just enough to love you

The power of love...(Or, Huey Lewis almost got it right)

So here I sit, having finally acknowledged the full extent of the negative that I was fighting to keep on the fringe. I recognized the power of anger and chose to turn it into something positive, determined not to let it consume or debilitate me.  Regrettably, in being so staunch in my resolve, I had allowed a number of things to pass without incident. I’d offer up details but at this point I’m still trying to sort everything out. I apologize my friends, but expect an increase in the number of cryptic messages coming from yours truly in the coming weeks. For those that are curious, feel free to approach me directly (those that are worthy have the means) and I’ll be happy to provide honest, direct, and full answers to any questions you pose. Here though…well it’s too open, too exposed and I’m still sorting through a great number of things. I’ve given in to easily to trying to offer up insight and refuge for too many, being the heart and emotional anchor for the masses when they can’t bring themselves to seek the enlightenment they so wantonly devour from me. I know this is beginning to verge on sounding bitter or militant, and that’s why I’m fighting so hard right now to handle this all in the right way. I don’t want to let all of this affect me in that way, I don’t want to be that person. I am stronger than that, and I’ve grown beyond that. There is no justice or benefit for me harboring the negative or dwelling on it. I had something beautiful and I watched it die. I watched fear and a profound lack of conviction destroy something that could have absolutely grand and incredible. I’ve belabored that point enough, I think even I’m getting tired of hearing it. She was a coward, and she let fear make her choice, not love. There I’m done, the final word on that point for a while.

Even rereading that last sentence leaves me with a bitter metallic taste in my mouth, because I’m still giving in to the animosity and the vitriol of something that I cannot allow to influence me. I thought holding on was the test of my resolve, but coming out of this unscathed and without severe or irreparable psychological damage/trauma is going to be the real test of just how strong my psyche really is. I’ve conquered suicide attempts, endured bullying, survived mistreatment, subjugation, oppression, public humiliation, and even having to defend my heart’s desire against a thousand naysayers with little more than a base understanding of the people involved, and the only test that matters is what I choose to do now. How I choose to be, who I choose to be, from here out. I can only fathom it’s a matter of time before things swing back and the pendulum reaches back the other way. Deep down both of us knew exactly what was and has always been meant to be. I provide excitement, fulfillment, compassion, near infinite understanding, and an unwavering commitment to a vision I hope to see come to fruition. I’ve no doubt or delusion that I’m alone in holding these views and this uncompromising dedication, but the man that ended up my better…I’ll never meet him to actually tell him how lucky he is, how wonderful a woman he has, and how strong the ties that bind her to him really are. While it is incredibly easy for me, or even most of you, to vilify and bash her, not one of you came to her defense a few months back, and what’s more is that not a one of you ever actually met her. She is not a bad person, never was, and truthfully never could be. Misguided and lost in the fear of her own choices, guided by the best of intentions and too afraid to move, it is low self-esteem, a misunderstood value of self, and her own insecurities that propelled her to the finality she optioned. Fear of being alone, of not having someone to come to her defense, and when she found that in me, someone with unquestioned and unflinching tenacity to always provide the best and spare her all harm and pain, it got her thinking about who she was as a person and what she deserved. The answers to those questions required reflection on the fundamentals tenets of what makes you, you. No one likes being thrust under the microscope like that and especially when you’re doing it in the hopes of seeing someone that is worthy of such selfless behavior.

But who among us, who among all of you, can say that you’ve not chosen fear when it was the less daunting option? She’s not a bad person, and I will not commit libel or engage in endless insult slinging. She is a wonderful person and had things worked out, I’d have been very lucky to have her. Despite the proclivities of most of you to see only the pain she caused (partially my fault for only reaching out to deal with that pain), she is a phenomenal human being. I think perhaps if I were to engage to any semblance of “revenge” it would simply be to shake the man’s hand and convey, through weighted words and veiled references, just how lucky he is and how much he should appreciate the love he has. In the end, for all the impossible I did, for all the mountains I moved, for all the stars I brought down from the sky, for all the demons I slayed, for the infinite understanding and acceptance I offered, for all of the miracles I performed, it simply was not enough to make me more appealing than the love she’d already found. In that regard it is nothing to be angry about or to seek any kind of malicious revenge; rather it’s something to be celebrated. I dared to fathom a depth of love that few can begin to comprehend, and in that I pitted it against the kind of love that you get married for. I lost. I’m not defeated, I’m renewed, I know what I’m capable of, I know that I can love and be loved and that there are still beautiful people in this world, inside and out, and to wallow in the hurt, in the heartache; to let rule the hollow emptiness of the love I’ve had to swallow down and “forget”, it’s a disservice to the incredible things I did, it’s a slap in the face to the genuine and unconditional love I found, and it’s make a lie out of every declaration of wanting her to be happy. I did want her to be happy, and not just with me. I do want her to be happy. I don’t know if she’s reading, if she’ll ever stumble through here and find this, but since it’s my page and I can remain uncensored, let me say this, if ever a more perfect and beautiful love exists in this universe, let it be known, I came first. I set the bar for unconditional acceptance and understanding. I, a mere mortal, a man of limited means and borne of a sordid past, put forth a lifetime’s worth of energy, passion, and love to declare my love, and I will never deny, decry, or abhor those feelings. If ever the pendulum does swing back in my favor, if ever that love is seen fit by the fates to be requited, I will accept it, with graciousness and never stop appreciating every day that passes from that day to my last, as I am reminded, by something as simple as her smile, just how unequivocally lucky and blessed I would be. My love has not gone, my choice has not changed, but the clock ticks by once more, and with it too, does my affection. If the hands of fate see fit to bring her back to me so be it, and if it is to serve as a reminder what a driven man can accomplish, there is no fault in that either. I only pray that every night he holds her, he knows and appreciates, fully and completely, just exactly what he has and never stops thanking the powers that be for such a precious gift.

Dare to dwell where Fear is afraid to tread...

Semblance of self, understanding of the id, ego, and super ego; there are many names for knowing the true name of oneself and having accomplished a seemingly impossible task in today’s culture. We are expected to want more, to go beyond, and to crave what we do not have, to never be content, to constantly covet and seek out something just beyond the horizon. While this type of behavior is what drove us as a species to seek out safer refuge, to map the globe, to build the greatest inventions, and even compelled the most celebrated romantics to achieve the heights of their highest success, it has gone from being something beautiful and noble to something twisted and ugly. Altruism, doing what must be done or should be done for the sake of seeing good done in the world, is an all but lost concept, diluted and sullied by a consumer culture that reeks a bit too closely of something Huxley proposed with Brave New World. There is no nobility of self because no one takes the time to see themselves, they see only the blemishes, the loss of something they undervalued when they had it, and look toward the shimmering sky, a canvas awash with dreams and personal fulfillment if only one is willing to trade away the things that really matter.

Smoke because it’s glamorous, be skinny because that’s beauty, have big breasts or a big butt and you’ll be attractive, be selfish and self-serving or a total spoiled bitch and people will think you’re cute, wear what everyone else does, buy, consume, thinking is a weakness…the rhetoric is a bit less ham handed but the message is still just as clear. Everyone sees it. I’m sure there is hardly anyone that can’t see the forest for the tress and stare with minimal effort at how callous and useless the entire consumer culture has become, and yet we press on, apathy allowing the infernal machine to continue its work, heedless of the loss of something so precious. My sense of self is something even I take for granted, but for reasons I think are wholly different than most others. I know who I am. I am in a constant state of change, endlessly evolving, always adapting and accepting. I am not who I was and I am not, now, who I shall be, but I am still me. The sum of the parts is merely the result, not the full construction, the assembly of something so intricate and beautiful as a life, it is something takes, quite literally, a lifetime. There is a complex and worthwhile tapestry of experiences and moments that weave together in a mind bending fashion and they serve to create the person you see. I would not be who I am if not for who I was. This is something I accept, and it has taken me quite a long time to recognize the truth within such a thing.

For the majority, they are constantly looking toward what might be, what they hope for, or what they plan on happening. The family the can have, the children they’ll bring into the world, the car they want to buy, the house they want to live in, the relationship they want to cultivate, the career they hope to pursue, even the clothes they want to wear and the food they want to eat. The dichotomy of this is that most of these people are endless spouting self-affirmations about reveling and enjoying the present. You’ve seen them all, “The past is history, the future’s a mystery, to enjoy the present because it’s a gift”, I mean there are countless others, and I’m not decrying the words as being without merit, but they undercut the intrinsic meaning being espoused by those that seek only to escape the current circumstances of their lives. Unhappy in relationships, miserable at a dead end job, lacking the resolve to even try to better their lives, and it is fear that holds them back. It is fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of asking too much, of being too brazen, of stepping over too many lines, of being beyond the scope of understanding for another that keeps them contained, wrapped in a blanket of anxiety and shadows, whimpering to the nameless forces of defeat and oppression for release from the bonds that they created themselves.

Without realizing it, more often than not we become the products of compromise and fear. We’re taught early on that not fitting in is something to be feared. So grade school is all about having the same lunch box, the same clothes, the same after school activities, and even the same backpack, shoes, pencils, and notebooks as the majority, to be any different is to be outcast. Middle school revolves around constructing identity, and sadly that is too often shaped by misunderstanding. A need to rebel leads to chopped hair or longer than normal, violent arguments, harsh words, music with hollow messages, and mauled, altered, name brand, or unique clothing being used to designate and inform how we see ourselves. High school is…well I imagine it’s about solidifying the person you’ve chosen to be with the gradual acceptance of personal responsibility. I say I imagine it because for me there were three things that I don’t think occurred for me during high school. One, I wasn’t there. I was removed from my peers in my freshman due to a misunderstanding and my proclivities being too far out in the ballpark of my creation. My refusal to fit in and accept what they prescribed I should be fostered further discontent and in my opinion allowed for a malfeasance to breed within those in the power structure. Second, I never had a girlfriend or even got laid in high school. I was a graduate before I had my first sexual experience and it was only a couple of months before that, I laid eyes on a naked woman for my own benefit and stimulation without it being through a television. The third and perhaps most fundamental of all the things that didn’t happen to me during high school is that I didn’t find out who I was. I knew. I had cultivated my persona, become the person I wanted to be, in need of some fine tuning perhaps, but I had no want or will to be anyone other than I wanted to be and I didn’t need the gradual acceptance of personal responsibility. I became my father by the time I was in the seventh grade and I had no gradual or piecemeal program of increased accountability to myself because I had been forced to accept it all years before. My home life was less than ideal and to most of you I’ve relayed the stories of psychotic breaks, verbal and physical abuse, and even the borderline unapologetic emotional neglect that I endured, so I won’t traverse the same material again, but my point is that I was not in need of an identity. I had resolved to become my father but do so in a way where I got all the benefits and made none of the mistakes.

Now most of us become out parents in one form or another. We assimilate little things that we barely notice. A proclivity for our parent’s brand of coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, perfume, clothing, cars, political leanings, outlook on society and family, all of it is informed by our parent’s example to varying degrees. It is an endless cycle that continues ad infinitum since time immemorial. But what happens when the pattern is broken? What is the outcome when we or our parents are left to quite literally create themselves? Well in my case, that is exactly what happened. My father had to build, piece by piece, who he wanted to be. His father is still alive, and he’s a wonderful man, but he is not the most emotionally expressive person and in all the years I’ve been alive I’ve yet to actually hear him tell me he loves me, a trifle in the grand scheme and by no means do I mean to say that my life would have been made in any way markedly different from such a pronouncement, but for the purposes of my point, my father was given a role model but little guidance on how to actually become or emulate his father. To that end my father is the culmination of the highest hopes and intellect, brought down by ill fortune and miscalculated gambles. So in becoming my father I was attempting to recognize what could have made him successful and what had been the highest detriment. I resolved to live as free of vice as I could, seeing a dependency on chemical substances to be a major burden that would hold even the strongest back. It is in this that the genesis of who I am now was spawned.

So if we have the role models of who we will eventually become, who will influence us the most, how do we go about defining our individuality? For most of us we pick and choose from media and other sources and splice it all together in a ramshackle way of producing an identity. We glean quotes from movies, we take ideas from magazines, jokes from television, music from the people we want to be more like and we present ourselves to the world as the combination of our best efforts. The only thing any of us lacks is depth. We don’t understand why we find something funny, why we like what we like, or even why we seek to be the people we attempt to be. It’s all a finely greased machine that is embedded in us from our infancy, behave a certain way and people will like you. The only flaw in that logic is that the people you want to like you are just as two dimensional and vapid as you are. I know that no one likes to think of the people they care about, or even themselves as being anything less than spectacular and unique snowflakes, and I don’t mean to decry or belittle anyone personal sense of self-worth. Rather I want you all to recognize what it is that gives you intrinsic worth. What makes you the spectacular person you are? It is only through questioning that we can come to understand anything.

It’s been said that I’m fearless, devoid of pause or terror. I think there might be truth in that but only in one simple thing. It is an important and popular fact (to quote Douglas Adams) that humanity fears what it does not understand. We all do it. Sky diving, bungee jumping, pig wrestling, cave diving, things that go bump in the night, even our own behaviors, it can all be terrifying. I seek to understand it all. And here’s another point in the current paradigm of our culture and society where a breakdown occurs. At some point in the past thirty years or so, it became an implied expectation that with the advent of cable television, the internet, and different mediums of radio (if Nikola Tesla could see things now, huh?) we no longer had the onus of understanding anything ourselves, someone else was doing it for us. The bogeymen had been found out and no longer lurked in the dark corners of the room between the dresser and the closet. So with that precept in mind, we have become the most jaded and uninspired we have ever been, relegating true understanding to the annals of pursuits best left to others, and no real compulsion to do anything to change it. We have the utmost information at our fingertips, in a way like never before in human history, and the majority of us retain slivers and pieces of anything if we retain anything at all, so any understanding is fragmented and shoddy at best. Enter my oddity and my propensity to actually retain everything, to really come to a full and informed comprehension of everything, and I have no fear. I don’t rely on someone else to have my answer, to protect me from the things I don’t know, I seek out to find my own answers, and in that I am made mighty enough to face down any dragon, slay any beast, go toe to toe with any demon. I am made invincible by the sheer veracity with which I seek information. I am who I have chosen to be, both now and at all points in every possible future. I made my decisions, I owned my choices, and I alone am the only guilty party if blame for any of it is to be given. Hopefully we can all begin to understand ourselves a bit more, to really recognize the good within us, the things that make us the unique and wonderful people we all are, and from that understanding begin to feel real love and actually put forth a bit of that emotion toward the ones we truly treasure.

Inner fire burns white hot...

The choices we make, the actions we take, the decisions we own, they all come down to our own conviction and the exercising of personal will. But what happens when the thinks we think we know we’re incapable of validating and the consequences of choice are just too far flung to fathom, too daunting to contemplate, and too terrifying to really try to comprehend. For me, I’ve never shown fear, I have always owned my decisions, I’ve made my choices and stuck by them without ever flinching. Sure there have been times where I’ve wanted to take something back, to do something over again and try for a better outcome, but I’ve always been blessed with an abundance of personal conviction. My resolve is unwavering in almost every instance. It’s this that I’ve taken for granted. Now in keeping with the idea that in order to attain closure on this whole thing and move beyond it, I have to understand it, I feel it pertinent to at least posit, what if I was not so resolute? What if my conviction was in question? Or if my choices were something I couldn’t necessarily believe in?

It’s a token thing that I don’t spend much time second guessing myself, rather I acknowledge mistake or error when it happens and attempt to atone and correct the situation. It’s a no brainer response, and it’s something I don’t question, but while for me it’s a tried and true response, and for the majority of you guys it’s something that you aspire to, what has allowed me to be so undaunted, so resolute, and so unquestioning of my own motivations? I know it seems nonsensical but it’s a valid question. I barreled along for four years without ever flinching or even pausing to consider another choice. But I forget that for so many others, her included, and even the majority of you, that kind of commitment is something unheard of. So that being said, it’s worth at least considering two major points, what endows me with the ability to make a decision and stick to it, heedless of the personal cost. The other thing to consider is, if my resolve is something unique to me from experience, upbringing, or is instead something indelible, well am I the anomaly that should seek to change?

I know this is a lot of questions and not much in the way of a formal argument toward a point. I also know that those of you who have been along for the ride this far or even those who got off and came back along the way, I should be decrying her and doing nothing at all to put myself in her shoes. Well, I’ve made my decision here that I’m not going to wallow in anger or pity, or doubt. It’s unproductive and it does nothing to help me heal or understand. It’s negative emotion that becomes nothing more than added weight and keeps me from doing more. There again, a simple affirmation of conviction that takes less than a second and I’m not even slightly inclined to consider another course of action. So what is it that lets me do it?

I certainly do not completely understand the universe, my role in it, or anything of that nature. Nor have I come to fully understand the intricacies of every situation. I’m not clairvoyant, psychic, or in touch with anyone on the other side. And I do have fears, no phobias per se, but I do have fears. So why am I so capable of having such unwavering conviction? I’m really hoping you guys can give me answers to this. I stand in the face of adversity time and again and I always manage to stay the course and arrive at exactly where I want to be.

So let’s just put together a scenario for sake of argument. So the choice is life changing, something that completely alters the day to day of existence. The results are far reaching, affect a good number of people and their reactions are expected to be along certain lines at the outset, but it’s hard to tell whether their own hubris and prejudice will win out over their wanting me to be happy. Okay let’s put names and faces to it all. Let’s say that I was considering getting back together with her and it could actually work out. She’s single and asking me to be with her. So if I decide to be with her, I invoke the ire of so many who have vilified her, I suffer the slings and arrows of others who say I’m throwing away something beautiful and it won’t be worth the sacrifice. No for me, it’s a no brainer, I make my choice and stick with it. But for sake of argument let’s say I’m not so resolute, not so self-assured…I think that’s it. Nosce te ipsum. I know myself, inside and out, I know what I’m capable of and what makes me tick and it is precisely that fact and understanding of myself that allows me to do what I do. I see my flaws, my faults, my shortcomings, and I embrace them, I don’t necessarily flaunt or laud them, but I accept and work to resolve them. I am comfortable with myself and who I am. My strength and resolve is culled from my innate understanding of who I am and what I’m willing to do. I am unafraid because I know that no matter what I do, I do it with the full understanding that I remain unchanged and unaffected unless I choose to let it be otherwise. Unfortunately that nifty little epiphany has given way to another question of why am I so comfortable with myself and my own skin when so many others are so ill at ease? Meh, an argument for another day, this is circular enough and I think I’ve raised more questions than I’ve answered. 

The good left unsaid...

Finality, it’s a word with a singular meaning yet somehow I manage to give it nuance. I’m not sure at what point in my life or my existence it was decided that the extraordinary would become the norm but somehow or another I consistently find myself in situations that defy the laws of reality and seem to be more like something out of a movie with clever writing and an all too appreciable protagonist. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not complaining or even lamenting this, hell I like it, it’s always something I can manage, it makes for great stories, and in the end if it makes it here (I’m terribly sorry for all but abandoning you guys) hopefully it makes for a good read.

I’ve been playing Madness Returns all week as well as re-reading the books in an effort to make them my own and keep from having a sour taste in my mouth following the excision of a monumentally, almost integral, part of my life. Y’know that whole thing about how certain music you just can’t listen to following a break up? Well for me it goes to an almost, and I’ll admit it’s unhealthy, virulent extreme. TV shows, books, movies, restaurants, clothing, even jokes and quotes get relegated there. Because of my astuteness for details and my near flawless ability for total recall…well it becomes very hard for me to break associations to things once they’ve been made.

Please don’t misunderstand this entry to suggest that I’m struggling under the labors of just being able to listen to Tool or enjoy House. In truth, Tool is, and always will be, mine. I got into Maynard’s catalog around 2003 with A Perfect Circle and songs like Judith, Weak and Powerless, The Noose, Blue, The Outsider, and Passive. I can remember going to see Constantine with friends and knowing every word to Passive as it played in the film. I fell headlong into Tool following a long and somewhat less well documented pursuit from 2006. The Tool song "Right in Two" provided the initial impetus for my long suffering novel. At that point in time it was less a love story and more a supernatural action adventure with little grounding in anything real. But I really began to experience the band, the music, their message, their catalog, and the emotion evoking power following a chance listening of Pushit while stuck playing the same damn video game ad infinitum for a paltry sum of money. The song had a message, unclear and a bit muddied to me upon the first dozen or so listens, but as I resolved to just provide white noise outside of the game’s insipid soundtrack, my attention continually focused on the lyrics and I began to relate and apply the song’s story of disparity within a relationship and the lengths to which the singer is willing to ignore it in the hopes of making the relationship work. The gap between them and how the constant pushing and shoving from the other forces the singer to see it, the continual challenge of keeping them from disappearing despite having to face that chasm, the incessant feeling of being alive when they touch and when the singer is shoved again and again, the codependency of it all but having to acknowledge that the gap is there, and the constant entreaty from the singer to keep from being pushed over the edge, knowing it will be the end of them. I began to relate to that, to see how much I was pushed, again and again, over and over, seemingly without end but I managed to side step falling into the gap. I never hit the breaking point as the singer of the song does, I was strong enough to keep from throwing it all away. The days wore on and I began to relate to more songs, Schism, Parabol/Parabola, H., Stinkfist, I could list the majority of their work but you guys already know I’m kind of a fanatic. But the point is that I chose Tool as a means to relate, to cope, to achieve catharsis I just couldn’t get otherwise. It’s kind of occurred to be recently and I know you will all disagree so I’m curious to hear your arguments, but I really suck as communicating my own feelings. I can argue points, convey thoughts, pontificate and even explain things quite well but when it comes to really putting emotion and not just words to paper…well it’s kind of a rare thing.

As great as most would profess me to be at expressing myself, I have to admit, if for no other reason than just for my own benefit, when it really matters, I’m terrible at it. I could say the most beautiful things, I could paint the greatest and most enjoyable and lovely pictures with my words, but I couldn’t ever work up enough courage to really say what was on my mind. I would stare her in the face and decry her for being so closed, so stoic and inscrutable, and yet in trying to get her to open up, I began to shut down. I would close up and lose my ability to really say what I felt or what I meant, saving it until I could do so here, in a venue where it didn’t matter, where she would never see, and where it would end up having no bearing on the only thing it should have affected: us. In that regard I failed. I’m more than willing to admit that and I know that the majority of you will come the aid of my ego and my practice of expression. I can already see the comments, “You’re a master at self-expression, she just didn’t understand you. Stop beating yourself up and know that she wasn’t worth your time.” Well do me a favor guys, stow the comment, because you’re wrong. I can be eloquent, pithy, succinct (it’s rare but it does happen) and flawlessly expressive here because while I do most often write these in a single sitting and most often as a single stream of consciousness, I do still have the ability to pause for a moment and rephrase something without it ever actually seeing daylight prior. In a conversation, her standing right in front of me, I’m scrabbling with utter recklessness to collect and convey my thoughts as quickly as I can because I knew that every visit was timed, governed by an ethereal clock of sorts that could only be pushed so far. For anyone who’s ever had a long distance relationship or something of the sort, you know that things gets lost in translation when you’re trying earnestly to get everything out before the bell tolls. Such is the case for this, as beautiful as it was, I did, on more than one occasion, fall terribly and achingly short of getting everything out in the time allotted and more often than not for all the eloquence she thought it possessed, it really came down to terribly ham handed commentary being given on a rudimentary and slapped together analysis of things. I did my best, don’t get me wrong, but it was nowhere near what I would have liked it to be.

I know I’ve come a long way from finality and the nuances of it to the point I’ve made above, but you should all be accustomed to it. I’m trying to sort things out, to make the picture clear in my own head and hopefully save myself some arguments and needless battling. So I’ll put thought to text and see if I can make the picture a bit less muddied for my own benefit. Hope you guys are enjoying that I’m back, even in the state that I’ve returned to you in. Hopefully someone comments and lets me know there’s life out there. 

Day by day...

Not sure how Sunday will be known in the annals of my history. Saying it was the end of the world is giving it too much credit, and saying it was the end of something beautiful….well it’s accurate but I don’t want to dwell in imagery, I’ll be doing that enough in my own head. Sad to say that no matter what gets posted here, it’ll be raw truth and but it will be refined. My own proclivities, the madness of this whole thing…well there’s no real way to make it make sense to anyone that isn’t me. I’m hurt, I’m in pain. I know that relationships end every day and while this one has ended many times before, I’m faced with the assertion that this is the end. Some part of me thinks it was a copout on her part simply because she got pregnant. Certain things she said kind of resonated with me that it might be the case. But then again I could smell the cigarettes in her hair, and she alluded to a drinking problem, that along with the fact that I saw a receding gum line and a slight yellowing of the eyes, well it’s the early markers of jaundice. I know that to most these observations would seem like my attempt at being deliberately mean or some weak attempt at a self-affirmation for my being better off without her, but it’s just simply not true. I don’t need to hide from the pain or make myself feel better. Truth be told I kind of saw this coming a long time ago. It just didn’t make sense, she carries a mountain of baggage but is far too afraid to even see it, let alone attempt to deal with it. Like so many others she is broken, and I think in that, I’ve recognized the fundamental impetus for the overwhelming animosity toward her.

While it would be unfair to say that it’s all because of this presumed epiphany I think the unspoken and perhaps even unconscious cause of the animosity is not necessarily that she’s hurt me, but that she is what we all fear we might one day become. She is stagnancy. She achieved a plateau and sought no higher plane. She chose to accept that what she had achieved was the best she could do and in that she has become a personification of perhaps the greatest threat one like myself could encounter, something that strips away my passions. I am the embodiment of conviction and commitment, the last of a dying breed of romantics and it’s no wonder that it infuriated so many of you so much that I devoted so much of myself to someone that just seemed to take it as a given. I have become a universal constant of sorts, the lone voice of reason and rationality in this world. I am the last man willing to give up everything, to sacrifice all that I am and offer up all that I have in order to win love. I make no excuses for her choices, but in the same token I do not seek to vilify her. She is a good person, but she is terribly lost. I saw that, and I’ve spent the last four years trying in vain to save her from herself. I can save anyone from anything, but I couldn’t save her from herself, because she didn’t want to be saved. She wanted to badly to stay in that place, to remain that zone of balance.

I am so consumed by impotent rage, such vitriolic and overwhelming anger. If I gave myself over to that impulse…well I don’t want to think about the lengths I would go to. I’m set adrift without an anchor at the moment and this is perhaps the most lost I’ve ever been. I chose love and I was thwarted by fear. There is no apology for that, there is no redemption, no excuse or explanation that allows it to make sense. The whole thing is a riddle. We may not have ever been meant to be. It began because she felt underappreciated, and I was the answer. I was a young man, still naïve to so many things and she saw in me an innate adoration that would satisfy that need, such was her fear that she sought out what she needed from another rather than ask for it from the man she was marrying. I obliged, but I pushed all of my passion into it. I made a relationship from nothing. I invested all of myself into it. I allowed all of my power, my pride, my ability to bring it together, to keep it running, to make it work. I did this. I have done the impossible and I should feel pride in that. 

"I want to wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa..."

I watched something beautiful be destroyed...

And so it has ended. The long saga has finally penned what is, for all intents and purposes, the final chapter. After 4 years, 5 months, and 1 week, the final curtain has come down and the decision has been made. Needless to say, it did not go in my favor. Right now I’m still reeling, a bit too far flung to the edges of pain and misery to really process any intellectual thought beyond simply, “wow, that fucking sucks”. I had the initial reaction of angry tears, but stifled them in her presence, she’s scared enough of her own shadow, don’t need to give her more reason to live in fear of me. I’d say I’m in shock, but it would be lying for the most part because deep down I saw this coming weeks ago. She asked me to see things from her side, to put myself in her shoes, and to try to understand the reasons for her decision. It’s always been difficult to do that with her, because while I’m able to empathize quite well with most, I can offer a compulsion or at least the promise of the strength needed to implement change. With her however, it just always cycles back to self-deprecation and too much crippling fear to try anything. So in following her wishes I think it is simply fear that made the decision, not her. Fear of life changing, fear of admission, fear of doing anything. As Maynard says, there is no love in fear, and it’s true. To quote Ewan McGregor, “Choose”. I made my choice 4 years ago and I spent every day from then until now fighting to validate that choice and to see it come to fruition. I’ve taken most of you along for the ride, thank you for joining me. I at this point, while the pain is still overwhelmingly fresh, and the wound has not yet had time to heal, the best I can come up with, is that I feel hollow and empty inside. As for putting myself in her shoes, well, the best understanding I can offer right now is that she looked at her perception of my life, an existence riddled with trials, drama, chaos, and a myriad of larger than life situations, and saw that I am able to endure, overcome, manage, cope, and deal with all of it with only a token need for venting and expression. Somehow she convinced herself that she could not measure up, could not manage, and would inevitably be consumed by it all. She chose the path of least resistance, the road more traveled and the life with less work needed to endure. I’d say I blame her, but being honest, I think I’m the only person in existence that sees the value of suffering for a greater good. So for right now, I’ll end this, but expect many more in the coming days, depending on how well I’m able to manage whatever emotions might pop up. For right now I’m really trying not to be hostile about things. I did notice a few things though, she mentioned too much drinking being a side effect of all this and she admitted to feeling underappreciated with him being the impetus for the dawn of our affair. At this point there are two truths within that, the receding gum line is an early testament to the liver failure that has already begun and the genesis of cancers that are beginning to grow. And the fact that she felt underappreciated and sought out companionship elsewhere says that even in the relationship she chose, she still feels unequal, so in being completely honest, it’s only a matter of time before things reach a point where it all comes back full circle.