I’m kind of spent this week. I’m not sure what it is. I’ve had a headache that started in June and it wreaks havoc every once in a while. Really torments me. When the worst of it subsides it stays at a level 2 or 3 but my body gets worn out. Coupled with the therapy I’m doing, the work I’m doing with my sponsor, staying clean, and going to work I’m fatigued to the bone. Writing these blogs takes a toll too. I feel like I’m stuck at 13 again and I wonder why. I fall back into the “what do I want to do with my life” zone. At 59 it seems like most people would have pretty much wound up what they’ve done and now are ready to simply enjoy the golden years. I seriously don’t think I have that much time left so I’d like the remaining time to count in some enriching way. My resting heart beat is around 90 so I’ve pretty much gone through most of my allotted beats. I’m learning about the soul, my soul though. It’s sensitive, wielding, generous but needy to a degree. It has the capacity to love, to care, to be tender and when to be tough. It can protect with ferocity but it can also shroud itself inside heavy wings of shelter from the pain of life. And life is pain for me.
It is all about me. I
know that sounds superficial but that’s the lay of the land folks. At some point in my history, a switch was
turned on that demanded everybody to like me.
Really it was everyone to love me but I would settle for like. Can you imagine the difficulty living with that responsibility? The many different faces I’ve had to endure,
to capture, to meld just to find that delicate balance? It was okay, no, it was not okay that my
mother didn’t like me. I liked to think
I didn’t care. What I didn’t understand
was why she didn’t like me? I couldn’t
understand the fairness, the gravitational defying unfairness of that
lack. True I didn’t ask to be born and I
hoped I didn’t ask to be born with her as my mom but then what did I do that
was so bad to be treated so cruelly?
What mother treats her child like thrift shop furniture? How can you wield a weapon against your
child? When Ry was 5 or 6 I imagined
doing that as an experiment (in my mind only) and I realized I would have to be
bat shit crazy to go off on my son like that.
There was no way I could bear a weapon upon my son’s body, no fucking
way. With that partial evidence I was
now convinced that my mom was truly a crazy person driven to extremes beyond
her control. But somehow that didn’t
alleviate the wanderlust of being my own person. It didn’t let Chris be Chris. Decades of programming didn’t suddenly
disappear and I was introduced again to the world born again. No that’s not what happened.
What did happen? At
some point I did go bat shit crazy. I
was completely untethered from any human programming, set adrift on the seas of
doubt, fear, insecurity and “togetherness.”
My second marriage exploded and the emotional damage cut deep into a
decade of work that I thought I was doing well with. I was clean and sober, seeing a therapist on
occasion. Raising 2 kids, working,
helping with all the work around the house.
I didn’t make delineations between household chores. I was coaching a girls’ soccer team and I had
no idea how the game was played. If the
ball wasn’t moving I could actually kick it.
But, but, but, I thought I had it together. What I realized manically out of all of that
was how close to unreality my mind resides.
My soul was residing outside of myself.
I didn’t know better. I was
projecting happiness outside of myself on how non-reactive everything was. I was liked by my wife and kids. I thought that was all I needed. I never discovered the depth of the need for inner peace for my
psyche. I didn’t know that I was a good guy where it counted. For lack of a better technical term, my
heart. I performed all the actions to
please my external environment but for some reason, it was not coinciding with
what my soul required. I was not being
true to myself.
Maybe it wasn’t a great marriage. We were both trying to suck the essence of
peace from each other’s projections. It
didn’t matter who did the laundry or who didn’t ever wash one piece of mine. (A
little slam) It wasn’t the actions that
made it bad, it was the hearts being elsewhere.
Hell, what are second marriages other than trying to make right what
went so wrong in the first. Sure there
are comparisons, good and bad and that’s where the damage starts. If she said something in the same tone as my
first, it would bring up a memory that didn’t belong but that was now
contaminating today. Coupled with some
similar actions and now it’s an event.
If you’re used to someone not washing spoons right for 20 fucking years
and then husband #2 missed one spoon, guess what? I’m just simplifying here. This was only a microcosm of what went on
with my marriage. I just stopped making
her heart beat faster one day. She was
looking for a spiritual answer and I couldn’t meet the challenge. Who could?
Then it turned into her being my mom.
I started to compare and my heart went a little grey. Well who wants to have a heart that color
with the woman of your dreams?
I fell apart in one day.
I’m not going to go into the specifics but there was evidence of someone
else. I wanted to kick some serious ass,
twice, but that wasn’t the real issue.
My angel, my direct line to the God lacking side of me was gone. I didn’t have wholeness and I didn’t know
that was where the pain was truly coming from.
If my heart/soul/psyche was whole, if I was ok with myself whoever I
was, I could have managed the disappointment.
I could have written a country song or something else. I could have let go with wisdom, yeah some
disappointment and sadness, but I didn’t.
I lost my entire mind. All the
pain that the world had inflicted on me in the past was now front and present
again and much more tangible. I deserved
this. This world is pain. I was a bad kid. What was I thinking I could be happy? Another woman abandoning me was my fate and
fuck me for thinking it could ever be different. FUCK ME.
It never changes. All that work
was just a thin veneer of wishing against the torrential winds of my destiny.
I started closing my eyes on the freeway on the way to work
and see how far I could count. I started
dreaming of death in so many ways. I had
my son to think about and it was hard for me to know what damage I would
unleash on him with my death. My mind
was shutting down because the pain was too great. I could only handle very small streams of
reality because the misery would fill it up immediately, perversely. If I opened up more, it filled those rooms
just as fast as they appeared. I had to
close it down and I felt that total closure would resolve that dilemma. That feeling was coming from the limited
space I physically allowed myself to work with.
I was without wholeness of mind truly.
I didn’t have a pier to dock my boat too metaphorically. I didn’t know how to start again, how to
climb out of that hell deep hole of black.
Then I met Nicole.
1.
I’m
grateful that I’m learning it is more than me now.
2.
I’m grateful that the pain I’ve felt has been my
greatest teacher.
3.
I’m grateful that I’m single today and getting
to know the greatest guy ever.
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