The Fallen Angels of Our Nature

"You start with something pure, something exciting.  Then come the mistakes.  The compromises.  We create our own demons."  -Iron Man 3

Yeah I just quoted something pseudo-philosophical from a superhero movie.  Sue me.

I sit here thinking about my past relationships and how I got to the point I'm at now.  I know it's beating a dead horse, but I don't really have anything else to do.  Relationships start off in a grand way.  I remember meeting my ex-wife in the hallways of high school and being amazed at having a real relationship for the first time.  I remember my wedding day and not knowing that I was supposed to look at her when I said my vows.  I remember the hundreds of conversations I had with the love of my life.  I remember pulling a cramp when I woke up in the mornings in such a hurry to get to the phone to read her emails.  I remember when we first shared our feelings for each other...  "What would you say if I told you that I loved you?"  I remember meeting my current wife for the first time.  I remember seeing her walk out of that apartment on our first meeting...  eating bbq with her, then walking around a mall for an hour.  I remember waiting on her to get out of the bathroom for the fifth time and thinking, "You know, as much as this used to annoy me with my ex-wife, I don't mind it at all now."

But then the mistakes started.  In my first marriage I was careless and selfish.  I didn't give enough attention to her feelings or spend enough time with her.  I didn't take her out to eat or treat her like a lady or even act like a man myself.  With my life's love...  I failed her in her time of need.  Oh God, when she needed me the most, I wasn't there and I think about that every fucking day.  I can't forgive myself for that.  She was sitting at the parking lot of my apartment complex, and I wasn't there intentionally...  she needed her best friend and I FAILED.  In my current marriage, I don't think I did much of anything wrong besides marry her in the first place.  I honestly don't have a lot of other regrets.  I fixed the things I was doing wrong in my previous marriage and was actually a solid human being for once.  I put up with a whole lot of shit (including being followed around by stalkers and threatened by a madman) and still ended up this way.  But I read something the other day that fits here perfectly...  when you end up with someone like this who's completely different than the person you originally married, then you can't feel too badly.  You married someone else.  That person just happens to not exist.  Such is life.

But as my friend pointed out on Friday, a lot of people (including her) would be jealous of my life.  She said, "You got to come visit us, and now you're about to head back, play your portal game, buy a brisket sandwich, get a bottle of wine, and watch Iron Man 3 by your fireplace in peace.  Then you're going to spend tomorrow playing video games all day.  A lot of people would kill to do that."  I thought about it, and she's right.  I did all those things.  I watched football, I read my Sunday newspaper, I made divinity, I gamed it up, I talked to some good friends.  If you'd asked me during my first marriage, I'd have said that this was the perfect life.  I guess I'll live with it for now, not that I have much choice in the matter.

The reason I'm here, though...  is due to a long string of problems created by yours truly.  In some form or another, I put myself on this path.  These demons...  yeah, they're mine.

The Measure of a Man

"Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you.  You just gotta find the ones worth suffering for."  -Bob Marley

Every single day, all throughout the day, I wonder what's wrong with me.  As in, not physically or mentally, but I wonder why I lack worth to others.  For as bad as I am sometimes, I don't think I'm THAT bad.  I do attach some measure of value to myself.  I can sometimes become...  overly negative...  but that's not all of me.  It's not even most of me!  In person I'm a pretty fun guy to be around.  I try to make people happy, make them laugh, and brighten their day.  I seem to succeed at that, or at least I thought I did.

Yet every time I get in a relationship, people run away from me.  It's not like they even have to consider whether they should stay with me because they're too busy sprinting the other way.  I understand that I got conned in this marriage, and I guess I just can't fathom how people work.  I can't imagine dedicating two years of my life to tricking another person into having a baby and feeling NO remorse for it.  Is the failing mine or hers?  In my last marriage, my ex-wife walked away pretty quickly and filed for divorce without a second thought.  When I was with my life's love, she also had the chance to run with me but chose not to (granted, she didn't walk away so much as get forced away, but the result was still the same since she didn't have to stay).  Since this keeps happening, I can only conclude that I have no worth to others, or at least not enough to matter.

It's the same way at work...  there's not a lot of value attached to me.  I know that I don't make nearly as much as the guys around me, and I've been there longer than most of them.  When I say things and make suggestions, nobody (at least outside of my department) listens to me or takes me seriously.  

Why?  I ask myself that question a million times a day.  How can I fix it?  I'm obviously doing something wrong.  I don't want to be worthless...  I want to add value to things.  To people's lives, to work, to everything.  I'm about to have a son, and I CAN'T STOP BREAKING THINGS.  He'll be here in less than a month, and I don't have answers.  How can someone like me...  someone who screws everything up and fails at everything in life...  how can I be a parent and role model?  I don't think that I can.  Sometimes I want to quit so badly...  because I don't have answers anymore.

Visions of Grandeur

"'Only the great of heart may despair greatly.'  All that malice and contempt is just love and hope and eagerness gone wrong.  It gives us the chance to do better...  In any case, taking a stand against it is what makes us who we are.  When we don't, we aren't anything.  We're just empty."  -Thomas Covenant

Well, I finally finished the Thomas Covenant Chronicles.  It's been a long ride, but it's finally over.  I can't say that the ending was spectacular, but I don't think anything could have lived up to the hype in my brain.  Still, there was one final good quote that made me think...  and it followed along the lines of what I've been thinking lately anyway.

All of the pain of living...  the pain of past decisions, of being wrong...  it gives us the chance to do better.  It gives us the chance to do something different.

I've always aspired to greatness in the things I do.  I imagine myself accomplishing things.  When I hear my Japanese teacher speaking fluent Japanese to a sushi chef, I think about how I'll be able to do that someday.  When I see dads taking their kids places, I think about how I'll be able to do that someday.  I see people like my boss, an expert in his field, and I think about how I want to catch up to his knowledge.  I see happily married couples, and I want to join them.  I have no choice.  My aspirations won't let me be anything other than what I am.

On many days I wake up in despair...  it hits me fairly often.  Heck, it's usually when I end up posting on here.  But I have to fight, and I do that by setting goals and pressing toward them.  I have a personality type that demands goals.  If I'm not working toward something, I feel like I'm wasting my time...  even if it's visiting a grocery store everyday to try to reconnect with my best friend.

In the end, life doesn't mean anything.  I said that in one of my previous posts.  In a hundred years, nobody will care that I've failed, but until then, I owe it to myself to keep fighting.  I've tried and failed at most everything I've done, but that doesn't mean I have to fail in the future.  I could still be a successful dad, I could find myself in a happy relationship...  I could visit Japan or teach at SQL Pass.  I could win the lottery.  I could find my best friend again.  I could accomplish greatness.  It's all very unlikely, but anything could happen.  My life has proven that so far.