The Road Ahead

"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."  -C.S. Lewis

I've been busy lately, to say the least.  My son is growing, I'm plodding along as a single dad, and in general things are going...  not so great.  I struggle with stupid philosophical issues.  I struggle because, for one reason or another, I'm not good enough.  If I ever catch the slightest glimpse of happiness or optimism, it's easily snatched away from me.  I'm just tired.

Last week I got the great news that I'll be taking a pretty hefty pay cut at work.  It's going to be very difficult for me to make ends meet.  As if I didn't have enough to worry about, I now have to worry yet again about how I'm going to provide for my son.  I seemingly can't win on that front.  Unfortunately, it looks like this will be a near permanent thing, so it won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

My grandpa was also put into the hospital recently with sepsis.  He wasn't expected to make it.  After going into a coma, they didn't think he'd even wake up, and most people don't recover from sepsis anyway.  Somehow he made a fairly quick recovery and got out of the hospital today.  He'll still be in some kind of intensive care nursing home for three months to do physical therapy, but he's tough and is on the road to recovery.  When I went to visit him in the hospital, he said that he "thinks about me everyday."

That whole situation even had my Mom getting philosophical, and you know shit's getting real when she starts thinking that way.  She said, "You know, I guess the best thing we can do in life is enjoy the time we have and try to enjoy every moment.  You never know how long you have."  Of course, this isn't some extraordinary thought...  people say that all the time.  But I suppose that doesn't make it any less true.  

I've tried to figure out how to enjoy life.  The best I seem to be able to do is waste time.  I can sit around playing video games and watching anime with the best of them.  I can read, study some Japanese, and exercise like a madman.  But is that enjoying life?  For me it's just getting through the day.  I bum through one weekend at a time, to get to the next one, to get to the next one.  I come home to my empty house and cook a nice meal.  I clean because I'm a neat freak, I do a load of laundry, maybe some ironing.  I talk to myself, sometimes in English and sometimes in Japanese to get some practice in.  I tell myself jokes and laugh at them.  Last weekend it really clicked as to how pathetic I am...  For years I've bought Aunt Jemima pancake mix and syrup.  I do make my own mix now, but I still use that syrup...  So for years, every time I used it to make breakfast, I made the bottle "talk" like Aunt Jemima (you know, like an old Southerly black woman).  "She" would always ask everyone in the house how many pancakes they wanted and would give me cooking tips as I worked.  I always made it stupidly over the top, but it rarely failed to make people smile.  So last weekend I fired up the griddle and made myself some pancakes, and as I pulled out good old Aunt Jemima's bottle and started with the voice, I realized something...

"You stupid fuck, you're talking to yourself with a bottle of syrup.  That's not funny, that's goddamn retarded."

So from now on, Auntie is done talking at breakfast.  But the thing that makes me the happiest is making other people happy.  For whatever reason, the guys at work find me hilarious, and it makes me smile to make them smile.  My happiest memories are of making other people happy.  To me, that's what it means to enjoy life's moments.  I remember making my ex-wife laugh for years.  I remember telling my old lover how much she meant to me each day.  She would tell me when I said something to make her smile or laugh, and I'd say that my work for the day was done.  I just wanted to bring her one unexpected smile everyday.  My current wife (at least until next Wednesday)...  well, I have fond memories of zoo trips and getting drunk before baking Christmas cookies and falling out in the floor laughing.

Unfortunately it doesn't end there.  I remember my ex-wife punching me in the head and throwing things at me.  I remember her telling me to grow up and be a man, calling me a pansy.  I remember my lover telling me that I wasn't special, that I was just someone who happened to come along at the right time...  I could have been anyone.  And I remember my current wife telling me outright that she hated me and how pathetic I am.  Today I said that maybe we should reconsider divorce for the sake of our son.  She told me, "Oh I'm not worried about it now.  I found some cheap insurance so I have no interest in being married to you."  On the plus side, at least she was straightforward.

I'm finding myself unable to enjoy life by coming home to an empty house and talking to myself.  I'm not that kind of person, and I never will be that kind of person.  I don't want to die alone.  I don't want to spend a potentially horrifying 50+ years in misery.  Then again, I also don't want to spend life with someone who doesn't enjoy my company.  But why the hell does everyone hate me so much?  Aside from my family, everyone seems to despise me.  There's no joy in video games and books and P90X and an empty house.  There's joy in love and romance and special bonds.  There's joy in making someone's day, in making them smile.  There's joy in bringing happiness to others.  There's joy in coming home each night and sharing the story of your day with someone and hearing theirs.  I don't want to "compromise" and try to make myself be happy in being alone by telling myself that "at least I'm not making everyone miserable this way."  That's no way to be.  I want to enjoy life again.  I want to live.

I just have no idea how to find the road again.

My Answer At Last

"I know you now.  That makes all the difference, doesn't it?  When you really know somebody, you can't hate them.  ...  When it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is the final cause, the purpose.  Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore.  You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart."  -Ender's Game

My son has finally arrived.  It's been quite an eventful three weeks.  He was a few weeks early and had a scary entrance, but he's here and well.  I'd been constantly worried about how I was going to handle everything.  I had a lot of built up rage by the time I got to the hospital that night.  She was already starting the whole labor thing, so it was just me, her, and her Mom in the hospital room.  I was visibly angry.  I'm pretty sure there was steam coming off of me.  So I sat there in brooding silence, content to watch her in discomfort.  I've never hated anyone like that in my life.  But at least I had my answer...  there was only one way for me to handle the situation, and it was with rage.

But then something changed.  She started bleeding profusely.  And her epidural failed.  She laid there for half an hour or more, writhing and screaming in pain.  They didn't know why she was bleeding or how to stop it.  By the time her doctor arrived, she was begging everyone around her to make the pain stop, to take the pain away.  I sat there in horror and had my epiphany that I hope will stick with me for a long time.  When a real situation was happening, my thought wasn't to be happy that she was in pain...  my unbidden thought was that, if it were possible, I would gladly take the pain in her stead.  My thought wasn't that I hoped something horrible would happen to her, nor was my concern for my unborn son...  it was concern solely for her.  No, I didn't love her even at that moment, at least not as a man loves a wife.  But I loved her as a fellow human, and that's good enough for me.  Hate isn't the answer.  Hate will never be the answer.  The answer is love, respect, compassion, and forgiveness.

The answer isn't easy...  I suppose life rarely is.  It's easy to love people who love you in return.  It's easy to respect those who respect you.  And it's easy to forgive someone who only punches you in the balls once instead of punching you repeatedly.  But hating someone means wishing bad things upon them, and that's not what I'm about.  That's why I've spent the past three weeks at my estranged wife's apartment, helping take care of things as best I could.  I cooked, I cleaned, I ran errands, and I kept my son the majority of the time.  In the end, I was unappreciated as usual after being kicked out unexpectedly and unceremoniously this afternoon.  It doesn't matter to me, because I can still feel good about what I've done, and I don't harbor any bad feelings toward her.

I think it's safe to say that she's made some mistakes out of uncaring selfishness.  The thing is...  who in the world hasn't done that?  She's been doing some evil stuff, but I've done my own share of evil stuff as well.  Now it's time to do the right thing.  People made fun of me when I did the right thing during my last divorce...  they thought I was being weak and stupid, but I still did it and felt good about the end result.  Now I'll have to do the right thing here, despite the fact that it's not the FAIR thing to do.  For better or worse, she won nine months ago, and I have my son to think about.  Maybe one day doing the right thing will be of mutual benefit, instead of this one sided affair where I give of myself to people who enjoy punching me in the balls.  It's still my dream.  Maybe one day.