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.

"Happy" Holidays

As a bipolar guy, I hate having to deal with my two extreme aspects.  I especially hate the one I am now...  the one who's devoid of hope and full of despair.  I knew it was coming, but I'm still powerless to stop it.  There's no amount of logic in the world to stop either one of them.

I just wanted to put up my Christmas tree.  My parents were nice enough to bring my tree from their storage yesterday, and since I'm off work today, I figured I'd put it up a little early.  I was afraid it would happen...  I'm not strong enough to handle this either.  The last few years of holidays have not been kind to me.  Three years ago my ex-wife kicked me out of the house before divorcing me.  Two years ago I was living alone in my apartment, and I had to deal with putting up my tree and getting rid of all the ornaments that belonged to my ex-wife.  Last year I didn't get to put up a tree in my tiny apartment, which was depressing enough, but I also lost my best friend, which took an unimaginable toll on me.  This year I'm alone again, and I have to once again deal with getting rid of the ornaments that belonged to my soon-to-be-ex-wife.  My Mom was always so accepting and loving of my current wife and her son...  she was happy to have a family and always treated them well.  She loved buying things for them, and she bought them ornaments to celebrate each Christmas they were in the family.  It makes me sadder for my Mom than it does for me losing my wife and stepson.  My Mom is special to me, and even though she hates my wife now, I know that deep down she's sad as well.

I remember a time that Christmas was happy and special.  As a kid, I always looked forward to putting up the tree.  I'd count down the days weeks in advance.  We always put it up the day after Thanksgiving...  such a fun tradition.  My favorite part was putting on the "icicles."  It was always funny to see my parents get so frustrated putting up the lights (a process that now frustrates me as I do it by myself), then it was time for the ornaments.  Last my Dad would bring out the paper sack filled with tiny, sparkling strands of...  something.  I actually have no idea what it's made out of, but it catches the light and sparkles.  Regardless, putting up the tree was special.  It was my favorite time of year.  What the hell happened?

Being a kid is so full of innocence.  Adulthood sucks.  I want the holidays to be full of magic again, not loneliness and despair.  My doctor (who's the greatest guy in the world, by the way) wants me to see him more this month because holidays are a source of sadness for people like me.  It isn't supposed to be this way.  This is not what life is supposed to be...  But it's about to get worse, and I have no idea how to fix it.

Happy fucking holidays.

Discipline

"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments."  -Jim Rohn

People can say what they want about me...  they can berate me for not being one way or another, they can criticize me for being overly strict or too rigid or whatever they think.  Just like the old football saying "Defense wins championships," I have one to add...  Discipline leads to success.  Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do to accomplish greater things down the road.  I foolishly married a white trash woman who can't understand this concept.  And because she couldn't understand it, she quit her job and left me.

I made some delicious tiramisu for a work potluck today.  It took a fair amount of effort last night...  grinding the beans, brewing the espresso, whipping the cream, making that awesome egg yolk custard, and all that jazz.  So today I got home with the empty dish, after only eating a few bites of the dessert myself, and I said, "Well that was a lot of effort for nothing."  Then I kicked myself (figuratively) and realized that it wasn't for nothing.  People got to eat something tasty, and TONS of people complimented me on it!  Was it absolutely thrilling making it?  Well I was drinking wine, and I find a lot of joy in cooking, but I'm sure there were more enjoyable things I could have been doing.  Yet tiramisu doesn't make itself, so I had to sacrifice a little.

Just now I did some P90X Ab Ripper.  I remember the first time I did Ab Ripper...  I got a quarter of the way done and crumpled over.  I tore a muscle and couldn't unbend from a 90 degree angle.  My ex-wife basically had to carry me to the bathtub and run me a hot bath.  About 20 minutes in there and I could finally lay back.  I was in ridiculous amounts of pain for weeks.  Basically, it was bad, and people laughed at me.  They told me that me doing P90X would never happen, like I was some kind of bad joke.  They didn't give me a chance.  And now here I am, doing P90X all the time, bench pressing considerably more than my weight, doing pull ups and hanging leg raises and all kinds of crazy shit that I couldn't do before.  I started with 15 push ups.  I can now do 60-70 depending on the day.  I started with 5 pull ups.  I can now do 15 if my old rotator cuff injury will let me (I do admit that P90X is dangerous).  I have no idea how many sit ups I can do, but it's well past 70.  When I started, I was a guy who had eaten at Popeye's everyday for a year, and I had ridiculously high blood pressure and bad cholesterol.  And now I'm here, eating healthy food, on a quarter of the dose of blood pressure meds I was on, 25 pounds lighter, and in great shape.  I had my annual physical yesterday, and the doctor said my numbers were quite literally perfect (except that I could stand to gain a little more weight, but still).  You know I got here?  Hint: it wasn't by sitting on my ass.  It wasn't eating whatever I wanted...  I had to give up the daily Cokes and sweets and my beloved morning Pop Tarts.  I had to give up my amazing fried chicken and fries.  It takes work.  Discipline.  All I ever heard from my soon-to-be-ex-wife was how much she wanted to lose weight and how she missed being thin.  Gee, I wonder how you'd accomplish that?  Hint: not by eating my entire fucking box of Honey Nut Cheerios while I'm asleep at night...  not by draining my WHOLE brand new jar of Nutella while I'm at work, after it's been in our house for less than 24 hours...  and not by sneaking a box of graham crackers down your throat while I'm not looking.  Idiot.

Just thinking about it, I was also getting pissed at some of the things I've done that have gone unappreciated.  I always hear about how women like men who do things around the house and help them out.  Surveys say that many/most women think their husbands should do more to help with childcare and household work.  In both of my marriages, I've always been top notch at stuff like this, and I never got any credit for it.  I thought I could do things right in this marriage, even though I could tell that my wife didn't love me.  On my Fridays off, I'd make sure to have the house spotless (like hardcore cleaning) when she got home, food waiting on the table, laundry done, groceries bought...  usually even a little surprise like some cinnamon or pumpkin bread or a glass of wine waiting as well.  Sometimes I'd try to surprise her by cleaning the apartment while she was asleep so she wouldn't have to worry herself with it on her weekends. And this is in addition to the mowing and yardwork that I did.  Occasionally I might have gotten a halfhearted thanks, but usually it went largely ignored.  Hey, I guess that's better than my ex-wife, who just called me a pansy for doing housework.  Even so, the thing that sticks out to me the most is one of the last times we had together (well, it was a few weeks before she left).  It was my usual Friday off, but I was deathly sick.  My fever got up to 104, and it was BAD.  I couldn't walk across the room to make myself a sandwich; I got halfway there and had to sit down because I couldn't hold myself up.  I had to get on a work conference call at midday, and I was seriously barely conscious.  I slept for hours and woke up still unable to move.  I felt bad because the house was a mess, but I couldn't do anything about it.  So she walks in at the end of the day and says, "The house is a mess."  She hasn't seen me yet, so before I respond, she walks around the corner and says, "What's wrong with you?"  I tell her how sick I am and show her the thermometer.  For reasons I can't fathom, she seems angry that I'm sick...  she makes a face and yells, "Why haven't you cleaned the cat litter?  You know that smell makes me sick!"  That did it.  My vision whited out, and I'm ashamed of how I responded, but when you're in that condition, you tend to be a little irritable.

So now I'll STILL exceed expectations by RAISING MY SON MYSELF.  You know why?  Because I'm disciplined.  I'm focused.  And I deserve more credit than I get, from myself as much as others.  I don't always do the hard things when I need to.  I should have been the one leaving that white trash behind instead of waiting for her to leave me.  It's a hard thing to do, even when someone treats you like that, but sometimes you have to look past the present.  It takes discipline.  I wish I could have convinced my old lover of that.  Sometimes it's best to let go of a marriage to open up better opportunities.  There's no point in staying with a person who doesn't truly care about you...  only bad things can come from it.  I should have taken my own advice months ago.  Even so, it's now time for me to face life alone, unless "some wonder is wrought to redeem me."  I'll continue holding fast to my goals and my dreams, and I'll raise my son right.  I'll succeed in the things I can control, and for the things I can't control....  well, I'll just stay disciplined.  "Attempts must be made, even when there can be no hope."

Echoes of Laughter

"Did I do a life's worth of laughing in such a short time?"  -Thomas Covenant

People keep telling me about how strong I'm being...  like I'm some kind of warrior in the face of my disastrous life.  I used to think of myself that way too, a tough guy who would get stronger every time I overcame adversity.  In truth, I'm just a fool who continues to get the shit kicked out of him each day because of my stupid actions.  Every single thing wrong with me is a direct result of my failures and bad decisions.  Isn't there supposed to be more to life than pain?  Isn't there more to existence than going to bed early and waking up with a sickening, nauseous twist as you realize that you have to live through another day?  Is THAT strength?  Is forcing myself to get out of bed being strong?  Does it make me a tough guy to sleep and drink the day away?

It wasn't always this way.  I was happy once.  I found a poem I wrote once...  once upon a time when I was in another world.  I was a different person back then, and I highly doubt that I'll be that person again.  I'll post it here in the off chance that I ever lose it.  It's a relic from a special time in my life that I can't get back despite my best efforts...

Realization.

It's a wonderful thing

To have an epiphany,

Something to make you reconsider

All that you thought you knew

Yet were so blissfully unaware of.

Revelation.

You open your mind's eye

To things previously unseen,

Things that you thought obvious,

Yet here they are

Pure and unadulterated in their glory.

Inspiration.

As light dawns on your understanding,

You see how clearly

You are in love.

Yes, love.  The world's greatest feeling.

The cornerstone of wonderful things.

Dedication.

And then you realize how much you care.

You see that even on your worst of days

You'd rather be with her

Than with anyone else on their best day.

Your heart yearns to be always by her side.

Education.

Learning is an interesting process,

Especially when you think you know it all.

Where I once was sure that love stories

Were fairy tales written by fools,

I have found myself to have been utterly mistaken.

Satisfaction.

And here we come to the point to be made:

I AM LIVING a love story.  Everyday.

I can taste, touch, smell my Princess.

I need make no conquest for her love

Because it overwhelms me daily, in every way.

Gratification.

I can't even write this poem with a dry eye

Because no matter how hard I try,

I cannot find even one way

In which I am worthy to receive her.

Yet she gives herself to me over and over.

Action.

Every day I will tell her what she means

To me, as lowly a person as I am.

I literally can't tell her enough.  Ever.

Her worth cannot be measured

By any scale that mortal minds could conceive.

Resolution.

I will chase her and follow her

To the ends of the earth and back,

If that would ensure that she would be mine.

So how will this story end?  What future awaits?

The rest of this love story is ours for the telling.

And I'm feeling a sudden desire to write.

It's hard to believe that that was me.  I was high on a cloud...  invincible.  The guys at work always say that I should have been a writer.  They have no idea.  I was capable of so much...  and now here I sit, staring at a bottle of wine that I can't open because she took my corkscrew, longing to not be sober.  According to the internet, I can use a screw and a pair of pliers, but I don't even have a fucking screw.  But honestly, seeing how my life has gone lately, that's not really surprising.

Did I do a life's worth of laughing in such a short time?  Probably.  It wasn't nearly long enough.  I want to laugh again.  I'm not strong.  And I can't do this for much longer.

Life and Such

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."  -Robert Frost

I've been contemplating the meaning of the eternal question...  what's the point of life?  I once asked my friend that, and he responded, "My only answer is to make it through each day and try to make the people around me a little happier in the process."  That's always seemed like a good answer to me, but it's not enough.  It's not enough because I'm apparently incapable of making the people around me happy.  If that were my sole purpose in life, then I might as well kill myself, because I'm a failure.  Some say that I will find purpose in my son, but I remain unconvinced.  That will be a part of my life, no doubt, but that also doesn't seem like the whole answer.

Right now I live solely to please other people.  As in, I know that my not being alive would make some people really sad, and I don't have a desire to hurt anyone.  But because of that, I have to find something to live for.  At this moment I don't even know how I would define a "win condition."  I have no goals.  For the past 15 years or so, my goal has been to get married and have a family.  Boy did I fuck that up.  I'm honestly not sure how I could have fucked that up any worse.  Granted, some of it (or most of it) wasn't exactly my fault, but I still made the decisions that led to all of this nonsense.  I couldn't have been taken advantage of if I hadn't put myself in that position.

So on the way home today, I was asking myself...  What do I want now?  My answer was, surprisingly, the same as it's always been.  I want a family.  I want to come home to people whom I love...  and people who love me.  I want to go to little league games, piano recitals, dance lessons, gymnastics...  I want to eat around the dinner table and share stories from our day...  I want to go to the zoo and the park and the museum and have a good time...  I want to live.  I've been told by my estranged wife that all of that stuff is "superficial bullshit" (that's an exact quote), but she is at least somewhat wrong.  My answer is that LIFE is pointless bullshit.  The lives we live and the things we do...  it means nothing!  At some point in the future, every one of us will be dead and gone, and at some point after that, someone on earth will speak our name for the very LAST time.  At some point, someone will think of us for the very last time, and everything we've ever done will be inconsequential.

But you know what?  While I'm still alive, there are some things that are important to ME, and I have the right to believe in them.  Importance does have a scale.  A coworker asked me what my future plans were the other day, and I responded that I intended to live out my life and die alone.  He thought that answer was insane.  When pressed, I admitted that there was one person in the world whom I would trust enough to have a relationship but that I was pretty sure she was no longer interested.  He said, "So you just intend to sit around all alone for the rest of your life and play video games?"  When he put it that way, it sounded a lot less appealing.  That's what started me on this train of thought.

I have to find better answers.  I have to find better answers for my son.  I can't make any more mistakes.

And I have no idea what I'm doing.