Thursday, September 27, 2012

Dear World,

You win. I’m too tired to fight you anymore.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Humans is dumb

To be honest, I don’t blog here for you, I blog here for me. I enjoy getting a little attention just like everyone else, but if I never got another page hit, I’d still keep blogging. It’s like therapy. I put the innermost thoughts and feelings out here for the world to read, knowing that nobody (or at least mostly nobody) I know reads this shit.

That said, every so often I’m a little curious if anybody is reading it, and if so, how they got here. One of the nice things about a blogger account is the fact that they give you those stats for free.

But then, of course, I’m inevitably disappointed, as life is wont to do. How do most people find my blog? One of three ways.

  1. That stupid metaphysical post from a couple of years ago. I fucking hate that post. I’m tempted daily to delete the fucker.  That one seems to get the most hits.
  2. You may have noticed that many of my pictures from older posts are missing. That is, unfortunately, permanent, and the reasons are complex. Well, not that complex, but I’m not going into it today anyway. Even so, I seem to get a lot of hits on my Religion series of posts, where I made a series of demotivational posters titled “Religion: I’m not afraid of gods, I’m afraid of their followers” and put several images of religious abuse including the twin towers. One of them gets a lot of hits. Which one? the stack of naked men from Guantanamo. Seriously? You sick fuckers.
  3. I get a lot of hits for some combination of the words “Lindsey Lohan nude”. Because a while ago I put up a joke post titled that which had basically no content. Yep, I get the guys looking for nude pictures of Lindsey Lohan. You sick fuckers.

I was hoping to get a mild following of people with similar issues, possibly people who want to engage in dialogue. As you can see, I have almost no comments whatsoever. It’s not the kind of thing to drive me off from writing this blog, like I said, I don’t do this for you people, but I was hoping for a little reassurance that the rest of the human race isn’t made up of a bunch of sick fuckers. Still waiting.

Why can’t you…

To those who say “Enough already, just get over it!”

Fuck you.

To those who say “Just move on already!”

Fuck you.

To those who say “Geez, why can’t you just deal?”

Fuck you.

To those who say “I don’t have any problem getting up in the morning. I don’t have any problem moving on. What’s your problem?”

Fuck you.

It’s that fucking easy. Some of us have a little more shit to deal with than you do. For some of us, just getting the fuck out of bed is a challenge. Some of us have to find a reason to live EVERY FUCKING DAY.

Instead of judging everyone else as inferior to yourself, stop being a fucking dick.

You want to know why? Fuck you, that’s why.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Meh…

The blasé I’ve been feeling lately seems to be total. A handful of events have happened over the past few days (a couple of them just today) that would have normally (normally being within the last year or so) have made me ecstatic and bubbly or emotionally devastated me. But they didn’t. It really is like just sort of watching a movie that I’m not emotionally invested in. It’s actually kind of cool, I’m just kind of taking everything as it happens. A mere decade ago this was something I was striving for. I believe the Taoism concept that embodies this is Wu Wei, but I could have those concepts mixed up these days. It’s basically the idea that lies at the heard of Taoism which translates into western philosophy as “go with the flow”. I’m kind of doing that over the past few days without even trying, it’s just happening.

I would best describe this as emotionally numb. The irony of this condition is that with the severe anxiety and depression I’ve been feeling over the past month and half or so, I was actually about to ask the doctor if there was medication that he could prescribe that did exactly this: made me feel nothing. Not nothing, that’s not quite accurate. Just numb my emotions. Make me more or less stoic. Numb the pain.

And all I had to do it was drop my depression medication. How’s that for irony?

I described this condition to a close friend, one who I can usually confide in, and she seemed to think this was a bad thing. I disagree. After the emotional roller coaster I’ve been on for months now, a quiet leisurely raft ride down a calm river is an incredible relief. I don’t think being emotionally numb is a bad thing for a while. I’m sure this isn’t permanent, but it’s a nice change for now. I feel so much calmer.

What prompted this post, though, is the fact that I sat down to do my evening twitter and/or blog rant, and I couldn’t work up enough irritation to rant about anything. Quite honestly, at the moment I just don’t fucking care. Politics, religion, the ex wife, none of it is really provoking an emotional response from me that I can translate into a good rant. It’s a little weird, but I’m going to roll with it. So, no rants tonight. Sorry guys.

Monday, September 17, 2012

It’s gonna hurt like a sonofabitch when…

So I finally did it today.

Anybody that’s been following me on my blog or on twitter knows that I’ve been struggling with a recent break up. What’s been hardest about the breakup is the abruptness and the finality of it. Not even a post break up “hey let’s get together for coffee and talk about this” sort of thing, just a “go the fuck away” e-mail and then pretty much nothing.

Well, not completely nothing, that’s not fair, but a fair amount of surfacy shit. Frankly that kind of crap pisses me off. If we’re going to try to be friends afterwards, be my friend. Don’t give me small talk. I hate that shit. If you want to talk surfacy bullshit, find someone else to talk to.

But that’s neither here nor there.

I’ve been trying for weeks, nay, nearly two months now, to try to get a little time to talk about things. She seems dead set against that. Having dropped the meds that seemed to have been giving me extreme anxiety and obsessive tendencies, I’ve returned to a slightly more normal frame of mind. It’s a good thing, but there’s been a few side effects I wasn’t happy with. Like the good memories starting to fade. I wanted to keep those, but… well, what the fuck. I think trying to keep them was making things harder for me to handle.

I had a bizarre dream about her last week as the meds were starting to fade. It was very strange. I don’t often remember my dreams, so when I do, you know it was somehow kind of jarring. In this dream, we were actually having the post-break up talk. We were in a house, for some reason, I think this was a house we were going to move in to. Don’t ask me, I had no plans or intentions to move in with her, but there it is. In the dream, she told me she had been pregnant, and she had an abortion. Within the context of the dream, this hurt. In fairness, I had mixed feelings, but the strongest one was that she had kept this from me. It’s the sort of thing I would have wanted to know, know what I mean? She was a little harsh about telling me this too, like there was some kind of simmering anger just under the surface. It wasn’t apologetic or caring at all. I’ve kind of come to see her this way somewhat. Side effect of the last couple of months, I suppose.

So as little as a few weeks ago, I would have woken from this dream and immediately felt despair. That was me from a few weeks ago under the meds and obsessing and anxious. When I woke up, I was a little sad, but mostly annoyed that I had had another dream about her. I kind of want that shit to stop already. I’m ready to move on now. Would my subconscious please fucking cooperate now thank you very much?

So I’ve written a couple of notes to her, but I never sent them. I waited, then deleted it later. I wrote several of these. Each successive one a little less crazy than the last. Finally I lost all desire to do this at all. Until today. In my therapy session today I told the therapist about the dream. Basically what he said was that everything in a dream is some kind of metaphor for what’s going on with us. His best guess was that the pregnancy and abortion was the relationship. It started suddenly, and just as suddenly she ended it. Yeah, I can see that.

At the same time, I’ve been starting to see how me-on-the-meds must have seemed to her. In a way I can’t really blame her for freaking out and cutting me out of her life. I was probably a little…. ahem… intense. That’s not me so much on a normal basis, so at the same time I kind of feel like I didn’t really get a fair shake, but who the fuck said life was fair, eh? I had my shot, I blew it, it’s over. Too bad, so sad, get the fuck out.

So I wrote one last note today, basically saying that I get how I must have made her feel, and apologized for it. Sent it, and now, well, I think I’m done. That’s as close to closure as I’m going to get. I doubt she even read it, but that wasn’t really the point. I had my say finally, and she’s free to respond if she wants to. I always make time for people who are important to me. The opposite isn’t always true though.

What’s most surprising about the last week or so is how my attitude has basically turned to “Meh”. It’s over, I know it’s over, and it doesn’t really bug me all that much anymore. I’m finally starting to move on with my life, do a few hobbies, actually get work done at work. Somewhat. The open office bullshit at work is fucking killing me. I need a little privacy to get anything done, but that’s a whole nother rant.

The “Meh” attitude is cropping up in other places too. Without going into too many details for various reasons, someone else did something that just a few weeks ago would have hurt me severely. This last week, it bothered me for a little bit then I pretty much said “meh, fuck it” and moved on. Another potential relationship was shut down I was ok with it. Well, not ok, I just feel sort of numb to it all now. Sort of like watching this shit happen to someone else in a movie.

I’m still suffering depression, but it’s just depression now. More of a general malaise. The meds I was on increase dopamine, which might be good for me a little later down the road, but I need heal now, so I’m going to stay off of them a little longer.

So, I suppose that was my good-bye letter. I’m ok with this relationship ending as much as I can be, and I wish her well. I hope she finds that right guy she’s hoping for, but I think she’s got her own issues to deal with first. I would have been happy standing by her side as she did so, but she didn’t want me there. What’cha gonna do?

But women, one parting piece of advice. If you’re going to break up with a guy, for whatever reason, fucking talk to him. Don’t break up over e-mail then refuse to talk in any form with him other than text. That’s fucking bullshit, and it’s chickenshit.

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You do not have the right to not be offended.

Facebook is always an interesting place, where an eclectic assortment of ideas tent to bubble around the surface. I just saw a picture go by of a woman holding a sign (it’s a popular meme) which read something to the effect of

I’m an American, but I would never make a video that mocks your faith. I am offended by that. Yadda yadda, don’t remember the exact words.

So my initial gut reaction is

Yeah, let them know how kind and understanding and tolerant Americans are.

Then I think

The fuck we are…

Then I think

The fuck! I don’t agree with that sentiment at all.

Call me an asshole. I am. But I haven’t been following the events that have occurred in the middle east recently too closely, but as I understand it, it goes a little something like this. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on any of this.

  1. Some yahoo makes a video that mocks Islam.
  2. Muslims across the middle east are mortally offended by it.
  3. Said “peaceful” Muslims riot in response to their offense at the video.
  4. People die.
  5. Video maker is now a bad guy, Americans everywhere condemn him

I have a slight problem with this. To illustrate my point, let’s take this same scenario but turn it on it’s side a little bit. Let’s say it went a little like this:

  1. Some religious yahoo makes a video mocking Atheists, or makes false claims about them. Say, something like this:
  2. Atheists across the country are mortally offended by it.
  3. Atheist riots occur across the country in response to the offensive video.
  4. People die.
  5. Who is/are the bad guy(s) now?

Bill O’Reilly would shit himself with pleasure if that happened. His “War on Christianity” would hit non-stop status.

The point is this: You do NOT have the right to not be offended.

I don’t care who you are or where you live or what bronze age myths you believe or choose not to believe. You do not have the right to kill because you’re offended by something. A few years ago I condemned a nutjob pastor from Florida for threatening to burn a stack of Korans which set off a set of riots in the middle east which put American lives at risk. I was wrong. I take that back. While I still think he’s a dipshit and should not have done it, the blame for this was put squarely on the wrong shoulders. It should have gone on the shoulders of the people actually doing the killing, not the fuckwad who pissed them off enough to do it.

I don’t know what the content of this video is, and I don’t care. It could show Muhammed being prison raped for all I care, that’s not the point. The point is that no video gives anybody the right to kill. And only religion seems to get a pass on this. Only religion could inspire someone to be offended enough to kill. Only the assault of someone’s precious religious beliefs make us sympathize with murderers. I don’t give a fuck what was in that video, those people who killed others are murderers, period.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Alone in a roomful of people

The last week or so has been a little bit of a roller coaster ride for me. I’ve been introspective lately, and that’s usually not a good thing for me. It has a way of deepening whatever depression or anxiety I might be feeling at the time, but it also tends to produce some interesting insights into the human condition.

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Sometimes I’ll send these insights out into the the twitterverse. Sometimes these tent to resonate with people. When it does, it has a way of making me smile. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Maybe it’s just nice to know that I’m not the only human on this little rock who feels this way. Misery loves company I guess, but it makes me feel a little better to know that I’m not alone.

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It does confuse me how there can be so many people on the planet and so many of us have absolutely nobody to keep up company. I can sit in a coffee shop for hours and speak to nobody except the guy who takes my order.

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Before recorded history, when we were tribal bands roaming the plains, we stayed together for safety. Our need to communicate with other humans was served by the very fact that our small tribes were always together. Now we put ourselves in little boxes and never talk to each other. This is better somehow. Personally, I kind of miss the plains.

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I desperately want something to happen. Anything. I would make something happen, but I don’t know how or what. Sometimes I can’t stand sitting in my little box any longer, so I get out and go somewhere. Today it was a coffee shop. I sit here reading and writing for hours, hoping someone, anyone, will want to connect with me in some small way, but that’s not how we work anymore. I’m an introvert, and this condemns me to solitude.

Maybe tomorrow will be different.

Please let me keep this memory, just this one…

I’ve noticed something over the past couple of days as I’ve stopped using my depression medication and my anxiety and obsessiveness have slowly dissipated, so have my memories of my ex girlfriend. That was an unexpected side effect. I had some great memories of our short time together, and I wanted to keep them. But, inevitably, I remember less and less of it. Maybe this is what’s helping me to move on, but it’s not how I wanted to do it.

I wonder if the anxiety was helping me to remember those memories. Perhaps my obsession and constant remembering of everything I wanted to hold on to was what was keeping me from moving on. I frequently wish I were a psychologist, so I could understand these things. I’ve always found the study of how the brain works to be fascinating. And everybody knows that any good psychiatrist/psychologist is quite crazy themselves, so I totally fit the bill.

I’m a little sad about this. I truly felt happier with her than I had in, well, as long as I can remember. I didn’t want to lose that. I feel a little like Jim Carrey’s character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as he’s undergoing the procedure to have the memories erased, he sees ones that he doesn’t want to lose, and he tries desperately to hold on to them, but they’re still gone. I know that I’ve lost some of the better memories already, but obviously I don’t know what they were anymore, only that I know that I’ve lost them. Unfortunately, since she won’t see me, I can’t make any more to replace them.

Maybe this is how all relationships work. You gradually lose memories over time, but in the successful relationships you make more to replace them. In the unsuccessful ones, you eventually heal because you gradually lose nearly all of your memories of the relationship. This seems like a terrible tragedy of the human condition. As I think back over other relationships that I’ve had, I notice the same thing. I’ve lost most of my memories of them. Even with my ex wife I know there were some good memories even there, but I can only remember a handful of them. Even the girl who broke my heart when I was a teenager, I can barely remember that relationship at all, only how it felt when she left me.

It’s funny how the negative memories stick with us better than the positive ones. I can still remember clearly the pain and hurt I felt over our confusing and abrupt breakup, but only vaguely remember waking up next to her and holding her. Kissing her neck in the morning… So much is gone already, but with it goes much of the pain. Perhaps the pain of a breakup is really just the pain of loss. As my memory of what I’ve lost fades, so does the pain. The only thing that seems to stick with me is the memory of how much it hurt when the memories were still fresh. 

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

The Force is Strong with This One

Today was a noteworthy day. There were two main things I wanted to write down, mainly for myself to be able to look at later. I know, it’s a blog, so this shit is all public and whatnot, but let’s be honest: this blog’s primary reader is myself. It’s cool, I’m not out here to become famous. Does one become famous for blogging anyway?

So the biggie was an on again off again thing that I wasn’t sure was going to happen, but it did. My oldest son, who was still being homeschooled due to wishy washy court rulings, told my ex wife (may the fleas of a thousand camels infest her pubic hair) that he wanted to return to school. Surprisingly, she enrolled him, and today was his first day back in school. This is awesome news, because once he’s returned to school, she can’t take him back out. This is the only fucking issue I won on in the divorce. Well, that and holiday time. On every other issue, mainly financial, I got fucked up the ass with a telephone pole. Still, this whole thing was about my kids from day one. I didn’t expect that the price for protecting my kids would be so steep, or that I wouldn’t be able to actually get custody to protect them from indoctrination into extreme religion, but you take what you can get. I won on a couple of fronts where it came to my kids. That makes the ridiculously insane amount of alimony I pay worth every penny. That and actually being divorced. That’s so worth it too. Jesus fuck if I was still having to live with that woman I would gouge my eyes out with a circular saw.

The second is really only important to me. I’m two days off the depression meds and my obsession with the ex girlfriend is waning quickly. I think the therapist is right, they were making the anxiety worse, not better. Today, for the first time in over a month, I was able to concentrate on something other than her, even if only for a while. Seriously, it’s been major fucking with my life. My house is a cesspit, I’m pathetically behind at work, and I haven’t been able to focus on anything I like to do as a hobby, which is sad given that hobbies are about all I have left now when my kids aren’t here. Today I got some work done, I looked at my phone a lot less, and I actually smiled and joked with people. I was even able to carry on a small meaningless conversation about pumpkin spice lattes with the insanely hot woman from two rows over who I can’t figure out if she’s with someone or not. Someday I might even work up the courage to ask her out for coffee. Maybe.

This is significant though. My feelings about her have changed dramatically in the last two days, I finally feel like I’m moving on. I still think about her a ridiculous percentage of the day, but it’s not this constant mopey “oh I wish I had her back I don’t know how I can go on without her” bullshit I’ve been stuck in for the last month. I’m starting to put it in perspective and see her a little more realistically. That’s a good thing, by the way.

It’s still kind of sad, she’s had more or less no good relationships, and I really thought I could be the good one. I wanted to try, anyway, but now I really don’t anymore. If she called me up tonight, I would still be tempted, but I don’t think that will be the case a week from now. She’s not going to, it’s just one of those things I obsess on. My resolve won’t get tested on this issue.

There’s one drawback to this though, I think the meds were actually helping me to quit smoking. It’s an antidepressant that’s actually the same thing as Zyban. Being off of it for two days has sort of thrown me for a loop on the smoking issue. Maybe once I’ve got this whole ex thing in place I can go back on them to quit smoking again. We’ll see. The main thing is that I really feel like I’m pulling back from the brink of absolute disaster. I need to get that under control so that I live long enough to quit smoking.

All in all, a pretty good day though.

9/11/2012

I wrote a blog post on 9/11 of last year. I think what I said in that post still pretty much sums up my feelings about 9/11. I’m still continually disgusted at how politicians try to politicize 9/11. The truth is, It’s just another day now. For 11 years we’ve commemorated 9/11, but I think it’s time for us to collectively move on as a nation. The resulting fallout from 9/11 is some of the most frightening things I’ve seen in my lifetime. I’ve seen our liberties eroded, our young soldiers killed, foreign civilians killed, foreign leaders overturned and executed, and our country tip towards the brink of fascism without even knowing it. 

9/11 has often been compared to Pearl Harbor. It’s not quite the same, but even so, we commemorate Pearl Harbor quietly these days. The pain of that attack has subsided. World War II was fought and ended. We fought and toppled fascist governments, discovered unthinkable crimes, and tried and convicted those responsible. What happened after 9/11 was a little different. We entered a war, but not with the foreign power who attacked us, because there was no foreign power that attacked us. It was a ragtag band of religious zealots living in the deserts of Afghanistan. The government of Afghanistan refused to cooperate with us, and we entered into the nation’s single longest war (that isn’t really a war because it was never declared by congress) with that government. We almost immediately lost sight of the criminal who murdered 3000 of our citizens, and turned our attention to another despot who hadn’t really done anything to us. That conflict cost us dearly. but no matter how dearly it cost us, it cost the citizens of Iraq much more dearly. We are not popular in that part of the world, and there is a reason for that. And no, it is not “because they hate our freedoms”. But recently we’ve found the criminal who murdered our citizens, and he was killed in the event. I will not entertain conspiracy theories about that event either.

9/11 will forever remain for me the epitome of what religious extremism can lead to. Unfortunately, it can get far worse. The crusades were a religious war, and they were fought with middle ages technology. Imagine if the crusades were fought today. That is the future we must avoid. Religious zealots are constantly trying to control our government, and the moderately religious are encouraging them to do so. This is the danger of even moderate religion, as Sam Harris points out. If we fall to fascist powers and become a religious state, the world as we know it will be in danger.

It is time to return to the ideals that made America great in the first place. Our freedoms and liberties must be restored from erosion of the last 11 years. Our adherence to the separation of church and state must be absolute. The balance of powers must be restored. And we must once again strive to be an example to the rest of the world as we once were, not the bully that the rest of the world is afraid of that we are now.

The last year has been very eventful for me. Around this time last year I had just started dating the first girl I had dated since I met my ex wife. Since then I’ve had quite the emotional rollercoaster. My divorce has been finalized. My children finally know that there are alternatives to extreme religion, and they’ve returned to public school. I’m alone, but I’m free of my ex wife to as much of a degree as possible. My house has been foreclosed on and soon to be repossessed. My apartment is overrun with cats whom I’m desperately trying to find homes for. I’ve returned to the job I had 11 years ago, as much as that job still exists, and I was with and lost a woman I’ve been secretly in love with for over a decade, and whom I consider to be my perfect mate. Sorry, fairy tale endings don’t happen in real life. It’s amazing how much can happen in just a year. I haven’t even covered everything that’s happened in my life, I’m sure yours has been just as eventful.

A year is a long time. When 9/11/2013 rolls around, it would be nice if we didn’t have to once again call for the freedoms we’ve lost to be restored again. 

Friday, September 7, 2012

Sure, Let Me Debase Myself And Lie Down In This Puddle So You Can Walk Over Me My Dear.

This is going to be another post about my relationship issues. If you don’t like those kind of posts, feel free to go somewhere else. You know what, fuck you. This is my fucking blog, and I’ll blog whatever the fuck I want.

So basically I had a really shitty day today. I found out that not only had the short sale on my house fallen through, but that today was auction day. In other words, I found out exactly too late to do anything about it. Even if I could have done anything about it. So I am no longer a home owner. In fairness, I hadn’t lived there in two years anyway. The worst part about it is the major hit my credit rating is going to take. Foreclosures stay on for ten years, not seven. My ex wife fucked me pretty good on this one. She did it intentionally, I’m sure, but the best part of the whole thing is where she says it’s my fault. No, I’m not kidding. She refused to find any kind of work whatsoever, or to support herself or her children in any way whatsoever, stopped paying the mortgage, and made sure the house went to foreclosure. And it’s my fault. You seriously can’t make this shit up.

Add to that the fact that she wants to move out of district so that she can move somewhere she can afford to. The unbelievable injustice of the fact that a father who wanted his children and was perfectly capable of supporting them and could have easily kept them in the good school district in which they live lost them to a mother who refuses to support herself or her children in any way shape or form and cannot afford to keep them in the school district, but wants to move them to a poorer school district. Somehow she has been determined to be the better parent. Again, you can’t make this shit up. If somebody put this in a book it would be deemed implausible. But yet, it happened.

And just for good measure, I found out my copay for my therapist is so high that I can’t afford it. So not only am I dealing with a ridiculous divorce, an insane financial situation as a result, and a difficult breakup with my ex girlfriend, but I can’t even afford therapy anymore. At times like this I start to wonder if there is a god, because if there is, she hates me. It seems implausible that all of this could happen to one, basically good person. Yet, it did.

So moving on, my ex girlfriend and I are occasionally talking again. Yesterday she had some crap happen, so being the good friend that I am, I stopped what I was doing and made time to listen. Because that’s what I do. It actually wasn’t all that convenient for me to do so, but I did anyway. And not just because some part of me still hopes that I can salvage a relationship out of this. I would do this for pretty much any friend.

Then today all of this happens, and I need someone to talk to. Guess how many people were available for me? Yep. Nobody. Not even my therapist, because… well… fuck you republicans and your fucked up privatized health care. This system only works for the wealthy. Fuck you. And if you’re not wealthy and support these fuckers, fuck you too. You’re fucking me as well as yourself, and that makes you a fucking moron. Fuck you.

So I’m thinking tonight, because, well, the only person I have to talk to is myself. So if you say I’m crazy for talking to myself, fuck you. You weren’t here for me either, fuck wad. And I realize something: that was my whole relationship with her. She would get frequent headaches, I would rush over there and give her a long backrub. Number of backrubs received: 0. Even my ex wife had a better record than that. Every time she had something going on, I would patiently sit there and listen to her. When I felt the need to unload about  something, I got some variation of “shit or get off the pot”. If I got irritated about that, her feelings got hurt.

And then I think “Exactly what about this relationship am I missing?” It was a little one sided. Actually it was a lot one sided. Yet, I still miss her and would probably go back if I could. Fucking why? What about this woman am I missing? Why am I so drawn to her? These are questions I can’t answer. My only guess is that there was more to it than that for me. She was at least an intellectual equal, and probably an intellectual superior. She had her own career and life. She was independent and strong. She made a difference in peoples lives. She was good at what she does. And something about her is magic. Her voice, her mannerisms, everything. I can’t explain it. Basically it’s not a good relationship for me. I know this intellectually. My heart will catch up eventually, I just have to be strong for now. That’s the real trick though. I’m not strong.

Anyway, just random thoughts. I had nobody to share this with, so of course it goes out to the world  on my blog. I suppose it’s all part of learning to be alone. Being alone sucks ass, by the way.

Monday, September 3, 2012

The Question I Never Got A Chance To Ask.

I was despondent for days, weeks, months. I was alternately angry, dejected, and confused. I believed every lie you told me wholeheartedly. I trusted you and gave you my heart unconditionally and without reserve, and you tossed it aside like a dirty rag without looking back. And up until about 20 minutes ago, at the slightest word, the merest mention that you would want to start again, to spend even the smallest amount of time with me, I would have gladly thrown my pride to the wind and followed you around like a stupid puppy. Because I’m just that fucking pathetic.

But I’m not stupid. I won’t vie with your other ex for your attention. He wins. Congratulate him for me. I no longer want to see you. I no longer want to hear your voice lie to me. I no longer want to know about the trivial interactions between you and your cats. Why, you wonder, the sudden change? I’ll tell you. Because fuck you.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

You took the kids WHERE???

I’m going to a picnic at Darrel Ray’s this afternoon. I find it kind of cool that I actually know the author of The God Virus. If you’re a member of the KC atheist community, you’ll realize that it’s not all that big of a deal, he knows all of us. But still…

I’m taking my kids too. Part of me.hopes the ex finds out. I can already see her doing a Rumplestiltskin type angry dance similar to when I embarrassed her lawyer during the trial.

Why yes, as a matter of fact. If you didn’t already know,  I am an asshole. To those who’ve earned it.

Oooh, I HATE that guy…

I’ve been reading a book called Quiet about the introverted/extroverted personality types. My ex girlfriend had recently read it and described it to me, and the topic interested me. Anybody who gets to know me intimately knows I’m an introvert, but it’s not always obvious to everybody. I’m certainly not the “Hi how ya doin lemme kiss your baby” type of extrovert, but I try to not be too soft spoken at work. Maybe it’s more obvious than I think. When I told my ex girlfriend that I was an introvert, her response was “Duh!”.

What’s most interesting though, is that I’m getting a better handle on exactly what kind of introvert I am. It’s not all good news. The most recent chapter revealed to me that I’m the kind of introvert who adjusts to social situations based on cues. I get my ideas about how to behave and interact with others based on cues I receive from them. In other words, I’m a different person to each person I interact with. Kind of like that salt monster from the early Star Trek episode. Put me in a room with too many people and I don’t know who the fuck to be. This is one of the reasons I have this blog and my twitter account, it’s about the only time I really get to be the real me, however pathetic that might be.

I found myself in orchestra rehearsal the other night being the extrovert. Socializing with this person, then with that person. To be honest, I hate socializing. I’m not half bad at it when I have to be though. I can be quite animated and entertaining when the situation calls for it.

I have to wonder if this is a factor in my string of failed relationships. It’s certainly something to bring up with the therapist. This personality type can be viewed by others as deceptive and deceitful. I really don’t see myself that way, but I have to wonder if that’s how my personality type comes off. It’s really more about trying to fit in and not do social faux pas. A basic fear of rejection. An extreme fear of rejection. And I take it hard when I am rejected, like my recent break up. This could be a factor in why I stayed in a marriage that was obviously broken for almost the entire duration for far longer than I should have. Long enough to have two kids, and for those kids to grow up to be big enough to be damaged by the ensuing brutal divorce.

I’ve noticed a trend recently: people don’t seek me out. Let me try to explain that more. If I don’t try to start some kind of interaction with my friends, the interaction tends to not happen. It reminds me a little of the game The Sims. In the game, if you don’t constantly call up your friends, the relationship atrophies and they stop being your friend. However, in the game if you don’t call your friends for a while, they’ll call you and say “what the fuck, dude?” In real life that second part doesn’t seem to happen with me. The relationship still atrophies, but it seems like if I’m the only one interested in preventing that. If I don’t call for a while, nobody calls me.

This worries me a little. Is there something in my personality that repulses people? Is it this quirk of adjusting my personality to each person? Does this drive people off? Am I really that guy? The guy nobody really wants to hang out with but is willing to put up with so that they don’t come off as a jerk? Introspection never goes well for me. I keep coming up with this kind of crap.

I would really like to know, though, why this seems to be the case. There seems to be some basic flaw in my personality that makes people like me ok but not really want to be around me more than they have to. I don’t know what it is yet, or how to fix it. I need to fix it though, or I’ll never have a successful relationship. I don’t count my ex as a successful relationship. She was wasn’t in it for any kind of interest in me, she was in it because she could live off of me without having to have a life of her own. She still does. Thank you, state of Kansas.

Anyway, no great revelations in this post, just questions that I don’t have answers for yet. Maybe I’ll have some in the weeks to come.