Tag Archives: love

sheer

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I never expected life to be this…odd. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, and I knew it wouldn’t all be very fun from time to time, but I didn’t expect it to be this odd. And no, I don’t really know what constitutes “odd”. A collection of things, I suppose: the way it feels, the people involved, the things they say, the preeminence of “new,” the exigency to understand my own past. At times, it still feels artificial, and yet it’s so very real, so very mine.

Time for me typically moves quite quickly, and that’s why the past fifteen months or so have been so odd, as I felt stalled here at a crossroads in the road of my life. I’ve maundered for more than a year on which direction to take, or how to correct my course, or how to do whatever thing would be required in whatever metaphor I might conjure. And I’ve ultimately gone nowhere.

It was time, and it was past time, and I was truly about to lose all hope.

To that end, some decisions are made, not in haste, but after significant consideration, then delivered quickly. The motivations for the speed of delivery can be myriad, but they typically have at least something to do with a lack of desire to prolong the obvious. It is unfortunate when such decisions countermand previous ones, but life is about survival, and sometimes survival is a harsh sentence. I was been drowning, and I had been trying to rescue myself from the flood with nothing but a collection of memories, a misplaced sense of duty, and talking too much.

Yes, I lacked even a real desire to get out of the water, or step back out onto the road, or anything. I’m brilliant like that, sometimes.

It was time, and it was past time, and the flood was carrying me away.

I could have done things differently, but I actually tried all the options I perceived over the past year, and kept coming back around to that status quo out of weakness. The necessary action was painfully obvious to me over a year ago, and that it’s taken that long to drive it home, and in such a furious fashion, is simply unfortunate. And now, as I move past those moments, I see there was never even a true crossroads: a side-alley into something quite unlike whomever I am becoming, is all there really was.

Of course, I realize that’s hindsight, but by the same token, it is what it is. That cliché has been haunting me all too much, recently.

Last year, the parting from that other one was so ragged it never really let go. So this year, the breaking had to be sheer, her contempt for me complete, and the enforced distance between us void of any real possibility of repair. I am neither pleased or proud with the darkness under which it had to be enacted, but my heart (my soul, if I have one), is lighter, and freer, for having finally done so. I have done the right thing (unfortunately, in some regards, I do not doubt), for I am no longer breathing a water tainted by inaction, insecurity, and distrust. And my own two feet are carrying me forward again: forward, past this “whatever” and into a future in which I have not forgotten myself.

There is time, and there is more time, and the clock is now wound by my own hand.

I am loved, deeply, immeasurably, by someone who sees me for what I am, who appreciates my talents and accepts my deficiencies, and doesn’t want or need me to change or redefine myself in order for her to be comfortable with me. A someone who is so remarkable as to have stood beside me through these recent upheavals, fought for me through them, and who holds to me now, rightfully expecting the deepest reciprocation.

And I shall hold to this someone, this one who helped me pull myself from those tainted waters, who chooses to walk beside me on this road, with everything that I am and hope to become, for as long as she allows me.

And the only oddity now is that it took me this long. Although that, for me, really isn’t all that odd at all.

inconsequentially yours

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words do not begin…

it recycles, and that annoys. but, it’s never the same.

the problem with me is that i remember. i don’t have the type of brain that memorizes every word that is spoken or written, whether outbound or inbound, but i remember so much else, so many other details, usually visual or aural, that will haunt me all of my days.

just this past week, unbidden, came sounds from the night of my high school graduation dinner, an event that hasn’t entered my mind again in over twenty years. that’s what i mean by haunting. i remember, but i can’t always call things up at will. instead, the memories come almost randomly, and leave me cold.

and so, words do not begin…

sometimes, i catch myself about to do something that i’ve done before, and if it’s that type of thing that doesn’t really need to be done in the first place, well, that irks. recycling is good for the environment, but this kind of recycling makes me worry about my brain. i don’t like redundancy, even if those who were to receive what i’ve had done or said would never have had a way to know i was being redundant.

maybe even especially then, when i know it’s only me that i annoy.

and words do not even remotely begin…

i was chatting with a friend last night, and something came out of my mouth that surprised me: that within the short span of less-than-three (pardon the pun) months, i have learned to love without being selfish about it. that’s a bigger accomplishment than you might think. and more than that, i’ve learned to keep myself above the age-old tendency to lose myself in the emotion, in her. it is a different thing: one that took far longer than it should have, to accomplish.

and while the words fail to suffice to describe it all, neither do they prevent the enjoyment anymore.

i started writing this in late august, and got sidetracked with life, living, and the pursuit of not being borne down by the music i listen to (the things that remind me of where i’ve been, what i’ve done, and whom i’ve known, in other words), into the depths of remorse and might-have-beens. the vectors of certain tangents in my life are helical: not quite recursive, but they come back around, time and time again, and the where-i-was is in view for long, painful moments until i move up and away and around and back again.

i had to make a break with the one who haunted me all those years. it’s not a clean break, and if i think about it (or her) too much, it’s the one thing that can actually bring me to tears. it’s a regret, true and thorough. i had intended never to have such a thing, but there it is. i’ve cried more for her than i have for the mother of my children, but the tears, now, lack the power to sway me.

the more things change

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….the more they are changed.

life walks forward down a path of its own choosing, on its own mission, at its own pace, within its own time, and i’ve known for decades the baseless futility of attempting to steer it solely for my own purposes. sometimes you have roll with what you’re given, and you otherwise work within the gaps to make it your own thing.

and i am somewhere in the gaps, or at least i try to be.

the rains of late have been a fitting backdrop for these days. my life, changing once again, gets redefined, and the world weeps. no, i don’t really think that, but it’s sometimes comforting to think that way, at least until you think about all the people affected by the flooding. so i only think about it that way when the rain is actually coming down, and i’m out in it, getting soaked.

but it’s finally getting cool enough where that’s no longer a comfortable venture.

old habits like this, they die hard. but they are dying, and not just for her. they pass away for lack of my attention, and the lack of their ability to capture it away from her.

it hasn’t been so painful as i feared.

because it is

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i got rather lost in the flux, lately. i’d offer some sort of humorous observation on the eccentricities of life and time, but yeah, that means very little. my on-again, off-again relationship with giving a shit about things outside of my control has fed into this as well. i’m trying to keep it more to off-again, but that requires a type of mental discipline for which i seem to have so little time.

i haven’t done a broadcast in a while, now. no one seems to miss it, and i’m not sure i do, either. i haven’t found anything insightful to say, nor have i found anything of seeming importance to promote. i haven’t been looking incredibly hard, either, though. i’ve been distracted.

i retreated into the online world years ago, completely by my own choice, and with specific intent, because up here, the inherent overlayment of impermanence and superficiality is transparently obvious, unlike the “real” world, where it all gets skewed and twisted somewhere out of sight before you ever get to see it coming, let alone recognize it for what it is. i can handle the bullshit up here because the bullshit is immediate, obvious, and usually very direct. real life is usually something different, or at least it has been.

but now, all of the sudden, life in my real world has become something both more and less than what it was for me, for so many years. the simple expedient of having someone interested in me–even demandingly so, sometimes–has changed everything. i’m actually having to think about how to better use my time, how to take care of myself for more than just the obvious reasons, how to learn to love again. it’s not something i ever really expected, even when i ended a marriage for lack of anything resembling mutual, interpersonal concern.

it’s different at this age, the falling in love thing, but yes, she’s keeping me away from you, my friends, and while i miss you, there’s just no contest there. i’m not so needful of attention that i couldn’t survive without her and her impact on my life, but by the same token, she’s here, she wants to share my time, and i want to give it to her. so, i wonder how many of you are like me, spending so much time on the internet, waiting/hoping/searching for something better to come along. yes, my prolific tweeting and occasional blogging have largely been escape mechanisms, i’ll admit it.

underneath all that, there has been some discussion of late about my morality. this is a laughable thing to me because of how little anyone online actually knows me, what i do in life, the communities i serve, and the people with whom i’m interconnected. somehow, it was deemed inappropriate of me to look for a relationship after i had ended a marriage that had been loveless for over a decade. somehow, for me, it was wrong to pursue those relationships via twitter while also using twitter to simply interact with people and learn more about the world around me and the people in it. somehow, i became anathema for actually taking the time, trouble, and expense to meet some of those potential relationship partners and deciding after some consideration that we weren’t compatible that way. in fact, i am apparently morally bankrupt for having done such things, despite the fact that i maintain good relations with those people, except for the one who bailed out of meeting me after i’d driven for 16 hours to meet her.

yeah, people’s definition of “morality” is pretty whack, and that’s true even amongst us freethinkers. i must have been the only person in the world drawn to other people via our interactions on twitter.

puh-lease.

then, i had to go make things worse and take loud, public exception to what i perceived to be the desire for the touchy-feely version of humanism to operate as a trump-card to all other forms of interaction freethinkers may have with the deluded. i handled the situation immaturely, apologized for it several times in several different media, and still, i’m the bad guy not just because i temporarily lost my head in an argument, but because i disagreed with someone who has more twitter followers than i do. funny thing is, that person and i were able to see through it and past it, and carry on being friends. it’s just some of her followers who seem compelled to continue “protecting” her on her unasked behalf, or who make entertaining, loud noises as they unfollow me.

which brings me to the last thing i wanted to say today. for all the shit i’ve been going through in the past year, it continues to amaze me to near speechlessness, the amount of willfully ignorant fools we have in our “ranks” as atheists and freethinkers: people who have really only effectively traded one adamant belief system for another. i received more rude, threatening and demonstrably unthinking tirades from fellow “freethinkers” due to the altercation i mentioned in the paragraph above than i have ever received from theists responding to something provocative i’ve posted in the past. these people (and you probably know who you are) serve to remind me that it is the simple human condition which is the overriding factor to everything we do, and within that human condition, intelligence has by no means been necessary, let alone an exclusive requisite, to the survival of this species or any of its individuals.

but yes, my friends, some wear the label of “freethinker” inappropriately: embarrassingly, ruefully, depressingly inappropriately.

ugh.

of course, aside from the accidental duplicity, there’s really nothing wrong with that. it’s part of what being human is about. perhaps “freethinker” can be a label that some people wear as an aspiration: something to work towards. a silver lining on the clouds of a bullshit reality which they may, indeed, someday take hold of to reshape themselves.

was that touchy-feely enough for you? probably not. o well.

at any rate, as with every autumn, my real-world life takes me away from here. and this woman with whom i’m falling in love is an additional, highly welcome distraction in whom i already find comfort and release (and that’s….refreshingly scary). i miss my frequent interactions with you, my friends, but there is no contest in the consideration of whether or not this is right for me. we’re two fiercely independent people who somehow manage to complete each other in all the right ways despite our insistence on our respective independence. there’s no way for me to describe how attractive that is to me, and so far, it’s working out beyond any expectation i might have been inclined to have.

if my past is any valid comparison, i expect what you’ll see is a bit more focused input from me in the future weeks and months. i’ll be using this internet thing a little more responsibly, which is to say, not as much, because i’m actually not trying to evade my reality any more.

and that, my friends, is a very, very good thing.

peace.

again

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would that i not be independent: that i couldn’t stand without your support, for a small, selfish part of me would very much like to just lay down.

would that i not be self-reliant: but as much as i like having your arms around me, i have to hold myself together in order to be yours.

would that i not be self-motivated: i could easily live my life for you and you alone, but only i can be responsible for my successes and failures, and i certainly wouldn’t pin the latter on you.

i feel incomplete without you, but i can’t feel helpless when you’re gone, for the hole you leave inside me is covered by all the things i appear to be and do.

and that vacancy is quite large, echoing with the sounds of my self-reliance, resounding then fading, as if they were searching for you, calling your name then chasing after you until they disappear over the horizon.

left alone, i return to myself somewhat, but it is, in truth, something less than what i am, when you are with me.

i might hide it well.

perhaps.

but i miss you already, and you’ve only just departed.