shoulders (raw and unedited)

A cold wind blowing…

It’s cold.  I knew it would be.  I lay in bed this morning, with my arms around someone I love.

I thought back to the first night I had slept beside her.  Over four years had passed.  This morning was in all likelihood the last time I would wake beside her.  We both cried.  I would wake up and drive home to a space where just yesterday I was only able to pay half of my rent.  I would drive home with no license in a car with a noisy exhaust.  Today is the first day off I have had in 28 days.  My fridge is full of food I bought with food stamps.  I don’t have any booze, and don’t smoke cigarettes.

I have a hope that my roommate will be able to pay the other half of the rent this Thursday or Friday, returning us to the good graces of our landlord.

I need about 600.00 to have my license back.  I have 21.00 until I get paid Friday, today is Sunday.  I don’t have Cable, I do have internet and the electricity is on, although I’m supposed to pay 200 towards it today, and I don’t have it, so I will need to call them tomorrow and beg for a few more days.  The 200 will come from my roommate.  He has fallen on uncertain times, but will be getting enough financial aid from school later this week to pay both me and the landlord.  So lights and a roof seem close and attainable.

I’m not a real person.  Real people don’t have these problems.  I don’t make much, but my child support is paid.  I have mediocre part time Health insurance that I got through one of my 2 part time jobs…it costs 15 a week, but covers me for 2500 a year in medical expenses.  So I can fuck up once and get most of it paid for.  Anything more than that becomes an unpaid medical bill at a local ER.  Not pride just fact.

My 8 year old glasses have a crack in the passenger side lens.  I need new ones, I do have vision insurance through work, it cost me 1.50 a week.  However I have to buy the glasses and get reimbursed, and like I said I have 21.00 which will go to something at some point this week.

I’m not a real person.  I’m 35.  You wouldn’t know it, but I bought a house when I was 22.  I made payments on in for 8 years without ever missing a mortgage payment.  I had a wife and I have two wonderful children.  They’re pretty fucked up too each in their own way, but I have my hopes for them.  I want them to be normal and happy…I know they probably won’t be.

I’ve been to college…a few times.  I’ve got an Associates Degree to show for it…not that it matters, I owe the college money and don’t have any so I can’t get an official transcript.  That means the 90 some odd credits I earned prior to losing my financial aid and having to pay 900 dollars for that last class are being held hostage even though I paid for all of those.

My kids both need to see me more.  I don’t have the means to be there for them as much as I should.  I work too much, driving is always risky, and it takes a lot mentally to maintain even half-way decent spirits.  At work I smile and greet customers with a smile and witty banter.  I’m good at it…I’ve been working since I was 12.  They don’t know I’m a horrible person with no license, very little hope, and a bleak outlook.  Somewhere I have a shred of hope that I’m going to be able to work myself out of this.  I know in all likelihood I’m probably going to get pulled over and arrested.  That will cost more money that I don’t have and make my life even harder…on some level I’m sure I deserve it.  There is no time limit for my license suspension, I need to pay a fine for not having an inspection sticker, a fine for speeding (I was driving someone else’s car it’s amazing how it doesn’t feel like you’re going very fast when the car doesn’t shake or make loud unpleasant noises) Then I have to pay several reinstatement fees to get reinstated once…like I said 600.00.

I hope some day she’s happy.  She deserves it.  She was nothing but good to me, and would have been there for me, would have supported me while I struggled to live and pay bills.  She told me when I first changed…she only wanted me the way I was, and to Love her and to hear me say I loved her.  I do, and did.  However, I’m not a real person…she is.

I left her, and we continued to spend time together, easing each-other’s troubled and lonely hearts occasionally.  She couldn’t do it anymore…it hurt her too much to need more from me, that I couldn’t give.  She told me she was sorry.  I told her not to be.  I’m the one not functioning.  We said we loved each-other and I went home, alone; where I now sit.  I’m sad, I mourn for these losses deeply.  I know what I have to do, but it costs so much more money that I have.  I need to be a normal person.  Then I can assess what I want from my life.  Needs have to come first, and I NEED to be self-reliant.

I’m a derelict criminal.  I work hard but don’t get very far.  I’m well spoken, and fairly well educated.  All anyone seems to want from me is me.  I’m not me though.  Me is a broken child somewhere inside.  Sculpted from a child hood of moving around, never having roots, working too hard, feeling loss, only knowing what I could get for myself.  Knowing what it’s like to have everything gone, being left only with myself and the ability to work.  All everyone wants is me.  I could have everyone in my life if I gave them me.  My smile, my warmth, the love I know I have to give, my conversation, my insight, the person I am…the person I pretend to be when I’m at work.  The smile is fake.

I’m not a real person…real people have a license, their car runs, they buy their own food, they pay the rent, they don’t ever have to talk to the electric company, and when they smile they mean it.

I haven’t been a real person since I started having to play games to live.  I’ll play them, because I have to, but real people smile…I used to smile and it wasn’t fake or wasn’t a sarcastic remnant of a memory…those smiles sting.  I don’t know who I am anymore…I only know that I need to make my life safe.  I only know that it is going to take more than what I have to get there, and I may fail…in that end I can’t take anyone with me…so they will all miss me, and I will cry for them, wishing I could be what they wanted.   

Solitude continued

Sins of the father...continued.

I've been working on a very expansive theory, that started as a joke, and still is to some extent.

Christian faith is based off the belief that God sent Jesus to come to Earth and die for our sins, thus saving us.
However reading the bible, if we were to believe in Jesus and the stories...It didn't seem, even by our own accounts, like Jesus was in on it.  We talk about this Holy Trinity...that are all the same being.  Just throwing out that recurring Triangle theme again for all you conspiracists.  (that's my word mothertrucker) Anyway....

It doesn't sound like Jesus knew what was going down, which given his membership in the one being club, you'd think he'd know.  See Jesus is down here preaching his father's word.  Performing miracles, championing the poor...born in a stable...you can't buy cliche' like this...SOOOO anyway

My theory...god didn't send Jesus here to die.  Maybe God thought we were all right...and he wanted to hook us up with his son.  He'd send Jesus as a gift, to spread wisdom and perform miracles and make us better beings.  Instead...we killed him.

Not only did we kill him, then we had the nerve and gall to say he died for our behalf.

So here's Jesus on the cross, saying "WTF why have you forsaken me?  Clearly the plan didn't go down as intended, about to get poked by spears, beam me the fuck up!!"  So maybe, at the moment Jesus died on the cross...maybe we weren't all saved.  Maybe at that instant God wrote us off as the assholes we clearly are.  What if at that moment we were all doomed...and now roughly 2000 years later give or take 30 years or so...the world is on the brink of economic, and resource collapse.  Social disparity is rampant, and wars are breaking out all over the place.

Which brings me back to my whole sins of the father context.  There's a recurring trend in life of present father, absent father, attention vs discipline...which I think on some levels plays back to the bible again.

So maybe the answer to it all is wrapped up in this left his son to die at the hands of these degenerate humans.  See the humans struggle to grasp what God the parent was feeling...maybe we aren't supposed to thank God by apologizing on the way through the turn buckle and knowing we're good because his kid died for us...

Maybe we need to apologize for killing his kid, and hoping maybe we get the mercy we probably don't deserve...

Deep thoughts...brought to you by the whateverlution

Solitude

Sins of the father

Life is a constantly shimmering wheel.  It is always turning, with the surface a subtly blending, gently morphing sheen of oil slicked color.

Every point on it is moving.  Yet it comes around again and again in the same fashion.

What makes a certain type of person, a certain type of person?

The case for genetics, I’ve got my father’s frame, certain undeniably personality traits.  I’d like to say I have my father’s temper, but I don’t know that he has one.  I’ve never seen it.  My grandfather was a misogynistic, woman beating, coward.  My father a smooth talking, womanizing, tough guy that never fought.  His game was never physical.  He didn’t let things go, and there was an underlying threat, but thinking back he was never physical.  So my grandfather was a high hatting, melodramatic bully who would only pick on people smaller than himself.  My father a bravado soaked, extravert with a definite physical presence.

What am I?

A hair trigger?  An instrument of rage and indignant fury?  A beast of burden that works tirelessly and emotionlessly to improve his own life and the people he cares for.  In that order…?

An empathetic soul who doesn’t really have his own emotions, but can weep on a dime for the hardships of others.

Obviously there’s more here, because I can comment more on my own workings than I can on observations.

The answer?  I don’t fucking know, but I’ll tell you what I’ve seen.

There are distinctly different types of parents.  I know some parents who daunt and feign with truly devotional love to their children.  They are there working on homework, taking them to sports, and friends houses, and movies, and family games.  They really are out there, I’ve seen them.

There are indifferent parents.  They work hard, their children are in daycare, and after school programs.  They pick them up on the way home from work, and share take out while getting ready for the next day.  They see their children nightly, and exchange the facts of the day.  They love and provide for their children.

There are distant parents.  They wait the whole day to call their kids to say goodnight.  They tell everyone how much they miss them.  They see them whenever they can.  They tell people that they would love to be there every day.

Then there are the parents that just disappear.  They realize at some point that they don’t want to be parents so they don’t.  Sometimes they get guilty and try to make contact, telling themselves that it is something they HAVE to do.  The attempt often unravels because it wasn’t something they ever really wanted….to do.

I tried to stop short of saying good or bad.  It was very deliberate.  My thought is everyone is who they are.  Circumstance notwithstanding generally speaking people do what they want to do.  There are times when the choice might not have been there’s, but generally speaking even then, the result is a culmination of events coming together to form an outcome.  Every person at some point made a choice, that choice grew into an event, those events become a life.

It’s lonely and quiet right now.

Self actualization

Even if it actually sucks