Bone Saw? Anyone?

With the news of my ex-wife moving, I have begun to remember the good times .  I think about Mr. Meow Wow.  I think about buying dining room chairs.  I think about Percy and Ratties.  I think about eating wedding cake and drinking champagne.  I think about the things I could have done or what I could be doing now. 
I went for a run tonight.  I thought it would have been fun to have gone with her, to have run the bleachers and walked after. 
Then I get sad.
Which makes me angry with myself. 
I have no right to feel sad for where I am.  I have no right to be sad for what I am missing and what I am missing out on.  Any pain I might be feeling is nothing compared to what I put her through.  She had no control over it.  I did.  I cut the ties and left her to hold the broken end.  I have no right to cry. 

But how do I not?

There are still moments, as brief as they may be now, where I want to cut out my heart because it hurts too much.  I might as well.  I seem pretty good at removing limbs and anything else that is good for me or that I might need.  If anyone has a bone saw, I am getting tired of ripping myself apart.  I would rather make some clean cuts from now on.

But what good is it?

Feeling things is not bad.  I should be feeling them.  By feigning numb, I got where I am today.  I need to feel.  I have to.  It feels good even when it is bad.  My short stint on antidepressants showed me that.  Not only was it nearly impossible to achieve orgasm, I couldn't feel anything else either.  They probably saved me from actually doing something stupid, which is good, but I was a blank wall for months.  Living that way is no good. 
My marriage starved to death because I wasn't allowing myself to feel and to be open and loving and caring.  Even as I talk about those things, I feel a slight twinge of anxiety, though I don't know why.  I do know that I won't repeat that mistake.  I hurt someone that I cared about deeply, but wouldn't admit that I cared as much as I did.  I was afraid.  I didn't want to hurt.  I was a pussy and I have spent the last year hurting more than she ever would have hurt me.  That makes me an idiot too. 

A lot of people have said that it is what we do now that makes all the difference.  We are all human.  We fuck up.  We hurt people.  We must learn and move on or we drown in it.  I have learned a lot.  I have learned about myself and what I want and don't want.  What I will do and what I will never do again. 

I wish I could apologize to her and make her believe that I mean it.  I am more sorry than I can put into words or action.  How many times can I apologize before anyone feels better about it?  How many apologies before they don't mean anything? 
I don't know. 

If I could take out my heart and show it to her, she would see that I am sorry for all of it.  She would see the bruises, the cuts, the scars, the holes....all because I walked out that door. 
But I can't.  And I can't remove any body parts, any ears, to show it either.

I can only say I am sorry.
Maybe that is all that I will ever be able to do.

I Remember Running

I remember running when I was a kid.  It was freedom.  It was wind in your face.  It was joy.  The goal was not to get anywhere or lose weight or finish first or burn a calorie.  The goal was.....well, fun. 
Sunshine.  Green grass.  Good friends.  No cares.

It seems that life has a way of changing all of that.
Hormones kick in.  Girls become more than someone to play with....they become someone you want to "play" with.  School becomes something you dread, but need.  Here you learn the lesson of doing things you don't like so you can do things you do like.  Here you learn that not everyone wants to be your friend.  Here you learn that carefree running gets you beat up.  Here you find your real friends and begin the search for your real self.  Here life becomes dark and gloomy.  Here you see your dark self.  Here light hides behind the edge of the reality you are trying to see.  Here you can lose yourself in your pain, or you can lose yourself in the joy of teenage youth. 

Then life intercedes again. 

High school is over.  College or job.  Early twenties.  Mid twenties.  Married or single or looking.  Booze and one night stand after one night stand.  It's time to really come out of your shell. 
I was twenty-two when I really came out of my shell.  No more angst and anger.  Just me trying to have fun again.  The last 8 or so years had become a burden and I was buried under the mountain that my choices had placed on me.  I began to find my way out, to find myself....if only just a little.  I worked out.  I worked.  I met girls.  I fucked girls.  I made friends.  I told lies.  I found truths. 
I was running again....with nowhere to go but where I wanted to go.  I found a happiness in the simple again.  My friends were getting married and kids were popping out left and right and they were all settling down.  I saw them happy too.  I wanted their happiness too.  And mine.  I wanted every one's type of happiness. 

I met a great girl.  We had a lot of fun.  I found a lot in the world she showed me.  She made me feel young again.  We were friends.  We were lovers.  We found love.  But did we fall in love? 
We got married.  It was all so simple.  It all became so routine.  It all became too little.
We began to grow apart and neither of us did anything to hold it together until I decided it was too late.  She held on.  I let go.  I fell.  Hard.

Life began to weigh heavily.  My shoulders hurt.  My back hurt.  My heart was unfilled.  I began to feel old again.  The mountain hovered and threatened.  I got scared and ran.  This time, however, I ran from something. 
I met someone that lifted that weight a little.  She put breath in my lungs so I could let my legs carry me away.  It was love, again.  I just don't know what it was love of. 
There was a point when love was just love...when we were young.  Then love became sex.  Then love became deep.  Then love became pain.  Then love became a myth. 
I found a love of a feeling.  It was the feeling that she put in me, this new woman. 
I felt love. 
She was a drug of youth. 
It was no longer a simple love where it was free and given and never asked for but received and returned. 
Life makes love hard.  We make love hard. 
Even though she made emotions flow from me like the wind used to flow past my ears as I ran, laughing down a hill....she made love hard. 

Life became dark and bleak and stormy and horrible.  Where was that child who played in the rain?  Where was the boy who climbed trees and sat in flowers and stared at the sky?  Where was the sprinter, the laugher, carefree? 
He was lost under the weight of the world he had created for himself.  The character that had risen up from hormonal angsty bullshit and had taken stage center was finally getting his moment in the light.  He had killed something in order to find something else, in order to create chaos again. The young boy that my wife had shown me had grown into that same teenager again under the wings of this new woman.  She was promise and hope.  She was the dreamer that every pubescent kid has inside of them. 

It all came crashing down.  She couldn't carry my mountain anymore and I couldn't hold it up on my own.  I was buried and began to dig the wrong way to freedom.  Every choice I made seemed to make things harder.  I grew numb.  I grew distant.  I lost my wife.  I lost my love.  I lost my youth.  I was lost. 
In and out of her arms I fell, each time it hurt more and more.  She hurt and became hurtful.  I hurt and became hardened.  All of the pressure had become too much. 

Now that is all done and gone.  I am alone again.  I feel free again.  I feel sad again.  There are moments of clarity when I think that I will be okay, that I will feel the sun and the grass and the wind.  Then life steps in.  The ex wife is leaving the state with her new boyfriend.  My heart hurts a little.  My legs don't move like they were a day or two ago.  I feel the weight of my choices.  Love has become complicated.  I made it complicated.  I gave it up when it wanted to grow.  I reap what I have sown. 

I miss her.  I will miss her more when she is really gone.  I know that I don't see her or talk to her.  But I know that she is there.  Soon she won't be. 
What do I have to show for it all?

I still see the warm blue sky.  I still feel grass in my toes.  I still find shapes in clouds. 
I don't run with the same freedom anymore, though.  Now, I contemplate all my steps.  The joy of reckless sprinting has been lost to consequence. 
Life is deeper as we get older.  There are choices to make.  We can't always see where we are going, but we have to choose a direction. 

I have chosen some wrong paths.
My feet want to carry me back to the right one.  It is just hard to find the child who would let them do so.   

Only Lonely Sometimes

I miss my ex-wife at the most random times. 
I am lying in bed tonight and I am thinking about some of our big fights before I left.  Then I think about my life with her before it all blew up and it all seems like a blur.  None of it can even be real.  For me to be sitting here at midnight in a tiny apartment by myself is almost absurd.  How did I get here from trips to England, nights of her stir fry and Frank Sinatra and the scratching patter of animal feet on hardwood floors?  Life has been moving so fast for the past year that it has taken to this point for me to even be able to stop and see it. 

Sure, I am having some fun right now.  I enjoy the freedom that I have.  I can do what I want, when I want.  I don't have to discuss or plan around anyone but myself.  There is a joy in that kind of unchained life plan.  I am learning to enjoy being by myself, even though I am rarely alone.  There is a rush of women in my life, in and out leaving their mark on me as I am on them. 

But none of it seems real. 

That life that I was putting together seems real.  The wife, the house, the pets, the routine.  It all seemed so real.  Instead of bed by ten, I am lucky if I can get myself to bed before 12.  I can see the comfort in the known, the expected.  I am currently being pushed along this current of life and am grabbing at whatever passes by, but I feel a yearning to find myself a friendly shore. 
I find some relief in this little desire of mine.  It means that I still want something more.  I still want to feel something real with someone else.  The little flings that I have been having are fun and good in their own way, but they are not "real" in the sense that they are what they are.  Flings.  Sex.  A day at the beach.  That is what they are.  I am living on the surface of this vast ocean of what a relationship can be.  I am not ready to take a breath and go under, not yet.  The unexplored expanse of the heart is still fine where it is.  I am in a life raft still. 

I hurt sometimes.  I hurt for my ruined relationship and I hurt for the chaos that followed.  I hurt for playing a game with someone's life.  I hurt for not seeing the things in front of me for what they were.  It is a challenge some days. 
Some days I am lonely. 
Some days I am filled with this joy at the realization that this is life.  This pain and the unexpected and the laughing and drinks and beaches and breezes and sunshine and rain and 8 hour work days.  It's all life.  It is always moving.  I have been standing still for a while.  It took that while to see that no matter what I choose to do, life is still moving.  I can sit back and watch it, or I can live it.

I do miss her.  The blue eyes, those few moments when she really allowed herself to be vulnerable, the silliness, the life we had.  I miss it.  But I can either keep missing it and living in something that is not there, or I can find out what is ahead of me.  I keep opening doors and stepping in right now, rarely passing one by.  I am not sure what I am looking for, exactly.  I do know that I will know it when I see it, though. 

The Storm's Lessons

You think you know yourself till you meet that one person.
It is a crazy thing when you meet that person that can drive you to the brink. 
For me, that person was supposed to be this amazing love.  I have never been as high as I was when I was with her and that high drove me to do things that I don't think I ever imagined me doing.  I took rash actions and made some mistakes and alienated the people that really love me.  I was in this state of ignorant bliss.  I saw only the sunshine and paid no heed to the storm that was brewing on the horizon.  Everyone else was handing me umbrellas and telling me to get somewhere safe for a while, to wait out the storm.  But, like the stubborn asshole that I am, I didn't listen.  I didn't pay attention to the advice or the wisdom of people who cared for me....for me.  They didn't have any other agenda or ties to the situation.  They just wanted me to be safe and to stop and think for a minute. 
I wish I had listened. 
And I am glad I didn't. 

It is in those times when a person can learn a lot about themselves....hard things.
I learned I am a selfish man.  I am more stubborn than I thought I was.  I love quickly, trust easily....too easily.  I truly love slowly.  I have a hard time letting anyone in, because I am afraid of being hurt and I am afraid of being disappointing.  I learned that I need to slow down.  I need to lighten up.  I need to actually live in the moment, like I thought I had been doing all along.  I hadn't.  I had been living in the past and in the future.  I learned that I am not an Aries and that is not an excuse for anything.  I am just me.  I can't blame that on the stars or anyone else.  I am the master of my mistakes and the place that I am in and the hurt that I am feeling is the direct result of my actions.  I am accountable.  I am a liar.  I am a cheat. 
Those are hard things to see about yourself. 
I also learned that, although all of that stuff may be true, now that I see it I can make changes.  It's all about what I do now. 

Sometimes I am lonely.  But that is okay.  I am learning to be by myself. 
Sometimes I still make mistakes.  But that is okay.  I can learn from them. 

That person that drives me to the brink still comes around.  She is not what I thought she would be.  My dreams of the perfect woman for me, the woman that would set me free and save me from myself is a driving force behind me learning all of the things that I learned.  She drove me to dark places, and I gladly accepted the ride.  I don't blame her.  I am responsible for my life and my decisions.  I also can't forget the role she played.  I am better in myself now. 
She used to send me into a funk that would last for days.  Now, they last for minutes.  She used to flip out on me and I would be depressed and suicidal.  Now, I shrug it off.  I move on. 
She came around tonight.  She wants something that I don't want and I think that makes her mad.  She tries to reason with me about why I should want it.  She doesn't respect that I don't want it.  I am at a point where I am getting a grip on the things that are good for me and the things that aren't.  She thinks I am still just lost.  She calls me immature and I am in a lot of things.  In this decision, though, I feel that I am actually making a mature choice.  That is why I am so pissed that she can't respect it. 
She said she wants to be my friend. 
I have friends.  They care about me and if I tell them that I am doing something that I need to do, whether they agree with it or not, they back it up.  She doesn't.  I am actually fine with it. 
This feeling, this being fine with it, shows me that I have learned something.  I am getting somewhere.  I have grown. 
Me rejecting her is not the ego trip she accuses me of taking.  I take no pleasure in it.  I do, however, like the fact that I am able to see something that is good for me and to go for it.  It may be a small thing, but it is something.  It is a start. 

I have found a new voice.  My gut.  I am learning to listen to it.  I don't always pay it heed, but I am getting there.  I can recognize the voice.  I listen to it in choir with my heart and my head.  Even though they tend to lean toward dissonance, sometimes they find a harmony.  It is in those times I know I am making a right choice.  Life throws open doors.  We can walk in or walk on.  Our choice, only ours.  No one else can force the door. 

In the past year I have been to some dark places.  It is mostly a blur.  I am coming out now.  I feel better.  I am beginning to hold on to the beautiful seeds in my life.  I hope to grow more, but they are rare.  This rarity makes them worth it and it makes them priceless.  I won't go back to where I was, but I won't forget it.  I won't go back to her, but I won't forget her.  For all the shit I was drowning in, she had an impact on me.  It was positive and negative, but it is mine now.  I have learned and grown from being forced to the edge.

The First Date

I had a date yesterday. 
The dating thing is a really weird part of our culture.  It's full of these expectations of something happening, but you're not sure what.  The spark?  A fun time?  A quick lay?  I have been working hard at not placing these expectations, or any expectations, on people or situations.  It is all part of this thing where I want to get out of my head.  On my date, I succeeded. 
The date consisted of going to the beach followed by dinner.  The beach was her idea and I gave her a lot of credit for originality.  I can't say that I have been on a first date where the majority of the time was spent half naked....well at least not at the start of the date.  It created this kind of vulnerability.  There wasn't much to hide because we didn't have anything to hide behind.  She didn't have makeup to hide her real face.  I didn't have a "date" shirt to accentuate anything.  It was all out there.  It was good.  It was refreshing. 
We talked easily.  Conversation flowed and we laughed.  She touched my arm.  This initial physical contact is a big thing, a sign that the date is going well.  This light, friendly atmosphere carried into dinner. 
I liked her.  She was fun and honest and a bit wild.  She was also really cute.  Beautiful blue eyes and sandy brown hair, a petite body.  I can't say there was a massive spark, but it was fun.  We shook hands to start the date, we hugged to end it. 
I left feeling good.  I left wanting to see her again.  I left planning what the next date could be. 

There seems to be a rule that a guy should sent an message or a call saying that it was fun and blah blah blah the next day.  I did that and it was easy to do.  I did have fun. 
Apparently, she did not have as much fun as I had.  An email message came in tonight.  It was honest.  It was straight forward.  It set down that she had fun, but she didn't have the spark.  She wants the spark.  She wants a husband. 
Disappointed.  I am disappointed.  But, I am okay.  It is amazing how that straightforward honest communication really lifts a burden of not knowing. 
The thing that kills me about dating is the not knowing.  When the new girl seemed to refuse to tell me what was going on in her head, it made me want to pull my hair out.  The rejection sucks.  Believe me, I am totally bummed this woman wasn't interested.  What would have been worse would have been if she hadn't told me.  I know.  I can deal with that.  I am a bit down about it, but I know what I am dealing with and I can handle those emotions.  Tomorrow may be different.  I may get a bit depressed about it.  I think rejection comes with a handful of insecurity to digest as well.  It does seem that right now, I am meeting women pretty regularly.  I can't help but know that someone else will come along and that may work or it may not.  By enjoying the moment and not setting expectations on an unsure future with a person I am able to just be where I am and experience it as it is happening.  The beach was fun.  Dinner was good.  It sucks that it didn't pan out into anything else, but for those few hours I had a good time with a beautiful woman. 

It was good. 
I hope to have more times like that.  I hope that I can hold on to this living for each breath instead of trying to predict what I will be doing next week or month with some person.  Placing an idea of what you wish would happen is a rash thing to do when it comes to people.  Other people are unpredictable to everyone but them. 
This is a tough balancing act.  You can't just ignore those red flags or forget what you know, but you don't have to dwell in them either.  If you feel something, feel it.  It's one of those things that makes us human. 

I think I will have some more first dates. 
I think I will meet some more interesting women.
I think I will enjoy every moment of it.