When you spend over an hour on your thoughts only to try to discard a change because of a typo and the site to mysteriously and completely delete what you’ve been pouring thought into.

Or is it just more likely you can’t hit the right buttons because your brain is still messed up and you hit discard post because you thought it was discard changes? 

How can you even know anymore?  How can you live like this?  Oh sure everyone makes mistakes… And if your life ambitions were to work at Chick-fil-A and not take a job where you actually seriously help other people for a living, it’d be fine.

But you need more. Fine little tight rope you have here. Taking the frustration and channeling it to constructive purposes in such a way where you don’t use it to beat yourself up and get to be more depressed than you already are.

You’re not really sure how much of a chance you gave the sleep shift thing, but whether or not it works, it’s not working right now so find something that will.  Self discipline. Getting up at the same time. Getting into a regimen of a schedule, even if it’s just to sit around and do stuff you want to do.

You try to stimulate your brain with 17-year-old video games, but you use the same strategies as you did during the GWB administration. Shit, you know what? If you’re pissing away all your time… Make a schedule for pissing away your time and hold to it. Why not try that?

Dad gave you another contact. Friend of his at a tech school to talk to you about career things. You haven’t emailed them yet because of pride… as if pride was gonna help you find anything in life after making the same damn mistakes over and over.

Whatevs. Pat yourself on the back for the things that you are doing right. Eating healthier. Small can of veggies with every supper. 10,000 steps at least three times a week. Two months – longer than ever while living alone – without once watching filth. You’d never even accomplished that when you tried to focus all your thoughts on one woman; you eventually broke down and tried to find someone that resembled her and later fell back in the habit. But now there can’t be turning back. Things are just… getting better. You can feel it. Maybe one day you’ll even be attracted to someone that likes you on Match. Your research tells you that’ll take more time though. If you keep getting in shape, who knows… you might be able to live up to responsibilities you refuse to fail at. Let’s face it… It’s not like God doesn’t want you to knock her socks off. He wants you to be able to make her happy. And now… you have given yourself a streak to maintain. Curse your fucking flaws. Whatever… be thankful they’re not worse. 🤔

Going to church every Sunday morning has been really easy, and you have a good reason to do so knowing that you were sharing it with someone who really appreciates it. Even if things get back to normal it still needs to be streamed on YouTube. If they decide they don’t need to do that maybe you can convince them to let you learn how to do it for them. 

Build. Create. For once in your life you have time. Yes you will screw up and accidentally hit discard. It’s okay. You hate making mistakes for many reasons, but an unhealthy one is pride. And yeah it’s really tough to learn right now. You even got confused trying to learn how to clean the stupid gun. Frustrated. Put it off to the side for later.

It’s alright. One step at a time. One area of your life at a time will make things better across-the-board. You’ve kept the mask on when you’ve made it to bed, but with very little to do during the day you sleep so easily.

Whoever she is, wherever she is, she wants you to succeed. Needs you to succeed. Please don’t let yourself die alone. And please don’t settle. That would only lead to resentment, and you really want to share with life with someone and make her the most special woman in the world.

Don’t let anger and frustration consume you anymore. Let God lead you in the direction He wants. Such an easy thing to say and such a hard thing to do. 

Now go to bed so you can be awake for church. And thank God that you finally have someone special to share it with.

Rights. Rights. Rights.

Whatever happened to Road Trips? You used to love the open road. Driving here, there; visiting far-flung friends. Often gaming. Or visiting the folks. Or once in a blue moon visiting a date because the laws of the universe forbid you from ever having a normal relationship with a woman that lived anywhere near you.

Pretty much since the moment you got car keys you LOVED going anywhere. Everywhere. You and two friends heading the 2 hrs to Myrtle Beach because y’all were in the mood for Johnny Rockets.

Fighting insomnia in college by learning the roads of Charleston firsthand at 3 am listening to Diana Ross and Billy Joel. In the mid-90s no less when both were out of style. You rebel. 🤣

Fighting depression over a girl you liked during Christmas break ’97 by finding out where I-77 went. LOL your poetic BS… it happened led to the redhead you’d dated freshman year that was in Cleveland and was happy to help you get past her.

LOL volunteering earlier to drive said girl all the way to Atlanta for Halloween because she was a freshman and didn’t have a car and really wanted to go home. Really kind since you had to work the next day and couldn’t spend Halloween there with her. Five ours there and back. But damn you loved driving. 😊

And then there was the epic road trip of road trips in 2002 – Getting everything ready and picking up your then-girlfriend up from work at 5pm… picking some stuff up at the apartment and heading north… needing to be in Buffalo New York in a specific church pew (That you would have to locate in an age before Smart phones) the next day at 12 noon. You could allow yourself one hour of sleep in a West Virginia motel room. No of course she couldn’t split time; You could never date a girl that has a car.

Even now looking back at it you still have no idea how you pulled it off; The two of you walking in to the wedding just before the bride came down the aisle. Sleep was pretty good that night. At least you picked up another friend there and could split time driving on the way back.

LOL your baby Cougar was sick so you had to rent a car and picked a convertible Sebring. Thought it would be neat to have a convertible for a weekend. And somehow you literally drove from Charleston to Buffalo literally all night somehow never getting out of the apparently America-wide downpour.

You just miss those days. Now you’re just older and wiser and can’t justify driving 2 hours to Columbia to visit the barber that you had for 20 years anymore lolz.

And like so many things, they’re no fun alone. Outside of visiting friends in Lancaster or maybe some in Columbia, The road trips just are too far out these days. Because if you go somewhere it has to be to see someone. What? Are you going to go to Myrtle Beach and take in a pirate show by yourself?

Nothing is stopping you from getting in your car and heading to Charlotte to visit one of those spiffy high-end malls… well… but money. And yeah you could spend the money if you had somewhere to crash, but…  there’s just that feeling…

That feeling of bliss and contentment driving home late at night in the Cougar with the windows down… The cold air whipping by at 80 miles an hour having had a great time just going somewhere and spending some time with someone you cared about.

Mentally preparing to be alone again? Almost definitely. Well sometimes you talked to God. A lot of other times you formulated D&D adventures. But there was always that common thread… you under the open sky late at night with few cars on the road always with a sense of contentment. The cooler the air, the better. And when it actually was winter time you just turned the floor heat on full blast lolz.

You have lived alone for the overwhelming majority of your adult life and even when you were a kid you were an only child and for the most part played by yourself. Wow yeah since you left high school, you have had roommates for a grand total of about seven years… out of 25. Three of those were living in the dorms.

But there at least just used to be the days when you can ask someone if they want to just go somewhere for the day. The smooth meditation driving was a more than adequate substitute, But you always came back to an empty place.

You lament this stuff, but where would you like to go? Let’s hear it. You could visit some friends in Greenville. Some in  Lancaster. Columbia. You could probably even do another road trip to good old Reston Virginia; see your friend up there. What? You’ve been bitching to yourself for about an hour about wanting to drive and now that you stop and think you don’t want to drive?

No… You know what the deal is. you are ashamed of your current circumstances you don’t want to be around so many of the friends you have known and respected for so long. You’ve gone through that before. It seemed like a much longer period of time that it was in retrospect. And yeah sure don’t beat yourself up over medical issues you can’t control at this point… but just take stock of what that is – pride. The bad kind, if it keeps you from spending time with people you love and care about.

Bottom line is you need purpose in life, and until you are independent again you don’t have the means. You hate being a burden (good) as much as you hate even feeling looked down on (bad).

Hell right now you can’t even go camping and sleep overnight without a massive extension cord for the stupid machine. Waiting sucks. Going solo through the adventure of life sucks.

You know all those roads. Been up and down them more than you could even imagine imagining. What you might just crave…is new experiences on them.

Don’t let it turn you bitter though. All those late night songs heading home in the Cougar bathed in moonlight going 80 made you feel… like you. Then you felt bad because you knew… there was someone out there that was really missing out. 

That’s what you need to find again. 🙂

Sell some stuff. Go somewhere. You need to. Bring a God. 😂

You like you. Something is telling you you need to remember why. Which means something is bothering you on a level you’re not perceiving. Even if you know what it is. 🤔

You’re not lost; but there’s no reason not to at least get out. You always came back happier. 🙂 This period of your life won’t be short… but like the last one, it will feel much longer than it actually is. Take heart in that. And it could always be worse, lolz…

 



You stood there as almost all the members of Dad’s side of your small family woke up to assemble. You were ‘on watch’, waiting for the inevitable. Grandmama was already never going to wake up again, but her heart was going to pretend otherwise long enough for everybody to arrive. Different groups slept in different areas thanks to sibling rivalries that wouldn’t even take a break to mourn one woman that everyone loved, but that’s just life.

That tiny little room was loud. Oxygen machine that was apparently powered by a chainsaw hooked up to her made it tough to even talk in that room. But you still knew the look on the nurses face when she turned to you after it had started beeping when she said “it’s time”.

Straight to Dad and the two words repeated. Mom. Lana. Heather. Lauren. And so on. Everyone woke up quickly enough because it’s not like anyone was really sleeping despite being three days in. The loud machine noise. The beeps becoming more sporadic. When everyone was in the room the nurse turned it off and reached down to hold her right hand. Someone else held her left though you’ve forgotten who. The nurse held the right hand with both of hers to provide warmth and human contact to know when the pulse had retired.

It feels like that is a moment that ought to have lasted an eternity but it wasn’t very long at all. At most 5 to 10 minutes. The nurse was far more professional than empathetic, and you have to admit that for some reason that actually helped. You were close enough to hear her over the machine “that’s it”… Or something like that. Could barely hear her. No “sorry for your loss”; Just a professional – though still very human - Delivery Of the news you all had expected four weeks in general and days now in specific, before Moving off to the side to make room as she stepped over to the machine that you couldn’t imagine this room without now. The transition of a loved one from alive to dead had no effect on you because you couldn’t tell due to her coma.

But it was then that the moment happened you will never forget. it’s not like anyone knew what to say even if they could say anything, But then the nurse reached over and turned off the oxygen to grandma’s now corpse.

Absolute deafening rumble instantly became absolute deafening silence. With but one exception.

It was a high-end hospice nursing home room with generic Decor, and with the rumbling of the oxygen machine finally silenced a sound that had been there all along obscured by it.

Tick. Tick. Tick Tock. The faint sound blared nonetheless in the utter silence of a little white wall clock.

There are occasionally moments where you realize truths in life in very easy to understand ways… And then there are the moments when reality flexes its muscles and hits you as hard as it can right between the eyes.

It had been there all along. You couldn’t hear it because of the man-made efforts to prolong her life, But then it came fullbore into your consciousness.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

You didn’t feel bad for grandmama in the slightest. Long, good life. Sure a bad marriage to a wife-beating bastard before she finally kicked him to the curb, but two wonderful children and two wonderful grandchildren – three if you count yourself, lol. You don’t remember ever seeing her face not smiling. And she died in peace in her late 80s surrounded by her loved ones.

So what about you? Tick. What plans do you have for the second half of your life? Tock. You beat yourself up constantly feeling as if you haven’t come anywhere close to living the kind of life you could have lived. Tick. But as you look around at people leaping into mistakes you didn’t make you think your lucky stars sometimes you are here and not somewhere far worse. Tock.

Ironic that one of the wisest takes on the concept of time you got from one of the lesser beloved Star Trek movies where Picard describes time not as an enemy, but a companion that we take along the way  of our journey through life. As you actually grow a beard for the first time you see so many ‘blonde’ hairs and try to take your own advice for once.

You hear the Tick and the Tock. Here now your life is in stasis as your next steps and challenges are decided for you by people hundreds of miles away… take heart in the bad decisions you didn’t make every time you limit the good decisions you missed out on.

Every single thing is a product of the journey that you have taken through life. Sure you could’ve done better.  Could have done worse. But you are who you are because of the decisions that you have made one way or another. Your experiences have made you who you are… and growing older and wiser teaches you that you need to be…more… now.

Because… it’s time. 🙂

And while Time has now begun to tap you on the shoulder like the slave once did to the victorious Roman general… it is not a reminder of regret… but so you cherish each moment as best you can, so that when all is said and done… The time you have spent here on this world will have had meaning. And so long as there was one person whose life has been improved by you being in it… it will. 🙂🙏🕊

For the first time I will record our conversation. Watch your language. 😊

Dear Lord,

I stand before You for the 20th time Here and what is still the site of My greatest temporal victory. Thanks to your light and the wisdom you gave me. Thanks to you I conquered doubt, fear, laziness, and strife. I overcame obstacles that I had never escaped from undamaged, and even then managed to lose my way only to see in time you moving my world to save me each time I realized it. Seeing your hand in my life as plain as day, but only when I knew I had failed you and asked for help.

And for each and every one of the 19 times between then and now, Our conversation has begun the same way.

I am lonely, Lord. Please send me my Eve, to bring to my life meaning.

I am unfulfilled, Lord. Please send me my Career to bring to my life purpose.

There was a third prayer for a time, but I ceased being worthy to ask.

Ironic that I chastise Crow for endless cycles. Or not, because I’ve sadly known them even more than she has.

I’ve never even been in a fleeting relationship when the window of May 14 has come around. Although last year for The first time I felt I was on a track towards a career at least.

Do I celebrate that or mourn it?

It’s May 14. Celebrate 🙂

As I walked across the stage that day my whole life was ahead of me. I was filled with promise – and potential. Year after year, it slowly wasted away. Arrogance and anger. Lust and sloth. Of all the areas of my life I had sought to be more than I was, I have failed in literally every single one of them.

Walking around campus in the nicest clothes I have with a $14 cigar to celebrate my failure.

Or not. 🙂 I like looking good and I like my Ashton’s. If that’s failure, I wallow in it just to spite it.

I stand here to celebrate my blessings. To be thankful for them. Because the one area of my life I Forgot to place expectations on myself that day is the one area of my life is the one area I have to be the most thankful for. I look back at the different universes different decisions could have led me too and see potentially painful divorces. Substance abuse. imprisonment. Self righteous hatred of others. Being dead in the gutter.

I see temporal success. Temporal happiness. All bereft of meaning. Because I never stopped to give myself expectations for my relationship with You.

And yes I have so many regrets when it comes to Roads not taken. give me the chance to pick one at random, Though, and I would stay right here.

Honestly don’t know why. It’s not like I’m a very good Christian. But I feel with every fiber of my being that my relationship with You – as flawed and broken as it is – Is the one thing that’s so far I’ve been reasonably successful at. 

And it takes some real arrogance to say that. Successful? Really? Well, now that I’m reading your word again I read about David and Bathsheba.. and realize I’m not doing that bad. Yes even now.

I gave my soul to you. Well back to you. My mind fails you. My heart fails you. here I am supposed to live my life for you and most days go by without me even thinking about you until it’s time to say a blessing.

Mind failure. Soul picks up the slack And we talk for a bit. Why it’s there. 🙂 I pine for someone I can’t have for hours on end and my thoughts turn negative. Angry.  crossing the line at thoughts of Violence I never want to have again. The line between noble protectiveness and selfish jealousy smashed into oblivion. Soul picks up the slack. I ask for forgiveness. Well, most of the time. 🤔

Mind and heart. Career and love. What you have chosen to assist me in avoiding, Much to my chagrin that things don’t just magically work out the way that I worked out the first year I stood here in victory.

I have told you so many times that I cannot wait to stop this stupid tradition. For me to replace this day with the day of my wedding as the happiest day of my life.

And here I am, literally unable to comprehend how others who know you can’t get past themselves to find you. They haven’t seen what I’ve seen. And only with CS Lewis’s masterpiece The Great Divorce was I able to put a finger on why.

So in the one area of my life where I am actually meeting any level of success… And I cannot share you with people I care about… I fail at the only thing I’m actually supposed to be good at.

I claim that this is the only area of my life I am remotely successful. And then fail. Thank you for letting the soul pick up the slack.

And here I am now on the 20th anniversary. Now wounded yet again with self-inflicted wounds brought forth from my own anger and pride and ignorance.

I have wasted 20 years. Wasted. Don’t get me wrong I’m thankful for what I do have that you’ve given me, but the point of having your other half is to be balanced so I can help others by serving You. The point in being successful  is that I can help others by serving you.

At 43, the task of retooling my career to start over in a world so different then the age of Chumbawamba there’s already monumental. And now I have stolen from myself the ability to even learn.  I draw comfort from the fact that now that I have let wisdom replace stupidity it will heal, but… Time is no longer a luxury.

Nor is it yet an enemy, but I sit here… frozen in every aspect of my life save aging… hoping the healing that is taking place will allow me to soon be able to finally start taking care of my parents instead of the other way around.

You showed me Psalms 80. Yes. It helps.  I know you’re here. I know you always have been. I know you have a plan. And I know that I will not accomplish anything until I place my mind and my heart where my soul is.

My mind is easier and harder at the same time.  The key is self discipline; definitely one of my worst flaws. Nowhere near as bad as some people, But bad enough to keep me out of balance.

My heart is new. Raw. Much like the old one, if the deep wounds’ blood calcified into armor. Counterproductive considering the prayers made about five years ago. It had been 16 years since it Truly felt alive. My fear was that I couldn’t feel exhilaration anymore. You have to be able to feel pain to feel exhilaration in love. And I have not met anyone since Flame that could hurt me.

I remember asking you for pain One drunken, lonely night. “Please let me know that I can still feel my heart racing for a woman. So I can know that I can still feel alive. I don’t want to settle. For whatever reasons, being a selfish, noble or a combination of both.” Something stupid like that.

Well, ask you shall receive. Had to give that heart away in exchange for that prayer being answered. The new heart being forged under plunging fire in a sea of tears… it’s strong. Better armored. Far more willing to fire back, But far more indebted to the soul that must and will keep it in check.

There have been plenty of May 14ths that have come and gone with the promise of a new day in someway shape or form. Well this one actually guarantees it for once for better or worse.

This one is the first true major turning point in my life that I will have had since sitting in that chair in that room as I lost forever the grounds to ask for a child.

And here I stand, now having violated the promise I made to you so long ago out of absolute fear after having feltplain as day You in that room deliberately keeping me from her that first night, then afterwards sending me into a wilderness in which it didn’t even matter anymore and I followed up by doing things I would never have imagined because I just didn’t care. 

My heart holds You responsible. It wasn’t supposed to be 17 years for me to find my other half. And I watched so many of my friends do as they pleased… and almost all of them are now in loving family relationships – have not given a crap what your Commandments were.

And the soul picks up the slack. 

You are responsible. And I trust you enough to understand you have your reasons. For the 20th year in a row.

And now I can’t imagine being with a woman that doesn’t set my heart on fire. And I wont. I’d rather die without passion than live pretending it’s there.

If any of this must be changed so that I may fit better into your stupid plan, give me the strength and wisdom to change it.

I now finally know again what it is like to be willing to change myself for love. And so long as the love is true… I have no regrets whatsoever.

A good man does absolutely anything within his power to make his wife happy. I have seen this in so many good men. Sometimes to the extent it backfires because they don’t realize what makes her happy. Especially when she doesn’t have a clue either, lolz 😂

I have only met two women at two very different times in my life that I deemed worthy. And now by sheer coincidence both of them are in my life again, Each Sealed away in one way or another. One I can’t tell how I really feel without crushing her feelings; The other I can’t tell how I really feel without her crushing mine.

So be it.  you made it clear as day long ago that I was not meant to have the normal relationship with a woman that my dad has.

There is literally nothing I can do.

But focus on bringing balance to my mind, my career, and letting your will play out for everything else.

I pray tonight for restoration. Of my mind, body and tired soul.

I pray for clarity in better understanding your will so I don’t waste my now even more precious time left fighting it. 

I pray for those dearest to me to find their way to You because of the turmoil in their lives that I don’t have because my soul always picks up the slack.

And most importantly… I pray to you in thanks… for this stupid childish tradition. Because it is what gave me my soul to begin with.

And for every last one of my uncountable blessings that I have no right to squander by failing to put You first.

Next year. Same time. Same place.

Until the happiest day of my life is finally replaced at last.

In Jesus’ name.

Amen.

Now to pick up a Coke for my rum.

Oh…. and thanks for the cat. 👊😊









1) Not knowing what to do.

2) 

3)

😔

1) Not knowing what to do.

2) 

3)

😔

What do you do when you are misunderstood in different arguments but each of you are so sick of the arguments that you realize it’s counterproductive to try to clarify it?

Nothing. 🙂

Greater picture always gets muddled in any conversation because any conversation by definition is the smaller picture. It’s ironic that so many greater overall influences in emotion can override even a good or bad mood. 

When she finally reached out to you in true need, you could feel that need. Everything changed, because deep down somehow you were able to shelve your frustration and the fact you knew nothing would change. That was good; which means it wasn’t you that gave you that serenity. Your heart was calmed so you could be there for her.

You still don’t know what to make of anything in the grand scheme. But you know how negative your feelings have become. Negative? A far more fair word than ‘angry’. A lot of the little stuff you haven’t even talked to her about because it serves no purpose, but still impacts you. Online dating is impossible. No one is even remotely like her; though that’s ironic because your feelings for her have changed too. What bearing does that have on anything other than to cause problems for you?

Fortunately it doesn’t matter right now because you are sidelined when it comes to dating anyway, and you have your hands full with health concerns in the meantime. So at the very least you don’t have that pressure on you.

Whatever. You’re just sick of it. Three dreams in one afternoon and you couldn’t even escape the frustration when you slept. Haven’t had any dreams of any kind since, so maybe you were just on one that day.

If there is something you have learned from the research you have done though it is that the damage to you – though lesser – is also real.

Best bet is for you to just find anything else to talk about. You will do that as best you can, because that’s what you both want.

She might not know what you meant,  but she knows how you feel. And most importantly, your limits. Yes, you actually get to have limits too. Everyone does.

Give her some credit and trust in God. Everything makes sense with that in retrospect. If she is truly in need, you truly need to be there, and He will truly be there for you.

So go easy on the day-to-day and make yourself easier to get along with. The negativity pisses you off and it needs to go. She is sacred to you, so the last thing you want is for there to be negativity in the way.

But know your limits, because this is coinciding with the slow changes in your life you need to make - something that’s scared the crap out of you for many years.

You used to be a real arrogant bastard. It really messed you up, and you learned your lesson, but way too hard. Now that Flame is back in your life you have come to realize that so much of the mythology you concocted was simply that. Either that hasn’t fully hit you or it wasn’t nearly as damaging as it seems that ought to have been. You know that you’ve been missing something for a very long time.

That means you are going to have to find a way to tap back into what you have avoided like the plague for so long. Your confidence in many things has been superficial, especially now.

So much of that “you” you left behind. Well you need some of it back. Not much. Just enough. 

Good news is you see the cognitive issue as something to overcome, and it has been a very long time since you had something tangible like that. Use it to overcome and build confidence.

And then keep building until you find Resilience… then stop. There is only one definition of self-respect, and you need to achieve it. That doesn’t mean feeling good about who you are. Feelings are fleeting. It means being in balance in your world, and thus at peace. You don’t get to define reality; you need the wherewithal to understand it so you can find your true path.

And vibrance.

Today needs to be a good day. If not,  whatever. Then tomorrow will need to be a good day. If not, whatever. Rinse, lather, repeat.

And while you do have a really really comfortable recliner and sofa, but good days don’t happen spending most of your time in them.

It’s okay, Atreyu. Literally everything is alright. There’s no reason for your blood pressure to be a problem. There is also no reason for you to deny the fact that your blood pressure is again becoming a problem.

There’s a lot that “you don’t need right now”,  but there’s also a lot you do. 🤔

Find more balance. You’re already making a little progress on your eating and exercise. Build on that. This time slowly. Make it a part of your lifestyle instead of a goal to meet and then let creep back up.

Get past your anger at God. It’s beyond counterproductive because deep down you trust Him more than yourself; so it’s not gonna drive you away but at the same time it doesn’t do any good.

Now would be a good time for the Celt to come home, though that does sound scary. She’s good at helping inspire you, when she’s not frustrating you. 

Now, find a way of being productive today. 🤔

And if you insist on holding that everyone else needs to “just get over themselves”… then ya darn well better do the same. 🤣



You are under no obligation to hurt for no reason.

You are under no obligation to pretend there is no problem when there is one, and it hurts you.

You are under no obligation to be there for someone on a conditional basis – defined by either one of you.

You are under no obligation to sacrifice your well-bring in the form of bottled-up stress, for someone else to demand to ignore it.

And most importantly – no one is obligated to any of this regarding you, either.

Blame yourself for the actions that you have committed – but only those actions. Hold others accountable for the actions they have committed.

Do not ignore wrongs committed against you, regardless of the wrongs you may have committed. If forgiveness is asked, grant it; just as you would hope forgiveness was granted to you.

But in either case, do not forget.

Do not forget that to ask for forgiveness also means that you strive to avoid committing the same wrongs. And that means taking steps to find ways of stopping them – and each of us must see clearly our own lives, faults, and truths before we can do the same for others.

There is no more greater virtue in this world than Truth. 

When you don’t know what to do, and you feel locked and trapped by your feelings, you must think outside the box, and find another way of looking at things so you can see the truth for what it is.

Each of us is our own worst enemy. We want what we can’t have, and the more we struggle, the worse we make it for ourselves, and the more it hurts.

We are under no obligation regarding each other in life but what we choose; our obligation first and foremost must be to Truth.

Otherwise, we don’t deserve self-respect, much less happiness. And without true Self-Respect – not its evil twin Arrogance – we can never have what we want. Because what we want doesn’t exist.

Either place your trust in God, or in yourself. In Reality, or Fantasy. In Truth, or in Falseness. In Selfishness, or Self-Respect.

You can’t control the world. If you haven’t figured that out by now, it is your responsibility to find a way to figure it out. That requires you to stop making the same mistakes and start listening to others who can help you.

It’s not like your problems are unique. There are others who understand what it is like to feel trapped by one’s feelings, and to know how they can hold one’s life completely in check.

If you want to be there for someone you claim you care about… you must be right with yourself first. 

Because you are the only one you can change. 

Be true, or be wrong.



You remember it plain as day. You were in a dreadful depression for a while thanks to stupid little decisions that you kept making and they kept  causing a problem for your grades. What’s really funny is that in retrospect you don’t even remember what most of them were. So much of it was self doubt, most of the rest was simply failing to prepare. Economics is a very highly complex science and much of it is theoretical. Different aspects and different systems. Different models and different variables. All plugged into varying scenarios knowing that any one scenario involves utilizing more than one model and trying to figure out which is the priority.

You got torched in so many courses because you failed to prepare and didn’t really sit down and chew on what you needed to learn. Eventually you have to start re-taking courses you got D’s in just to up the GPA. Tremendous frustration because they average to the grades rather than replacing them, so if you got an A the second time around, The D and the A averaged to a C+… which is wrong because you got an A! It just took you taking it again.

So there you are with an A knowledge of a subject but treated like you only have a C+ knowledge of the subject. That’s pretty shitty for university to do considering you’re the one paying for it and it cost you a shit ton of money to take a course again just to get a better grade. It’s your time and your money. That’s plenty cost to pay for screwing around the first course.

Depression built on that… you would take a course hoping to up your GPA and you might take a hit in midterms from failing to prepare as much as you needed, and before you knew it you were behind the eight ball because just getting a C didn’t do much good. And every C you got would make it even harder to dig yourself out of the hole.

So if you took a course three times, you would never get out what you needed of it even by getting an A.

And for what? Because jackass ivory tower intellectual Decided that if you can’t figure it out during their allotted time you don’t deserve your degree…. But they deserved to the reap the financial reward of you trying over and over like you were struggling in quicksand of you paying them semester after semester.

It still pisses you off, and rightfully so because that is lawsuit material like you have never heard of. But still you took responsibility for your actions by signing on the dotted line, and there you were.

Late 97 or early 98… Banking. The same 300 level course that dad told you bit him so badly at Clemson; he got a D and was thankful to just get out of there. Torched you even worse. You still remember the final exam. You studied and you thought you were ready to give it a fighting chance, despite the fact that it was going to be seriously tough to overcome how bad the rest of your grades have been all semester… and after waiting an hour for the sake of your dignity so you wouldn’t be the first to turn it in, you turned in the final exam blank with a simple note to Dr. Clary that you would see her next semester.

Be straight with yourself, Atreyu. You had given up. Seriously. As far as you were concerned,  you had no plan. You had no idea how you were going to make it out. And you kept digging yourself into a hole.  taking some elective business administration courses helped some; bringing in a couple of B’s, but then you got bit by the intermodals and another C and D.

Spring of 98 honestly the smartest thing for you to do was cut your losses and leave school. You were spending way too much money per semester to even dream of being able to graduate. You were better off taking that money and trying to restart at a tech school or something. See if you could find a way to just get everyone to ignore the massive failure that you had dug yourself into.

That sinking feeling in your heart that you are so fucking familiar with begin to introduce itself to you. The one that you really don’t feel when you think about it…. but you know it’s always there. Impending loss. Failure.  like living on savings and slowly watching it disappear… wondering what’s going to happen when it’s all gone.

Mom and dad took you to lunch and you were trying to vent as they tried to listen. You said “I Just don’t feel motivated anymore.” Dad said “Then you need to GET motivated!” One of the biggest captain obvious moments you could ever imagine but it actually did happen to you at some restaurant, lolz.

Dad was retired Army reserve. Lieutenant Colonel, 28 years in. Executive VP of his company. He didn’t live in a world where you can depress yourself into failure. It was just an alien concept to him, and he was absolutely no good to you in terms of helping, probably for the first time in your life… and he didn’t know how to process that.

Your trauma – if you can even call it that – was a result of diagnosed chronic depression, determination to avoid the resources of the college provided to those with attention deficit disorder, and a fixation on denial… to which a counselor told you was the natural response of many people to stress – focusing on things that don’t matter to avoid stressing over the things that do… and thus making them worse.

That shit was real though, and you have never gone through anything like it before. You’re pretty intelligent and breezed through high school without much effort; you’d never had to fight your inherent weaknesses that way before.

It pretty much took direct action by God Himself after all of that cost you Flame (well maybe; maybe not now that she finally got her side of it), but God isn’t the one that finally rocked midterms. God isn’t the one that actually sat down and did what you knew you always could have done. You were. God can show you the way but it’s meaningless if you don’t do your part.

But you did, so here you are. Yay.

Different people have different weaknesses. You have yours; and they are fairly mild thanks to blessings you’ve lost count of. Others have wounds that are far deeper. Leading them to places in retrospect so much worse than mere quicksand depression.

You remember staring at the phone with utter disgust as an ex-girlfriend who was trying to be friends with you went back to her boyfriend who hit her. Lil Cathy. She really wanted to be with you, and your time together was fun but… just wasn’t really a good idea, and she really had let herself go while she was married to the guy in the Navy. She and a friend were visiting and her boyfriend at the hotel punched her. You, her friend and one of yours got her out of there and to your friends house  where she’d be safe for the night. She hadn’t even really been with the guy for that awfully long, but to hear it this was the first time it’d happened.

In your mind there is only one logical conclusion; dump the bastard. It’s not like you wouldn’t make sure she got back to Virginia separately. Problem solved.

So the next afternoon when you get off work and heard she had just gone back to him and the two of them left together… she fell into the category so many girls in high school had. Fucking stupid.

I mean you had had it with the nice guy schtick. You’d tried be there to comfort so many girls who just wouldn’t leave jerks, but never physical abuse because A guy hitting a girl was an instant relationship kill in your mind.

To this day you have contempt for poor Cathy. Last you heard she got married. Hopefully to someone else.

You really do have utter contempt for women staying with jerks. You accept that jerks are jerks. You understand they are obstacles through the course of life, and by your nature you are protective and supportive of others. You cannot comprehend certain things through the lens of anything other than absolute fucking stupidity.

Fascinating.

All these years… and you never tied it together with dad and “getting motivated.”

It is objectively clear to you that abusers need to be tossed. It’s not even a question, and frankly you don’t have an ounce of respect for anyone that keeps sticking their hand in what they know is a wood chipper. Simply put… you honestly just don’t have time for that kind of bullshit.

Neither did dad, for a different kind of bullshit.

To people who are emotionally or physically abused, they know what the deal is. They’re not stupid. They understand full well what’s happening but they can’t get past their feelings of coping… just like you couldn’t get past your quicksand of depression.

So… you have two choices. You wash your hands of people in need like you did with Lil Cathy… or you try to find a way to understand the hidden problem that they keep fighting and losing to. 

Your judgment was sunk in a swamp of sadness before God came to you like Falkor from above to save you. As you struggle to come to terms with this realization, two things become clear. You are no Falkor, and if you care, you’re going to have to learn about overcoming wounds you’ve been blessed to never have.

This isn’t the first terrible relationship she’s been in. She seems to gravitate towards them – and she needs help from people that understand a hell of a lot more than you ever will what her quicksand is.

Pray. And learn what she needs from you. She’s not stupid, so stop acting like she’s stupid. She’s wounded. Deeply, and probably for a lot longer than she realizes. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it but learn how best to support her.

And that means shelving your frustration. So yeah… definitely start with prayer.

And if you can’t get past it, do what you need to not make it worse.

Just like dad did for you.

 Start here. https://www.thehotline.org/2017/02/16/supporting-someone-returning-to-abusive-relationship/

And here.

https://www.thehotline.org/2016/09/21/why-do-i-love-my-abuser/

Now… shut the fuck up about it until you have a better idea.