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.





How to Get Out of an Abusive Relationship

If you are being abused, remember:

• You are not to blame for being battered or mistreated.
• You are not the cause of your partner’s abusive behavior.
• You deserve to be treated with respect.
• You deserve a safe and happy life.
• Your children deserve a safe and happy life.
• You are not alone. There are people waiting to help.

Signs that your abuser is NOT changing:

• He minimizes the abuse or denies how serious it really was.
• He continues to blame others for his behavior.
• He claims that you’re the one who is abusive.
• He pressures you to go to couple’s counseling.
• He tells you that you owe him another chance.
• You have to push him to stay in treatment.
• He says that he can’t change unless you stay with him and support him.
• He tries to get sympathy from you, your children, or your family and friends.
• He expects something from you in exchange for getting help.
• He pressures you to make decisions about the relationship.

If you’re in an abusive relationship

Why doesn’t she just leave? It’s the question many people ask when they learn that a woman is suffering battery and abuse. But if you are in an abusive relationship, you know that it’s not that simple. Ending a significant relationship is never easy. It’s even harder when you’ve been isolated from your family and friends, psychologically beaten down, financially controlled, and physically threatened.

If you’re trying to decide whether to stay or leave, you may be feeling confused, uncertain, frightened, and torn. Maybe you’re still hoping that your situation will change or you’re afraid of how your partner will react if he discovers that you’re trying to leave. One moment, you may desperately want to get away, and the next, you may want to hang on to the relationship. Maybe you even blame yourself for the abuse or feel weak and embarrassed because you’ve stuck around in spite of it. Don’t be trapped by confusion, guilt, or self-blame. The only thing that matters is your safety.

*****

No – it doesn’t matter if you hit him first. His abuse was emotional before it was physical.

Being blunt. Sorry, not sorry. Good friends care about you, whether it upsets you or not.

Please…at the very least… seek help from people who understand what I can’t.

If you can’t leave an abuser, there is a reason why: Emotional damage, and you must come to terms with it. Must. 🌷

Love,

Orson 

So much made of the field of battle. Technological revolutions will do that. At the end of the day it was a simple field between two rows of trees. Was a bright blue day when we saw it in the spring of 1995. Where Henry’s Longbowmen seemed as if they’d be washed over by a tide of French cavalry that greatly outnumbered them. That was the day the Knight died, and took Feudalism with it. The Knights were the French nobility, and their numbers were devastated by arrow fire. Unlike the pleasant afternoon we enjoyed, that day was cold, wet, and muddy. The horses clopped onto the soaked field between the two thick tree lines and tried to charge the English at the top of the hill… but their numbers were too large. Ironic… if they had merely a tenth of their number, the French Knights would have been harder to hit by massed fire, perhaps been more able to maneuver, and actually had a chance. Just a few dozen heavily armored knights getting to the top of the hill would have spelled doom for the English army. But in the mud, they could barely hold formation, and with their numbers, they were packed so tightly they could barely draw their swords. They never had a chance. The best of the best of all of France were mowed down helplessly en masse with wave after wave of that bastard Plunging Fire…and there was nothing they could do about it but look around as everyone died around them as they waited their turn.

Women often complain that chivalry is dead. It wasn’t modern society though, blame the Yeoman. English Archers weren’t even really seen as professional soldiers; most often they were commoners that were commanded to train at the butts one day a week, all day. Drawing the weight of a heavy longbow isn’t for the weak; requiring building up of muscles almost no one else ever uses. But compared to the brightly-colored banners and tabards of the French nobility, more often than not with a good portion of their family’s worth invested in the glistening armor and gear they carried, they were common folk. Nobodies. Feudalism was ended on a soggy October afternoon by a bunch of nobodies. By the end of the Century, the Age of Discovery had begun and Mercantilism began replacing Lords and Barons. 

Asked the folks to bring down the photos from those trips, but they were mixed in with other albums. They found Portsmouth, Cologne, and a few each of Waterloo and Aachen, but Agincourt and Bastogne were nowhere to be found. Need to do some searching. Photos from those days are important. Found so many of us touring Navy ships. Dad always supported me, and when I was dead set in going into the Navy, he took me to bases on both coasts to tour as many ships as we could board. He really cared. Still does. I so wanted to share that with you. 

I don’t know what to do, sweetie. Typed up a bunch of feelings that I don’t want to send and you don’t want to read. None of it matters. You know already, and even sprinkling in some humor won’t make it new.

The song you sent that night hit me really, really hard. 

It hit me hard because… you don’t need to be tougher anymore. You’ve suffered. You’ve hurt. You’ve cried. And… you don’t need that anymore. It doesn’t need to be that way anymore. There is so much more… and I want so badly for your heart to be at ease. For you to be with someone you can breathe deeply and know would never hurt you. Who’d give you in the second half of your life everything that was stolen from you in the first.

Who understood… and if you accidentally reacted out of past pain and dug your talons into him, he’d know you didn’t mean it, knowing some wounds just don’t heal in this world. Being as tough as you want… but never *needing* to be tough again. 

And then…it came out. All of it. Everything I’d held back. I’m still embarrassed.

Look… I hate it too. But this is how it has to be… I just can’t pretend I’m fine with you being with someone who abuses you. No one who cared about you could. Nothing has changed in four years aside from it now being physical abuse instead of just emotional.

I just can’t deal with it. And if our roles were reversed, you would feel the same way.

My negativity would bleed through. It would spoil my words, my thoughts. I’m no good to you if I have negativity in my heart. Eventually we’d fight more and more and one day we’d  leave each others lives in bitterness and ‘good riddance’. 

There is no way in Hell I’m going to let that happen. I have no idea what’s going on now, or in the future… but no, I’m not letting that happen. You are sacred to me. You always have been. Sorry not sorry. 🙂

I want my presence in your life to fill your heart with peace, joy, and vibrance. To do that, I need to find them myself. With my health and career both in shambles, the only way I can do that is to share my thoughts here, and hope you continue to do the same.

I unblocked you after only two weeks. I got every text. Every message. I read your blog every day, though honestly I have to be wary any time you post a picture now.

It made me sick to my stomach to not be there if you truly needed me. I gave you my word, and I will always keep it. Now you know. Please don’t unless you feel you really have to.

For now, this is the way we can share each other’s lives. Please trust me. It has to be this way. I don’t know for how long.

Don’t you ever think I don’t love you, sweetie. 

Orson 🌷

 

This. You’ve wanted to do this for so long; ever since you first heard it searching for D&D music. This is your land. You need a win. Something productive. Something accomplished. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t matter. Nothing is stopping you except wanting to stay inside and sulk in the Holy City. In May.

You need a Win. Any kind of win. Let’s do this… 🙂

LOL everything about this has been a disappointment… but… disappointment layered within disappointment in such a way where it loops like a Mobius. You really don’t know the Bible; never read it as an adult, and no, it’s not just like a novel. A collection of 66 books by numerous different authors spread over, what, a thousand years… Every book is a different story. And…several years back, you thought “Why not find an uplifting one?” Well, yanno, there’s plenty, but for some messed up reason you always identified with the Old Testament more than the New Testament. Maybe it’s the D&D geek in you, or the contrarian when everyone else seems to fixate on the main thing – stuff like the big four gospels and the two Corinthians books where they always seem to draw on. Maybe it’s a Baptist thing. Who knows…

So, fire up the old Internets to find the old “give me a quick summary of what each book is about” one day when you’re in the waiting room at Doctor’s Care back in 2016 or so and ironically you’re drawn more to obscure books in the Old Testament. Began with Habakkuk because you were amused by the idea of a prophet – a true holy man – throwing up his arms in frustration and metaphorically yelling out “What the fuck, God?!? Why are you letting this happen?” Seemed like a great book to draw upon to have an answer to those questions when either posed to you or when you pose them to Him. You even brought it to Bible Study and led for a few weeks. The Bible Project YouTube channel made it easy. Cliff Notes. Truth be told, you wanted to be able to bounce it off the folks there just so you could actually comprehend it. Being unable to even read…well, don’t beat yourself up; you were an idiot, and you’re trying to properly sleep your way out of idiocy.

You saw Ezra also, and the description was:

“The story of the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, and of the rebuilding of the temple.”

Well that actually sounds like a pick-me-up. Something to inspire you; something where things finally went right. Not the gloom-and-doom with a promised silver lining like Habakkuk, or, well…half the other books it seems like…

And…the whole book is actually about grandiose expectations and crushing disappointment. I mean you can’t make this stuff up. 

So much disappointment in the last few years in your life. Everything seems to be as if it’s coming together; like you’re finally getting to where you want to be in life. With your career. With love. With your health. Actually feel like being an honest-to-God forty-something adult that resembles where you thought you’d be. Where Mom and Dad were in the late 80’s. I mean you can’t even comprehend either one of them being as behind as you feel right now… And one by one, all of those inevitabilities were crushed. Some were your fault; some weren’t. But as you often say “There is a difference between ‘fault’ and ‘responsibility’. There is. But, at the end of the day, it’s not one that matters.” 

Yeah, you do think a little too highly of yourself sometimes, but you have confirmation from a few folks that that actually was a pretty wise thing to come up with, lolz…

Ezra. Microcosm. Grandiose moments heralded by an edict from Cyrus of Persia to allow the grand rebuilding of the Temple, after the dark days Habakkuk was warned about in his “Biblical ‘Dafuq?’ Moment.” Yeah, write that term down too, lolz… (apparently you can’t put emojis on posts you do on the computer. Weird…)

I mean according to the Cliff Notes YouTube video… the Book of Ezra even ENDS in disappointment, and the story has to be carried over in the next one. Talk about a Letdown. And… yeah… that’s just how He leads you. That’s the way He rolls. Little signs here and there. He knows where you are. How tired your soul is. How hurt. How frustrated. Everywhere you look yields frustration and you don’t have a clue what to do. Forty-three going on twelve; thanks Mom and Dad for the mortgage payment…and the groceries…and the insurance…and God Willing the the upcoming Mayo Clinic trip.

Meh. Comfort yourself in that you hate being here with every fiber of your being. You will never get used to it, and if you ever do, to hell with you. You’re here to be successful. To be the one that helps others. To be wealthy enough to be able to fund causes you care about and come to the aid of people who need you. And always remember just how much faith THEY have in YOU. Because if you were a loser? Didn’t appreciate them? Didn’t have the need to Pay It Forward? They’d make sure you didn’t starve, but that’d be about it. But they believe in you. So…believe in yourself.

So…find a way to balance that. Something you really suck at. Figure out how to use this feeling as a Riding Crop – just hard enough on yourself that it pushes you to overcome it… but not so hard that you hurt yourself with guilt. It’s messed up; you used to be good at this. Well, at least once, and you’re pretty sure that “most amazing moment in your life” was pretty much just Him throwing you a mulligan. 

Folks are coming over to have Sunday lunch. And the dreaded “how I’m doing with all the crap I need to do” report. Ugh. Asked them to bring down photo albums of 1995’s trips to Europe. They asked you to put together the bills you’ve gotten. Sigh. 

Use it, Atreyu. No matter how much of a failure you feel like in so many aspects of your life… find that balance that you need to get past it. Fight off Ennui. Fight off Anger. Fight off Frustration. Fight off Depression. Fight off Guilt. Fight off Boredom. Fight off Procrastination. Fight off Disappointment. 

Fight off everything between you and where He wants to lead you…

Find balance…

Find vibrance…

Find yourself…

(Insert Smile Emoji because PC interface is weird…)