The little insanities of life

Ever wonder why certain people do certain things, over and over again? Like, I was just thinking about this friend of mine who does all these incredibly self defeating things, over and over again. I sort of understand why he does these things, what I can't understand is why it still feels ok to continue to do self defeating things to himself after all these years.

But then I look at my own life and see the self destructive patterns and think, what's worse, my self destructive patterns or his? Of course, we all know that it's all relative. I guess it just appears to me that his patterns are more painful than mine. I don't know, I guess he has a higher threshold for pain than I do. Or maybe his experience of the things he does to himself are less painful to him than they would be if they happened to me. I dunno.

In his case, I do know that he has always been seeking out extremes in experience. So have I in my own special way. Mine are more of a sexual nature, looking for extremes in experience. His has been more life experience extremes. Extremes in human experience. Raw, violent, graphically emotional experiences. When I think about it, mine is not much different a need to experience, I just chose things less graphic to experience. I still want the raw human emotion though. I just don't need to see the carnage of war or a tsunami to experience those emotions. I'll take gut wrenching, heart ripping, suicidal relationships with psychopaths over carnage on a vast scale, for $800 Alex. Any old day of the week.

Anywho....

On a lighter note, it's New Years Eve at the moment. It's actually early in the AM on NYE, and I have yet to go to sleep from December 30th, so technically to me it's still Friday, December 30th 2005 at the moment. But I figure I will not get a chance to post here again until after the new years celebratory events, so I better post now. There is however, less than 24 hours left in this fucked up year of 2005. Thank fucking god. Considering that I believe that time and space is all relative and in the grand scheme meaningless, Gregorian  (or any) calendar year changes mean very little to me.

On an even lighter note, I gave Alyssa a nickname today. She had been looking for a nickname for sometime (in her words, years). We tried Aly out, but it wasn't fitting very well. Al of course was totally out of the question. So this morning (or at some point in the last 24 hours) I came up with Alec. She loved it. She loved it. Frankly, so do I.

I told her earlier this week that I actually loved her name, Alyssa. I thought it was a beautiful name. But it was not very fitting for a boy like her. I can relate, Jeanette is not a very fitting name for me either. I hate it. Which is why I do not use it anymore. J works just fine for me thank you very much. So now Alyssa can become Alec. I have a feeling that for some time to come that I shall be the only one calling her Alec. But I will be working on it... after all I made it up, it's my job to get everyone to call her that now. I managed some how to get everyone to call me J, if I can do that, I can do the other.

Well, it's time for bed. Happy fucking New Year everyone. Truly, I do wish everyone prosperity and unconditional love and happiness in this life experience.  It's just I wish it for you all the time. May your blessings be many. May the desires of your heart find their way to you soon and remain with you always.

Peace out my friends.

Pleaseant Festive holiday event!

Christmas was not too shabby. I got so much more than I ever expected. I was seriously stoked. Sue has pretty much figured out after all these years exactly what will float my boat.

I got way too much to mention here, but suffice to say, she did good and I am happy.

Thanks sweetheart. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. I love you more than you will ever know. Hope you liked your presents too.  

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do....

I just wanted to mention that Jay started taking T two weeks ago tomorrow. Tomorrow he should be doing the second of a life time of injections.

He called me earlier this week asking me to look something up online about how often you can take your dosage of T without liver damage. From some minor research, I let him know that once every two weeks was the right amount of time between dosages. What I noted from that conversation was that his voice, after only 7 days was beginning to deepen.

It was interesting to listen to the subtle change. I am most interested in our next communication. I will be searching for those changes in him. The subtle changes that only someone close to him could detect. I am most anxious to see how he progresses.

He is doing what I have never had the guts to do. I never had to the guts to cut off my family completely.  His family, not unlike mine is extremely ultra right wing, ultra conservative fundamentalist christian. To  become who you really are, you must be willing to release them from your life. They will never accept you for who you are, so the only option is to let them all go forever. I have never had the guts to do that. Waiting around for my parents to die off does not seem to be an option for me. I think I am actually going to die before either one of them actually expire.

You are a braver man than I my friend. My hat is off to you. Hope I hear from you tomorrow dude.

Standing on the mountain top.....

....and it's all down hill from here.

Ok, it sounded good momentarily. Like a good opening line or something. Not so sure about that right at this second. Not sure what my point was in the first place.

Have you ever noticed I don't necessarily have a point? There's no point tonight either.

I have been taking these hormone supplements the last few weeks. I am not sure they are working, but one of the possible side effects is that my voice could deepen and beard growth could develop. My voice is already deep, so you might be hard pressed to tell if there was any subtle change or not. My beard however should be something you could tell a difference in pretty easily. I already shave. No big deal there. I don't think I am noticing any difference in the beard department either.

Anyway, this stuff I am taking is supposed to give you back your strength. Apparently somewhere along the way as menopause waltzed through my life and left me hormone-less, I lost my physical strength. Things that had been so simple for me to lift and carry have become burdens for which I must reach out to others to help me with. This might not bother other people, but I have tended to be rather self sufficient for most of my life. For whatever my reasons, I have chosen to do most things by myself, seldom asking for help and then only when it was absolutely necessary.

These last few years have been a nightmare for someone like myself. Someone so used to going it alone, being such a loner, being the one who was always there for others. I find it almost impossible to ask for help. Having this self image of total self sufficiency, this weakening of my physical self has been more than I can comprehend. Hence the hormone supplements. I want my old self back. I keep telling myself I am still far too young to have lost so much strength.

If you have followed along in this journal over the last two years, you might recall the story of my second grade teacher Mrs. Carpenter and my hermit story. When Mrs. Carpenter asked us kids to get up and tell the class what our ambitions in life were (what we wanted to be when we grew up), I said I wanted to be a hermit. You know, if a 7 year old said they wanted to be a hermit to me, I would be amazed at the fact they even knew what a hermit was and could use that particular noun in context to a life goal. I would think the child brilliant. But hey, that's just me. Mrs. Carpenter got exceedingly pissed off at me for saying that in her class. But it was my truth at that exact moment.

To this day, it's actually been a goal of mine. To be left alone by a world that is pretty fucked up. My desire to not live in a world and with other beings who are cold and cruel. As you can see, I have not succeeded very well in obtaining this goal. Although part of my desire to live in the place I live in is based on my need to get as close to that goal as possible.

By the age of 7, I was seriously entertaining thoughts of suicide. Intertwined in my fantasies of living alone and far away from the cruelty of other humans, were thoughts of death, the ultimate escape from their cruelty. It seemed the ultimate to me at the time anyway. I had elaborate plans on how my death would occur. As you can see, I failed miserably with those goals just as I failed in my goal to become a self sufficient hermit.

I have always held people far away from me, never really letting anyone in completely. I assume that most people do something similar. I don't know because I do not live in their heads. I am just assuming this because I am assuming that we as humans truly do not feel all that different from one another. I could be wrong about that too. I don't know because, once again, I don't live inside other's heads and hearts.

I've spent a lot of time talking with other people over the years about their perceptions of life and how they felt as children growing up. I have come to the conclusion that most people grew up thinking they were artists and that they had some deep creative purpose in life that they needed to express in some way. This is either true of all of mankind, or else I only hang around extremely creative and artistic people. I dunno, I have known a lot of people in all kinds of walks of life. I have yet to meet anyone who said that as a child all they ever wanted to be was a garbage collector because they felt they would have some since of fulfillment in doing that. 

Among other things, and aside from being a hermit, one of the things I wanted to do when I grew up was be a composer.  I realized that this wasn't going to happen when, at age 8 and in the middle of piano lessons, I discovered that music was basically math you could listen to. Mathematics, unfortunately, was always my weakest point. I was certainly way less than brilliant. There was always something in the way my brain processed mathematical problems that never added up (pun intended). I always felt on the precipe of comprehension, like I was on the verge of an epiphany or even a mental orgasm, but I never quite got "it".  I would get so close and then the brain would shut down and I would lose whatever I almost was about to understand.

I remember sitting there at my music teacher's piano and silently crying to myself as she told me I would never be able to learn to play the piano or to read music until I learned to comprehend fractions. I fooled her. I would listen to a musical piece and then sit there for hours at the piano trying to pick it out, note by note until I had it down. I could not read the music, at least not the time signatures, but I could read the notes and knew where they were placed on the keyboard. The only way I had of placing the note value correctly was to listen to how someone else played the piece. And then I played it back exactly as I had heard it played.

I did the same thing on the guitar. I would listen to something and then pick it out, cord by cord until I could reproduce the piece. Consequently, I was never a very good musician. I seldom learned anyone else's work after a while. I finally wrote and played only my own compositions. It was easier that way. It was the only way to still make music. Which, for whatever reasons, I felt compelled to do.

I was also pretty bad at English. Much to the chagrin of my mother who had a masters in English. It's funny (as in odd) that now I would rather write words than music. For all the things I composed musically, without the words, the melodies have no real home. It was always the poetry of my songs which made them special in any way. Still I wish I could compose. Anything, I am not picky at this point.

As you can see, this whole post has absolutely no point and is going no where. So that tells me that it is over now, as I have absolutely nothing left to say. That and I am tired of typing at the moment.

You've been patient. Thank you for your time, please come again.

It's the end of the world as we know it.......

I am severely depressed right now. Not enough to entertain thoughts of suicide, but enough that I am torturing myself with extremely moving and melancholy classical music. I think I do this because somewhere inside I think it will expel the demons that haunt my soul and cause a depth of mourning that is beyond reasonable to leave me. This music is what I have always used as my solace... this passion that wells up inside of me when I listen... somehow  it has always been that which calmed my aching soul. Tonight, it is causing my spirit to ache to be free of this human condition, to be free of the pain of being a human being. This is one of those moments when I question my sanity for having incarnated again.

Yes, I do know what is causing the depression. And yes, it is grief. A mourning of a certain and unstoppable loss. Something I have had 51 years to prepare for and yet, I sit here grieving nonetheless, stricken to the core at my loss.

No, no one has died. Nothing more than a part of me that I had always known has passed away. And now I must grieve it's loss and move on with life. I do not like grief. Do not like grieving. And yet I know that it is part of the growth we go through as incarnate beings. It doesn't make me like it anymore, knowing it's purpose.

Giving up part of you that you thought would always be, appears to be more difficult than I first thought. I don't know why this is so hard for me to accept and just go on with. Well, that is not necessarily true, I do know why this is so hard, why this cuts me so deeply, why I am weeping deeply right now. I just wish I would buck it up and go on, walk away and figure out how to go on.....

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I wrote this almost two years ago. I can't believe that this blog is almost two years old. Wow... ain't that something?

It seemed so appropriate to me for this posting. Great grief begets the memory of great griefs past. I hide it all so well, you would never know I was nearly hysterical in my pain eh? Depending on who you are in my life, you have spent days, weeks, years on end with me and yet, you do not know the depth to which I ache inside.  Because I will never share it with you face to face. And here, in this place you cannot hear the pain in my voice, nor see the tears of a lifetime of grieving falling silently.

 

Feb 04:

You know, I am a great salesman, due in part to the fact that I can read people pretty well, that and I know what questions to ask and I listen to their answers closely. But when it comes to my personal life, I have a very difficult time reading people's intent. For some reason, even if someone swears on pain of death that they mean this when they say that, I still have deeply held doubts. That could be from years of being lied to by my mother. I guess I learned to never trust anyone who tells you they love you that they really mean it. I also learned at Mom's knee that just because you love someone with all of your being does not mean they are going to love you back.

Maybe this doesn't happen to every kid, but I suspect it does with many, we grow up believing our Mother doesn't really love us. I surely did believe that growing up. I really though Mom did not love me. Fast forwarding into my adult years, Debbie was pretty good friends with my Mom and they would talk for hours about stuff. This was even before Debbie and I were together. Apparently Mom confessed to Debbie (way back before Debbie and I were ever lovers) that she had never loved me as a child. Debbie was trying to console me one night in bed about my mother and her treatment of me when this revelation came out. Debbie let it slip that my Mom had told her she never loved me. I was probably 28 or 29 and this just struck me to the core. I felt mortally wounded, my heart was broken beyond words and I sobbed uncontrollably for sometime that evening. I don't think there are too many other times in my life I have been so heart broken.

All my fears confirmed, I had not read Mom wrong all those years ago as a child. I had read her as right as you can read another person. Mom taught me to doubt most people's sincerity in my personal relationships. On the other hand, she also taught me to tie my shoe laces, so it all evens out in the end right?

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So yeah, this is what the face of my depression looks like, and yet you are not seeing it. That I would never impose on you in real life. Here I can lament. Here you will just pass over what you do not want to read, what you cannot deal with hearing. Yet here I have the space to say what I cannot say to another living soul. Here I can become small and struggle for understanding. Here I can beat my demons until they rise screaming to the surface, finally to be released from my heart. Hopefully forever.

Ky, you said to me once that I love huge.  I took that to mean that I love deeply, fully, utterly. You are not the first person to tell me something similar. But you are the last person thus far. That gives you the distinction of being special to me in my book. Loving huge, I guess can be construed as good and bad, depending on your outlook. I cannot give up love, or love any less than I do. Love is the only thing I know to truly be real. Everything else in the universe passes away, but love always remains.

Every last one of you who has touched my life and I allowed to enter me, all you who are still living and you who are dead, I have never stopped loving you, never forgotten the depth to which I adored your very being.  I am struggling my loves, I have come to a crossroads in life. The grief is beyond measure, the loss so much more than I ever thought it would be. I have known this day was coming for ages, and yet, I find myself unprepared emotionally for it all.

I am getting small, backing away and hiding from you all.  I cannot bear this alone, and yet I cannot face you all with the reality of how I am reacting to this loss. I had this fantasy that I would pass this loss with dignity and grace. Instead feel the fool.  I am grieving because there are still things I wanted to experience, and yet, they were only things of the physical. Of what use are they to me in the grand scheme of the universe? None. They were of this world, of this physical time and space.

I am not ready to let go, I am holding on to a dead corpse.  Youth, youth, stupid and foolish youth. Arrogant youth. Why do they not teach you these lessons in school? These are the lessons I want to teach my children. Do not be deceived by strength and youthful vigor my children. So soon, too soon, before you turn around again they will be gone. Strength, energy, vitality, physical power, beauty, youth, all gone, left behind by this physical time and spacewe know as our existence here on this earth, in this physical form.

Youth, gone. Beauty, lost. Sexual power a distant memory. I will no longer fight this loss. I am a fool to attempt it. There is no stopping the loss of all you thought was the reality of your being. Time to seek out a new reality, free of the lies. Time to make a new path. Time to find another way of being, of relating.

Now it is time to rest my body and aching soul. I wish I remembered my dreams. I wish that one last time I could dream of days gone by, of power and beauty and strength. My power and beauty and strength. One last time. One more dance, one more,  just one more and then I swear, I will go silently into that good night.

 

Passionately passionate

I am listening to Luciano Pavorotti right now. He's singing Ave Maria. I thought it appropriate for this time of the year. My friend Gina Nicoletti sent this to me in a download one night some time back. We listened to it together online the two of us. I knew that she, as I, was crying as we listened together.

Only Gina would have shared this with me. Only Gina would have known to do so. No other friend or family member would have known how deeply such a thing would have touched my soul. Our souls.

We wept together, Gina and I, sharing something that only she and I could have shared in that moment. This touching of spirits through music. This dance of aural ecstasy. This passion, this musical climax floating tenderly in the air between us.

Gina my friend. Dear friend, from ages past. From youths not so much misspent, as misdirected and writhing in youthful angst. That time in our lives, I would not change, not one moment, for from it, and so many other layers of experience we became who we are today. In all the rich and textured fullness of our beings.

To say that I love you is an understatement. Beloved is closer. There are no words to describe my devotion to you and this our enduring knowing of one another in this lifetime. I am passionate in my loyality to you. My beautiful, beautiful friend. No friend or family member will ever know, nor share what we have known or shared with one another over the years. What we have is unique to us alone. It is not that our relationship or love for one another overshadows or lessons any other relationships in our respective lives, it is simply it's own beautiful unique experience of relationship with one another. And for this relationship I am forever grateful to the universe. What a gift, what an incredible blessing.

Next lifetime, let us start off less confrontational. Let us remember the lessons of this lifetime, let us start off loving and caring. I ask this as a special favor from the universe for us both. Let us remember Ave Maria... let the passionate flame of a past rememberance envelope us upon our first meeting. Let us remember the shared passions, how music touched the very core of our beings and bonded us forever.