Angle grinder

Someone asked me recently why I've been getting so many tattoo's these last few months (I use to average about one every six or seven years, and I've had four in the last four months). 

Partly I think it's because, for whatever reason, I have an easier time assimilating a little physical pain than I do dealing with emotional pain.  Something about the relentless dull ache of a tattoo needle seems to pretty much resonate with the things I've been feeling since she left.  The sort of constant dull ache.  Not the sharp pain of past encounters, quick and over (which I usually salved with either the odd drunken tussle, or a bout of rebound sex with someone in a similar situation...  Truth to tell, half my 'relationships' have been rebound sex with other heartsick wanderers)

But I don't drink anymore.

I'm too old for a quick brawl ( there are too many laws now...  Not to mention, folks have gotten fuckin' crazy lately, as likely to kill you as dance with you.  I figure this 'zero tolerance' generation just takes things too seriously... Seems it's always 'all or nothing' with them...  If it sounds like a cop-out, that's because it is. I make no apologies for my lack of free floating aggression, and dammit I'm tired)

And I'm not attractive enough (and apparently no longer free spirited enough) to do the rebound sex thing anymore...  Don't get me wrong, I gave it a shot.  During my usual 5-7 week horny window (which usually hits about two months after someone stops talking to me) I propositioned just about anyone who sat still long enough.  But my heart just wasn't in it (seriously, it basically came out as 'eh, I'm looking for some guilt free rebound sex, you up for that?'...  Yeah, I know, not very suave... But no one can say I was dishonest about what I wanted).

So I figure self mutilation (in the form of body art) is the best I can come up with.  And the occasional flagellant pilgrimage to the gym (which I should probably take more often).

So, when I say that my day went well because it feels like someone took an angle grinder to my chest this afternoon, try not to think ill of me.

I'm finding a less destructive outlet than I'm accustomed to.

And I'm going to sleep tonight.

For the first time in weeks, I'm going to sleep

And I'm going to sleep well.

Another stretch

Staring down the barrel of another 21 day week at my 'day' job,
hoping we can get my sister's business off the ground long enough to pay off some of her debts,
wishing I had one person in my life right now who wasn't a business associate, family member, or fair-weather friend.

And I'm thankful for all of them.

I'm glad to have them.

I know it could be much much worse.  I've had it much much worse.

But this is one of the harder times of year for me to be alone,
and I can't help but wish that I had someone to talk to,
to be with,
to give me a touch,
a smile,
a laugh.

A little warmth and human contact.

I know, too much to ask of the universe.

Be happy.

Be productive.

Head down,
eyes forward,
shoulder the boulder son...

Still Tired. Still Angry. Don't read this.

I know you won't read this K.N. , at least I hope that's the case.

If you are reading then I hope you stop now.

I need to vent this shit to someone, and I can't take it out on my co-workers (they're not paid for it).

I can't take it out on my friends and relatives, they've got worse to deal with.

I no longer drink and I can't afford a shrink.

So the fine folks who randomly surf this blog will have to do.

Again, I hope you're not one of them.

These are (some of) my frustrations, and I choose to believe that you deserve better from me than to have them inflicted on you.  But there are some things that I just wish I could say, wish I had said, and they aren't pleasant.  The sorts of things that would normally be said in heat of the fighting and arguing that most couples engage in (and that we never really had) and then later recalled with regret.  But as it seems we have nothing to salvage, and as we've both been denied the catharsis of an actual fight or argument to end things with, I've been sitting on a lot of this for too long.  So while you've been paying a therapist to listen to your pain and anger, I've had to content myself by letting it out in dribs and drabs on this blog but not really letting fly because I couldn't remember if I showed you this, or just meant to.  I'm going to start letting fly as I feel the need, and I will try to preface my rants as such in the highly unlikely event that you are stopping by here from time to time.

※ {full stop}  ※






It's coming up on four months and not so much as a phone call or an email response.

That's kind of a funny way of not wanting to say goodbye.

I know that you were unhappy with me for not being emotionally available (whatever that means) but I always answer when my friends, my family and the people I love ask me to.  I may not answer right away, but if I get a message I answer (and I don't make them wait a third of a year to do so, especially if it's an answer that will only cost me three or four keystrokes on a computer).

Now I know I'm no saint.  I know I probably did lots of things that pissed you off or upset you, but they were never intentional.   I know I laugh at the wrong times, often at the wrong things.  I know I don't cry at movies.  I know I'm not the most sensitive guy in the world.  I know I tend to find weaknesses in every plan before I act on it. I know I've committed these sins and probably thousands of others that you let go unchecked (though I had often wished you would just speak your mind).

But be damned if I didn't spend every extra ounce of energy I had, every extra dollar I had (and a few that I didn't), every bit of free time I had trying to make it work.

Even when it was over, I was still trying to make it work.  To find a balance between making a clean break and cutting myself completely out of your life (as your actions and the actions of some others told me I should) and staying in your life (like you said you wanted me to).

I gave you the space you requested, and I waited to see if it was just something you needed to get out of your system.
A long needed decompression.
A fling that you just had to have before finally walking the walk after all that talk of marriage and family.
I waited a good two months before I even thought about actually dating or accepting invitations out from some of my female acquaintances.

I've still not "moved on" as you put it.
I kept my pants on, and with one exception (someone who was there to talk to me six weeks after you decided I wasn't even worth the trouble of an email, a one word response to the last question I asked, something to let me know you were ok, to tell me whether or no you still wanted me to wait for you) I've not even asked or offered.

I've been here all along.
Waiting.
Hoping.
Ready and willing.
One phone call away.
Ready to listen.
To love.
 
To try to make you laugh and dry your tears, just like I have since you were first available for me to do that.

Hoping that there was some part of the last several years that you thought was worth salvaging.

Yeah, I'm a heartless bastard, you knew that already.

And I'm sure your friends and your family have told you repeatedly that you're better off without me.

I'm sure they've also told you that you need to find yourself a real man.

One who will knock you up with no thought to the future or how his children will be raised.

Who will follow you around the country taking progressively lower paying jobs, yet still find a way to buy you useless shit and pay off your ever increasing pile of debt.

So if you're lonely tonight,
if you're having a bad month and need someone to talk to,
if you're trolling for dick on the CL because things didn't work out with the guy you left me for...

Well I'm so very sorry.

But at least you've found a better man.

And as an added bonus, I'm sure you all got a good healthy laugh at my expense.

Bravo...

Quisling

Drown in irresponsible idealism glowing tube smiling shirking sinking suckling post-industrial livid teat cutting teeth on chrome dipped plastic suede enshrouded pseudo-luxury.

Priced to sell everything must go low down payment for a limited time act now supplies are limited ten percent off twenty percent more amazingly astounding optometricly balanced aesthetically pleasing auditorially efficacious fully operational final options.

Song of the week!

It's rare that I find a song that I'm willing to listen to three or four times in a row...  I may have found my favorite band this week!

Awkwardness 101

This is why I usually just walk away when it's over.  These sorts of interactions are always way too painful and awkward...  And honestly, our genders really do speak very different languages.

38 pounds of pure kinetic energy

My niece is really cool.
She's at that fun age where she thinks that we're all pretty cool too (though she can still be a bit of a snot at times).  But she's a really cool kid.

Lots of energy, endless curiosity, smart as a whip and funny as hell.  And she's got a whole bunch of grown ups looking out for her and making sure she's ok and waiting to teach her stuff.

Really great kid.

Sometimes I look at her and I wonder if I've made the right choice by deciding not to have any myself.  Enough so that I've actually considered it recently (even managed to talk myself into it about six months ago, but life happened and things changed).

But there are days when I look at my sister, my brother-in-law, my folks...

I think I'm probably better off just being the crazy uncle who shows up with toys, spoils the hell out of the kid, and leaves before it's time to clean up the mess...  I don't have that kind of energy.  It takes between three and five adults to keep up with that munchkin, and she runs us all ragged.

Why does listening to old music make me feel young?

I think it may have something to do with hearing it from the older people when I was younger.

Maybe it just had more vitality.

Who can say.

Another year older.

So it seems I've gained a year.

At some point I got it in my head that I was a year older than I am (though as of yesterday I've caught up)

The up side is I get another year, the down side is that it mostly sucked the first time around.

This years projects:

1) Get over the ex and move on (though I'm still a little peeved that she was setting things up with her new guy while she was still seeing me [apparently being able to tell me that she'd "moved on" a day or two after dropping me over the phone was important to her]    I'm not bitter, not at all... But hey, you get what you deserve, that's life right?).

2) Start learning either Japanese or Russian (why the hell not right?).

3) Tattoos, as many as I can afford (I was planning a few already, but I'd been saving up for a move and wedding that never happened, so why the hell not?  Let's kick this mid-life crisis off in style!).

4) Find a new job (preferably a better paying one).

5) Clear the clutter (literally and metaphorically... I need to streamline my life a bit).

Wonder how long I'll be able to stay on it.

Redundancy

Four months and I still miss her.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Nostalgia

There's a trick to having a cigarette put out on you, or maybe you'd call it a kind of knack. 

See most folks instinctively pull away from the ember. 

It's nothing to be ashamed of, it's natural to pull away from pain, but being natural doesn't necessarily make it the right course of action.  In this, as in many other things, a positive outcome is contingent on not following ones instincts and doing something that goes against the fundamental nature of our species.

If you pull away you extend the amount of time that the burning matter is in contact with your flesh. 

The trick is to embrace the pain, embrace the knowledge that you are going to be hurt, you are going to get burned and you have no control over that.

You have no control over the pain that others will inflict on you, but you may be able to choose the manner in which the pain is inflicted so that you're being burned on your own terms.  It doesn't seem like much, but it makes all the difference in the world.  It's the difference between being a helpless victim and being an unwilling participant.  The difference between being someone else's property and being an otherwise dignified individual temporarily inconvenienced by conditions and circumstances that are beyond your control.

If (and this part takes some practice so don't expect to master it right away) you can force yourself to push the body part being burned into the cigarette (and in a sort of sideways shearing motion) then you can often either crush the cherry quickly (lessening the severity of the burn), or knock it off onto the ground where it's less likely to burn you at all (or at least not seriously enough that it'll still be noticeable after a couple of days).

It's important to note, however, that this trick hinges on your ability to move. 

If the person who's decided to make you their personal ashtray is savvy they might pin you down in such a way that you can't move, and that allows them to exercise total control over how long the ember burns, and now deep the burn goes. 

If that's the case then you're S.O.L.

In that situation your only options are to grin and bear it, hope that you don't suffer any permanent damage, and try not to cry out too much as that will only excite your assailant even more (leading to longer and deeper burns, and [assuming you're incapable of driving off the friend or family member who is taking it upon themselves to teach you this valuable life lesson] more frequent assaults).


In the end I think this was possibly one of the most simple and most valuable lessons I learned during my formative years. 

It applies to so many other facets of daily existence.

In the real world, this little hard earned kernel of insight has helped me out of more situations; seen more practical use than all of the trigonometry, calculus, and finite algebra that I spent so many months learning and then forgetting.






I found myself thinking of this the other day.

I was getting the outline portion of a fairly elaborate tattoo over a part of my body that had several faded scars on it.

A series of old cigarette burns.

A couple of pock marks.

And a faded, nearly invisible with age, upside down cross that was carved into my arm by a couple of "true believers" when I was a teenager.  Good christian boys who took it upon themselves to whoop the love of jesus into me for not going to the right church, not buying into their anti-abortion crap, not staying away from the good christian girls, and for listening to that evil devil music.

 Fine upstanding lads who felt that I needed to be marked so that people would know that I was "from the devil".
 
Of course, they did a half assed job at it (I wasn't a willing participant...  I saw a picture of one of them a couple years back and his nose is still kinda crooked). 

The "mark" has all but faded out over the last twenty some odd years.  Even after I shaved that area, I had to look really really close to find it.

 But it still feels good to know that by the end of next year it will be completely covered by something that will hopefully be beautiful.

On my terms. 

Hubris

I keep seeing messages that I wish applied to me.

People leaving anonymous postings on the internet, in newspapers, saying all the things I long to hear.

Offering reconciliation.

Offering explanation.

Affection.

I know they can't be for me, but I wish they were.

That's the problem with our modern society, we've forgotten how to talk to each other.  (In truth, some of us never learned)


If it's you, and you're hoping I'll read them, give me a call.
Otherwise I have to assume that it's someone else, and give you the privacy that you asked for.
The only gift I have to give, and far less than you deserve.