Memory Sucks

Need I say more?

I remember when the ex and I first got together. That first year was heaven in so many ways, she was wild and fun and nasty and warm and everything in between. She was nuts about me. We traveled, we partied, we spent evenings and weekends talking philosophy and art and ideas.... and then she would get on her knees and beg me to let her suck it.

I remember us laughing and walking down Piedmont Avenue without a care in the world.

I remember me on her back, when she said, "just slip it in my ass" and then thank me for popping her cherry.

We never fought, we never had a single issue. It was all good.

She was not a drunk. She drank, but it felt...controlled.

She was the dream girlfriend. I though I had died and gone to paradise.

Later, when things got bad, it was that time and that vision of her and us that I kept in my mind. It would come back just often enough to convince me that this was the real her and that all the issues were the unfortunate result of her emotional challenges.

I realize that at some level, part of me wants to recreate that. It explains some of my pre wife choices.

I can process the reality cognitively till I am blue in the face...and I know I am in a better place.

But she still haunts me.

She always will.

Heading Home For Christmas

Tomorrow Wife and I are heading east to spend Christmas with my family , then on to NYC to see her family. I will be working some as well, but looking to be a great trip.

My favorite Christmas Present So Far




Schivona, weapon of the Slavic Mercenaries of the Doge of Venice. This one is a beauty.

I will post from home, should have more time. Right now it is the typical race to the Christmas finish.

Merry Christmas! Everyone.

Cram Time

So I am cramming for a professional exam, security professional type and apparently a ball buster. Oy, have not done this since the Navy.

Like the picture in the profile? There is a guy at work who's hobby is cartoons. He did this one day and showed it to me, his view of me. Interesting, I am not quite that buff, but it does capture things pretty well. Truth be told, it has always been my fantasy to drop my everyday life and follow Aragorn into a desperate battle for the salvation of Middle Earth. I suppose that, as much as anything, explains me.

One thing, I hereby give any of you who care permission to rant in the comments section of my blog. Much of what I write is meant as a way to process the events of the last few years. I have other blogs up for other reasons, but this one is the online support group blog, even if the readership is a group of one. My hope is that it has value to others as well, and so it is only reasonable that it causes people to speak there mind. Feel free.

One quick observation from my last blog. I was reading a rant someplace else where a woman was classifying her husband as a looser because he no longer did the things that they used to do. Point in fact, if you read between the lines, they got married, had a kid, she quit work, and all of a sudden he is hyper focused on the career and stressed a lot of the time. Etc, etc.

I could write a book on the implications of that rant. What struck me was the selfishness of it all, on both of their sides. Selfishness and cowardice seem to me to be at the root of a lot of divorce drama.

It is also at the root of most of the long term hurt. It is selfish not to own up to what happened and to take the time to process properly with your ex, and especially your children. If you choose this road, you need to commit to cleaning up your messes.

Especially the ones with your kids.

Unfinished Business

Late night in the Data Center, geeking out, finishing up a couple of critical evolutions in advance of the end of the year. Thanksgiving was great, family is well. Wife and I are happy as clams working diligently on family 1 (her) 3 (me). That project requires that I go for a semen test this Friday, where after three days of abstinence I get to jerk off into a sample cup. Bit undignified that, but we do what we do.

My ex continues on her path to be my new best friend. We chat every week, share coffee at either her place or mine. I get calls and emails on everything from gossip about her siblings and their dramas to recommendations for shows to see in the city. Her boyfriend hung out one morning over thanksgiving at my place, chatting with my kids, wife and mother in law.

Just all too fucking cozy.

When you are young, breakups are usually torrid affairs, with lots of drama and damage. The dumper, convinced of his or her righteous cause, and desperate to avoid any legitimate feeling of guilt, summarily jettisons the dumpee and heads off at warp speed into the sunset, leaving said dumpee with a nice bag of shit to try and process over the next couple of years as a going away present. Normally after some time has passed, the dumper realizes that he too has a nice bag of shit to process, and of course by now the dumpee has moved on.

Each is left to clean up the merde pile on their own, and this leads to what we call Baggage.

Which leaves us with:

Unfinished business.

We all have it, pieces of broken relationships that hang like girders off a wrecked tower. Over time we process and think and cognate, in therapy or out, trying to cyst over the wound. It gets tolerable, maybe even better.

But it remains, still there, ghosts that haunt our lives an inhabit our dreams. Funny, most mythologies think of ghosts as spirits that linger here on earth because they have unfinished business, and are doomed to wander till it is done.

Only once in my life was I partnered with someone where we both had the maturity and commitment to take the time to finish things up. We stayed connected until it was all done and we were complete. We are friends today, and it was the greatest of gifts.

The ex and I have unfinished business. As a point in fact, the ex has unfinished business with me, with my daughters and most of all with my son. I have unfinished business with her. Our breakup was abrupt, massively disruptive for everyone and very much out of left field, mostly it was done impulsively and selfishly, with few explanations and a lot of pain all around. For a long time we were distant.

But we have my youngest, and for her sake we need to be civil. But more so, my ex needs for everything to be ok, and she is desperate to get back the relationship she had with my older kids.

So we have evolved to this state where we are friendly and communicate, lots of interaction and discussion. But there is a gorilla in the room, and he is getting more obvious every day, at least to me. My ex desperately wants everything to be ok, but it is built on a fiction. My youngest is angry at her mother for disrupting her life, and she talks to everyone about it but her mother. My older kids are furious with her for the same reasons, and they also feel abandoned by her.

My own feelings are so complex that it is almost impossible to tease them out. A combination of fury and anger and disgust mixed with raw lust and love and complete confusion. One thing is clear, they are nowhere near resolved.

I think that the same holds true for her. She is not very self aware, but I continue to see evidence that she too has trouble sorting it all out. It expresses itself in strange ways at very odd times...Repressed psychic content that she tried to sink deep but keeps bubbling to the surface.

I have written on this before, the reality of our unfinished business and the forced fakery of our relationship, such as it is. I though it would just die off, but that was foolish thinking.

More later.