More hard truth: "We can't be together because...".

I'm back to my old habits of staying up to late, sleeping in longer than I should and getting pissed off about trivial things.

All major contributions to my already voracious, ingrained insomnia that is not allowing my brain to shut off when the rest of this hemisphere is asleep.

It's 0420, folks, as I type this.

Moments ago, in the midst of randomly checking social media as insomniacs tend to do I saw a status message from a woman whom I had a very brief "relationship" with. 

She was extolling the virtues of now being pair bonded with another guy which is not uncommon. 

Curiosity got the better of me and I took a look at where this gentleman lived and it turns out that he lives five states away to the west (California), and alarm bells went off in my head.

One of the primary reasons we didn't go any further was that I'm not driving, and I live some 30-40 miles away from her so we couldn't do the lovey dove boyfriend and girlfriend things. 

It made sense to me at the time two years ago but I'm an hour down a turnpike by car...California's a good 10-14 hours doorstep to doorstep, likely more.

It rattled me, to say the very least, not so much that she's moved on but that the excuse of time and distance applied to only me and not another guy.  As you've undoubtedly figured out from reading this blog you know I'm no stranger to breakup.

It's why this blog got started 8 years ago.

This one made the top five with this revelation, right behind the big D (divorce) in 2002 and the previously mentioned reason this blog was started, where it was decided that my dismal credit rating meant I wasn't relationship material, and finally two weeks of talking online and the phone leading up to a date that never happened.

It boggles the mind, I tells ya. 

I'm guessing I should face the fact that I'm headed to my dying day alone.  It seems inevitable now, because I can't get anything going, not that I'm in much of a position to. 

Thing is, I'm still young, not a twenty or thirty year old yoing, but young just the same.  Why is it that I have to struggle so mich to find happiness?  It makes little sense.

Hopefully this blog will be the elixir that puts me out for the night. 

Who knows?

Walk of faith: I don't get it.

This year I was made aware of something.

In terms of my religious beliefs, I am not compatible in relationships.

No, I'm not making it up.  When it comes to my laid back attitude towards organized religion, apparently I am incompatible to most females, especially here in the buckle of the Bible belt.

No, I don't get it either.  But apparently it is what it is, whatever it is.

I'm not a church goer.  It's not that I don't believe,  it's just that I wasn't raised "in the church".  My mom and dad were, and they didn't expose my sister and I to church like some of my friends were.

I give my parents a lot of credit for many things now that I really didn't when I was younger, and one of those things was the ability to choose how we believe.  This of course is an example of giving us "room to fail" I discussed previously, which on the surface sounds bad but it taught us accountability, among other things.

It also taught me to make decisions about life, and one of those decisions was to believe but do so on my terms.  It wasn't always easy to do, but I chose my path and tried to live my life well and good.

Simple, straightforward.  No ambiguity. Something you would think would appeal to God, which is the only one I really need approval from.  For all intents and purposes, mere mortals opinion is moot given the fact that all begins and ends with God, according to Scripture.

Apparently, this is incorrect. 

Wildly incorrect. 

Especially when it comes to how I administer my own religious direction.  This was revealed to me earlier this year when the person I had chosen above all others...the one whom I committed my life to and gave my last name to...told me in frank discussion that "the church thing" was one of the reasons why we aren't married anymore.

I have stated elsewhere in this blog that I have gotten past most of the pain surrounding the end of my marriage which took place 15 years ago in October and by and large I have, but things like that bring it all back. 

Additionally, it further illustrates how easy it was for one of us to throw the other away emotionally. 

I consider myself numb to those events for the most part but like any anesthetic sometimes it doesn't deaden all the pain and that has had me rattled for at least 3 of the first six months of this year.

Again,  it's not that I don't believe in God, Jesus or anything like that---I'm just not a church person.  I was led to understand that you could do that and still be a faithful person and be a compatible person in relationships.

If it were just limited to my marriage that would be fine,  but three of the last four of my relationships have ended under the caption of my lack of churchgoing faith preventing anything from developing further.  I consider it insulting, and an unfair judging of who I am.

I don't plan on changing.  As far as I'm concerned,  I'm at peace with my walk in Faith.  To my knowledge, God is too.  I'm too old to try and re-learn how to do that. If I had realized this truth say...a quarter-century ago, maybe things would have been different.

You never know though...

Broken...

Well, it happened again.

Just when I thought I was back in the saddle again in my personal life the horse bucked and just like that, my ass is in the dirt once again.

It seems like for every forward step I take someone kicks me in the nuts and I'm at the back of the line again.

I'm not getting any younger.  I don't know how much more I can take, guys.

I really, REALLY thought I could put it back together with this one.  Evidently I'm really naive when it comes to that kind of thing.

One day, before it's all over, maybe I'll get this right.

Probably the day before I stop breathing.

I'll heal, but it's gonna take time.

Going to step back from the political for this one...

Honestly, I think that I've done enough politics, don't you?

What more can I add to the steady droning that is coming out of the news today?  Squat.  The sun rose, in places reason and/or rain or snow fell, babies were born and people passed away.

In short, the last few days have been largely normal all things considered, so let's get on with it, shall we?

To shake things up I figure taking things back to the reason this blog was born is a decent entry to jump the tracks with so, here we go.  

As I grow older the need for partnership in my life is becoming very desirable. By that you can gather that, in the relationship department, I am currently single in addition to being broke and jobless. To use the sports metaphor I am "on waivers", so to speak.

Regardless of the whys and wherefore of it I am in the "friend  zone", and quite frankly I deserve it the more I think about it.   Family issues, mainly on her side, are the factor that keeps us apart and it's not fair to consider is in any way or form "together" in the truest sense of the word.

I understand it.  I'm at peace with it,  but I don't have to like it.

As I get older, I find myself needing and wanting to be in a relationship.  I saw my parents together 34 years,  (until my dad passed) and though it wasn't a smooth road that they walked they had each other and at the end of the day, that's all they ever needed.

Thing is, when my folks were my age they were still married, had two kids and a house.  Myself, on the other hand, I'm pushing 50, unemployed, divorced, have a teenaged son and live with my mother.  All very serious detrimental social elements on appearances alone.

Until a number of those elements change it looks as if that's how I'll stay.  I am efforting to make that change but it is glacial in speed.  It's raising an impatience in me that I dislike to a huge degree.

I find myself longing for the days of stability.  The days of thrill.   The days where I was happy and safe in the knowledge that my female best friend was there for me and loved me.

It's been too long a time since I had that in life, and it hasn't happened that often to begin with.

Hope things change soon.

Peeling the onion: When what you always knew is confirmed.

So this has had me twisted up for two days now.

If you know me personally, you know that I was once married and togwther my ex-wife and I have a teenage son with special needs.

After five years together my wife decided to leave me while she was pregnant with our son cutting my inability to manage money and the ever overused reason of "irreconcilable differences".

The shorthand being her family did not like me and basically told her that I needed to go. 

It was primarily one parent in particular who upon or first meeting asked my then- fiancé if my portly dimensions at the time were the result of a beer belly.

For 15 years, I believed that money management killed us.  It made sense and isn't particularly uncommon. 

Myself, I attribute it to being young, dumb and in love which I was, head over heels. 

But hold onto your hats, ladies abd gentlemen, another reason...one I always knew was part our marital implosion...has finally come to light and it has me twisted up even after all this time.

Apparently, I'm not religious enough to be married to the mother of my son.  Yes...after 15 years, 18 if you count the separation time and related court actions this character flaw she accepted by marital vow was enough to put our marriage on waivers. 

She is correct in that I am not a religious person.  I have a distaste for organized religion as a whole and socially, living in Oklahoma, it puts you somewhere between atheism and outright devil worship in the social construct here.

It's not that I don't believe.  I do, but how I believe and the way I profess my belief is personal and not under the thumb of an oppressive group of people gathered socially.

Going in, I accepted my fiancé and her church as part of the family I was about to marry into and, though the other party will doubtlessly dispute it, tried to assimilate as best I could.

Apparently it wasn't enough.

As I have written here previously, the bitterness and contempt associated with this life event is all but gone. 

I live and breathe for the child I created and it would do him zero good to see me at loggerheads with his mother.  She agrees and our disagreements in front of him have been few and far between.

What gets me though is that it reveals a lot of what I didn't realize about the woman I married.  Mainly, it disappoints me to know that this could have been worked through.

Had she not have given up...or decided to give up under pressure from her parent(s), we might still be married and raising our son as it should be. 

But it isn't going to happen. The more I think about this old/new revelation the less confident I am in the idea that I will likely die alone.

John Lennon wrote, "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans", and with that in mind I will somehow get past this like I always have.

I could have gone without knowing it even still.

I should have stayed single...

It's three o' clock in the morning and my mind is still active.

This is another subject I have been thinking about for a while but haven't quote figured out how to put it into words. 

Before you get any untoward notions that the regret that I'm about to express here is an indication of impending self harm or anything of that nature.  

Quite the contrary...I am happy with the way my life has turned out to this point.  What you're about to read is my hindsight positing the question of what I could have possibly done to make life simpler, especially in the area of relationships.

I do not regret any relationship I've been in.  Not one.

After all, a relationship resulted in the creation of the life I value much more than my own, my son Sean.  

I couldn't imagine life without him. 

There are times where I wish things could have worked out with his mother and I. 

Not to the point where I long for what we had though because it's end was way too painful and I feel it nearly 20 years later.

I have forgiven her enough to make sure that no ill will from anything would reflect poorly on him.  But there is a limit to that forgiveness.  It will never ever be total and complete because of the pain she inflicted on me and by default, my family.

That's all I'll allow on that subject.

To connect this with the title I'd have saved myself all that if I hadn't decided to take the chance and get over my shyness that had prevented me from starting a relationship when I was younger.

It raises the question of if I had started at an earlier age...say my teenage years which are supposedly traditional, would I have had better success later on?  

That's a rhetorical question but with the benefit of hindsight maybe it might have.

It was a calculated risk I don't regret and I can only hope I've learned from it.