The Altar Boy

A friend reminded me that I was a former altar boy and stripper and that I should write a book. When you look at my saga and include those two diametrically opposing personality types I can see why a tome might be in order.   

When I think of those two pieces of my life I automatically think of my weight loss of 75 pounds, my marathon and ultra-marathon days, my three wives, five miscarriages (one stillborn child) and my drug and alcohol addiction. And where I am today a sexagenarian whose cage opened unexpectedly and is now wandering the open range. I suppose that there are several things that I have added to some that roam the earth and if there is only a dearth that can agree I will spend my remaining days making other people smile, take notice and spend a few moments remembering my past. To those I love and will always love I say that with sincerity that I tried to make a difference in their lives  (believed or not) even if some of my character defects left them with pain and sadness.  

Boundaries

The price of freedom may come at too high a price. It means that if I am not careful I will find myself inside another vortex of people pleasing and subject to the vagaries of yet another set of problems that I can easily fall into because of my enabling personality.  Not to say that I can’t establish my own boundaries, it’s just that if I don’t look at what makes me happy first I will be enlisting in taking on the burden that I have been released from.  

A New Life

It’s not that my old life was bad because it was the most enriching time of my life. And after getting sober being a step dad was my epiphany from the isolation of my own island.   Coming from a larger family of five children I learned quickly how to withdraw and be vague especially with my father who was an unmerciful intimidator. Five children on a limited family budget made it seem like I had to be on the hunt for food everyday. Although I suspect this was part imagination as well.  In any case I learned to be alone within the confines of a full house. 

There were places that I came out from my obfuscation and they were my paternal grandfather and my eldest sister Carol. However I have gotten off my topic and on to a branch too far from my main point.  

This new life might be an illusion or it might be something that was there in my old life but I chose not to see it was there. In any case I am busier than ever and I hope that my blended family will learn to accept my faults as we cohabitate in these tough economic times. I am just who I was before until I was discovered as not the man some wanted to believe I was. I always knew who I was even if those that loved me pretended they didn’t.  

The Times They Are a Changin'

The times they are a changin’. I never felt that a sabbatical from my duties as a stepparent would be essentially a relief. Not that I don’t hold what I did dear because it’s forever but just the idea that I can be a friend to my stepson instead of his jailer makes me feel a sense of relief about what I can still do for him as he prepares to dig deep into his new vocation.  I will help him all I can while I can. 

Girls on Film

I don’t have a story about it but I just loved that song by Duran Duran when it came out in 1981. In fact I saw their U.S. debut at a dance club called Spit in Levittown.  Little did I know that they would become a supergroup later.

I am singing just a bit more these days as work seems to be just a little bit better after a dismal beginning in 2011.  However, maybe it’s because I just feel a little bit better about my life too and losing the guilt that I was being assigned by would be character assassins.  

My stepson will be my voice box as I make my exit from my half a Brady Bunch family. I have decided that I will help him all I can in his new endeavors as much as my experience will lend itself to his chosen vocation. It lets me see that I have no bitterness towards him or for anyone that is sailing into my sunset as a Step Dad.  It makes me feel good too that since I have no agenda it is purely the other part of me that some might have chosen to forget. I have to hand it to the kid because he is not shortsighted at all.  

Love Is Sometimes Not Enough

I know what I could have done but just like a habit that lingers it probably would have been no use. That doesn’t change my feelings about my half a Brady Bunch family because they occupied so much of my love, time, effort, heartache, frustration, impatience, intolerance, devotion and the closest I ever came to having children of my own.  I have been rejected out of hand by some but there are those too that will remember what I did and that is my wife and my stepson.  One day my daughter in law will forgive me as well. (Well maybe)

Sometimes love is just not enough. 

Please, Please You

Do you ever feel trapped?  I have many times especially because some people just expect more than they might from someone else.  Maybe it’s because you have a skill set that might be a little more extraordinary than what they possess and they appeal to your ego to get something done that they are either unwilling to do or they just feel incapable of doing themselves.   

Now I am not saying trapped in a situation lest some of my more critical readers think that that is what I am referring to because I am not. I meant that you could feel trapped because you might just be trying to please people into liking you or worse yet you are just a people pleaser and that is I. 

Persona Non Grata

Love is a many splendored thing. That’s a familiar American idiom that was even a 1955 movie starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones.  Idioms have a way of encapsulating sentiment and memory but they fall short on substance because words are cheap. 

I have always subscribed to actions speaking louder than any set of words ever could because I hate to sound hollow or worse yet sit in judgment of anyone else. Kristen reminded me of two AA axioms this morning: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The other is about putting someone else down in order that we feel better about ourselves. 

Judgment is another that I find fascinating as well. I just saw my sister in laws husband in the club today and he ignored me totally. Obviously he has judged me as persona non grata and I for one am happy he is out of my life because, hell I never liked him anyway. And I don’t say that because the decision to ever see him ever again socially has been in effect taken out of my hands. He just was a mook and his holier than thou attitude just confirmed his self-righteousness. Good riddance one less imbecilic presence in my life. God does it feel good to have just said that.  

Non Conventional Man

 I learned much on this Matt Talbot retreat down in Long Branch New Jersey. The speakers who were   a collection of alcoholic priests had me riveted about the steps with a different twist and it will provide me with some fantastic inspiration for my AA blog.  I didn’t expect that I would get anything out of this respite other than a break from the augurs of threat and intimidation. I am not my behavior and I will not label myself as road kill just because I do not conform to the will of convention.  

My Tears Stain My Heart

My afternoon meditation purged some of the dried blood that had pooled in my veins. As I witnessed the “bad blood” leave me it was not without sorrow for my part that I ask forgiveness. For those that I feared wronged me I am not in judgment of them for they are the witness for their own sorrow. I ask in silent prayer that I retain faith and leave doubt to dry in the puddles of my tears.  

The Invisible Craft

When I sit down before this window screen, there are no tools, no pre fabricated pieces other than a title that may have descended on me from the heavens. I liken the invisible craft to a precious gift that has been bestowed on me. I have ceased even wondering if this gift will stay with me or leave like an approaching cold front. For now it is here, and I will peck and pound for as long as the outer world chooses to speak through me. 

Radio waves are invisible, and yet through verbiage of the spoken word millions of us are entertained by particles of energy perfectly formed in one place and then dispersed unrecognizable into space and then reassembled into their original form as if by a magical incantation only Merlin could produce.  The invisible craft starts out that way and makes it to our inner voices by way of paper and ink  

The invisible craft has more power than a locomotive and Superman because the rippling effects cannot be measured by any conventional means known to man.  Horse power, candle power and amperage are conventional barometers that can give us a sense of the force of things in the observable physical plane, but the invisible craft has no calibration only a vibration for those that have their window of perception open.  Sadly because of sensory deprivation we miss a great percentage of transmissions that unfortunately are not contained as a text message. 

God Only Knows

I have been both blessed and cursed having lived so many unlived lives.  And just like I didn’t have just  one career I have lived  more than one life. I know that I  have  brought both pleasure and pain to yet another segment of my life as it now sorrowfully   comes to a close. God Only Knows that  I can choose to feel alone or be part of all the memories I have created. The ones with my sister Carol will live with me for the rest of my days as I head toward my own expiration date. The days of my blended family will stay with me as well because I gave four people a life or at least part of one.   

When I listen to The Beach Boys the fondest days of my life are reenacted here in front of my keyboard. I often think how blessed I was to have gone in and out of so many of the lives I have touched for better or worse. And I want to give myself the benefit of any doubt that not all relationships that have ended badly meant that the whole experience was just a waste of time. I know in my heart that it was not and even those that to choose to see it otherwise, that still doesn’t make it so.  

The Black Dog

As I open my Jacbook again I will be more discreet in talking about anyone else in or on their way out of my life. I am Mr. Magoo and for someone that is supposedly so intelligent I am one of the biggest dummies since those crash ones that they used in those car commercials.  

I awoke yesterday with one of the strongest emotional hangovers that rivaled some of the alcoholic ones I had prior to 1989.  I had no specificity in my tremors but the Black Dog as my friend calls it had me by the jugular and the ‘bite’ stayed with me for about an hour.  Unusual even for a bad dream.  All things pass and today seems brighter for no particular reason and I am glad that I experience the intensity of emotion like I do because I wouldn’t be able to muster the passion that I am so in love with. It requires that I live with the good and the bad. Yesterday was my Black Dog.  

Judas

I discovered that my stepson’s wife, the one I sponsored into this country was the one who betrayed me and led my wife to my personal blog.  This journal was for me only and not for anyone’s eyes. What the net result was that my wife was tortured which  made her inconsolable.    Imagine the gall of that. I gave my pledge of allegiance that she would be in my care while she lived here in my house for three years, married to my stepson.  She used my finances to gain entry into this country and then betrays me.  Amazing! I will never ever trust anyone who asks me to do a favor for them because they will turn you out when it suits them. I am fit to be tied and angered beyond belief. Did she forget who is footing the bill since 2008?