In The New Year

I am going to transform... physically and mentally.   There are goals to strive for and more to set.  There are no impediments to my pursuits and I have convinced myself of this state of affairs. So it is with enthusiasm I am engaging the new year.

The details are what they are.   It is enough that I am a part of the millions of people who use this time of year to announce their makeover and recommitt to many of the same things that they've told themselves that they would no longer be a part of their character only, ultimately, to fail.  But habits are hard to break especially without the drive to push yourself.   I understand,  I get it.  The untrained brain does not respond to the kind of changes in its routine easily at  first,  and even mentioning such a thing requires that a cat ignores the previous efforts that a brother made previously.  My life is asking for a fresh start and that is what I am giving it!!

My life is going to be that of routine.   I am hopeful that by doing what needs to be done, nothing more and nothing less, will carry to contentment!  I will admit to missing Omaha and being able to comfortably watch the Hallmark Channel, but sacrifices have to be made!!

IN A LIMINAL SPACE

 today feels like a Thursday evening in Omaha working at Pinnacle Fitness downtown... off the evening before the  "official" start of the weekend but the start of my weekend work schedule...

Playing PS2 NCAA 2006 endlessly and my mind floating off into the ether... going hither and yon, envisioning environments heretofor unconsidered  except for  that precise moment,  disposable thoughts who's meaning lasts only for the brief instant that it flashed in my head...

Maybe this is what passes for " psychadelia" in my universe because these moments are not a result of my brain trauma... I have had the vision ever since I could have remembered them ... I have often thought that this is how it feels to have your mood altered by a drug except I am getting faded on Crunch Berries and Coke (don't ask).  Because I have had this "state of being" occur randomly many times in my life, from when I was a young boy through the present moment,  I have never thought to make note of the feeling until now...

General update

IYKYK

‘Nuff said.

I get a lot of spam calls and of course they use the 402 area code. It is like standing on rose thorns,  deep enough to be uncomfortable but not critical to the functioning of the body or the affected area to be overly concerned with. 

The reason I dreaded moving from Omaha is that it meant that I was metaphorically and literally a backwards step.  That it was imposed upon me by my health and well-being only makes it more complicated.  The idea of me being unable to trust myself outside of my apartment ( which includes Planet Fitness, Food Lion, and the drug store) is as foreboding of a future as one can have. After all, Omaha was one of the few well planned experiences in my life.

There are several entries that are started but not completed.  I find it painful to go through my accounting of my day to day because there is nothing going on.  I don't have the desire to find out what is in Rocky Mount,  not because there is nothing to see (but, admittedly,  there is a risk-reward component to exploring as well, and I don't think I should have to feel compelled to expand upon why exploring is potentially too much risk for any possible reward), but I have not felt like I should  “press” myself into any connection-making.  

So, unlike my fall-off from journaling in Omaha, I feel covered by a weighted blanket of sadness.  This is a feeling that you (at least I do) see in the eyes of people in town and I think that I am falling prey to the gravity of THEIR own festering misery.   It is not that you get the sense that Rocky Mount is that kind of place, but I am just not getting the kind of vibrational frequency that I  did when I was in Omaha.   In short, I will be journaling more.   Not that “now I am ready to get all up into my feelings “, but that  journaling Is going to help me navigate my desp--, er, my day-to-day. 

Getting ready to explore this process of my maturing is challenging.   For instance,  I have subscribed (and unsubscribed) to several local groups for older men and women to start some form of relationship on Facebook.   I could not help but feel choked by the desperate loneliness and summarily need, not desire,  for someone to be in their lives. I remembered in Omaha subscribing and meeting women, in fact, I met my Omaha partner that way.  But the Facebook dating groups smells like ‘old people’ and yes, I am ‘old’ in age but I still have a limber spiritual sense of being and I still have a youthful disdain for butterscotch!

FREE RANGE CONSCIOUSNESS

MAN... PACKING A SIGNAL FLARE WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD IDEA

 I am more than east of where I should be... and that is not being modest about where it is I am, but I am further off than I have been in quite some time.  In fact, it reminds me of the early days of my injury, when I was unaware of what was happening to me and the long degradation of my faculties to the moment I knew what was going on with me whilst I lived in mid-Michigan.  Right now, I am trying to decide if this is actually 'a thing' or is this 'A THING'.  For instance...

No, I do not do Facebook much at all.  That is not intentional, but it is something of my character. My modest daily comings-and-goings do not warrant announcing to everyone who is being forced to listen.  Additionally, the people who really know of me, understand that not only is not hearing from me via social media is normal and therefore intentional.  What makes it normal is my desire to simply "be" and that makes it intentional.  I do not need to tell everyone about my comings and goings, and the only person that I would feel comfortable telling would be a quality therapist! This is not to say that I do not care about anyone else and how my life would affect their's, but that is not nor has been my reality.  I am forced to be more social than my character once saw fit, which is of course, ironic.  I never saw myself speaking to so many people and dealing with so many identities as someone with a TBI, but there you go.  The people here in Omaha are nice and they really affect a thoughtful pose when I have encountered a native.  That has gone a long way to affecting my rationale for remaining here, even as far as to have planned for my eventual internment (which is something that was done OVER A YEAR AGO... MAYBE TWO and has NO BEARING on today's feelings) and memorial services.

Adulting has been very difficult for me recently.  I am struggling with the weight of the mundane, along with fatigue from physical exertion (which also includes mental exertion, as even a malfunctioning brain demands at least 1/5 of the body's energy demands) leaving me worn out.  That is what journaling was supposed to be for me, a place where I get to "off-load" some of the thoughts that were taking up space in my head, and though I know I have said this before, hopefully, I mean it this time... I HAVE TO get this nonsense in order.  Back in the day, I had a Nine Inch Nails tee-shirt (might still have it buried somewhere) with the print saying, over and again, "Can't Stop This Scratching Inside My Head".  No surprise that I am thinking of it, and even as I wonder if that is a misquote, it remains that I cannot stop the scratching that is going on inside of mine.

Between missing appointments (medical appointments are of the highest priority) and having problems with my daily tasks, my concern is that I am at "the end of the beginning".  After all, I have been essentially on my own with this condition for nearly 20 years, and eventually, the time would come where being able to negotiate the world-at-large (much less the world where I live) would start to overwhelm me.

So that is why the Churchillian quote was used for this section.  The true start of my dealing with TBI has begun.  Nothing was over when I was with Mookie Dee, as the previous pages of my journal attest.  I have made a big leap and gone from where I was, a "bumbling, stumbling, rumbling..." human being who could go all the way to nowhere, to someone who has gone (and yeah, still strives to go further) to where their dreams took them.  If there were any regrets, I guess I that there would have been tighter Quality Control on what passed for my dreams... or at least on the blueprint that I followed to achieve them!

NOW THAT I PLAN TO SET ROOTS IN OMAHA...

 For the majority of the past decade I have been enjoying my existence.  This is not to say that I did not have a good life prior to moving to Omaha, but as the number of posts since I have been here have dwindled to rumours, I really have been enjoying an increase in the quality of my life.  Because of that increase in life quality, the thinking that created many of my entries has been altered.  I no longer “think” the way that I did in years gone by, and that has made a great difference in how I perceive myself and the world at large.  I have personally held that it is hard to find yourself when you are stuck in self-pity, which is part of the reason that I began blogging.  To have those corrosive thoughts inside of me would have really done me in, and by journaling out what was inside, those thoughts did not eat away at my being, keeping me from falling into self-pity or worse.

The troubles that I did have were far from exercable.  Nothing that I have experienced here (minus the hospital trips from being struck by cars!) has caused me to stay up late at night, nor have I had any moments of dread from something that awaited me to start my day.  Most days, in fact, have been in the 85% - 95% percentile, even with the snow, the rain, almost any inconvenience that I have encountered.  Because of that, I have had no motivation to dredge up (which is what I would have been doing… exchanging “drama” for content) what was going sideways in my life.  I could have mentioned the relationship that I terminated and the ebb and flow of it, but instead, I CHOSE to handle things appropriately and make the decision according to what I believed in.  No debate and no fear of whether it was fair or not, and I have long since felt that I “paid back” what I had taken from people in relationships.  So there was no drama there, and further discussion would be to try and sharpen my storytelling chops.

GET IT STRAIGHT

Which brings me to the secondary and most important reason for my journal.  To keep me on message and focused.  I do not have drama and there is none that I would like to share.  While social media is a useful tool, it has been relegated to an afterthought, checked infrequently to keep track of the people I care about and who I want to remain in touch with.  There is nothing that I really want to say, no one whose attention that I want to get, and no information that I have to share with anyone.  This blog is about as far as I will go with any personal news/or information, and if there is any type of “announcing” done on a social media network, it will likely be for official self-promoting, not the “oh, look everyone… this wonderful thing is going on in my life” kind of breaking news.  Not to be a curmudgeon or anything, but I have never been a self-promoter.  I do understand and am aware of the purpose to self-promotion, but I will still be abstaining from the fatuous, “look at me” stuff.  That just is not my style.  Besides, that is not going to help me with writing up a proposal to the city of Papillion for a boxing program, which is foremost on my mind.  I may have mentioned it, but if not, I do have interest from the Mayor and a couple of the councilmen here in town.  So I feel that if I am serious about wanting to live and take charge of my life, then I will take a serious run at making this happen.

My life has stabilized.  There are always chances for destabilization, but that is with anyone.  The thing I have now is a foundation that hopefully I can build upon, even rebuild on, if necessary.

I also have entered into a new relationship.  It is not with someone “new” in my life, but it is with one of the women that I dated prior to my last long-term girlfriend, a woman that I met not long after “the Princess” that I once dated.  She has a couple of adult daughters, one who has a child and is expecting another.  Would I call either of her daughter’s situations “stable”?  I am not sure about KT and her emergence into adulthood, so I would ask, “What is stable?”.  But I will withhold my reservations as I feel that I can competently care for my own well-being, physically and mentally.  Even talking about my “once and current” partner should not be necessary.  She, along with her daughters, are all independent entities who exist in their own worlds, outside of my sphere of influence and direct concern.

I hope to start an amateur boxing program here in Papillion.  Now the boxing team is not the only thing that I have in mind.  I still want to go to school and I want to become a real estate agent as well.  So that would make for me to really have my sh*t together, focused and hustling.  The anxiety that I do have in my life relates to finding not only the order of actions that I should be taking but the general uncertainty that is a part of taking on a major project in one’s life.  Much of the butterflies are self-induced, and that is why I am going to be journaling about my progress.  So if anyone has any tips on writing a formal proposal or business plan… Any advice would be appreciated!

THE END OF THE SPRING

 I am very unsure of how I feel right now.  It feels as if I am journeying through the nadir of everything, ever.  The reality is much more forgiving than that, but, the feelings of sadness and hopelessness are thick in my heart and mind.

This may have been the last time that I will get to see KT.  She has really taken a turn, blaming everyone for her unhappiness.  Much of her ranting was boilerplate, typical complaints of an entitled young person.  She accepts no responsibility for her own unhappiness, quick to point out all the faults in me, her Mom, and her Stepfather.  Her ranting also failed to accurately condemn herself for the decisions that she made (after all, to have received scholarship offers from Columbia AND Michigan is something that I could have only dreamed of, and most people in that position would have chosen one, even if they were uncertain and worried about being up to the task.  But she was not up for hearing that she had the option to make the decision and that neither her mother nor I was responsible for her not altering the trajectory of her life.

Her pleas that she was denied the opportunity to grow and experience life rings hollow as well.  According to her Mom, the three primary adults in her life, her Stepfather and myself included, all bear the wrath of her disappointment, for not providing her with the things we specifically provided her with so that she can have the opportunity that we did not.  From the first night, I knew that this was going to be a difficult month.  I thought that we were going to laugh and take pictures and go see what was what with the nightlife.  In the end, dropping her off at the airport, receiving and receiving a very uninspiring half-hug goodbye, was the most appropriate ending to her stay.  For the first time, I felt like an unnecessary chapter in her life.

It is hard for me to focus on much of the venom and hate that she spewed.  Her Mom is the this-that-and-the-other thing.  I am all-the-things-that-Mom-was not.  And while her stepfather was exalted (as was my former partner), her Mother assured me that changes with the breeze, as her fury, has touched him as well.  In the end, it is safe to assume that she is the victim of a conspiracy that seeks to deny her the life she deserves… that of being a wife of a high-wage earning man, living off of his accomplishments while she handles the home, taking care of the children and making sure that the servants keep the estate neat.

Whenever I thought about what a parent would want for their child, I felt that the three of us had done a pretty good job.  Her Mom, her Stepdad, handled most of the heavy lifting, and I felt that I was always there to “spot” the both of them, assisting whenever they seemed to falter.  But lately, the last three or so years according to her Mom, she seems to have been influenced by social media, inspiring her to a retcon of her life.  She is the victim of a Mother who did not know how to express her feelings, a non-existent Father, and a Stepfather, while he has his flaws, was the only one to have tried to prepare her for life.  This outlook eschews whatever responsibility that falls to her for being the one who actually makes the decisions that altered her life.  So no, I did not try to record her visit… I am looking forward to when my memory dulls the sharpness of the knives she flung at me and it becomes, “she hates me”, and nothing more.  I could have saved myself the trouble of pleading for help in taking her around town, getting a car (more on that later).

She looked at my apartment and my living conditions with contempt.  Would I not be more comfortable with Kitty, my ex?  When I explained that despite her feelings for me, the execution of her love was too costly, both emotionally and materially, and I could not deal with the constant ups and downs of dealing with easily avoidable situations.  At this point, I remembered what her Mom had said, that when she talks about “you”, she is really trying to find out something for and about HER.  Now she has a relationship with an older forty-something African cat, and she is wondering why her “love” is not enough.  Her chastising me for not remaining with Kitty, who truly loved me and was willing to care for me, made no sense to her.  She feels that love in and of itself is enough and that someone who can love you for who you are and as you are, should be paramount.  Still, that was the least of her concerns.

Being an only child, she is very selfish and everything has to be about her.  Even when she shows concern, it is mostly about how a thing affects her and not the thing concerning anyone else.  It is not a worry for my safety but how it made her feel that was upsetting to her.  Right now, she is not a kind, nor good, person.  Initially, I thought to chalk up most of her difficulties to the “failure to launch” problem that affects many twenty-somethings, and that is a part of it.  But there are specifics to what she is going through that make me less-than-hopeful for her.

See, some of the questions that she is facing were things that I initially dealt with when I was 17 and decided to join the service.  As much potential as I may have had, she clearly has much more, and its weight has become a burden.  She would rather not live up to anything and seek the “easy way out” of not working and being someone’s wife.  Growing up on the fringe of the Women’s Movement (DYK that the ERA has not been ratified..? WTF.!!) and growing up with women asserting their equality, the notion that a woman would want to be tied to the home seems ludicrous.  But there are a lot of younger women who see this as a viable option, either work for a few years before starting a family or just forgoing work and being a housewife.  As a teenager, I never heard young women stating that one of their goals was to be a Mother and wife FIRST, at the expense of ambition or a career.  If anything, they would combine elements of each and have a full life.  It sounds so different from how I perceived relationships when I was her age.  It was more “us” and “we”, concepts that I still hold as viable, that in relation was the achievable aim.

So my pleading with people to help me fix my bike was not taken as high as I thought it would be.  Neither was my improved job or living situation.  That she does not think highly of me, especially because I am seemingly not willing to be with someone who loves me, is not of great concern.  As my Mother would say to me… “I am your Mother, not your friend”, so I think similarly of my relationship with KT.  If I am one of those “friends” that she fades away from as she lives her life, so be it.  After all, I want her to be happy and successful with her life and if that means I am not a part of it… eh, oh well!

STILL IN SEARCH OF AN ENTRANCE

 "People are capable at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of." - Paulo Coelho

I have not been able to blog as regularly as I like because I have been … well, lazy.  Not that I would have actually called the reason “lazy” as the reason for my stretches of deep absences, but, the truth of the matter is that I did not muster the energy to write down what I was feeling.  Having a blog, a commitment to myself, is one of the hallmarks of my journaling.  Journaling forces me to slow down and analyze and digest my daily comings and goings, and clears some of the constant fog that comes with living each day.  There are times where there is a line between what I call “being conscious” and what neurotypicals mean whenever they refer to “conscious”.  And I mean by ANY state or feeling, any interpretation of what that word means.

Meditation helps me greatly.  It slows everything down for me and it allows me to ‘go through the details’ of my day and pick through the things that I need to go on.  Which leads me to something that I DO NOT think I need anymore, my once and current girlfriend.  She had a problem with her vehicle, an expensive brake issue that I had taken care of a few years ago.  But due to her negligence, the SAME THING now threatened her vehicle.  While I did not want my journal to be full of “drama”, stories of careening from one avoidable circumstance to another, I am unable to write anything without first talking about the elephant in my thoughts.

She has been in a state that was approaching failure in her affairs from the very beginning.  Yet, I was, as I have said before, taken by the way she made a first impression upon me and that was that with that.  As I got to know her, I began to see why she had remained single, as she is a mediocre homekeeper, with a tendency to knick-knack clutter and pet slovenliness.  Based on my initial assessment, I threw myself into trying to help her in all ways of the home, to no avail.  No matter how much laundry, cleaning, dinner-making, and shopping that I did, nothing improved.  She did not need someone to absorb some of the slack, she was more than ready to transfer it all off to me!  This became a point of contention thanks in part to a conversation we had after the brake repair.

With my daughter’s KT visit bearing down on me, I was at a loss for what this meant for her visit.  Getting the work done on the vehicle for my partner at this critical time in my life forced me to juggle my priorities.  While admittedly, she, herself, did not come out and ask for me to help her out, c’mon… what choice did I really have, if we were indeed to potentially share our lives together?  So what went wrong??

This is where I get a little off topic and talk more about why I have not been regular with journaling.  Omaha has been a really good place for me (relationships be damned..!) and I am very comfortable with being able to take care of myself.  But the past 5 or so years I have been languishing (LOL@Beth) as the world around me has found a steady “thrumm” to each day, almost hypnotizing me as entropy streams me towards the rather unspectacular end of my tour on this mortal coil.  While we were a couple, the constant dissonance between the life we were leading together and the life that I felt was worth changing my goals were becoming an uncrossable chasm… unless I left when I did.  

I do not know if I altered her course in life.  Were I to make a case for “no”, it would be because I think that she was headed for this path without me.  Part of my “why” for pursuing her was due to my empathy as I got to know her and her story.  Besides, if I have to “own” my choices bringing me to this experience of ennui (ooh! Another scrabble word!!) that I am now enduring, then I feel that whatever is left between us, is being left adrift, and fairly so.  After her unfair comparison to her daughter’s new boyfriend, f*ck her.  To quote my man Dres of Black Sheep, “keep your problems to yourself kid, ‘cause I gots my own”.

We are sitting here a week from hosting my darling daughter! But in even BIGGER news, my youngest daughter has tentatively reached out to me about a relationship!!  That has really gotten me stoked and once I manage to get through this patch of uncertainty that I am currently going through.  See, when I started to blog again, I wanted to avoid the dramatic distractions that were becoming more and more a part of my life, thanks to someone who did not listen, and had their own agenda that was completely opposite of what I had expected of myself.  For instance…

Whether or not KT brings her math books, I am STILL going to go to school and do maths!  Even if I fail to get a Pell Grant!!  Somehow I am going to figure that out and add to my growing character story!!!  Which brings me to one more reason I wanted to forego the typical whining of a journal… as my disease progresses, I feel more aware of how much time I have in so many ways that I do not want to waste it on dead ends or chasing ghosts from the attic of my mind.

One of the things about the continued existence of this journal is that it will continue to be an accurate barometer of where I am at in reality.  Maybe I will get a neurological test and be diagnosed with PD (cause I am feeling it in my bones) to go along with the suite of conditions that come with a traumatic brain injury.  Again, trying to avoid the self-pity and woebegone hopelessness of being lost.  After all, my life is not that dramatic and I cannot willfully drum up any drama either.   One of the things that I hope to establish by blogging is building a clearinghouse for my ideas, hopes and dreams.  As far as my last relationship experience is concerned...