Tuesday, April 3, 2012

WHEN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE THINGS WE NEED AND WHAT WE RECEIVE ARE AN ANCIENT OCEAN WIDE


 THE LONG ROAD THAT YOU DRIVE DOWN WHEN THERE IS NOTHING TO THINK ABOUT

Sitting here without a television has become a very relaxing, almost meditative experience for me.  Without football or college basketball, I don’t miss having the television on at all.  Meanwhile, if I did want to watch something, most of what I would watch on my own can easily be found on the Internet.  I can go to wherever and find a “Criminal Minds” or “Law and Order” repeat fairly easily.  The networks that I would watch, like Discovery: Science or anything on PBS is also available online.  I do plan to find out how long I can go without football after KT leaves.  If I really HAVE to watch a game, either a bar or the gym has a TV I can watch.  So we will see.

Having achieved my goal of independence once I left Mookie Dee, I confirmed something that I had felt but sort of flew against the winds of convention.  Because I never felt isolated because of my solitude, I grew up “alone” rather than “lonely”.  I never could miss companionship because it was always as ephemeral the morning fog in my life as a child.  Before I ever wondered why I wasn’t able to maintain friendships when we moved from one place to another, or why people in jr. high that I thought were buddies with me, weren’t when we were in high school, and the few relationship from high school would soon fade as we went off in our separate directions.  It has always been that way and it isn’t something that ever saddened me, as it was a new experience and I had the opportunity to deal with it unencumbered by any expectations to compare what I felt was “the way” it was going to be for me.

If there was anything that left any residual mark on me from adolescence that factors in how I frame relationships, it is this: My growth spurt and adeptness at boxing stopped people from f*ckin’ with me.  That was ironic, because I had learned to make sport of bullies threatening me and chasing me home from school in junior high.  In high school, the sophistication went beyond simple “yo’ Momma” jokes and cracks about your clothes.  A lot of it had to do with the cliques and associations that were made and where you fell in the hierarchy of status.  When it came to pick up basketball games in Phys Ed, I would fall right behind “your boy” if a social Alpha was choosing teams, but ahead of “the scrubs”, because I was athletic enough to be considered a ball player.  Not cool enough to avoid being ostracized for whatever reason there was to push a cat on the outside of a clique, but fear-inducing enough so that people kept their comments mainly to themselves.

I was never quite anything enough… not enough of a geek to be forced to sit in the front table of the cafeteria at lunch, but never rating enough points to sit in with the cool kids or jocks.  I would find a spot somewhere in the middle of the cafeteria, with an empty chair on either side of me.  Occasionally, someone would wander over to chat, some to get notes, others because there were no empty spots available near where they wanted to sit.  No biggie, I rode all through that stuff in high school because it did not bother me, not one little bit.

…BECAUSE IF IT DID…

I try to remember to text the SFC because I miss and love her, and I would have done anything AT ALL for her at one time in my life.  I always thought of her as my best friend and wished that we could have kept in contact after we went our separate ways.  She was someone that I had always wondered about and when she found me through Facebook, it was like kismet.  Nebraska and I had a spat, which opened the door for the SFC to ask me to Virginia.  See, part of my plan after I had left Mookie Dee, the plan that was developed BEFORE Mookie and I would hook up, had left room for someone to roar in from out of nowhere.  It had happened before, in fact, once with another woman from the military, Jenny.  That was why I thought my “ex-List” had more potential than others.  Not saying that my “milkshake is better than yours”, but people from my past has always been trying to catch up to me, so I figured that since this was a time I was stuck on a person from my past, I would trade on whatever made me such a memorable person to others, and see if someone who was super memorable to me, was not a sign from the past that reflected upon my future.

AND THAT IS WHEN EVERYTHING BEGINS TO CHANGE…

Mookie Dee and I troubles seemed to coincide with my symptoms and diagnosis.  Around that time she found out she was going to be unemployed and instead of battening down the hatches and girding up for the storms, she started f*ckin’ and what not, while not breakin’ a cat off his share at home.  Whatever.  I figured this was my comeuppance for my “less than gentlemanly” behavior in my past.

So I paid my “debt” to the arbiter of “Relationship Court”, or as much as whatever was going around with my name on it as payback costs, and decided to push on with my plan.  But there were some alterations, one was that as much as I had wanted Tee Jay back in my life, I still wanted and had more trust in what I did not know than what I did, and that had me set sights on moving to Omaha.  Besides, I had a crush on a “fly skimmie” that I had met on the internet, and who knew if there was REALLY any magic in being drawn to Omaha?  So I got my stuff in gear and headed out west!

Mentioned the SFC because the opening for that adventure occurred during one of the periods of tensions between Nebraska and I.  This was part of my preplanning, to be ready if a “darkhorse” would come rushing into my life, so that my INTENTION would not be in jeopardy.

As much as I wanted her to be a part of my life once I got here, our relationship had been decidedly one-sided.  This is a trait that I developed as I floated in the space between places as a teen, and because I have enjoyed the results, I continue to do this, which is to separate my objectivity from how I may feel personally about something or someone.  I own my own emotions and I don’t allow for them to skew how I process things intellectually.

Nebraska was taken aback by my manner of speaking and how I spoke about her, about Omaha and a host of other seeming-at-time peculiarities about me.  For instance, my amorphic sexuality… because I spoke with indifference to sexual identity, she had to wonder if I was not one of those “free love brothers” (because “on the ‘down low’ was not yet in vogue), or a cat whose racial identity was confustrated or something. I REALLY DON’T KNOW OR WORSE CARE.  That stuff had been a shrug and “one less f*ck” that I had to give when it came to another person’s opinion of me for a long time, in fact, you can say that I specialize in not caring what someone thinks of me when it is negative.  Not that I am someone who lives in denial, but because if it is wrong, why worry about it?  If their attitude doesn’t change towards me, que sera, cause I KNOW that I am not going to change because of what they think.  Still, I hear what people say because they just might be right.

A LOT OF STUFF HAPPENS ON SATURDAY NIGHTS

… which sometimes include tossing me (but I will say I am sorry) out but at least if you did, you might just have enjoyed the weekend for a change.

I don’t know if every great person sets out to be whatever it is they become.  How did Bill Gates know he was going to be BILL GATES, or how did Hilary Clinton know she was going to be HILARY CLINTON?  I could go on and on, but you get my point and if you don’t, WHY ARE YOU READING THIS BLOG??

I did not recall when I was in kindergarten wanting to be someone who did not fit into any standardized social demographic.  Nor do I recall in 2nd grade thinking I would grow up to be a semi-socialized hermit.  But as they say in Uzbekistan, “Those are the breaks, so break it up, break it up, and break it up, BREAK DOWN!!”

           Or as my main-ski Arthur Schopenhauer puts it: “It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.”  Because I hold that close among my core philosophical beliefs, it is also why I KNOW I can be an a**hole.  At some point, there is a place where each and every one who lives can make a decision that puts in motion a series of events that leads us to that place I like to call “the nexus of realities”, where fate are determined.  Sometimes those moments are lost to the wastes that are the sands of times, but they once were there nonetheless.  A moment where the path to desires was available to you and everything hinges on the simplest of decisions.

With all the things that I know about myself and what I know of how I am received by society, I do skip my happy-go-lucky a** along in the world expecting the best but when it doesn’t happen, being f*ckin’ surprised!  Not because I am such an optimist that I blithely expect only good things to happen, but like how I interpret Pollyanna, I believe that good is out there for those who are daring enough to let it come into their lives.

This means that when reality does set in and it is doing so with a darker cast than what has been hoped for, you accept it.  But you are not defeated by it.  No, there is another dawn, and there will be other opportunities… the big question is, will you be brave enough to try to seize them when they come?

I want to go back to the acceptance of things… There comes a point in a relationship where the signs are more than obvious.  In my mind, these are when relationships become dangerous.  It is when no matter how much materiel is committed to making right whatever may be “wrong”, no matter how patient or reckless, no matter how far into deviancy that one is willing to go, is there any real chance of change or hope.  But more than that, there are “magic” or “deathless words”.  Things that once said linger over the relationship the way that carrion reeks of death.  Not only is the relationship over, but it has prolly BEEN over for some time now, and you find yourself out in Crouch’s End, and all the worst of possible torments are now come into being. 

So with a sigh, I ‘heard’ what I needed to… and knew that I would continue on a path that as for that did not differ that much from the other.  But as it was not known to me and lush with grasses that bore no wear from previous travelers, I set out down the other and left the first for another day…

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hilary knew in the womb. Hers was a calculating fetus. I think there are others who felt they Knew, did get at least their 15 minutes of Warholian fame, but were, along the way, undone by their good fortune, or didn't work at sustaining it by actually Doing something that mattered, or by not doing enough of it. The where are they now? people. ~Mary