THE SECRET COLORS OF MY LIFE

When I look at my life and its secret colors, I feel like bursting into tears. Like that sky- it’s rain and sun both, noon and midnight. You know, I think of the lips I’ve kissed, and of the wretched child I was, and of the madness of life and the ambition that sometimes carries me away. I’m all those things at once. I’m sure there are times when you wouldn’t even recognize me.

~Albert Camus

I like how everything in the Camus quote is thrown together like an honest pastiche of his life.  Often, that is what I think of my journaling, a pastiche of my life, or maybe some imitation of a preceding one, a life with maybe more style and flourish than this one that I captain.

I subscribe to a feed on my Face Book page called, “The worst feeling ever is not knowing whether you should wait or give up”.  I am not certain when I began to subscribe to it but what I am certain of is my motivation to add it to the various feeds I receive on my page.  The “not knowing” between me and Nebraska was avoidable, particularly if an intimate relationship was a possibility.  When I would spend those nights that were not particularly empty, but neither were they fully comfortable, I would wonder what direction was our relationship going to take.  It felt for all the world to me that our relationship was a rudderless ghost ship stuck in a Sargasso of unfounded fears and failed gambits, and while I was willing to sail with her it was not at all costs, nor was it solely on her terms.  When I made the decision to go to school last year and bear down on which direction that I was tacking was when I once again recommitted to myself.  Though the main purpose was for me to build a multi-dimensioned life here in Omaha, you, dear reader, also was aware of the high hopes that I had for Nebraska and me.

Though we did not cover each and every place that I had hoped to enjoy with Nebraska, between Flat Ruthie and KT, I did think that I hit enough of the wonderful spots that I had once hoped to go with Nebraska.  And with that being so, I feel that I no longer have to wonder what it would be like to go to the places that I have not been with her, because I actually had the chance to show off Omaha (to Flat Ruthie) and to go to many of these places with someone who I love and loves me back (KT).  Maybe this does not make any sense to anyone, but it makes perfect sense to me.

I have been doing some thinking this past week as I get ready for my “second” second year of college at how far I have come and where it is I am going.  It has always seemed like yesterday I was down in the basement of Mookie Dee’s townhouse chattering away in the early morning hours, unable to sleep because I was filled with so much anxiety.  Between my diagnosis, losing my darling brother, and the last bit of whatever money I had from my job on the fringe of the auto industry, putting up with Mookie Dee’s impending unemployment and crap was too much for me to bear.  And it is with some degree of irony that I write about that because when my one reader decided to “dump me”, I had explained at the time how it came I was with Mookie Dee.

Because I never got “messed up” because of a relationship (including my starter marriage) until I fumbled away Tee Jay, I found myself unable to move past that relationship.  This would be as “messed up” as I have ever been over a person, where I was wishing I could be with them and I found myself wrestling with the “stalker ex-boyfriend” that dwelled within me.  “So, I thought, “THIS is what it is like to be lost in love with an old lover.”  And for the first time I found myself still wanting to be with someone that I was no longer in a relationship with.  Now here is where my friend missed me “mea culpa’s” for my role in aggravating the problems between men and women, PARTICULARLY brother’s and sister’s.  And with me being a snarky smart a$$, part of why I put out there that I did not think I would be bothering with another relationship is all of the “I gots mine, you gots to get yours,” that I reflect upon my relationship career.

Been married, divorced and engaged.  I have gone from nerdling virgin to solider, to professional boxer.  Traveled as much of the world as I have wanted to ( or thereabouts anyways) and then some, and from being flush with material things and money, I have been so broke that I would pick through garbage to retrieve a soda pop bottle for its deposit.  It is also why when Danny Elfman used to sing “I’ve been reborn so many times that I can’tremember them all”  as he would ask  in the song, “WhoDo You Want To Be?” that I would feel a sense of foreboding, as if that was a discovery to be made as I journeyed though this dimension.

Anywho, it was with all this in mind that I dared to embark upon the “Ex-List era” of my life.  I felt that I had something to make up for and the “sentence” that was my relationship with Mookie Dee; I have paid for my relationship transgressions.  And if you think that I have not paid enough, take that up with the judiciary!

WOULD YOU RATHER SUFFER BY YOURSELF IN A POOL OF BLISSFUL MISERY?

And I need to add that I have also bedded my share of women.  It matters less “how” I did accumulate the numbers (better known as statistics) than it is that I did not violate anyone’s “personal space” and I forced myself on all of no one ever.  In short, I did not have to force or “take” anything from anyone… EVER.  In fact when Mike Tyson was convicted of rape I would use that as an object lesson for my roomies in Greensboro in how women should be dealt with in our apartment.  In fact, I still would find it hard to even role-play certain stuff, and I know that because I have tried!  But THAT is a different conversation!!  Suffice to say, my carnal desires have been had, as have many of my soulful ones.

I know what love is for me.  I know what it looks like, what it tastes like as well as what it feels like.  It is something that is unmistakable and when I feel it coming FROM someone, it is unmistakable.

A while back I posted on my Face Book page that “I am love…” along with other comments that while I am sure that most took as the typical Face Book blithering, that I sincerely meant as a description of who I am.  Though I am not to the zen-pacifist level, I do not engender hate towards anything and anyone in this existence.  The last time I openly “hated” anything or anyone was my starter wife, and really that was more of an annoyance than a good old-fashioned hate.  Our relationship was over 50 pounds ago and she could move me with her punches because of her weight advantage!  Also, she was fueled by irrationality, and the less said about her and our marriage, the better.

I have never needed anyone to “like” me to justify my “liking” them.  If I like you, I just DO.  And that is that with that.  But this does not cover my why I am still following my former reader, but what I am struggling with regarding Nebraska.

IN CLOSING

I wish that I had something more substantial to say, something that had relevance to an intellectual subject, but I don’t.  I am taking a pause on a ledge as I climb, getting ready for my new job and school.   Got more KT pictures to share and I will be sorting through those as well.