Goodbye, 2017. Please Kiss Me First, 2018

We should all get Participation Trophies for 2017.

You know, one of those generic trophies that says "As long as you had fun, you won!"  But that wouldn't really cover shitshow 2017 was, would it?

Perhaps a Golden Turd.

It's important to reward those who so richly deserve to have their efforts recognized.  This year sucked.  Normally I'd personify the year and come up with some kind of witty dialog to illustrate just how badly it sucked but honestly, at this point, it's just too much.

Perhaps we should offer other awards for this year.

A lot of us deserve that award.  So many people had it coming, too.  It was hard to get through 2017 without stabbing somebody because it seemed like every day somebody new made the list.  

This year was so bad, I feel like I can't really speak the words but instead I have to use a doll to point at the places where 2017 hurt me.  The problem is, so much of what happened this year was self-inflicted.  

I did a lot of it to myself.  I wish I could say it was all "them" or "that" but no, I'm self-destructive.  

I'm starting to feel like crap.  I'm thinking somebody gave me their bug.  Because it's so damned cold out, and I don't have a car to drive anywhere, I'm kind of stuck here.  And I don't have a job, either.  I lost that a day after Christmas.  The car died two days before Christmas.  

What this all means is I'm sliding into 2018 ready for some serious changes.  I'm ready, too.  I'm ready to blast into 2018 like a 10 year-old shithead on a sugar rush in Walmart on the day they put out the toys for Christmas.  Come at me, bro.  

The Ghost of Jacob Marley's Shithead Grandson

It's Christmas Eve. 

Thankfully I'm not with my family.  My car showed mercy upon me and died.  I'm thinking it's most likely a blown head gasket.  I say it's a mercy because it snowed today and my tires are bald. 

Better stuck at home than in a ditch with broken bones sticking out of my skin as my car burns with me trapped inside.  I say that's my luck but the truth is The Powers That Be would never do that to me.  They'd never let me out of this rotten manure pit hurling through the cold dark of space so easily.  I'm fucking immortal.

That's a bitter thing to say but honest depending on your perspective.  But that's all about what life is supposed to be, right?  Perspective?  How we frame something is supposed to make it a reality, they say. 

I've been getting better at framing things in a more positive light.  I hate it, though.  I feel like Karl Rove standing behind Rupert Murdoch with a hand on his shoulder, whispering in his ear.   It feels like self-propaganda as if I'm somehow spinning reality to fit the narrative. 

It feels false to me to say this Christmas Eve is somehow not bad at all.  After how rough these past few weeks have been and all, to say simply that things aren't all that bad feels disingenuine but it's the healthy choice.  It's the healthy path. 

Self-deception can go both ways, I guess.  You can lie to yourself and tell yourself all kinds of stories about how you've gotten a lot of positive things done despite the harsh terrain.  Or you can totally discount your progress as inconsequential because you're not this enough or that enough.  For some reason I am perfectly content to discount myself but even remotely being positive is about as comfortable as shoving a cactus up my arse. 

Tonight I walked up and down a flight of stairs without issue.  I even carried laundry baskets full of wet clothes without having to stop and take each step one at a time, or keep the basket on the steps while I repeated the tedious trek.  Put the basket on the highest step you can reach, put both hands on the walls, take one step at a time until you catch up to where you set the basket, then repeat. 

That's how I used to go up the stairs leading out of my basement where the washing machine is located.  It was a rough journey, too.  My knees would feel like they were about to blow out and I wasn't nearly as stable as a toddler just learning how to walk.  I was terrified of falling. 

That's a reality when you're too big to move around much.  You know if you fall down you're fucked.  Proper fucked.  Because you're not getting up that easily and when you're a loner like me, that means you might be on the floor for a while. 

When I was a kid, my grandma's sister, Naoma, fell down and was pinned between the couch and the radiator in her apartment.  She was horribly burned because she was stuck there for over a day.  She was in the hospital for almost a month.  That's not going to be me.  I'm careful.  I'd much rather learn from the tragedy of others than from my own mistakes, miscues, and missteps. 

The Frank Capra classic "It's a Wonderful Life" is on television right now.  It's an annual thing I haven't watched since I was in college.  I always found it a hard movie to watch.  Capra was a genius in his day for making the audience sympathize with his main characters. 

Just like George Bailey, we've all made choice we thought were best for other people. 

Something's been bugging me lately.  Well, okay, a lot has been bugging me.  I try to reframe it but it's still there.  It's the self-destructive thing again.  The things I have ruined. 

I've bitched and complained about relationships I've tanked plenty but I've never mentioned how I've done the same with jobs and other aspects of my life.  Right now I'm faced with some decisions about my employment and I'm wondering if I'm going to repeat those mistakes over and over again.  It's bad enough I can't be happy for more than 24 hours with a woman but I'm almost as bad with jobs. 

If the job is utter shit, I stay.  If the job is really bad, I'll apply twice and stop by once a day until they give me the damned job.  Usually it's something horrible like shoving a cactus up my arse for minimum wage and a bonus for extra needles they take away routinely because sometimes the cacti are too smooth.  That's my dream job and I've done that job with a dozen employers over the past 20 years. 

I wouldn't know what to do with a good job that paid well.  I'd just blow that extra money on all the bills I've neglected for the past 30 years anyways.

But this is the season of re-framing things and being positive.  I have no idea how to reframe this one.  I don't have a fucking clue how to spin this shitty story into something positive. 

But on this Christmas Eve, while I sit alone and monitor a quiet internet because everybody is with family and people who care about them, I can say I've done more this holiday season to rise above the darkness that always consumes me.  I have done more positive things for myself than ever before and I have made more progress than I thought possible.  I might not be hitting any home runs in my life but I've made positive steps in the right direction. 

That's not bullshit spin control, either.  That's truth.  So sure, a year ago I was a basket case, and my brain spun around like a centrifuge, while I lined up another kamikaze ran into the dirt, but that's not happening this year.  This year, I've gone full Bill O'Reilly and Wolfe Blitzer, and I'm telling a positive story--truth be damned.      

The Quest for New Memories

My wife and I were married on December, 18th.  Today.  And it was 18 years ago. 

I'm not doing well.  I never do, either. 

I hate the fucking holidays for a lot of reasons.  This is one of them.  To me, this day is a reminder that I used to be happy. 

Here's a memory I always go back to in my head:  My wife and I, sitting in our small apartment in Seoul, in the Ewha District, as she holds our daughter.  Raven is drinking from her bottle and I'm petting our dog, Charlie.  Charlie is laying down and Seung-Hee, my wife, is looking at me and smiling.  We're talking about how lucky we are.  We're talking about how fortunate we are to have gotten to the point we're at and how incredibly grateful we both were to have what we had because neither of us thought it was possible.  Not for us.  Not in our lives. 

My wife and I both remembered where we came from.  Her life wasn't very good, either.  And she wasn't looking to meet anybody when we first met.  Our first dates weren't even dates.  I was teaching her English via e-mails and both of us had very shitty weeks.  I was starving for something other than the few dishes I knew and I told her--be my food guide and I'll take you out to dinner. 

That was our first few dates.  They weren't dates--she was teaching me about Korean food and I was teaching her English. 

In short time, we discovered something about each other--we respected each other on an emotional level.  She knew I wasn't going to be some drunken asshole, I wasn't violent, I didn't yell, and I didn't push her around or bully her.  I respected her thoughts and feelings, asked her rationally what she thought about things, and we made choices based on a calm, respectful conversation. 

Most of the time.  I was an asshole sometimes.  I'll admit this.  And there were times when she was very controlling and jealous.  Plus, she really didn't like my darker side, which I kept very hidden from her.  Gladly, too.  I wanted to be for her what she wanted me to be. 

On that night, I knew I'd finally had everything I've ever wanted out of life.  I had a family.  That's all I wanted.  That was the ultimate goal for me--a family.  I wanted to do it better than my dad.  I wanted to be a better husband than him, too.  I wanted to start from the beginning with a family and be the man I knew I could be for somebody who cared about me the way I cared about them. 

And I lost it.  All of it.  I had it and lost it all.

I won't go through the long, shitty story but suffice to say I lost everything no matter what I did, how hard I fought, and it left me devastated. 

Is there anything worse than knowing what you have and then losing it? 

On this day, every year, I am reminded that I was happy once.  I was happy once, goddammit!  And I can't get it back no matter what I do.  Losing my family changed me in a thousand ways and I'm no longer the person I was.  If my wife saw me today she wouldn't even recognize me.  I'm not the guy she fell in love with anymore. 

I've tried to get back what I had and I just can't.  It's like they were taken from me because I had to fall apart.  I had to be damaged.  Fate had plans other than happiness. 

And sometimes the answers to our prayers is "Go fuck yourself." 

When December 18th rolls around, it feels like I haven't been happy since I lost them and that no matter what I do, I never will be again.  Every effort will be nothing more than a feeble attempt at a replacement for what I had so I can lie to myself and make believe it's ok. 

But all of that is nothing compared to the guilt.  My wife forgave me.  Our last conversation on the phone was her forgiving me for all that happened.  She said she knew it wasn't my fault and I gave it my best, but there were too many things happening at once and it just wasn't allowed by fate. 

It is a punch in the gut to have someone you failed forgive you and tell you she still loves you.  I wish she had told me she hated me.  I wish she told me she wanted to shoot me in the face.  I wish she had told me, "If I ever see you again, I'm going to throw acid in your face and cut off your various body parts, you son of a bitch!" 

But no, she was the woman I knew she was when I married her.  She forgave me. 

I feel like I've ruined her life.  I feel like I have exposed her to all kinds of horrible shit because it's Korea and dangerous for women.  I feel like I'm responsible for everything bad that has happened to her since I left.  And I am responsible.  She was my responsibility and I failed her.  Fate and the gods be damned, the blame rests at my feet, no matter how many incredibly weird things happened to destroy our marriage. 

But here's something I'm starting to consider after friends pointed out a different perspective:  What if it wasn't about me?  What if all of those times I got back up and came so close to getting them back only to be derailed by something was Fate and the universe removing me from their lives so they could walk their own path? 

What if it wasn't about me at all?  What if they needed me to be removed from them so they could grow in their own ways? 

I've blamed myself for things that were totally out of my control for a long time.  Long enough, really.  I'm afraid to let this go, though.  I'm afraid to walk away and I don't know why.  But I can't keep living like this.  I can't keep punishing and tormenting myself for things in the past I couldn't control in the lives of people who deserve their own fate. 

In the past, I have written a letter to my daughter, explaining to her how badly the guilt I have carried around for years has eaten away at me.  I shared that with some but a friend suggested I do it again and this time, keep it private.  The goal of this is to communicate with my wife's higher self on a soulful level.  Those vibrations are important.  She might not hear me directly but she will in her heart. 

I can't contact my family.  They moved when I was homeless and I didn't get my mail, so I lost contact with them and I have no way of finding them.  It's done.  I wrote the letter to my wife tonight and I feel better because of it.  I didn't say "goodbye" as much as I released myself from the bonds of guilt, anger, and loss. 

I feel like I made a step in the right direction today.  It's going to be a long journey and it might take a long time for me to let go of this.  I'm still angry and incredibly upset.  I think part of that is because I just haven't dealt with this much and instead buried things because I just couldn't deal with it.  Maybe one day I'll find some kind of happiness.  I'm trying.  I really am.  I'm not sure what to do next but I feel another lesson will present itself later on down the road. 

For now, I will accept that I have lost happiness, and hope it doesn't last forever.  It often feels like it is forever but I've been wrong before.  I hope I'm wrong about this. 

Love Songs of a Kamikaze

Earlier this week I reminded somebody the entire reason I'm making all of these changes is because I don't want to die alone.  Sure, the world is full of people who die alone.  Thousands of people a day die alone.  I don't want to be one of them.

Yet I have structured my entire life to keep women away.  Not at a distance.  Not at a certain length.  Away.  Totally and completely away.  

Oddly enough, all but a couple of my closest friends are women, but we can ignore that.  Nothing is going on with any of them.  No friends with benefits, no friends with an occasional hook up, or anything like that.  

In fact, my friends don't talk about sex at all with me.  I love that about them.  I love not hearing about their sex lives and I love that all but one never sends me naked pics of themselves.  

I'm not like other men.  I know this about myself.  I don't watch porn, and in the past few years, all things sexual have become abhorrent to me.  To say I get uncomfortable when a woman talks about her sex life is an understatement.  

This week I've been having a lot of nightmares.  On Monday morning, my alarm woke me out of a nightmare about a woman cutting off my Mr. Happy.  She was laughing and just as the alarm woke me, the blood was beginning to gush.  And it really hurt.

That nightmare probably says more about how I react to women than I'd spell out in plain words.

I don't hate women.  Quite the contrary.  I fear them.  I'm terrified by them.  I see them as either a friend or a vicious, carnivorous predator ready to rip organs out of my body and feast upon them.  When I see a beautiful woman, I see claws, fangs, and bloodlust.

No grey area, either.  One or the other.

It's part of the reason I seek out women who are unobtainable.  My dream girl is over 1000 miles away, totally out of my league if we were to meet face-to-face, and possibly married.  Knowing I'll never meet her is best.  Knowing she'll keep me her dark secret is even better.  Sure, it sucks she'll never tell her friends about the weird guy in the creepy van, but it's best this way.

But all of that doesn't matter.   It really doesn't.

Within 24 hours of being happy, I will self-destruct.  I will ruin everything and totally make a huge mess of things.  I've done it way too many times.

If the most intelligent, witty, kind, and beautiful woman came to me and told me she felt a connection with me, within 24 hours I would do something stupid to drive a wedge between us.  I would tell her something about myself out of context that would make her realize I was a mistake.  It would be the truth, but it would be a random thing out of context, and she would have to realize things were wrong.

I self destruct whenever things are going well.  I don't know why.

I've lost weight.  I've made progress.  I've been doing so well.  But too many people have complimented me and encouraged me.  I've been starting to feel like I'm not a waste of flesh and that there might be a better future than the one I imagined.

So, I've been eating carbs.  I've been eating chocolate, ice cream, and bread sticks.

I can blame all kinds of things.  Budget, food costs, etc.  But no, this is me self destructing again.

I can't stop it.  I have to destroy anything that brings me happiness or puts me on a path to a better life.  And I don't know why I do it.  I just don't.

One of the reasons I've stopped connecting with women was because I just can't bring myself to hurt another one with my self destructive instincts.  It's instinct at this point--I just do it without even thinking about it.  And it kills me to know how badly I've hurt women who cared about me.

I don't know why I do that.  I really don't.

I keep going back to that quote from Milton's Paradise Lost they used in the movie The Crow. 

Am I really that bad? 

I can't be, but somehow I have developed a self-perception that is and it has tainted everything around me. 

I keep going back to a memory from not too long ago.  I cared about her, she told me she cared about me.  And then the clock started to tick.  Within 24 hours it was done.  I'd fucked it all up. 

Again. 

I was furious with myself.  I still am.  And it still hurts.  Just 24 hours and I'm still angry at myself for fucking it all up.  I hurt a woman deeply just because she was stupid enough to care about a guy like me. 

I'm working on sorting this out.  Last week I had the realization that all of my perceptions of self, since as far back as I can remember, were based on the valuation given by broken people with issues.  People who were deeply hurt and from painful pasts who could only cope with alcohol and violence and rage. 

When I was three and a half years old, I watched my babysitter throw her drunken husband down a flight of stairs and proceed to beat him with a vacuum hose while he begged her to stop.  I was sitting at the base of the stairs.  I pulled my knees up to my chest and covered my eyes with my hands while I shook with fear. 

When I was about four and a half or five, somebody giving me a bath suddenly flew into a rage, grabbed me by the back of my head, and shoved my head under the water.  They held it there for a long time and I was certain I was going to die.  I ran out of air and let go, knowing that was how it was going to end.  Then, they suddenly pulled me up out of the water.  They were pale, shaking, and crying.  We went downstairs to have some orange juice and never spoke of it again. 

Food healed the hurt that night and made it all better.  Another pattern I need to work on. 

Somehow, I took moments like that, and instead of assigning blame to the people doing the deeds, I turned them around on myself.  I somehow twisted events like that into meaning that I was a bad person.  I have no idea how that bit of logic worked out but that's what I did. 

I thought, for my entire life, there was something fundamentally and centrally flawed about me as a human being when all along it wasn't about me.  Even decades ago, when I learned it wasn't about me, I kept the original self worth and self identity.  Despite knowing and understanding the world I grew up in, I maintained the flawed perspective that got me into this mess. 

The old lens through which I looked at myself is falling apart and good riddance.  I am working on developing a new one.  For so long, I always saw myself reflected in the eyes of others.  So when somebody liked me, I instantly thought they were somehow flawed themselves, and of poor judgement.  I knew who and what I was, why didn't they? 

I am now re-thinking and reinventing everything I knew about myself.  I am looking at how I came to believe in who and what I am, then trying to see where those perceptions were false.  I have no clue what to do after that. 

I have people who are helping me and guiding me along but this is scary shit sometimes.  But sometimes, it's like being able to re-take a driver's license photo.  I get to have a more honest appraisal of who I am. 

I have to fix this.  I just have to.  I'm self destructing in a thousand ways with a dozen choices every hour.  I don't want to die alone because I have the instincts of a Kamikaze pilot with a hundred kills painted on my side.  But more importantly, I can't hurt any more women.  I just can't.  I feel so horrible already and knowing I can't control this makes it worse. 

After a while, it becomes just another sick cosmic joke.  The guy with severe abandonment issues self destructs when he finds anything close to happiness.  You can only tell a woman you're sorry so many times before they start to think you're doing it all on purpose.  Or worse, they realize just how far gone you are mentally, and how they need to run.  You feel like a monster when that happens.  Inhuman.  It's hard to apply the new self valuation and perceptions of self when she's backing away like a woman in Hannibal Lecter's kitchen after she sees a couple of toes in the garbage disposal.   

A lot is changing.  I know that I am changing, too.  I am changing in the most positive way I know how and with the help and aid of friends who genuinely care about me.  I'm not sure who I am but I am starting to narrow it down a bit more every day.  I'm very curious about what I'll come up with.   

Small Victories on a Good Day

It's almost midnight.  I'm exhausted, in a good mood, and I almost typed the word "happy." 

Almost.  I stopped myself and deleted the few letters I got out.  I mean, I don't want to get too crazy here. 

I left my apartment. 

I don't normally do that.  There's a little girl I'll leave it for but that's about it.  She's very special to me and I love being her creepy uncle. 

Today, for the first time in well over four years, I left my apartment for a destination that was more than an hour away and new to me.  I was so anxious the night before I didn't sleep until 6am. 

When the time came to leave, I was even more anxious.  Anxiety is like a big, dark monster riding on your shoulders, licking the back of your ear as it delightfully tells you all the awful shit that is waiting for you outside the door. 

You can hear it smile as it sings in whispers about all the things that will go wrong and how horrible it will be. 

You believe it because you remember.  It's hard to forget things and you know what's out there.  It's even harder to ignore and just go on with your day. 

But I left my apartment. 

It wasn't easy.  I had to work up to it and because of that I was running late.  I slept late, too, because I didn't sleep at all the night before.  Such is the penalty of anxiety. 

The road trip was supposed to take three hours. 

On the way there, I saw a cow giving birth not more than 20 feet from the road.  Nobody was there to help or do anything about it.  Such is Wisconsin, I guess. 

There were several times I almost stopped, turned around, and came back.  I was so uncomfortable with what I was doing it was almost too much.  But I brushed aside those thoughts as false and just kept on going. 

I made a few wrong turns on the way.  Instead of three hours, it took me more than four to get up there.  And I couldn't stay long because I have to work tomorrow morning.  Oh joy of joys. 

I even audibled mid-way through and changed the route.  Instead of bypassing Madison via county roads, I got tired of following tractors, and went through Madison anyways. 

But it was nice.  I made it safe and sound. 

Here's the weird part that gets me--the anxiety went away once I got about 1/3 of the way there.  Even when it was clear I'd made a wrong turn here and there, I wasn't nearly as anxious as I was when I first got into my car.  That doesn't make any sense to me but that's the truth of it. 

Today had some great moments.  Not only did I leave my apartment and go someplace new, I was able to tilt my steering wheel down two positions for the first time.  Since I've had that car, I've kept the wheel tilted up all the way.  Just four months ago, it was rubbing on my belly.  Today, I had several inches of space to work with, and I was able to tilt that wheel down. 

That was a good moment.  It meant progress for me.  Tangible progress.  Instead of feeling like I've lost weight, I had something to measure, and show. 

I feel like I've done something today.  A milestone of sorts.  I unlocked an achievement and levelled up. 

And it feels good.  I can honestly say that.  It feels good.