[youtube:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SdllbXv4uEI 331 276]
test video
September 11th, 2008down
July 27th, 2007[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dehde0jbgI]
My pain is self-chosen
At least, so The Prophet says
I could either burn
Or cut off my pride and buy some time
A head full of lies is the weight, tied to my waistThe River of Deceit pulls down
The only direction we flow is down
Down, oh down
Down, oh down
Down, oh down
Down, oh downMy pain is self-chosen
At least I believe it to be
I could either drown
Or pull off my skin and swim to shore
Now I can grow a beautiful shell for all to seeThe River of Deceit pulls down
The only direction we flow is down
[audio http://gloomferret.info/tunes/06 Tarantula.mp3]
Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die
July 24th, 2007We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them - Kahlil Gibran:
I was planning to write something worthy, to provoke discussion…It’ll have to wait. Last night my wife sent me a series of text, most notable of which was her mentioning that she was probably going to kill herself. This followed some passive aggressive (always passive, because then she can deny ever actually accusing you of anything) accusations, blame and bitterness. So in one fell swoop, lay on the guilt, blame me for her current position and then off herself, thus leaving me to live out my life bearing the weight of someone taking their own life because of my actions. Nicely done. Well played there. Of course, I can’t panic and fly into emergency mode, because suicide is not an uncommon card for her to play when she is low. She has never actually tried it, so all I can do is put this down to another episode of melodrama, and hope she pulls through… And she still blames me for giving up all hope of us being together? Me, who can barely cope with my own head, never mind living with someone who can spin from passive subservience to vitriolic psychosis in one day. So…I wait, and hope she doesn’t actually go through with it this time. What else can I do? To react would just give her another weapon to use against me. Teach her what gets a reaction. Encourage her to use it more. This is why I gave up on us. I cannot live with this constant trauma -the uncertainty, the stress, the emotional storms. I am too weak. Everything you are makes me more and more ill. I am sorry I ignored your flaws, and tried to love you despite them. I should have walked away and not let you believe in me. I am not strong enough. [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=P0AZIFmkogY]
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on - Robert Frost:
Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
July 17th, 2007This post was originally a comment, from the last post, in reply to a comment from PA, and it might not make any sense in parts, but I figure, why waste a load of words on a comment, when I can recycle it as a post and save myself some bother? Energy efficient that is… Go with it. You know you want to.
The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it. - Edward R. Murrow
I did a template change in lieu of actually writing anything.
I feel bad for not writing, but then, I wonder why? In case I lose the two or three people who occasionally check my blog? Kind of pointless really. Its not why I started a blog, but theres always that pressure isn’t there? To entertain…It kind of spoils it for me. And I have lost a sense of that community with some of my favourite bloggers going quiet, or just plain vanishing. Everyone seems quiet recently.
And of course I am busy with work, so can’t afford to spend a whole day spilling my guts onto a page. Or rather, preparing to spill my guts, and then spending an hour actually translating the spillage into words 
And., there’s the depressive guilt that always comes when you’re actually feeling okay, and not really that depressed. I feel like I shouldn’t write about good things because it will just piss off everyone I know in the whole world because everyone I know is manically depressed, bipolar, suicidal, or otherwise generally hacked off with life.
Pole to Polar has blogged recently about the whole Top Trumps of madness scenario (does Top Trumps work as a metaphor over the pond? Not sure) so I won’t linger too much on that. The ‘I am madder than thou’ one upmanship. I feel faintly embarassed at feeling relatively ok. But I shouldn’t, because I’ve struggled to get to a state of stability for so long, and I’ve sacrificed so much to get here.
Speaking of Pole to Polar, they blogrolled me a while back, but never ever answer any of my comments or acknowledge my presence in their electronic world. I find it a bit spooky. I get paranoid. Am I just saying really stupid stuff and being ignored? Theyre not a huge responder to comments like some bloggers, but I’ve seen a fair few responses to other people, but never to me. Maybe they’re scared of responding to me? Maybe I am looking at it the wrong way…maybe they think I am weird and don;’t respond in case it encourages me But then why blogroll me?
Oh, I don’t know. These are the tiny tiny details that slightly worry mentalists even when they’re reasonably stable. I don’t wake up in the night screaming ‘why won’t they talk to me!’ but you know…it nags doesn’t it…
It brings me neatly onto another topic that has been nibbling at my cortex recently…the whole blog thing…now I can really only see the point of blogging if you get comments, and you respond to comments, and you can actually have a meaningful debate between intelligent people. Just blogging, and getting nothing back, to me, is a bit pointless. Yes ok, it gets the thoughts out, but I am looking always to growth and progression, and I know full well that listening only to myself and my own points of view is limiting and will only lead to me thinking a load of utter mad nonsense. We all need other voices to drag us (kicking and screaming) back to ground zero, the centre of our mentalist wanderings. We, especially need dialogue because we are all prone to those madcap Pirsig-like blinkered voyages into proving the world is round using only the power of our minds.
You (PA, still talking to you yes) have a fair amount of commenters, and respond well, and therefore get some discussion going, when you’re not blogging about stuff that people don’t know what to say to of course. You have been blogging for a good while now, you blog, well, a lot, and have built up a number of readers, some from the medical sector, some from the mentalist sector, some from the kinky lesbian freak sector etc.
Thats basically what it takes to get a goodly amount of commenters. That and doing a lot of commenting yourself.
And I think being female is good, as its reasonably rare for guys to bother commenting on other guys blogs. Don’t know why…I do it, but it is quite rare.
I am losing the thread…
Erm. Anyway. I want more discussion on my blog. But I don’t blog enough, I have no way of attracting enough intelligent people here, and it all seems a waste of time. And the people I like are the very people who just explode and then disappear. Regularly. Its a pain.
Ok. Fuck it. I just posted in the comments section. At least that way I won’t attract any more readers! You have to be really fucking dedicated to check the comments section of a 2 week old post! Well, check the latest comments list anyway. Which I do at all the blogs I read, but I don’t know how many people do.
you see, I’d love to ask a load of questions about how people blog, and how they read, but I’d get maybe two answers, so it would just be depressing. Maybe I should just do guest blogs on a more popular and hip blog. Steal an audience…
Minx? Dame? You need a blogger? 
The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate - Joseph Priestley
COMMUNIQUE
July 2nd, 2007****Incoming message from the big giant Ian*****
‘… the history of Society is only, after all, a symptom of increasingly more organised madness.’ - Kilgore Trout
Bill used to give himself lots of lateral downtime, or so he called it. This would involve him, maybe a beer and smoke, and lots of time drinking tea. It would help his creative preserves he said, sort of allowing himself to become sort of a better being, he said.
Strange thing was, Bill never did seem to get any better as the weeks would slip by.
Then one day, there was mum making mince in the kitchen on this summery evening and Bill turned from where he sat on the backdoor step , saying casually
“Thats it Marjorie, i have decided its probably better if i lived the rest of my life as a Bedouin Dancer”
and so off he went. I never did find out, but i like to think that somewhere in the corner of the world Bill does still whirl away in long desert robes.
And so it went.
***
When i was 23 i believed my friend was trying to poison me. I saw the vapours, and we didn’t like each other too much at the time anyway.
When i was 21 i believed Pearl Jam wrote a song about having seen me at a live gig.
When my Dad was fifty, my sister once told him about eating healthily, eating pasta. He always counted the pasta shells: thirty to make a good meal.
And on it went.
***
All life is, is one whole big collection of stories. I made this decision years after hearing that infamous ‘The Whole World’s a Stage, and we merely actors upon it’ - it took me a while to really grasp it Shakespeare, i guess i was always a windowshopper decider. Just like all the books on my shelves over the years have grown and shrunk, my life has been filled up with faces and lives and ideas. Little fragments of dreams and other worlds appearing and gently snuffing out, forever forgotten. Some enduring books and even whole collections stand constant and dusty, assured of their faded importance.
Life doesn’t have to make sense.
***
So this was it, i had decided to not sleep with my ex tonight. I would go around, collect some of my stuff, we’ll talk and watch a movie, she will see that i am still a nice guy and i will leave this evening both of us feeling like we are better individuals. I felt good, imagining myself like a Sufi Prince detached and joyful about my life. This would just be the beginning, i would start being a better human being across the board; i’d be able to politely turn down the lures of drink or boredom or melodrama. I’d start studying again and using my life creatively.
The next morning found me sauntering back home, and so on it went.
***
maybe i should get off the tablets-
i was chatting to a friend of mine today, this was the guy who told me a while ago: ‘It takes three years to recover from a breakdown’,
he seemed to be a little sad this time. I don’t know, something in his eyes maybe. My friend’s an ex-soldier, living on a frantic low income as a builder. he drinks hard, harsh tinnies in the town square - he’s a great guy; he’s always willing to have a cheery word. I remember once, before work i was sat, 8:45am in one of his old cars, with two of the local town street celebrities. We passed around some harsh weed and one of the guys behind me started going on about the beer he’d spilt in his lap. He’s got a wonderful alliterative use of the most disgusting swearwords of all time. The ex-soldier start saying ‘calm down, calm down’ in that slightly scary paranoid way: this was it, i thought. My Life is a Comedy. I am a bizarre rerun of Last of the Summer Wine.
He asked me what i was doing with myself when i saw him today, i always say an embarressed ‘Nothing.’ Shit. What are you supposed to say to that? I wander around morose, i shake with fear in my own home, i try to get by. He always gives me strange advice about ‘Doing What You Want To Do!’ going back to university, become a proffessional guitarist. I like him for that.
But today he seemed a little sad, almost as if he sensed my embarrasment, my reticience at our usual, ritualized question.
It takes three years to get over a nervous breakdown, my last breakdown was 20 months ago.
And so it goes.
***
Earlier this year i wrote a story about an improbable interview between various future me’s. They had all been different versions of me from different future dimensions, about six years from now. The current me (2007 me that is) interviewed them.
They kept on saying the same thing.
***
The first time i had sex was on a friends sofa at the end of a party. I was stoned, and fumbled a lot. The lass who had chosen me had a little daughter, only a baby, and she was committed to study Law and maybe go to University so she could get to know how to keep custody of her kid. i sometimes wonder what happened to her and her kid, what her alternate future dimensionary self would be like. I actually had an experience of meeting a future alternate (but at the time current i should say) dimensionary version of another young mother i knew.
Her name was Dannielle …(Bossinau?? I never could figure out how to say or spell her name). We knew each other as juniors and kids, i had a bit of a crush on her.
One day a friend in a college class was detailing to me the finer points of the CB radio. It was a little world that suddenly opened up for him who was like me i guess, a bit of a loser. A little whole community of people who talked to their husbands working on the passing boats, people chatting away about their corners of their world and the tasteless obsession of listening-in to the emergency service radios. Anyway, it turned out he had talked to Dannielle! He didn’t know her, but apparently she’d asked after me because she found out we both went to the same college. She’d dropped out after school, and had a kid. She lived with her parents, and was cheery.
I never heard about her again for years until i met her future (but at the time current) alternate dimensionary self. One summer break from University i bumped into her outside her old house just a street away from my estate. She looked really good, had her baby with her and i was struck by how things could have been different, how my expectations of her were so removed from this version of her.
Maybe i’ve got a single-mother thing.
***
When i was 28 i still believe that maybe, somehow improbably my future could be ’saved’ by a glorious secret talent or luck or divine will.
When my Dad was 28 he believed that if he opened the front door a gunman would blow his legs off.
Puts it in perspective, sometimes.
***
Another other girl i had an unbearable crush on was my sister’s best friend. Her brother didn’t have any future alternate dimensionary selves. Her brother and his best friend killed himself in his car. He used to help me out at the Boys Brigade Youth Club. I kinda idolized him, in a teenage way. The dissappearence of his future alternative selves had a huge impact in our community, far more than i had realised until, years later my ex-fiancee (who had come from the same town i had, had used to go to the same places but we had met in a far off university in another Country) had told me the story of the couple of well-liked boys who had killed themselves in their car outside one of my old haunts.
Their tragedy escaped me really, like a transatlantic cement truck gliding past me on a foggy night. But the wider community didn’t know that my sister’s best friend’s brother had written what i still think is one of the most touching comments upon life. Apparently a part of it read; that all he wanted to do was to go live in Middle Earth with the elves.
***
One alternate me did most of the things i never did. When he was 9 he really believed in the power of that title ‘Man of the Match’ for throwing himself bodily against opponants as Defender. Shit. Why not- its not as if he was ever going to score or anything. He liked winning the mock boxing fights my friends used to have at 15. He probably even learned to write well, get good marks at Literature and now works as a clerk or a bookseller. His life is probably small, still in Southend but he feels comfortable, and confident, happy.
He’s lucky, he never made the mistakes i did, or the divine will looked favourably on his life. Just think, if there really are infinite dimensions then in one of them there is the Perfect You!!
What a jerk they would be at parties.
I wonder if the other alternate me sometimes stops at a window, before he answers his partner cheerfully and honestly as he always does. I wonder if he too is ever scared that Reality can shrink schizophrenically, in fragments.
***
There is this state i get into sometimes, when i’m really really high that somehow all of these stories make sense… My life is part of some big pattern, and its no big deal to worry about anyway. It’s peaceful.
***
Another alternative future me i bump into regularly goes to television and radio production shows. The kinds which like audiences to cheer and laugh or make votes and things. He tells me that if junkies were given adequate places to live, with reasonable rents you wouldn’t have this image of them all living on mattresses in squatted flats robbing bins for food. Poverty and addiction are directly related, as the Ratfarm experiments showed. If you were given a better and better environment to expand into you would, logically have no reason to try to escape it.
I feel sorry for this future alternative me. He’s doing well, but he became better friends than i did with Adam and Smiley, two of the older guys in my college philosophy class.
Red haired anarchist-buddhist Adam doesn’t have any future dimensionary selves either - we never knew but Adam had a genetic heart complaint, and once, taking whizz he just dropped down dead. Adam himself knew about it of course, which was probably why he started taking the whizz. I guess he just didn’t like having all these alternative future dimensionary selves running around.
***
(sub)missive from: Sacred Chao Brigade. Hail Eris.
her heaven is never enough
July 1st, 2007[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=jkBAUqp6NKg]
Lets see PA guess this one the cheeky monkey 
—————————–
I’ve been hovering close to posting all weekend, but can’t quite seem to bring myself to do it.
Of course I’m doing it now, but in a reflexive sort of, ‘I’m not posting’ kind of way, thus circumnavigating the issue quite neatly.
I don’t know if it’s just mental exhaustion from the new job (probably), but I can’t seem to come to any kind of decision regarding whether blogging is actually worth the effort.
Frankly I think the only thing I really get out of it is meeting lovely people - who I actually know virtually nothing about - and participating in a kind of mutual delusion that we are all nice people, and would actually be able to spend 5 minutes together in real life without getting bored and wandering off in disgust.
This is the cynic in me of course. In actuality, in my less dark moments I do find it hard to believe that peoples true character doesn’t come out in their writing and their online conversation, however brief and sporadic it may be.
So is there a point to the transitory and faintly illusory relationships we form between each other, in blogalia? Would we, for instance, be better off spending our time popping down to the local bar and starting a random conversation with a real person who looked vaguely interesting, instead of sitting at home tapping away at our computers, because we can only open up if there is sod all chance of anyone actually seeing us, spending any real time with us?
Don’t ask me. I don’t have the answers…I’m asking you…
Well?
What are we doing? What is this new western obsession with living our lives virtually, reaching out across the binary pathways, whilst every day we don’t bother really talking or opening up to people we see every day, our work colleagues, shop workers, neighbours, family…old friends, not so old friends…
When did this collection of letters on a screen become so attractive compared to the ‘real’ world?
Is it just fear? Are we driven to pursue our lives online because it feels safer to have that buffer zone. Are we so removed from each other physically due to our lack of community, that we can no longer cope with the actual physical presence of strangers any more?
One of the thoughts I was pondering earlier this weekend, that I failed to blog about, was the amount of damage done by the simple emotions of fear and anger. Pretty much all of the worlds problems can be laid at their door, be they more personal and petty, or global and culturally driven. Think about it…if you could somehow eradicate fear and anger from your life, how much simpler and pleasant would your life be?
But then, you run into the human problem of pain and suffering being educational, motivational and a catalyst for change. Without those rawer darker emotions, would we be human at all? Would we have the same energy and drive? Probably not, but it’s an extreme concept. We are human, and we can’t eradicate fear and anger, but if we could even reduce it by 10%, learn to love a little more, be less judgemental, less selfish, less scared of everything and everybody. If we could learn to trust just a bit more. Would that be enough to allow us to strike up a conversation with someone we don’t know? To share something of our private world with the people around us? To open up a little? Instead of having to retreat to our private worlds here, to share our thoughts with the invisibles, the ones who can’t hurt us because they don’t really exist do they? Even if they don’t get us, don’t like us, so what? We can just close down our blogs, and create a new world somewhere else.
Nobody can touch us here…
But no…I’m no closer to understanding if blogging is good for me, or detrimental.
I know I value all of you I have met and talked to. At least those that talk back anyway!
Sometimes though, don’t you wish you could just gather everyone up and head down to the bar, and actually have a conversation with each other, share stories of life, and of tears and of joy…instead of these fragments and splinters that amount to virtually nothing of our souls and our hearts?
There is something lacking in a world of text…possibly why we can’t stop ‘tubing…we need the heights of emotion that song brings, to get a message across, that mere text can’t hope to achieve.
This one’s for fulamuso:
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=QlLTjXfNMYg]
The moon is low tonight
June 30th, 2007[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=4kinoIv0DpI]
Its the weekend! I might actually get around to posting an update!
But, for those of you that actually care, I am fine. Working hard. Almost enjoying myself. I find not thinking helps a lot. It might actually be the secret to eternal happiness. Or does it just turn you into a potato? I shouldn’t grumble. The number of times I’ve wished I could just be a potato like the vast majority of western civilisation instead of an anxious depressive mess. Of course wishing something and actually achieving something are two mutual exclusive experiences. What would be the point of living if the things we tried to achieve were actually any good?
No, really, I’m reasonably happy. Its a full moon tomorrow. I always get a bit mithery. More than usual.
I am content more or less, and that is good for me. Working hard seems to suit me. Gives my brain something to do other than chew off my metaphysical ankle.
I might not be posting, but I am still reading you all. Those of you who are writing any more than me anyway Even those of you who never reply to my comments
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday
It ain’t easy being mean…
June 18th, 2007Mega post warning: This post is long rambling and, no really, its like, long, dude. Get a cup of tea, or a beer, and maybe a snack. Or come back when you actually have the time to read it. You’re going to want to comment. One way or another.
Ok. I am working on a long rambly and probably quite tedious update (edit: this post became long and rambly and its teacup overfloweth into other areas….I’ll fill you in on the rest over the next few posts), but its taking me so long, and I can’t figure out whether I actually want to write it for myself or just out of some sense of blog duty, and continuity….Soooooo, to break the logjam, this is by way of a interim post. I’ve found myself having to actually try to be mean lately, simply to get things over and done with, and this is something I enjoy very little. In the long term though, it is going to be better all round. I suck at being mean. Even when I am trying to be mean I feel bad about it. When I’m not trying to be mean, I seem to get accused of being mean.
It all leads me to the conclusion that me and women are not meant to be…I try so hard to be a nice person and then whenever I end up with a woman they seem to want me to be someone other than who I actually am. I mean….wha? The person you wanted to be with isn’t actually who you wanted? I is confused. Fuck it. I hereby swear to never ever try to be anyone other than who I am, and if smelly old women can’t hack it then they can bally well not try to be with me in the first place.
Anyway….thanks to my wifes recent reluctance to accept my decision to break up, the subsequent mentalness, the bitterness and her incessant making everyone around me think I am the spawn of Satan, I am feeling a little surrounded by people that think I am a twat. So they’re not people who I actually care about….anyone I do care about knows me, knows what went on, knows what I’ve put up with for the past two years and understands my decision to quit. They may or may not agree with it, but they understand it, and respect me enough to support me in it. (and if they don’t they’re keeping quiet about it!)
Yes, I told my wife our relationship was over -While she was in another continent for 3 months. Via email. Yes this sucks, but I am pretty useless on the phone, and I am pretty eloquent in the written form, and telling someone why you have decided to end a marriage requires something more than a few grunts and verbal shuffling. I didn’t want to wait until she came back, and do it in person (which would be the preferred option) because I wanted to give her the option to stay in her home with her family and never see me again. It seemed mean to wait and let her think everything was fine. Isn’t it?
I appreciate that people seem to think the phone is better than the letter, but I do not. I really am useless on the phone. You don’t get me when you talk to me on the phone, you get a total twit. I am me in a letter, I can form my thoughts in the written form as they sound in my head. Albeit slower. To me, a letter is personal, the phone is not. And she is aware of this, she has known this for a long time.
People just choose things to be mad about when they feel hurt.
So I broke up with her.
She came back from the states. She was still of the opinion there was hope for us, even though I had made it very very clear my decision was final. Even at the beginning of the 3 months I had stated that I wasn’t sure we would have a relationship when she came back. It wasn’t like I was surprising her with this decision. I also wouldn’t make a decision like that unless it was final. I don’t dilly dally in such things.
I had got friendly with a lady on the internet in the few weeks prior to her coming back. The friendliness grew. It didn’t contribute in any way to my decision, which if I am honest with myself I could have made in the first week she was away, but wanted to give due consideration. What it did do was force me to make the decision, because I don’t cheat on people, and I do consider a net relationship cheating. It is isn’t it?
So I couldn’t not formally break up with her. It had to be done. However I did it.
But then another conundrum. Do I tell her about the internet lady, or not? Now my first instinct is to just go with the full disclosure. In for a penny in for a pound. I know I’m going to have to go through the emotional ring of fire, so no point leaving anything out. Its not like I’ve done anything…got friendly with someone, also decided that my marriage is a failure. Hey, we’re going to argue anyway, its a given with my wife….
But then I’m thinking - I know her….if I mention at the same time as telling her we are definitely over that I have also met someone I like on the internet (even though I have no idea if is going to lead to friendship, romance or nothing) then I know for a fact she will blame my decision on the other woman, and it will get all very messy and she just won’t get at all my reasons for my decision.
I also know how much it would effect her if she decided that I was essentially leaving her for another woman (which is so not the case, but I could see where it would go). I didn’t want her to think she wasn’t good enough for me, because that wasn’t the case either. There was basically no way I could do the full disclosure and end the relationship in a way that would convey to her why I was actually ending it.
Ok, it got pretty complicated and messy in my head. You all know I am sure, the machinations and worries that accompany any attempt to end a relationship whilst wanting to leave your other half with as little baggage as possible. I went with the not telling her option. Concentrated in the breaking up part. I did tell her I had made friends with people on the internet, and also told her one in particular I had got on with, and even told her I was going on a visit as a brief respite from life before starting my new job. (I was going to go travelling even prior to meeting the internet lady, so the trip was not even provoked by the meeting, but there you go)
I didn’t really know what else to say because I didn’t know what else was going on. You don’t know what kind of a relationship you are having with someone you’ve never met do you? Especially when you’ve only known them a few weeks. To me, it was all pretty much irrelevant to the break up anyway, and I just wanted her to realise that too. Not a hope in hell…and I was foolish to ever think it could go down any other way than the messy hell that ensued.
So basically the wifes insanity gene kicked in, the house was torn apart looking for evidence. My email was snuck into after I left, my blog was ransacked. (my blog was previously kept private, not because I wanted secrets but because my wife was incredibly insecure and would read anything into nothing, would be convinced any female bloggers commenting were madly in love with me and jeez, its just not worth the hassle…) The upshot was that she realised my relationship with the internet lady was a little more than mere friendship. We were of course officially broken up by this point.
I received a few nasty emails….I got back to an atmosphere of such ferocity that it hurt to even breathe. I started my new job a day and a half after coming back. I didnt get much sleep the first 3 days. Tuesday night I was woken up when my wife came into my room (she had moved into the office) and started yelling at me at 1am, ranting like a total lunatic. I didnt get a lot of sleep that night.
I don’t know. I feel bad because no it’s not the ideal way to break up with someone, but I’m not sure what else I could have done…the circumstances weren’t ideal…I hadn’t seen her for 3 months…I had told her several times over the course of the 3 months that I was trying to work out if we had a relationship left. I didn’t expect to meet someone. I decided to break up with her, and met someone at the same time. Is that a coincidence or was I just trying to reach out to someone else to ease the transition. Its always possible, but I’ve needed someone many times in the past, and theres never been anyone even close to the kind of person I could connect with. I think sometimes life just throws you a rope you know? The human concerns of leaving a suitable period of time between partners is just that, a ridiculous human concern. It doesn’t make a mockery of our relationship. If I am honest, I have been unhappy for a long time. Its not something thats happened quickly.
I’m sure I’ve missed out a lot of important detail that makes me sound like less of a bastard… but I have at least got it out…I didn’t intend to haul out the whole sordid tale.
The sole details my wife has been sharing with people is that I don’t want to be with her anymore and that I have been prancing around behind her back while she was away. Thats it. No mention of the two years I spent putting up with her insecurity, paranoia, quite scary anger outbursts about well, nothing at all, moods, general mood swings and weirdness. And I take prozac for depression and anxiety so you can appreciate maybe how hard it is for me to cope with living with somone so …. unprecictable and stressful.
To some extent I have deliberately avoided trying to persuade her of my innate niceness because I realised there was little point to it, it wouldn’t really help matters. She needs her anger to put some space between us, to help her heal, to make her realise we weren’t meant to be. I don’t need to be the nice guy. Its too late for that. So I have let her rant and call me names mostly. I’ve made little effort to try and change her opinion. I resent the fact that she’s been badmouthing me to people, that she felt it ok to totally fuck up my first week at my new job whilst calling me selfish. But to regain her self worth, it helps if I am unworthy of her in her mind. So thats what I aimed for. To convince her I was a nice guy, that I did still love her and that it was just circumstance and an inability to live together, that would be a cruelty really. It might lend her hope, make her think there is room for hope. There isn’t…I’ve been worn down so much over the last two years that my love for her is a distant thing now…through necessity. I can’t share my life with her. It hurts, but I know it for a fact. I’ve tried to make relationships work long past the point of realising this before, and the last time it ended in me having a nervous breakdown. I know I have to recognise when to stop now. I can’t push myself too far. I am weaker and more fragile than I used to be.
She moved out on Wednesday. She’s coming back on Tuesday to get the last of her things. I think she might be moving elsewhere in the country.
It hurts me that I feel little but relief about this, but thats probably a temporary thing. All I really want is to recover. To pick up the pieces of me and try and figure out if relationships are really worth it. Maybe it’s time to just focus on myself until I understand me. Would seem a good first step before I expect anyone else to…
If anyone has any advice, unbiased opinions, criticism, or other viewpoints…feel free. I hope the women in the audience aren’t all silently cursing me… I’ve been on the other end of this, a couple of times. I know how it feels. I can say I did it with more honesty than my ex did it to me, so I at least learned something from that….
new man
May 21st, 2007Ha! I just set up a laptop for a client, installed and tested a wireless network and cooked and ate a rather tasty fresh pizza, all at the same time….
I am new man! Hunting down wild technological rhinos, whilst still being in touch with my sensual aesthetic side.
Now thats done..I have a rather fine looking bottle of Theakstons Old Peculier (aye, its from Yorkshire, Gods own county) to relax with….
Don’t see what all the fuss is about. Women are always going on about there being no decent men, and then when they get one, they want something else. Fiddlesticks!
Tasty beer. It is my faithful friend. You’ll never leave me will you?
I realise I am now talking to my beer, and that surely is my cue to leave…
Adieu!
null
May 19th, 2007I am not writing very much recently… normally this is an indication that I am a) happy and/or b)busy.
I am neither, and both.
Life is extremely…strange at the moment.
I feel a little disenfranchised with the blogosphere of late. It might just be that I feel less of a part of it due to lack of intensity of posting, or that my regular reads have been somewhat sporadic or plain old missing recently…(minxy, where did you go? You’re like a yoyo woman…you’re here, you’re there, you’re here, you’re going away, you’re staying finally, you disappear without warning…jeez)
I feel the loss of my blogpartner in crime doodles, who is still out of the matrix for the forseeable, and yes he updates his blog with his futile scratchings every now and again, but its not the same is it…blogs are for the immediate. Read, respond, post, the thoughts spread out like ripples, and some people run with an idea, or take it somewhere else, and sometimes they don’t even know they’re doing it, sometimes it’s conscious…I need my blog world to be here and now. If I post a comment I want a response…I fail at this myself. I often neglect to respond to comments. I think we should acknowledge our comments, maybe in a comment response roundup, but you know, people like to feel welcome. I certainly do.
I am just whinging really aren’t I? Ah feck it. I’m allowed to whinge. I just imploded my marriage so I get to whinge. Ok I am whinging about something completely pointless and unrelated, but in a way, its not entirely unconnected. This blog has been a place of rediscovery for me, and helped me to stretch out my previously rather cramped and coiled in brain. Stretching your brain out onto the cold concrete floor of a public space, not only assists in shamanic fortune telling events, but gives you insight into things that you might otherwise have missed. Sometimes your thoughts chase themselves around so quickly (like the Coyote and roadrunner) that you just miss the important ones, and pick up the stupid stuff.
Am I making any sense here? I fear not, but I struggle on regardless.
The pace of change in my life recently is of rather scary proportions, but this seems to be a continual factor in my life. Its why I have a strong connection with the Tower card of the tarot. Cataclysmic change. For me the tower represents the structures we build in our mind/lives…the rituals and safety nets…the things we decide will be important, and use to create order. Often these things really just take us further and further away from the ground, a tower of lies really. If we keep building, we end up stuck at the top of this edifice that we become too scared to get off. We are trapped by our own need for security, and our securities become our prison.
So, my life seems to revolve around this cycle. Build up a prison for myself, of things I feel I should have, or need, or want, become miserable, unhappy and scared of doing anything about it. Then some time later, a whole chain of events will occur that takes everything out of my hands and sets in motion a massive upheaval in my life where I literally have no idea what is going to happen next.
The thing is, I really enjoy this kind of chaos. Something in me loves it, loves the energy, and the change, and the release of all that pent up stress and immutability. I am generally at my least depressed when all hell is breaking loose around me, I become some kind of insane storm surfer, riding a wave of weirdness.
Then I get dumped somewhere.
And I look around, and wonder what happened.
And I realise life isn’t/can’t be like that all the time. Change is there to give us opportunities. To let us try again, to keep trying in the vain hope that we fecking learned something and will do it better this time. But what are we supposed to be learning? What am I meant to be doing with my life?
I just struggle with purpose. I am never satisfied with myself, or what I am doing. I feel as if time is wasting away, and there is some definite something out there that is waiting for me, and I am arsing around like a blind idiot, stumbling over things, and then moving on, onto the totally wrong thing.
I want to stop this behaviour. I think it is time I learned a lesson. I like to believe that life tries to shunt you in the right direction, and even if you are an arsing idiot like what I am, who fails to make decisions at the right time, or even the right decisions at the wrong time, or, even, (shuttup!).. so….yessss…. where was I? Life! Yes. Life. It shoves you along, because you’re an arsing arse. But all it can do is shove, and thats no way to go about life. Just sitting there, waiting for the next wave of change to pick you up and carry you to the next location. Is it? Thats like, being some kind of seaweed. or a crab. or something. Or a tourist on a lilo.
(Thats quite good fun actually. The lilo thing. Except the part where the wave picks you up and hurls you into the beach when you’re not paying attention. Cos then you look a bit of an arse. )
So. I want to start making conscious decisions about my life. Actual real, I am going to go this way, and do this, and that will be good. No dilly dallying, no procrastination. No smelling the, well, maybe a little smelling of the flowers on the way…got to have some fun.
I am not being as succinct as I had hoped. But I know what I mean. I know what I mean better than when I started this ramble, and thats what I mean about the sun-dried brain exhibition…sometimes just putting it out there, and giving it a bit of a stir and you realise you know what you’re talking about after all. You just weren’t sure what language you were talking to yourself in.
Of course no bugger else comprehends a single word you’re saying, but thats ok. I don’t think there’s too many of you left anyway.