the patriots left behind

i'm sitting here on memorial day watching all the posts online people make to our veteran's which are important and well deserved. but i wonder if people know the difference between veteran's day and memorial day.

this woman knows:

i'm 38 & a half years old, and i've lived just about as great a life as possible. sure, some can point out many things i have or don't have, but in the end i am free and i am loved and i am happy - and i'm alive.

a lot of people want to make a big deal about how important their lives are and how they deserve better or won't be treated a certain way or this or that. people who sit home alone and friendless because they are certainly right about life, women who cheat on the men they claim to love because they think they deserve more or can get away with a lie, men who think they're a big deal and can treat their wives like crap, people who can't be happy or respect what they have. no one understands all we have more than someone who was loyal in the face of all they wanted, someone who gave up someone they love and assumed they would return to them, and they never did.

life isn't hard, just love one another. i'm no hippie tree hugger, i'm not all about peace and love, but sometimes life is simple. wealth and image and jealousy and pride - all nice to have. but certainly not the most important thing in life.

i will go on forever as a single childless man (as horrific as that sounds to my mother), as long as i know i can keep the people i love in my life. i value people, and even if you're someone who doesn't, we all have to respect those who gave their lives for ours. we have to respect those left alone because the person they love went off to defend us all. and never came back.

to those who gave their lives, and especially for those left behind - thank you.

never alone

someone i know is facing the possibility of a great loss. for a handful of reasons she feels she cannot count on me to be there for her, and in the relatively recent past when i was in a serious situation facing great loss, and she did not rush to my side. i have no way to convey how much i worry about her, how much i want to be there for her, and how much i think of her as a person in spite of all the flaws everyone has.

some would think that due to our recent past i would think less of her, that she doesn't matter, or that i couldn't be bothered to hold genuine concern. well, i do. and its keeping me from sleeping.

bah, i guess its not important in the long run. you can care about someone else all you want, but if they are unable to see it, or refuse to allow themselves to see it, i guess it won't make a difference. it's a shame.

i'm a lover

i'm not open minded enough to see other people's potential view if i disagree. in most cases people are open enough to tell me... of course, this assumes they are secure enough with themselves, and me, to take the time to explain.

my problem is that i care.

and i'm not smart enough to realize that most people are primarily concerned about themselves.

i had a rough day, someone i care about deeply has a secret that if exposed will cause a significant change in the future they consider themselves lucky to have. the solution: glaze it over, and walk away from the secret hoping to put enough time between them and it so that if it is ever exposed, its well in the past.

its really not a bad solution, avoid facing the music by giving a very basic explanation which leaves out all the key details, so that in the future we can all claim that we've all been honest. i don't think its honest, but that's the plan which causes the least amount of risk and it keeps the wedding plans in tact. oh yeah, did i mention there's a wedding planned? yeah, i can't imagine being engaged to someone i can't tell everything to in exact detail, but maybe my standards are to high.

i was confronted about this opinion of openness and my friendship done away with today. i was accused of not actually caring about the persons involved. i see it as quite the opposite, silly me thinking honesty and openness between two people is paramount. in hindsight, this person always had issues with openness.

and so, i explained to this friend of mine that i loved them and hoped for the best, this friend stated their love was lost, it expired. i guess some people require agreement for love.

most of my friends are the greatest people on the planet because they are the first to tell me when i'm wrong, and for that i love them. they irritate me daily with their habits and ways and explained absences from my life, but they care enough to explain it to me and when we disagree it doesn't change the love.

and so, i turned to my friends.

i called my ex who recently came back into my life after 10 years, and told her that i needed a distraction. i asked her to dress in a fashion that made it look like she was less than respectable, and come get me in her flashy BMW, she agreed. good god she's hot, i took pics of my night which i'll add to the thousands on my Picasa feed if anyone cares to see her. then again, the only person who ever claimed to read this blog seems to have decided to never read it again today, so i guess there's no rush.

i told another friend who was married what happened via text without much detail... and she was in the middle of spending all day at Six Flags with her children and their classmates. this would leave me a wreck, but without missing a beat she told me she could be home by 5pm and to meet her at her place. another friend called randomly and could tell i was down, i didn't give a lot of details, and without asking he told me he would meet us there after he put his kids to bed.

my ex arrived, and i told her, "listen, my day has been shitty because on some level people leave little but important details out which may or may not be important to others, so you need to know why i asked you to escort me around tonight...". i just explained that i was down because of the loss i felt enough to guarantee she was informed enough to know what was going on.

after all, honesty is important, the key details were there, and the details of the disagreement i kept to myself. ha, of course i'm talking about this in a public forum now, but still not in a way to embarrass anyone.

and so we went, arrived at my married friend's house where i was welcome without her husband there. shockingly, she is allowed to have single male friends, including ex-boyfriends. she loves me.

then my friend chris called, he was bored, and i told him where i was so he just showed up. his wife had no idea where he was or that he was in the home of a married woman who's husband was not home. oddly this did not matter and really, he just wanted to hang out with his friends. he loves me too.

the night went on, outside just talking trying to distract me, and support me, all of them knowing generally why i was unhappy but none knowing the details which could expose the friend who has done away with me, and not one saying anything negative about me or the friend who had just cast me into the class of people you know just enough to identify in a lineup, but not see in person ever.

i ended up inside getting a drink and my married friend was there with me and asked how i was doing. i told her, and the key statement which hurt me the most that day. she replied, "real love never goes away, i still love my ex boyfriend from college, even though for years i wanted to kill him." i asked if her husband knew, and she said "of course!" and looked at me like the question was crazy.

dan showed up, 12 pack of Corona under his arm, dropping one off in front of me on his way to the garage fridge. two kids and a wife at home, he reached out to me today as he does many days and could tell i needed some friend time so he made that time. he loves me as well.

i live in a messed up world, there's so little formality and so much is inappropriate. a lot of the people in my life drink and smoke and such, and they'll be the first to say something direct and rude and forward... and honest.

the night came to and end, my ex wanted to leave and and my married friend's husband was home. chris and dan were still sitting there with them as we walked to the car. i shook some hands and my ex took my arm hoping to speed up the process as my married friend babbled at dan. after getting 15feet away i sarcastically spewed out one last loud goodbye to her since she hadn't given me a reply.

and right there in front of her husband she said, "bye baby! love you!"

my emollercoaster

I've really only been involved with 4 women in the last decade of my life, and all 4 came back during the last week in one way or another. It's been interesting.

The least damage, well drama, was done by CJR... her only involvement was simply to have suddenly disappeared off my 'friends' list on Facebook, while keeping 2 friends of mine. So be it, I'm not sure what caused her anger, and I'll probably wait a few weeks and re-add her without a problem. After she and I split she got knocked up fairly fast by some boyfriend she didnt keep around long, which confirmed what many speculated: she wanted sperm, not me. After that it wasn't long until she moved 5 hours away, and with the toddler and move, she was quickly out of my life.

Next was AEB, who was with me 10 years ago and clipped me the day after Valentines Day because to her it was obvious I wasn't taking our relationship seriously. She called me out of the blue last Friday and invited me over for a drink. We talked for hours, and in those hours I got to know her ten times better than I did in the months we were together. She's somewhat unhappy now that she's the only gal in her world who's single and childless (and really because its left her bored as the others sit at home), but she also seems to think the idea of settling or going with the willing guy who fits best isn't acceptable. Her biggest point about life when comparing now to then, she really had no idea who she was back then - when she was making all these big decisions she felt she needed to make. Truly ironic... she's now going to help me with a Master Cleanse. She is still completely gorgeous, woah.

And then there was ANI, who lived in St. Louis only briefly and regards it as the worst years of her life. Married and two babies now, she had gone and finished med school, married a doctor, and is now a stay-at-home mom with a growing blog about life and being a mommy. Brilliant - she found her calling and the inner peace she needed, and I'm so proud of her. When we had been together in the past she was in her early 20s and she wanted our relationship to progress fast. She got mad at me once when I scoffed at her ideas for a great wedding pointing out that she was only telling me because she pictured me on the altar with her. It didn't make sense to me, a 22 year old, intelligent, educated women all focused on marriage. In hindsight, there was obviously a hole in her heart she needed filled and like many she felt marriage would fix it. A decade ago she was so eager to fill that empty place in her soul that she made some bad decisions which permanently damaged our romantic relationship, but life moved on. It seems she finally filled it herself and then was able to bring that complete person into a new life. I am so very proud of her, and sadly I bet it will be a long time before she really feels that. But at least via the efforts of a bored friend and Facebook, we have reconnected.

Lastly is my freshest wound, KLV, who just months ago claimed she couldn't go but days without me, that she loved me, and so on... but then repressed it all. She probably caused me the largest heartbreak of my life, but at the same time has been one of my closest friends and my greatest fan (really, I'm hers too). She too has an empty spot in her it seems, but is trying to let others fill it for her. The whole event has left me at a loss, watching this glorious being go through motions and thinking about her words from the past which told me that it wasn't going to make her the happiest she could be. She and I have a friendship which I originally caused her to keep as a secret from her friends and family due to my unwillingness to interact with them... and now must be kept a secret because we are so close that it could threaten her relationship with them. Maybe I caused the problem, and then she perpetuated it for 3 years. But she can't move on to the next stage of her life without coming clean to all the parties involved... if she doesn't, it's just dishonest and a problem waiting to happen. It's all very childish (of both of us), but the results could be childish no matter what. She's a good person who did a simple but threatening thing, and not correcting it now risks her future, and makes our friendship as she describes as 'intense' at times. I refuse to believe a woman that smart can't know how very much I care for her, maybe she doesn't care back as she's told me many times, but maybe she doesn't care enough for the others to come clean to them... I can't tell anymore. All I can do is wait, and hope for a change, hope she does the right thing by all of us so we can all get along as open free adults. Good god, I sound like an Obama commercial.

I have a female friend who will giggle at me and call me names like 'dirty bird' and 'man whore'... but then she quickly corrects herself and tells me that she can't help but love me anyway because no matter what interaction I have with women, I'm honest with them. She finds it surprising at times how blunt and honest I can be, and still have so many in my life. Really, the four examples above are all stories about why honesty hasn't helped, they all moved on, and not all to better places. But if you read the end results, the truth did set them free. It's ironic that women generally look at me as immature fun, but that in the end, it was finding the truth in themselves which gave them what they most needed.

Why do we all do the things we do anyway? All its led me to do is be the fun guy no one respects... no one thinks of me as someone they can come to for advice, everyone is smarter than me in their own eyes. I don't know if its me or them... and in the end, no one reads this blog anyway, ha. But for those of you out there who may have found this by accident, learn from the examples above: find what you need to stand alone, fill any emptiness as best you can, and always be true to everyone you come across. The truth will set you free.