It ain’t fun, but I’ll learn from it.

Let me take a coherent moment, while I have it, and say, “Thank you,” to all of you that commented, left me notes, and sent me e-mails. I tried to write all of you back, but there were quite a few, and I just don’t have it right now to tell everyone exactly what their kind words meant to me. This is easier, and right now, this is what I can do.

You are an incredibly caring, compassionate lot, and it touched me deeply to find out how many of you truly care. I realize that you are almost all strangers to me, yet you managed to reach out to me, and I want to tell you I appreciate it with all my heart.

It’s been a great comfort to have the people that I love come to me as well. I’ll be honest, though, I haven’t reached out for any of them and the ones that have found me, most likely, were just seeing how I was doing when I told them that my life is in a low place. They listened though, and they offered their support and love. They very rarely told me that I was better off and they never told me that I should just kick the Girl to the curb. They only offered their love and support and, bless them, that’s all I’ve really needed.

Not to say that the advice I’ve received, from the people that read this as well as those that know me personally, isn’t wanted. I just know that I have a pretty good grasp on who I am and the direction I feel my life should take, and I will proceed with my decisions on my own.

But, I appreciate it all very, very much. Thank you.


A light rain falls as I drain the last of a glass, of a bottle, of very cheap wine. Chateau Screwtop 2004 has never been one of my favorites, but it gets the job done. Much like a cheap meal lacking taste or substance. As an old roommate used to say, “If it’ll make a turd, then it’s done it’s job.”

The job that the wine is currently tasked with is making the hurt go away. At least, that’s what I had originally intended when I bought it. Now, I realize that it is only accentuating what I am feeling, and I am slowly beginning to realize that this can be a good thing as well.

Our two dogs, Asshead and Dingbat (names have been changed to protect the innocent), are chasing each other around me as I sit outside, on our back patio, and make an attempt at figuring out where my life should now lead.

It’s always amazing to me how much people discount the relationships they have with their pets, or even their kids. The living, sentient beings in our lives can be like walking barometers, reflecting pressure changes that are invisible, intangible, yet no less real. We may have believed that we had hidden these changes from them or that they are unable to understand, but we are proven wrong when we see their reaction, provided we see it.

Our dogs have been acting listless and moody for the last few days. Since the Girl left, actually. She’s been gone on weekend trips to Montana before, but they’ve never exhibited some of the behaviors that they are showing now and it’s troubling to say the least. Anyone who reads this knows what a pussy I can be when my girls have something going on with them.

I’m guilty of not giving them full credit for knowing that something is painfully wrong with me right now.

They are just fucking dogs, though, and they can’t understand the words I use when I tell them that their boy is in a bad place, but he’ll be okay someday. They can’t understand that their girl isn’t here for a reason, and that she may not ever come back to stay.

They DO understand that I don’t feel good now, and no amount of chewy, bacon-y, yummy treats are going to change that. Our “play” time is limited by whether or not their boy can handle it long enough to give them the attention and exercise that they need. Bless their four-legged-idiot hearts though, they seek only to love and comfort their boy when he breaks down in tears, shuddering and sobbing on the floor. I can only be thankful that we don’t have any kids to subject this to.

I won’t pretend, and I refuse to fake anything in order to, “just get by.” I’ve never burdened others with my problems needlessly, yet I won’t lie when asked if everything is alright. Some people sincerely want to listen, others want to know and then process it in order to more efficiently “deal” with whatever situation they are in with me, and yet others, the ones that piss me off the most, want to pretend to that they care for almost no other reason than I will think better of them because they are so “compassionate.” Thankfully, there are precious few of those in my life.

I’m not dying of cancer, I haven’t lost someone I cared about to some calamity (recently, anyway. Another entry, another time), I’m not guilt-ridden over causing any wide-spread catastrophe. I have a good life. I have wonderful people that care about me. I am in great health. I have all of life’s basic necessities and some of its greatest pleasures, some of which I’ve never had before. I really have nothing to complain about, and I won’t, I assure you.

I just hurt.

I am facing a mountain of change that is going to be, at the very least, incredibly painful and unfulfilling, and, at the very best, painful and fulfilling.

It’s times like these that remind me that I possess something that many others I know simply don’t have, and it breaks my heart that I seem to be in such a minority on this level, but…

I am happy with who I am.

I LIKE who I am.

I am comfortable with who I am.

I will never, in a million fucking years, tell anyone that I don’t still need a tremendous amount of work, or that I am ever going to stop working on who I am simply because I am happy at this moment, but, as of right now, I’ve got no complaints.

The trick I’ve found is, to be happy with where you are at right NOW. The past is who we were and everything that happened to us in that past is part of what makes us who we are RIGHT NOW.

The future may consist of who we want to be, or who we someday think we may become, but it is an ethereal, intangible thing, and I believe it is sheer folly to pursue it without a firm, rock-solid, grounding in the here and now.

Right now, I have a relationship that is in tattered pieces. It doesn’t matter how it got that way or who was at fault for it’s present state, only that I make the right decisions to either possibly salvage it, or scrap it and move on from it. I can only trust myself to make the right decisions for me, and I do, I do trust myself.

When all is said and done, we are alone with the exactness of our own thoughts and our own feelings. No single being can comprehend things precisely the way that we do, and I feel this is something to be understood and embraced, instead of questioned and mistrusted.

“Know thyself, and to thine own self be true.”

I’m not religious and I got no idea where that came from, but it fits. And it makes sense.

So… who am I?

I’m pretty sure I have a good idea and, what I don’t know, I’m learning.

I remember once, when I’d made a mistake in parking at an airport that ended up costing me the entirety of the meager amount I possessed, my uncle telling me that, though he was 20 years older than me and I considered him to be very wise, he was always learning something every day, and that it was a rare time when some form of compensation wasn’t required for the lesson.

While I was barely in High School, I had a crusty, old, ranch boss that would work us from dawn to dusk some days, harder than we’d ever known, but would then reward us with any form of alcohol that we desired. He would buy us a case of beer each, minimum, and then let us get drunk beyond comprehension at the bunkhouse back at the ranch.

In the mornings, he would get us up at the same time as usual (slightly after daybreak), feed us the same things as usual (eggs and sausage at one point, but now seemingly an entire plate of grease and mush), and push us just as hard as usual, but with one difference. He would absolutely forbid us from taking aspirin or any other painkillers for our thundering hangovers. Our fear and respect for him kept us from questioning this until about the third time it happened. My closest friend, a guy I consider my brother, asked if he could leave the ranch and go into town for some aspirin (obviously assuming, at this point, that the old man simply didn’t have any).

The old man merely told him, “No.”

My friend went back to work grudgingly, and full of resentment for the old hard-ass, but I waited for a lull in the day and asked him quietly, “Why not? He’s done with his chores and things are slow, why not?”

His face softened, into something that I’d never witnessed, as he placed his gnarled, life-of-work-toughened, hand gently on my head.

“Because then you’ll never learn.”

I realize that, throughout my life, I’ll never stop learning, and I am only now, fully capable of appreciating that fact.

Though the lessons are sometimes incredibly painful, that doesn’t mean that I can ever lose sight of the fact that I still need to learn from them.

Wish me luck.