Category Archives: Behavior

Behavior, Death, Fashion, Food, Humor, New Word, Opinion, Personal, Psychology, Relationships, Social Rules

Both Personal And Random Ideas

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“Make all the right choices. Eat all the right food. And you will still be dead one day. This is a rigged game, indeed, this gift of life.” – X

Have you ever thought that another way to describe a bath is “butt soup?”

For the first time in MANY years, I am getting a refund for both Federal and State taxes. While I can’t finance a yacht with the refund, it is a pleasant change of pace! Also, I did my taxes exceedingly fast; in previous years, it was a very tedious process, usually involving a lot of typing, swearing, and frustration – and that was just addressing the envelopes. Though I meticulously followed the software and triple-checked it, the IRS said my refund had to be adjusted. Whether it’s worth arguing over depends on whether my hold on sanity is firm the day I receive the letter to challenge their adjustment.

“The chickens came home to roost. Or so they thought… the smell of fried chicken soon permeated the air.” -X

Last week, very early in the morning, as I rounded the corner of the apartments near the trail by the hospital, I found three bags stuffed with personal items. Though there was no one there along the fringe of the building, I surmised that someone had slept between the minimal hedging and the brick wall. I saw someone there the following day, and I left them in peace. When I passed by again, they were gone, but the bags were still there. I left a gift for them next to their bags. I’ve not seen the bags since. I wonder about them each day.

I keep learning that being clear and honest still likely results in a mess. It doesn’t matter what your motivation is or how concisely and openly you share; the odds still dictate that things will likely spin away from you. Likely, there’s nothing you can do about it. So much of the outcome depends on the other mercurial person. Not stating your truth will just as likely cause you to bubble over unexpectedly when the pressure to speak overwhelms you. As hard as it is, between the two options, it’s always better to just state your truth when you feel like you need to. It won’t feel like the best option, though. Most of us are hard-wired to put off what plagues us until it seeps or explodes out. It’s important to remember that the feelings you bury are still alive under all the layers.

Wine ice cubes are fantastic. Not only do they go well in actual wine, but they also can be used as needed when you want wine to cook with. Don’t “at me,” either, saying that ice cubes in wine are uncouth. There are no actual rules regarding taste, cooking, or eating. The sooner we abandon that nonsense, the better off we’ll all be. And happier eating macaroni over the sink – or a bowl of cereal for supper. One wine ice cube is much better than a cheap grape popsicle, too. In my opinion. Adult note: if you drink enough wine, your appetite will likely go away. And your ability to cook coherently definitely will.

“Wisdom teaches us to be patient with the ridiculous setbacks we’re all going to encounter. It also somehow still fails to prepare us for being surprised by how people will act.” – X

Not everyone is wired the same way sexually. That’s to be expected. But if you’re a sexual person and not being intimate, consequences to your quality of life or well-being always follow. It doesn’t mean that sex is an overwhelming or inflexible motivator; it just means that human behavior will succumb to the urge toward intimacy. People need to stop being ashamed of their essential needs and how they practice and define them. Sex is the big mystery that permeates our lives in multiple ways – yet most of us have a completely mistaken idea of how other people live sexually, much less how to be happy with our sexual selves.

My therapist told me that in one of my first sessions, I said this: “Isn’t it odd how most of our need to look presentable isn’t really so we’ll feel good about ourselves. It’s because we are leaning into the idea of spectator attractiveness. We want to look good to other people. Because if not, generally speaking, we’d all dress comfortably and not think much about hair, makeup, shoes, or how we are perceived. Absent the expectation of attractiveness and left to our own devices, we might be a lot less preoccupied with appearance and happier as a result.” I could be wrong, but it seems to be true generally.

You can drive around the roundabout 17 times if you need to. Likewise, you can fail as many times as you need to or have to until you finally make the turnoff. It’s where you end up that matters, anyway. It would be nice to avoid a convoluted, circuitous path of errors, but life tends not to work that way.

“You’re not afraid of being alone in the dark. You are afraid that you might not be alone in the dark.” This isn’t my quote. It does demonstrate how our fears and thoughts overtake us.

Male secret #34: most men do not care if a woman’s legs are smoothly shaved. Or if their nails are painted, their blouse, shoes, pants match, etc. The enthusiasm of presence derails all those concerns. I’m not sure you should trust a middle-aged man named X or not – but this is true.

Rule of Presence: each of us will jump to hold the door for another person, but we will move heaven and earth to stop someone from passing us on the road.

I’ve put up three ‘fake’ streets signs in the last couple of months. All of them are still posted. PS If you want to do it quickly, have the sign made prior to showing up, with the bolt already through it. Since most street posts have multiple bolt holes, push the bolt through and twirl the nut on it quickly. Also, did you know you can order a custom street sign easily? If you’re bored, google it. It’s no accident that 75 mph is a great sign to add in Johnson. (I didn’t do that one due to public safety concerns. And the lack of a sense of humor with traffic enforcement there, now that I think about it.)

Another one I stole from the internet: “Each and every selfie is a picture of perhaps your own worst enemy.”

It’s been about six months since my surgery. It’s been the longest ten years of my life. I’m still thankful to be here. But I can’t escape the idea that I’d be a lot happier with a check for one million dollars in my wallet. I might not ever cash it.

Love, X
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Behavior, Mental Health, Personal, Psychology

Sunday Afternoon

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As I pulled up to the Casey’s, it was impossible to avoid looking at the tweaker. He was an indeterminate early thirty year old man, replete with thousands of dollars of tattoos across his exposed legs, hands and neck. He sat and shifted on top of the wood for sale out front of the store. His jerky movements were uncontrollable, his eyes and head shifting wildly. I could tell that at some point a few minutes prior the rain had washed him.

For reasons I’ll have to think about later, I felt a wallop of sadness. It was totally unexpected. I see my share of tweakers in Fayetteville. None of them started life with that intention. I parked directly in front of him and when I exited I said good afternoon. His eyes briefly met mine and then he nodded wildly.

While I waited in line inside, the younger man in front of me kept looking out the window at the tweaker. He told the man in front of him that he wished we could round up all the tweakers and put them down as an act of mercy. Though he probably said it offhandedly, the residual effect of sadness inside me flared into anger.

I told him that if that were the case, I hope he would be capable of doing the so-called act of m mercy himself because that kind of heartlessness requires personal accountability. And that perhaps he could call the tweakers mom and let her know that her son has zero value left in life. The younger man commenting was stunned by my words. Everyone grew silent for a moment. Momentarily I felt bad for what I said. It doesn’t matter what my motivation was. My comments did not add anything positive to the world.

It’s true I would not trust the tweaker in my car or my home.

I bought a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a soda for the tweaker. When I exited I placed the things on the woodpile next to him. I told them that the things were for him and he again nodded and grunted.

I know that I didn’t do those things for him. I did them for myself, to feel a little bit more human, and to express gratefulness that I had not chosen a road leading to where he is. It’s raining hard now and I know that he has nowhere to go. It’s likely we all know how his road will end. But there is a very small possibility that the universe will choose him for an unexpected upturn in life.

I drove away, glad that the young man commenting had a good enough life to foolishly think that such a thing could never happen to him. We all think that.

I don’t have a neat wrap-up or lesson here. I sit in my car inside my beautiful life, writing this without edit or correction.

Paraphrasing Alan Watts, he said that muddy water clears best when left alone. So I’ll leave my thoughts here unredacted.

Love, X
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Behavior, Fayetteville, Justice, Law, Opinion, Personal, Psychology, Security

Anger’s Blossom

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I’m reluctant to share this one. While my heart was in the right place, I felt a flare of righteous anger. That type of anger feels right at the moment but often sours with consequences. I am not a hero in this story.

About two weeks ago, I was driving about 35 mph in a way that made me feel alive. Music high, smiling. Not in a hurry.

Her green sedan pulled alongside me in the lane to my left.

She held her phone, crying.

Her black hair reached her shoulders.

She tossed her phone in the passenger seat.

And unexpectedly looked toward me.

Tears on her face.

She nodded and wiped her eyes with a sleeve.

I let off the gas, and she raced away.

Five minutes later, I pulled into the lot.

And saw the green sedan there.

Life reminds me there aren’t many coincidences.

As I parked, I noted she was next to the store.

Cigarette in hand, nervous.

I watched a man pull up and exit his truck angrily.

He hissed at her in a way I couldn’t hear.

She flinched and looked down to the ground. Because of my childhood, I saw the backstory written plain. I already knew what her private life was like. This wasn’t the first time, nor the tenth.

The man gesticulated and shook.

Without thinking, I walked toward them.

“How are you?” I asked her.

She looked at me in surprise.

The man interrupted, “Who are you?”

I replied, “I am the man just in time.”

“For what?” He hissed at me.

“To do what I need to.” The anger flared in me.

I prayed he’d move toward me.

I walked to his truck and opened the driver’s door. “Get the eff out of here, sir.” I smiled like a predator. I admit that it felt good. I’m not sure what that says about me.

The woman watched, fearful of what her man might do.

She should have feared what I might do.

A man in Canada filled my head, his volatile narcissism unchecked, his multiple victims attempting to regain normal lives in his wake. The law does nothing to aggressively meet the abuser’s behavior in kind, even though that is what is needed. Another man was using his long familiarity with control and emotional abuse to impoverish his fleeing wife. Both honestly deserve a measured dose of Southern Justice. This might be my surrogate, one to catch my vengeance. I hoped so. Waiting for ‘someone’ to help might lead to never. I’d felt the burn inflaming me for some time.

“Get home in ten or else,” he told the woman.

“She won’t be there in 10. Or 60. Go.”

He paced around me and pretended to lunge as he did. I didn’t flinch. Ninety percent of all aggression fails to materialize. Had the ten percent emerged, Bobby Dean laid in wait, anesthetized against anything except immobilizing pain. I wanted him to lunge and make contact. The law allows us to defend someone else. If it penalizes me for acting on impulse, that’s fair.

He got in the truck, slammed the door, and roared away. He put down his window momentarily and shouted the redneck equivalent of whatever angry, stupid people say. I laughed purposefully and ignored him.

The woman cried again.

“You know what you need to do,” I told her. “Today, before it’s too late. Do you have someone to go to?”

She nodded.

“Go there. And don’t go back to that. Do you need anything?”

“No,” she murmured.

“Go now in case he comes back.”

I didn’t enter the store.

I watched the black-haired woman get in her car and depart.

I saw a green car today and wondered if the woman was safe. And I wondered who the man’s next victim might be. That there will be is a certainty. I hope there’s a future me waiting for him. It’s evident that I will pull the curtain back and summon Bobby Dean.

My idle pacifist hands are anxious in an unexpected way.

Days later, I’m still thinking about how close I had to get to really hurting someone. And how the realization that the same Bobby Dean inside me was as guilty of the same misbehavior as the man was with his wife or girlfriend. He was a chronic abuser; ironically, I can channel that same energy to obliterate my doubts and step in on the other side of the situation.

There are no easy answers. But I do know that sometimes raw anger is appropriate. Sometimes it’s the only way. It’s not right, proper, or even intelligent. A lot of men need to spit blood to learn their lesson. And some men, men like me, ones who earned their abuse badges when younger, probably need to be more willing to violently be the one to administer a reminder.

PS I know that we’re supposed to call the police. But I also know that they constantly fail to protect people. The law exists to inhibit behavior, but it often does not remedy the need for immediacy. A few weeks after my surgery, I got a reminder of how precarious the idea of safety can be. The flare that lit inside me of me hasn’t abated. As I said, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about this admission.

Love, X

Ancestry, Behavior, Biographical, Deanne, Family, Nostalgia, Opinion, Personal, Photography, Social Rules

Amaranthine Memories

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This is a post in two parts. I didn’t know how to separate them…

She reached out to me in November, her heart dreading what I might tell her. Sheena and Deanne, my wife who died, were once inseparable comrades in friendship and a little mischief. The early 90s were their heyday. Both Sheena and Deanne were outgoing and beautiful young women.

They’d lost touch. I don’t remember that Deanne told me why other than she often told stories about her friends and the shenanigans and moments she lived before meeting me. As anyone knows, the first few months of getting to know someone is a sublime pleasure filled with stories and insights. We immerse ourselves into the unknown universe of someone else’s life as we get to know them. Deanne was almost ten years younger than me. Despite that, she had a lot of stories to tell and a large family to fill the spaces of her life. I already knew her brother Mark thanks to our jobs at Cargill.

Sheena said she’d seen Deanne once in April of 2001 when Sheena was giving birth to her daughter. Deanne worked at the hospital and surprised Sheena with an impromptu visit. Evidently, it was one filled with smiles and quick words. Sheena did not see her again. But she always wanted to and wondered where Deanne was in the world.

As so often happens when we get older, we think about the people who once touched us. Some of them drift away purposefully; others drift for other reasons. The truth is that some people have a room in our hearts even when we no longer see them. It’s one of life’s bittersweet lessons.

Sheena found an obituary for Deanne. I’d dutifully left a trail of her life and some of her stories on Ancestry and other places. People need to be remembered. Sheena told me that she cried reading it, knowing that her hopes of reconnecting were gone forever. I felt an immense pang of regret on her behalf. Deanne would have lovingly hugged Sheena had she had the chance. She loved a good grudge, but she loved connections more. One of Deanne’s foibles was how quickly she could get irritated. It was a blessing to her in some ways, too, though. As I grew to know her, her ire often made me laugh. She’d punch me in the arm and laugh, too, once the ridiculousness of the situation became apparent.

Sheena ultimately revealed that their friendship probably ruptured because she had told Deanne that we were not compatible. Deanne made up her mind about me very early on. I’m not sure I was consulted!

Sheena reached out to me on Ancestry, and I shared my entire picture collection with her, thousands of pictures – and every picture I owned of Deanne. She was able to sort through Deanne’s short life, as told in pictures. Later, I shared a few stories with her, ones some people have never read or heard.

More importantly, I gave Sheena peace. I let her know that she should feel happy that Deanne and I found each other and stayed together, even when it wasn’t easy. We all do and say things when we’re younger – and often continue the same when we’re older. And if she said the things she said to Deanne with an authentic heart, she should not be accountable for sharing her opinion or truth. That’s the risk of being genuine with other people.

The truth is that Deanne and I weren’t compatible at first glance. Or probably second glance. In that sense, Sheena was definitely not wrong. Deanne was an outgoing, buxom, active soul, almost ten years younger than me. I had no clue she was interested in me. Until she insisted I come over for a homemade meal. Believe me, I was not the one wearing the pants at the beginning of the relationship. Call me oblivious.

Sheena got to see Deanne’s life because I am committed to sharing every picture I own with anyone interested. I’m just the custodian. I love pictures, and I love knowing that people always come full circle with wanting to see every picture of someone they love or loved. Avoiding the soapbox, I will limit myself to saying that unappreciated or unseen pictures do no one any good.

I still feel a bit of remorse for both Deanne and Sheena. They could have reconnected. Had I been aware, I would have asked Deanne to look past any past words and find Sheena again. I did the same with Deanne’s dad. Deanne doubted she could forge a new beginning with him. Through the years, though, I encouraged her to try from a new foundation. And she did. I still count it as one of the best things I’ve ever accomplished. More so because she died so young.

I hope Sheena found a way to fill her life with new souls. She seems like the kind of person who deserves it. Her words to Deanne so many years ago would have been received differently had I known at the time.
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After Deanne died, I didn’t have a big interval of time before I met Dawn, my ex-wife. Whether you can understand or not, I made the choice to plow through life and not let myself get overwhelmed with the loss. When we first got together, I had her meet Deanne’s brother and his wife. I wanted them to know that me getting on with life didn’t negate Deanne. Quite the contrary. I had to make a choice, one that wasn’t really a choice at all. Things could have ended very badly for me. If you’ve lived a life with loss, you can imagine what some of those endings might look like for me. There’s no shame in acknowledging them.

It’s not a choice a lot of people might make. I make no apologies, though. Dawn and I were together when we were very young. She’d had an intervening marriage, one that fizzled and ground down into apathy. We were happy to find each other again.

Deanne never was between Dawn and me. At least not for me. She wasn’t a ghost, but she was a catalyst and reminder for me, something that people misunderstand. When life snatches your optimism through mortality, there are a lot of impossible feelings. This amplifies when you consider how capricious life can be; anyone or anything can disappear at any moment. Deanne deserved more years to continue her journey. She was substantially different from the time when we first met. And that was a great thing to witness. I try to remember to be grateful for the years I had with her. The song always ends, leaving us with a melody we can replay in our heads through memories.

At the risk of repeating myself, one of my biggest mistakes in life has been to occasionally forget the lesson that Deanne’s death dealt me: life is for the living, obstacles will always punch, and love is never wasted, no matter how it ends.

It’s true I shared fewer stories about Deanne than I should have. I did make the mistake of not writing all the stories of adventure and mischief I had with Deanne. And also some about our hard times. We definitely had them. As Dawn and I disintegrated, she seemed to switch the narrative on me about how it was with Deanne. Whether that’s true or not is in the eye of the beholder. I made a choice – as did she. I’d make the same choice again because a choice to live and love is a positive choice; fearing another loss and avoiding taking the risk is a negative choice.

Someone reminded me this morning not to veer. Since she’s a disguised writer, I’m obligated to heed her warning.

Every love is forged with expansiveness and optimism. That we can’t navigate the treachery of daily living and one another’s messes isn’t a knock to love or vulnerability, though. The problem lies within us. Familiarity breeds contempt. We assign motive to actions or words, usually based on our faulty filters. It’s hilariously evident that most of us want the same things.

When love has drawn its last breath, it is easy to focus on the things that were wrong.

When a person draws their last breath, all the doors are shut forever.

Whether you are 31 or 71, the door is always about to shut. We just don’t see it coming. That helps us to forget how precarious our lives are. That same forgetfulness affords us the ability to live our daily lives but it also has the reciprocal defect of failing to focus on what lights us up.

For Sheena, for Deanne, and for anyone who no longer walks the Earth, we can do our best by choosing optimism over despair, deliberate risk over comfort, and for being ourselves, even as the world madly surprises us.

Deanne would tell us that all these years she’s been gone that she would hope we were squeezing the absolute hell out of whatever life has to offer – and shame on us if we aren’t.

She would have loved to be alive and make a lot of mistakes. We should be too. She’d be the first to call me out for being an idiot. And she’d mean it.

Love, X
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Behavior, Blogging, New Word, Opinion, Personal, Social Rules

A Series Of Anecdotes

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Yesterday afternoon, as I exited the inconvenience store with a banana and a knock-off brand of Takis, I saw the older gentleman lift the cigarette receptacle off and run his good hand through the pile of old butts there. His other hand was bandaged from above his wrist over his fingers.

I went back inside and came out with cigarettes. I handed them to him.

“Whoa. My son is two hours late picking me up. I’m not going to lie. I’m dying for a cigarette!” He looked at me sheepishly.

“In that case, have twenty,” I said and laughed.
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Standing in line at Harps, I was fascinated by the woman in front of me. She was probably in her late 70s, dressed in frayed-bottom pants, a white jacket with bats, converse-style sneakers, and her hair was done up in a dazzling pile of twists and a red band. Her eye shadow was surprisingly dark, and her lashes were long. I could tell that she was interesting. For whatever reason, she needed to pay for her items in three batches, so I watched the clerk impatiently adjust. I could hear the audible exasperation of the person behind me in line. When the woman spoke, her voice surprised me. It was at least two octaves higher than what I expected, like a voice strained through piano wire. She piled her three orders into her cart and exited the store. As I put my groceries in the so-called trunk of my little car, I saw that she was loading her items into the trunk of a luxury car. Before I stopped myself, I walked over across the two aisles and stood about fifteen feet away from her. “Ma’am?” She turned, her eyes open and curious. “I just wanted to say that I love your style and that I think you’re beautiful.” She smiled, even though she wore a mask. The smile went up into her eyes. She laughed. She nodded and said in her peculiarly high voice, “Thank you, that made my day! No, my month!” We both laughed. I walked back to my car, curious about the woman with the colorful and vivid sense of style and superbly high voice. Another interesting person I’ll never know.
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Paraphrasing, someone wrote me and asked me, “…why I thought everyone should see into my past life and from my point of view…” The weirdness of the question threw me off a bit. Is there another way to write about one’s life? Or from whose point of view should I write? Of course I write from my point of view! Implicit in everything I write is the idea that it’s my own opinion. There’s no escaping I’m prone to revisionism or self-imposed blinders to my stupidity at times. We all are. Equally valid is that I’m often the first to admit I’ve done something stupid. Previously, I wrote a post titled “Get Your Own Soapbox.” All of us have the option to share or not. We all have the option of using social media platforms, whichever we enjoy, ones that allow us to share in whatever capacity we’re comfortable. We have access to the internet, blogs, YouTube, and countless other means to express ourselves. As for me, I make an effort to avoid needlessly bludgeoning across moving lines of privacy and telling my story. Anyone who reads what I write can see that I make a concerted effort. It is a mistake to ask anyone to refrain from telling their story because it makes you uncomfortable. You have to trust that the people in your life will respect the boundaries and expectations they’ve created. All social media is like television. Change the station if you don’t want to see it. Fighting other people’s opinions seldom leads to a happy resolution. In some stories, you’re a villain. In others, a kind soul. If you live a great life, such a distinction won’t afflict you much. Life takes too much energy and effort to look over one’s shoulder constantly. Even if you live a perfect life, someone’s going to question your life, your motives, or your ideas. That’s in part because there is no single way to live one’s life and live it well.

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Today, I got another reminder that people are inscrutable. It’s just a fact of life that some people don’t like others having a good time when they aren’t happy or able to do the same. Both sets of people can be in the same environment, yet some are satisfied and happy, and some are miserable. Infrequently, I run up against people who resent that I find ways all day to enjoy the zaniness of things. And if there are no interesting things? I make them. I can’t turn it off. Those who go out of their way to impede others from enjoying themselves seldom realize that their actions and attitude convey their own unhappiness. They do NOT appreciate it if it’s pointed out to them, either. Yes, I know this from experience. 🙂 happiness or fun is not a zero-sum game. It can be created infinitely. Just like love, if you are receptive. For those people who try to stifle me, I feel sorry for them. Instead of focusing on others, just a little bit of that same energy transposed into being more creative for themselves would transform their days. It is one of the reasons I annoy people by saying that I don’t know what boredom is.
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“You can kick your feet but not your neighbor” is both a call to energy and happiness even when you experience a setback, but also a tacit reminder to be nice in the process of your day.
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“Routine saves us. Lunacy revives us.” – X
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“A box fan is one of the best intruder/break-in devices ever created. It won’t stop the break-in, but it will keep you from hearing it.” – X
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“Gambling is only a problem if you’re not winning. It seems obvious. We use the outcome to determine objectionability when in reality, it is the act itself.” – X

Love, X

Behavior, Humor, Mental Health, Personal

A Therapeutic Moment

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“Your past is just a story now,” she said, her voice booming with confidence. She saw the look of disbelief on my face and nodded. “Are you saying you’re incapable of turning the page and choosing different behavior? If that’s so, go ahead and surrender to your patterns. It’s over for you.”

I was a little stunned that she was advocating that I give up.

“Get a piece of your crazy chalk, X, go outside, and make a chalk outline of your body, as if you’ve fallen forever. Look at it. That’s what you’re going to leave behind if you don’t make different choices. You know that the number of obstacles that hit you is never going to be zero, so figure out how circumstances are not your actual problem. You are. You wanted clarity and hit-you-in-the-face commentary. There you have it.”

I nodded with an intent look on my face. She wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t heard before. The words, though, were incisive and harsh this time.

She continued. “I read your ‘reset’ promise. You said you’d give it a year. Do that. Every day, make a chalk outline and remind yourself visually that we all are going to end up with unfinished business. Get yours done already. You love to write? Do that. You want a connection that gives you presence and affection without qualification? Get that. If you can’t be successful, I doubt anyone who sees me can be.”

I laughed. “I wish you’d tell me how you REALLY feel.”

I pulled the piece of orange chalk out of my gray jacket pocket, holding it up. “I’ll get started when I leave, right in your parking lot. I hope no one gets the wrong idea.”

“There is no wrong idea. It will either be funny, surprising, or hurtful. You know that you can’t control other people’s filters. Stop trying. What was it you gave me? Like a mouthful of fire, who you are should be impossible to conceal. Your sense of humor is your secret weapon. Focus on that, X.”

After I left the office, I did what usually gives me a secret laugh. I knelt on the pavement and drew a rudimentary chalk outline of a body. I wrote “Yesterday” on the torso.

Somehow, I knew she would nod in approval at the small addition to my drawing.

Almost all of our lives are written in chalk. Entropy and time erase so much – but never the connections and moments we share as memories. Things are transitory, just as we are.

On the way home, I stopped and got nine balloons. I wrote a card that said, “Thank you for being you. -Anonymous.” And I tied them to someone’s car, someone I didn’t know. I laughed, knowing that whoever the car belonged to would find them and be filled with curiosity. And maybe a little glee. I gave them a story, maybe one that would linger forever in their heads.

Love, X
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Behavior, Biographical, Blogging, Family, Mental Health, Opinion, Personal, Privacy, Psychology, Relationships

Never Veer

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@xteriq

#personal #truth #insight #socialmedia #confession #sharedstory #foryoupage #FYP

♬ Inspiring Emotional Piano – Metrow Ar

I love sharing on social media. I do. It’s personal, revelatory, and I try to be honest without stepping on people. I tend to step on myself the hardest.

I learned to play the game of Chicken with my crazy dad. Do you know what his secret was? NEVER veer, even if you’re going to get killed. He told people beforehand, “I’m not going to veer. I’m not kidding.” And he never did, even when it could have killed him. People learned not to play Chicken with Bobby Dean. Not in cars, not on tractors, not ever. Never veering is a stupid way to play chicken – unless your goal is to stop people from challenging you. There is no truth I will not confide if it is in my heart to do so.

I wrote very personal posts on the 23rd and yesterday. Both were honest and revelatory. The one from the 23rd was an admission that I’m as guilty as anyone about being a revisionist. I’ve not hurtfully crossed the line needlessly about anyone – including my ex-wife. That’s not to say I couldn’t. Two of the components of my post were to mention that I appreciated the good years, as well as to mention that I could have engaged in a flame war during the divorce, even though I bore the responsibility for the mess. It’s okay to need to gain perspective and distance. Even if it makes me the villain. It’s not okay to wipe away the good times, the good things, or the concessions I made to mitigate my self-made disaster.

With my level of humor and stark, combined with my willingness and ability to literally say anything, it would be manifestly easy for me to shatter a lot of illusions and break eggs. Even while still admitting I’ve behaved like a lunatic at times. I’ve been considerate after-the-fact. I can’t erase the past. It’s unwise to argue with someone who buys ink by the gallon, or with someone who will respond to accusations by admitting even worse truths himself. No one can win a “let’s share secrets” war with me. I will go there – not out of spite, no matter how someone pushes me to inflame or respond to fire with fire. It’s a fool’s game, especially after the final whistle has blown. The players should exit the field, hopefully with the goal of learning from what happened. Even if they fouled forty times during the game. An examined life always yields lessons.

People trust me not to reveal secrets they share. Believe me, one of the most satisfying aspects of social media is that many people have shared some of the most intimate things possible using it.

As you’d guess, I caught hell privately for the things I shared. Even the post about my wife who died brought out a level of accusation that surprised me. None of those accusations touch the truth, though. Everyone was kind, loving, and supportive to me for both posts. Well, almost everyone. And I love that. Worrying about the critics is another fool’s errand. Because I’m a fool, I’ve been guilty of that at times.

“You’re the villain in someone’s story” has always been true.

Equally true is that telling me I can’t tell my story isn’t going to end well. I’ll be respectful – but not silent. Trust me to be both honest and responsible.

If you play Chicken with me, I will not veer, now or ever.

Love, X

Behavior, Biographical, Death, Family, Mental Health, Personal, Relationships

Thoughts, Bittersweet And Kind

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Thoughts, Bittersweet And Kind

When people move away from a relationship or marriage, they become revisionists. It’s a natural human reaction. Because I don’t want hypocrisy lightning to strike me, I will be the first to admit I’ve done it too. When things go sour, we overwrite the good moments, and the sense of wrong and failure fill our heads. Most of us don’t go into relationships will ill intentions. There are exceptions; some people don’t see behind the masks of those they are with until later. It’s not their fault. Love drives us. We all pretty much want the same things. How we traverse the minefields of our own vanities and life determines how successful our relationships might be. When it ends, we’re left with a raw fringe that often transposes into a filter that overwrites all the positive things we experienced.

I haven’t written a tremendous amount about my marriage. In part, it is because I saw no need to inflame emotions or trespass across the boundary of where my right of expression would infringe upon her life.

As time passes, she’s told me more than once that she thought I was there for so long because it was an easy life. Such a comment is an indictment of what we actually shared. There was a lot of love there for most of the marriage. The end was a bitter pie, that’s true. Since I’m the one who added a lot of the bitter, it is my pie to eat.

When we first got together, I was trying to recover from the sudden and unexpected death of my wife. She was ten years younger than me. Her death was a stop sign in my life. The brutal truth is that had she not died, my life would have continued along that trajectory, probably forever. That’s not how life works though. It’s a series of blows, each of which we either confront or bury.

I made the decision to live life. The risk of me not doing so might have been my demise. “Get busy living or get busy dying” was certainly in my head. It wasn’t going to be easy no matter what choices I made.

One of the reasons the accusation of staying in the marriage because it was “easy” bothers me is that anyone who knows me knows that I am not money-driven. That’s both a defect and an advantage. I feel rich in a lot of ways no matter what roof is over my head or what car I drive. Growing up, I lost a lot. Houses burned, tornadoes came, and violent parents made physical comfort an impossibility. Security is never in the things that envelop me. There is no doubt that my conscious decision to ignore ambition has cost me in some ways. That same lack of ambition also provided insurance, flexibility, and more free time to fill in life’s spaces with ordinary moments. We live most of our lives in those spaces rather than in the grand ones that most people prominently use to illustrate their lives.

Before the divorce, I signed over the house to my ex-wife. I did it for a lot of reasons. I could have insisted that we divest everything and sell it. Had I done so, I would have had 40-50K in my pocket when I left. As it was, I left with $5000. Someone motivated by money would have never walked away from that money. She would have needed to move and start over exactly as I did. It didn’t matter who was at fault; that’s just the way it works. I don’t know many people who’ve willingly given up such a big chunk in order to let their ex have peace and security.

It bothers me that the love I had and the gift I gave her by letting her keep the house are now being characterized as untrue. But I understand.

I sit as the villain in her head. If that helps her have a good life again, I can accept it. During the last few months, I stayed as a roommate. Luckily, I was going to counseling. I learned to sleep and I learned that I didn’t need nearly as much sleep as I had been getting before something in my head snapped. Over time, the anxiety I wasn’t addressing built to a point where I had to either succumb or deal with it. I waited too long to get a handle on it. That was arrogance on my part. There’s no other word for it.

I learned some lessons, some of them unflattering about myself. But one of the lessons I learned is that no matter what your intentions, if you don’t express the hard things in your mind when they come up, they fester and burn you from the inside out. It is so easy to walk through each day, letting the details and routine gloss over the things that need to be said. And done. It’s obvious that I didn’t really learn some of the lessons deeply because I repeated the same pattern by swallowing my truths a few times, ignored the little voice inside my head saying “No,” or stopped striving for the demand of a normal kind of affection.

When I had my emergency surgery, it was my ex-wife who came to the emergency room and stayed with me until my surgery started. She got to witness me violently throwing up and yelling in surprise pain each time a spasm of internal tearing got the better of me. She got her karma that night! But despite that, she was there. And that’s not nothing.

I don’t want to ever come across as someone who doesn’t appreciate that or the good years we had.

I also don’t want to be the kind of person who feels like I’m ‘too much.’ I’ve learned that my ‘too much’ is exactly what some people want. And that is true for all of you, too. I was surprised to find that the things that give me connection are these: writing, a buttload of laughter, and the ability to sit in a chair, intertwined, with nothing but the comfort of someone who sees me as me. I’ll get there, in part because of the long past that lies behind me, including all the stupid things I’ve done and the times I let my arrogance or inattention to what matters lead me astray. I don’t want to be right. I want to be happy.

If you have a happy marriage or relationship, please whisper its truth in gratitude or prayer. Don’t let the valleys overshadow the inevitable peaks. And if your relationship ends, try to avoid the pitfall of painting everything as sinister or dark. We’re all complicated people and so often we find ourselves at the end of a road without a clear idea of how we got so far astray. We started in love.

As the noted philosophers of VanHalen said: “If love’s got you down, love can lift you right back up. Get up and make it work.”

Love, X
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P.S. Wherever I end up, there is going to be a swing. Without playfulness, the seriousness of what we experience would drown us.