Day 4

MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE BLOG, HELP ME UNDERSTAND MY FALL.

I remember the first time I made love to my wife, after we decided to have my daughter, and still remember thinking to myself relax, let go, focus on the goal and not the distractions. I was getting older, she was already 34 and the maternal clock was screaming. Oh, but you were eager to please were you not? I was eager to try. We had been married for eight years, people were beginning to ask questions in roundabout ways, "You have been married for x years and you and your husband have not had children? You both must be career oriented." I was just getting back to basics, prerequisites for my tenure at community college. "Oh, so you don't wish to have children then?" People can really drive a nail into the coffin at times and swear they meant well, and I am usually the one pegged as disrespectful. Image is everything, you should know that. I am not very photogenic. See, I have always been the one carrying around the punchline that only I seem to get. I have taken nothing but shit from everyone around me about the non-traditional methods of how I came to be where I am today. Society sets rules for how the "norm" should be. Society can suck it. I don't see CEO's or high profile writers trying to shed some of their knowledge to the rest of the world for free. I don't see neighbors any longer asking to borrow a cup of sugar for reasons that a simple Google search will tell you, society has closed its shutters to the outside because everyone is a goddamn critic, including you.

You were saying something about having your daughter? Yes, I wrapped the past eight years of my marriage into a nutshell of logic that may or may not have been very smart. My wife left her country, her family, her career to get onto a plane and fly to a country she had never been to and probably never would have visited, pursing a promise I made to her. It was not a false promise, no delusions about easy living or not having to struggle in the least. In fact, I told her I would have a place for us to live and a means for transportation, which I lived up to. My interpretation of living and acceptable transportation did not translate quite the same way. Comfortable living in South Australia to a one bedroom studio in Midtown Memphis does not equate equally I assure you. And you were young, uneducated and reckless. I, like many before and after me, made some mistakes. Some? Many. So you brought a child into the world, because you were feeling guilty? At first, yes. I have since discovered being a father not only feels right, but was one of only a few things I actually did correctly. Had you the chance to go back...No need to finish that question. I love her more than the sun or the moon. Without those things you could not live. Without my daughter, there isn't a reason to do so.

Are you going to answer my question? Help you understand your fall? Yes. You don't know that already? I only know how I feel and how I got here. Lets start there then. How do you feel? Now or then? How you feel now should be the end result of how you felt then.
  I know I love my wife. I know I love my daughter and loving them, by association, I should love my family. But something is wrong still. Something I know I can fix, if only I knew the root cause of the problem. Other people seem to think you should just stop now, before you or your wife, possibly even your daughter, become collaterally damaged for a war no one seems to know how to end. THAT'S THE ISSUE THOUGH, ISN'T IT! I have stopped fighting. I no longer care to win this war of the roses when I have no fucking clue what I am trying to occupy. It's almost like I have bought into a defective product that I refuse to accept as defective. It works just fine, exactly how everyone else uses it, but breaks down the moment I convince myself that there isn't anything wrong. You might say, my troubles are intermittent. When they happen, they are really awful and I cannot get a damn thing done; but, isn't this just how the machine of marriage works? So, you're just venting or complaining here, for all the world to see, to avoid having to explain yourself to your wife when you breakdown? No. I don't think so. I think I open up for a couple of reasons. I am a reclusive. I do not have "friends". At least not the kind I can sit down and have dinner with. I write as an outlet and hope, in the event I am finally understood, that I actually connect to someone who has similar issues as me, maybe even exact. I need to know that I am not just another statistic that some Harvard asshole will compile into one of their "Scientific" studies that supposedly offer real insight into whatever social ailment "Time" or "O" magazine happens to be covering for the month.

If you do not know why you fought or what you continue to fight about now, regardless of whether or not you want too, what makes you think you fell at all? What if you are actually standing on the edge of a cliff, considering jumping, not having a chute, not suicidal in the traditional sense of the word, but clearly contemplating how much it would really matter if you did or did not jump? I think I just blew my own mind. Recall: I remember the first time I made love to my wife, after we decided to have my daughter, and still remember thinking to myself relax, let go, focus on the goal and not the distractions. You made love to her last night, without any barriers, and you had this same thought cross your mind again, didn't you? I did. For the same reasons you had then? No. Then maybe you haven't so much fell as you have failed. Perhaps you are projecting your own shortcomings onto your wife, when the focus should really be you. After all, you are talking to yourself.

Day 1

MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE BLOG, WHO'S THE MOST DARING OF THEM ALL?

Today I made a choice. I assessed myself, my life, all of my failures and those precious few successes and realized No...I promised myself that I would not sugarcoat this voyage into the next chapter of my life. I swore that the writer in me would not self-edit or remove any incriminating or unflattering comments, to avoid any backlash my words might bring me. I did this because I need to. I must bleed out the poisons that have slowly sickened me for far too long now. It should not be a secret that I am unhappily married. There is no shame in this as I am not the only one who has been slighted or pummeled by the constant constraints of a difficult, if not completely fucking impossible, marriage. I stayed too long in this marriage. I had a child when I probably should have painted the bedside wall instead. I get my goddamn teeth kicked in day after day, week after week, but I get right back up and forge on. Am I mentally removed from this reality? In short, no. 

I am a husband. I am a father. I am an example, perhaps a collection of shining examples, of what and what not to do. Nonetheless, I am still here. And today I made another decision. This one, however, was made without pressure or outside distractions. This one was made on shear will and determination, as a man and architect of my own existence, to not prove anything to anyone, including myself, but to take what is rightfully mine, beginning with my immediate family. Beginning with understanding me, to solidify to myself that I am not insane or clinically fucked in the head in any respect. As the background and title of this blog, hopefully, dictate. I may very well be lost within my own fantasy. 

Today I embark down the road of parenthood, to start anew with the second and final addition to the family I have so valiantly fought for. A conscious choice that did not involved having to satisfy a woman's maternal need, a crutch to patch up my shitty marriage, a payment for having made a woman leave her homeland and move continent's for the sake of her heart, or to fulfill some kind of human genetic means for whatever mindless fucking indulgence people with kids seem to enjoy. Personally, not sleeping worth a damn for the next twenty or so years has never been a selling point for me. Without having to go back and explain how I got here, lets just say this choice was made to hammer out that missing notch in my belt of the American Dream. And like any dream, there is always that possibility of wetting the bed or having the worse nightmare of your life. 

And you know what kinds of scary things lurk in this dream, don't you? She is 36 and overweight, stressed to the point of her hair falling out, skating along recklessly in her marriage and blind to the fact her heart is just not in it anymore. Combined, you are faced with the potential of a Down Syndrome baby, maybe even miscarrying and you know how unstable she gets when watching those infomercials about starving children in Africa. No pressure though. It only gets worse the longer you wait. Goddamn it! Why didn't you listen? Where is the fucking return in this decade long investment of yours? I don't know. It's getting late and you have a big day at work tomorrow...

Oh, one last thing, before you go, you are grossly behind on that novel you've been promising your wife you would write for the past eight years...maybe you should consider waking from one dream, before getting all involved with another. 

Maybe you should go to hell!