Listening. Waiting. Wondering.

I am trying to retain my personal struggles and not allow my emotions to bleed through the rough jagged edges of my atypical self, but find this practice to be a difficult one. Part of my inability to focus on things recently has been due to the ongoing battle to maintain my marriage, providing a stable home for my little girl to grow up happily within, even if it means sacrificing my own personal wants and needs. The other 70% of my distraction falls here with My God, because He is such a large part of it. God has always been my father, when my own failed to show up for work. The unseen, unheard, faceless voice that has provided me with spiritual direction as far back as I can remember has never been more silent than it is today. And, like a son standing with his catchers mitt and ball, alone in the yard expecting his father to play with him, I am left to wonder where everything went wrong between us. My God, I am in need of direction from someone. Heaven knows I have tried to talk to my wife without any success about our challenges and the few close friends I have are not willing to hear my drama in their single-minded childless lives, which leaves me to my mother who is about as helpful in marriage counsel as Michael Jordan is to coaching any Baseball League. There is one thing that my loving mother has left burred deep inside my conscious, always reminding me of this, whenever we are at odds with one another. "You can't fly to high that God will not bring you straight down to your knees."

Here is the issue I have with this. 

A) Why is my mother constantly wishing ill will on me? All the other mothers I know out there seem to actually support their children, even the ones who murder people, eat humans, kill their babies and poison their spouses for money, yet my own mother wishes God to strike me down when I tell her not to give ice to my two year old daughter.
B) Why is My God so angry with those who believe in him and honor him and pray to him in a world that is increasingly turning the other cheek.
C) Why is it that all those I consider "parents" also come with being selfish assholes?
D) Why is God so against my happiness and success?

Granted, I know this is just her own insecurities lashing out at me, but it is still ungodly annoying. I feel like my life has reached its limit, though there is still so much left in me to give and offer, and I am trapped inside my own confidence box, shouting at the top of my lungs for someone to lend me a goddamn box cutter. How can the outside appear so warm and welcoming, when the inside is corroded with acidic baggage that is simply unwilling to fade away? Faith is such an unpredictable crap shoot that I am not even sure about its authenticity nowadays. What I mean by this is that everything seems to be controlled in one way or another by some other person who thinks they have the answers to all. And maybe they do, but until someone can reach out to me and say that they have walked the same trail I am on with spot-on examples of their own trials and tribulations, I am going to look for the omnipresent LORD as my Savior...except, when I throw out the cross shaped bat-signal nothing happens. I am on the verge of an unprecedented mental breakdown here, where the hell are you?

Then I am reminded of my own personal opinions of the matter. God is there, wherever "there" happens to be, always present in the most subtle of ways, a sudden gust of wind on a windless day, an unexpected smile when no one is laughing, a distant voice inside you that pokes you this way or that. God gave me and everyone reading this a brain with limitless boundaries. A piece of himself that was meant to bring us closer to Him, not drive us further and further apart. Because of this, I am lead to ask myself, have I conditioned myself to use my brain too much? Have I crossed that unspoken line that was meant solely for God's use, the expression doing all that you can and leaving the rest for God to sort out seems to have brought me and my faith to some kind of spiritual crossroads. Have I forgotten my manners or has my heavenly father clipped my wings? This also plays an important role is the whole belief system. God cannot or chooses not to defend his role or tell us anything about his plans, leaving this up to his human representatives to chalk up. But I lost faith in those guys years ago and would not dare seek holy counsel, unless he can raise the dead or turn my water into wine and even then I have to be cautious, thanks to the Anti-Christ.

My current banshee-like wail is this; I am trying to keep my marriage a happy and successful one. I am trying to keep my daughter from spacing out around the age of 13, because mommy and daddy called it quits and love is just an unused condom left on the vacant pillow next to me. I am trying to connect with the woman I love, grow this connection and bring another excellent addition into a world filled with creeps, but I can't seem to find that forgiveness my wife needs and the condomless love I need to make this happen. What in God's name do I have to do to erase the bad and pencil in all the good I want to bring to this holy matrimony? My God, there must be an arrant thunderclap in the sky just waiting for me to hear it, or an unexpected instant message from an unknown advising me on my next move. There must be. There HAS to be. Call me Icarus, but those were some pretty nice wings, regardless of what they were made of.

The Power of Prayer

I promised myself that I would go deeper than anyone might be willing to go in questioning their God, maybe revealing too much of myself to a world of infinite cyber space, to read and judge me by; but, am I not already doing that when I pray? I have one prayer. It may not even be considered "praying" by many, but it's what I have been doing for a s far back as I can remember. 

Dear God, 

Thank you for this day and the many more that may follow. 

Thank you for my wife. (this prayer was slightly altered 12 years ago, which went something like, thank you for (insert wife's name) because, after all I had gone through to bring her here to the states, and the time spent on a computer upholding a long distance relationship, it had to have been a miracle) 

Thank you for the beautiful little girl asleep, whose light snore make me fall asleep with a smile. 

Thank you for watching over me and my family, blessing us with good health and the means to survive. 

From here, I just talk. I talk (in my head) to the spirit in the sky as though he were sitting in a chair next to me, chewing on a pen cap and occasionally jotting down a few "Ah-Ha!" comments. Going back to touch a little more on what I get out of religion or faith, I get a kind and impartial ear to hear me from start to finish. I get what I have been craving for years from my wife and mother and anyone willing to put their own selfishness aside to lend a kind perspective to another. The problem now is that I think my shrink is on some kind of permanent vacation, because I do not think He is listening to me anymore, joining a very large group of people I love with all my heart and soul who also have stopped listening. 

Without revealing too much detail (to honor a promise I made) let's just say I am in a very dark place, where voices not your own try like hell to dig you further and further down inside the darkness. You could call it a bout of depression. You could call it drama, which is very overused in my house, or you could call it life baring down on me like the weight of the world crushing down onto the shoulders of Atlas. There is so much happening to me right now that, for the first time in my life, there are too many doors without exits. I have prayed (once upon a time) nightly for the simplest of things. Peace. And not world peace, but a peace of mind that should be easily executable since I am the pilot, navigator and passenger aboard this plane of existence. My God, is there anything in the above prayer too difficult to address? And I don't mean to read all over the place, but without full disclosure, it makes following my logic a bit of a challenge. But, here is an example of my frustration. 

Me, in a stepped upon nutshell lying on the floor of my Lonestar franchise, waiting to be swept away by underpaid help, called life.

My marriage is very unstable. Still. In fact, my wife has told me recently how she continues to further "numb" herself to me.

I have one parent (a mother) who might be the most selfish, unforgiving, unloving, unkind, unjust and totally ignorant woman unabashed by how anyone feels about her, who continually fucks me over every chance she gets.  That's it, folks. My family begins and ends with these two women. AND THEY ARE GIANT FUCKING ASSHOLES. 

I have been working feverishly in finding time alone with my wife, without the child, and every single time I have found a time, she has found something more important to do, or tell me how we do not have the money for this or that, or she wants to address the house (because that is what adults do and what men who love their wives do). My boss gave me some tickets to a triple A baseball game on Labor Day, a day game which should make for a nice time out. We have never been to a sporting event and she once said how she would like to see one of these games. Opportunity knocks, I open the door. There is one problem- my daughter. The simple solution would be to pay her, no bubbles no troubles. This would dip into those savings we are trying to pile in. My mother is there, free of charge, and a phone call away. Problem is, my wife cannot stand her. She "tolerates" her, which translate to not speaking to her when around her, unless spoken to first, which is a single word reply and back to ignoring. 

After a terrible turn of events in trying to talk to my wife about this "fun" time I was arranging lead to a stupid comment in Facebook, another admission of how she is numb to me and a day filled with anger. 

On the way home, I called my mother to ask her to sit for us, which she said OK, but then started throwing out bait to reel me in to another one of our arguments about her not having enough time with my daughter. I cannot do much about this. My wife dislikes her. She has reasons to do so, but something has got to give between them. My marriage and life is suffering because two people are unwilling to let go. So, I lost it. I was (am) sick and feel horrible. I told my wife about the argument with mom and me, which lead into my frustration with the argument with her earlier in the day. ALL OVER A TRIPLE A BASEBALL GAME!

This lead into my most recent prayer. 

Dear God, 

Thank you for this day and the many more that may follow. 

Thank you for my wife. (this prayer was slightly altered 12 years ago, which went something like, thank you for (insert wife's name) because, after all I had gone through to bring her here to the states, and the time spent on a computer upholding a long distance relationship, it had to have been a miracle) 

Thank you for the beautiful little girl asleep, whose light snore make me fall asleep with a smile. 

Thank you for watching over me and my family, blessing us with good health and the means to survive. 

(I am not sure what I am doing wrong here. I have worked tirelessly in expanding on my marriage, committing to having another child and doing so right, with love and respect for the woman who is my wife...and she is numb to me. Everything I do falls onto a numb surface. when I got home, I was clearly distraught and she rolled her eyes to me, defended herself, and left to go lend an ear to a woman she hardly knows. I have lost my wife, my family and quickly losing my mind. I have prayed for some sense of stability and I get instead a mountain of grief. Are you telling me something I refuse to listen too? Are you even here anymore? 

If there is one person in this world trying to do the right thing and getting killed for it, it would be me. I think half of this would be non-existent had my God added one more commandment. Love thy children. I recently held a conversation with my mother about the list of 250 priest who fucked children in Boston, and asked her what she thought and how it effected her. "I am not giving up my religion over a few bad apples." Yet, she is willing to sacrifice the happiness of her own flesh and blood, with refusing to do the simplest of things-do as I ask with my child. This single request from a son to his mother has fucked up my entire life. My God, where are you? Where did you go? Were you ever there to begin with? My prayer has changed again, after 12 long years. 

Dear God. 

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