An Old Friend- Revisited

I have nothing. I had nothing when I first met you and along the way I lost something dear to me, and I am once again empty. Empty on the inside, rotting away spiritually and condemned to this personal hell. I could speculate how I got here. I could even assume it was all your fault. I could make excuses for myself that could just as easily be thrown back at me, blamed for everything I've ever done that has lead me to the here and now...empty, without you in my life. I could blame technology and the evils driving our human thirst for the unknown and the knowledge it contains, influencing my consciousness to consider a lack of authority in my life and the universe surrounding it. I could just shout obscenities at the masses and fuel the growing machine of doubt, rebel against you and make a stand against your continued silence and lack of public showing but where would that get me? Hell. I could do a lot things, question you and the entire gospel of faith, until I near my last breath, and accept you into my heart and be saved. I guess I am saying, My God what have I become?

Godless. I have become godless. I do not wish to be, because I do believe in you. I have for the longest time, ever since I can remember. Like when my mother stepped out the door, promising me she would be back, and I asked you to be with me on that day and have her there for my return from school, only to learn that she had run into the arms of yet another man-again. But that was not your fault. Nor was it your fault on the countless other let-downs in my life, the lack of a father, mother, family, friends...clearly I am not easy to get along with. But you brought me my wife-the woman who is the mother of my child. The child whom I love more than life and the air that I breathe. And it was within her that I saw something special, something magical, legendary, even miraculous. My God, I found you in her eyes. In the way she smiles when I come home and how she saddens just a little when I leave. what I had thought was lost was only missing, and now that I have found it again I can grow it. I can Love it, unconditionally, knowing that it would not be possible without your blessing. I cannot explain why I know it's you, but I don't have to. I do not need to explain the love and thirst for life that you represent in all of your silent promises. You may have not answered a specific prayer, but you answered another I never needed to ask for. Somehow you knew, before it was and that is what makes you God. If not as a whole, then as a very important piece. So, yes, I have become Godless and more blessed than ever before.

Year One: Perspective in Faith and Absolution

When I looked at the bedside clock, the digital semicolon blinked in and out the final seconds of 2011. I was in bed with Kina, my daughter was sleeping easy in the monitor and it was calmer outside than one might expect for an approaching New Year. Within those precious few seconds, the world, my world, came into focus for me. I've prayed, real hard, many of nights that the magic finger of God wag its mystical digit in favor of my direction. bless my heart, my wife's heart and seal our holy vows with a kiss to ring in the New Year, and remove any doubt the moment that clock turned over. 11:59.00 and counting and still doubts linger. I cannot blame myself, for I can only lie for so long until one lie, once covered up by a stack of more lies, finds its way back to the forefront. You are wasting your life away to someone who will never be anything more than the cold, distant, baggage handler who refuses an honest apology in order to nurture the poison that is her vicious and vengeful bite. 


Kina is watching some music videos, drinking her wine, working out in her head how she might convince herself of the same doubts roaming freely in my mind. All I wanted LORD was one woman to love for life, why is that so much to ask? Don't worry, tomorrow is a new day. be thankful it will come, for it could all end with a quick simple stroke, perhaps a random heart attack? You have been under a lot of stress lately. Good point. And the momentum that had been building, the confidence to take the next step in my life, call it a day with my wife and shake hands that we both came out of it all with our dignity intact, suddenly takes a step aside for commonality. Go with what I know, what I am used to, what is definite, regardless of how negative an impact it may have on me. So I reach for my glass and tip it back. We both drink in silent remorse, for she has apparently made the same decision I have. Stay. Give it just a little more time. The old is about to fade into oblivion and the new limitless year will be upon us. We eye one another and smirk. "More wine?" Yes please.

11:55.05.
Hope has packed its bags. Look, if you are going to continually ignore the signs because you are afraid of change, I am just going to head out and find someone who can use me to the fullest. Good luck, schmuck. I am now hopeless. Fitting, considering the theme running around my brain. Just say you have had enough and move on. But...I haven't. My God, there is still so much to give and experience with her. So much can come if we both just let go...hell, if just one of us let go. Shut up and drink your wine. A thought derives from the pain, just drink until numb there is no shame in that. No shame. It does help, the wine, the alcohol of any kind, to quieten the thoughts. A stupor has more use than just making a fool out of myself. Because what you now read before you, comes out from my head like fcnwsoeifwoihf ewofhwufhwrui fiuffhiu fhsdoisoiu sofdvhsigvh oshvoisduhvodsiuf gvhw0gvhwseovhseo9vhe9ouvbhfpd oiudouif do. No wonder I cannot concentrate.

11:59.00
wggferouhg gfeegveoiu...just...relax....it will all be over...soon...A clean slate, start anew, make the most of tomorrow and be the husband and father you respect. She will come around. It will take some time, perhaps more than I want and willing to give, but she will see the good in change. Save her, Scott. Save your wife and do what no one has ever done for you. Right. Here we go. More wine. A little more. Feeling better. Numb. Thoughts slow. Breathe. There you are. Drink up. Atta'boy.

12:00.00
Happy New Year....Schmuck.

Dear God: An Open Letter of Faith

Dear God,

It's me, hopeless. I'm sorry that I haven't been around much recently, but life has just firmly planted its foot straight up my ass and I can hardly take a moment to breathe. I write this to you because I have hit the proverbial wall with my marriage and I sit here, cast in partial darkness, trying to think where my life will go next. I know one thing for sure, it's not going up. I have reached the point of auto-pilot malfunction with my marriage and it could not come at a more worse time than now. Maybe things are so unstable because my Polish mother-in-law is here, which is never a good time for me regardless of the mood anyone is in. I have reached the point of no return, Lord, and it scares the hell out of me. I have finally amassed the "look" you get when you know, no matter what the other tells you, that there is no more love to give. It's been long in the making and I know that I am partially responsible for allowing it to come to this, with my refusal to call it quits when I should have, but I believed so sincerely in my heart of hearts that you would intervene. I guess that was my second mistake. And don't think I am blaming you, because I am not. At least not on the surface. There are places within me that shout "Why didn't you do something!" when I know it's not your place. I chose to marry this woman and have a child with her, and even convinced myself to try for another with the approaching New Year. 

I did this because a part of me believes that, if you commit to the vows and the holy communion, my god would see to it that such a union remain healthy, as long as the two vowing did equal shares in keeping the faith. And I guess that is where things stop being spiritual and become the fault of others. The main question that has always troubled me was, "Why does she stay with me, if I am so loathed by her?" "Why has she committed herself to a promise she knows she can not keep?". So many questions that will never have answers, yet I have to accept now that my ten year marriage is virtually over and that my daughter will spend the rest of her life with mom on one side and dad on the other...and that breaks me in two, Lord. I am emotionally wrecked. Each night, before I lay my head to sleep, during those moments I would pray, are now filled with uncertainty. Doubt. Confusion. Will I have this same bed with this same woman I desperately continue to find ways to love, or will I be in a strange new bed, where there is only room enough for myself, the trusted dog and my little girl when she is with me on visitation days. All because I took stock in my faith two years ago and trusted my faith, when my heart was bleeding incredulously inside my chest. 

My God, where did I go wrong? A question so many of us have to deal with during the procedures, court ordered or otherwise, as if I did not have enough to deal with already with the new job. A job I took solely to nurture my marriage and better support my daughter while I am still young enough to do so. Appearing intelligent and actually being intelligent is quite a dynamic I must admit. So I guess I am writing you to ask for strength, support, will and maybe a little extra spiritual guidance. I know that sounds selfish, but, right now, selfish seems to be a word that has been lacking too much in my life, causing such catastrophic breakdowns, and a little atta'boy from my God is just what the witch doctor ordered. To get a visual of how I feel, consider Atlas. Burdening the weight of the world on his shoulders, knee slightly buckling, forehead saturated with the sweat of mankind's selfless destruction. My world still rest upon my shoulders, but I am face down in the dirt. Every single muscle in my body is flexed to its max and I am doing just enough not to suffocate beneath it all. Just a little pick-me-up, doesn't seem like too much to ask. Does it? I do not want heavenly intervention, just a little stroke of fortune to assist me. And I am not asking to win Powerball, just a jackpot or two in what means more to me than the paperweight of greed- love. 

I know you understand me. I know you that you know how much I do love and respect you as my God, so please, please God, help me understand those things I must do. If not for me, then for the little spirit who has yet to meet you, but will undoubtedly be grateful for that little miraculous push in the right direction. The one that says to her, "You're welcome." even though she may not ever know what it is she is thankful for. I will know, for her, for her mother, for our family, for the brother or sister I so want to give her, for the world that I have cried, bleed, shouted, kicked, punched and clawed for. Lord, hear my prayer. 

Yours eternally,

Atlas. 

Fractels of Faith

I am in the bedroom waiting for my wife to come in from putting our daughter to bed for the night. The house is quiet. The room is silent. The double doors leading to the master bathroom are opened, the Jacuzzi, staring back at me, hasn’t been used in some time, but it does serve the occasional purpose of romance, lined with white candles with plenty of wick left to burn the midnight oil with, when everything is just right with the world. The bedroom door is also opened, revealing the kitchen dimly lit by the hanging light above the family table. I am reminded of all the good and bad times spent at this table and a half-assed smile comes to my face. Much has happened in this house over the last five years that has shaped me as both a person and a husband. I have absorbed the role of father nicely, I think, and continue to frown upon the image looking back at me in the mirror each time I try to shave the growth from my face. Even now as I write this, I am reminded by past events which shaped my family circle from the warped and jagged pieces of old into the nearly complete cog in the wheel of life that spins slowly around now. It feels…nice, when all is still and quiet. It feels right, when no one has anything to say to the other. If I close my eyes and try hard enough, the chill is removed from the air and replaced with a gentle warmth that envelopes me like a nice unseen blanket. During this moment, a distant unfamiliar voice whispers to my soul, "See, I told you so." and though I am not sure what this means, I still like to think I know. I would like to think that it means that no matter how bad things may get, at the end of the day, when the house falls silent and the ruckus of the day settles, the reason why I did those things I did in the past and all those things I am likely to do in the future were done because of this-whatever this is. And that is where I find you, the intangible God whom speaks to me, even when I am not listening.

Things have been rough going, this much is true, yet they tend to calm as any storm does when it loses all of its charge. I am sure many of you already know this, but it still feels as though I have cracked the Davinci Code whenever I have this type of revelation myself. I am sure I have been told this, by someone at some point in time, and never listened. It's the ole "You'll understand one day." threat we have all been handed down by our parents. And, like my mother before me, I will pass it down to my daughter one day and she too will scoff as I did; but, she will see, just you wait, one day. It will all become clear. I guess I just hate myself a little for wasting so many years on insignificant bullshit. My god, think about the opportunities I missed out on, because I had to walk in my mother's shoes. I have to wonder if there is not some kind of celestial jigsaw puzzle whose missing link is not given to us until we take that last breath of air, which might account for why so many people have this sudden look of consternation at that final moment. The deathly AH-HA! So many loved ones never get the chance to pass on to anyone. Tricky, tricky.

 I can admit with some humility that I lost you, there for a minute. Maybe I forgot how to believe. Maybe something inside me, a demon if you wish to blame my own ignorance on something other than myself, told me that my time was better spent on the things I can see, touch or feel. Maybe it was something as trivial as peer pressure that distracted me from you. Whatever the case, I connected with you tonight. Maybe not in the traditional sense, or even in the sense I am supposed to, but it was something I deem important and godly and powerful enough to share here with my peers. I might not be that dedicated sheep my religion demands of me…but I am getting back to why I believed in the first place and that is what means the most to me…and you…I think.

Following the Fissures

My God, what more can I do? How much more can I try and convince my wife that our life together simply isn't what it was six years ago? How do I stop the pressure and contain the emergency that is my marital floodgates from bursting? I am reminded of a display of human ingenuity this past weekend, where several groups of elderly people, a few mothers with her brood and plenty of WWE style signs, standing on the corner of Popular showing their support for the power of prayer and the abolition of abortion. "Pray to end Abortion!"

I mention this not because of the message, but the delivery. Praying to God to end something we created, which is ironic really. How many prayers does it take to make a woman not go through with that unwanted fetus, which was placed there by a rapist without a conscious? As I drove by these assholes, I wanted to veer suddenly, perhaps claim to have seen a dog run into the street or something, and plow through these people taking up My God's time with abortion, when I need His guidance with my marriage and trying to keep it together. I am trying to remain married to one woman as God intended, while these apes (who I am willing to bet good money on having been married multiple times) protest abortion in God's name. I need My God. I need Him to hear my prayers because they are sincere and honest and true and far more important than someone trying to make another person bring an unwanted life into an already overpopulated world to be shunned upon and treated exactly how someone should be treated, when not wanted, like a stray. I need God to bring me some kind of bleeding miracle, because the woman I love and the mother of my child is simply no longer responding to me, as though she has mentally shut me out of her life and I am without the foggiest clue as to why, what have I done and how did I arrive here and where in the hell is the exit?

Did God send me a message years ago and I just ignored it? Would God stand idly by and allow someone he loves unconditionally suffer one tragic heartache after another, until the physical toll beings on an early stroke or heart attack in which there is not often a comeback story to follow? I AM TRYING TO PROVIDE A GOOD LOVING HOME TO MY DAUGHTER and I am being sacrificed for my troubles. Dear God, I have slowly bled myself dry over the cobblestones of marriage for a decade now and I am only bandaged now and again, drugged across them again before the scabs have a chance to heal and because...why? Why can't I get some kind if answer from the executioner? Why can't my spiritual father just throw me a nugget of epiphany to show me where all the goddamn trap doors are in this path of matrimony. For better or worse, SO. HELP. ME. GOD!

Help me find the strength to carry on with our without the woman I have given so much of my life to. To find a right way in explaining how I could not do something so damn simple as to keep a loving marriage together with my daughter's mother, to explain why a brother and sister are not likely, to say I am sorry for my shortcomings, but please believe me that I tried and tried and tried until there was nothing more I could do, but pray that God could help me, just a little, by planting a rouge thought into the mind of the woman who no longer responds to me and drifts into the blank space before her eyes whenever I speak to her. The same woman who can authentically look me in the eye and ponder if the sound of my voice is the cause to her explosive bowel movements on a day we spent laughing and enjoying one another. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG HERE???

My God, what more has to fall my way? I braved the life of having no father, worked my way through 9 temporary fathers in the process, battled my heart with my only parent who, till this day, cannot accept my wrongful statements to her, but expects me to forget the pain she brought upon me, cut the cord of family to have my immediate one survive just to hear the woman I fight for daily compare me to a fucking bowel movement. Please forgive me, for I have apparently done terrible things in a past life of which I am paying for now in this one. Oh, and please strike down the woman about to abort a child she knows she can not give a proper life too. 

Amen.

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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