may you have many more beautiful ones to come.

I have no real leads in the job market here so my future is even more uncertain than I realized. I was have one glimmering light to hold onto, but It is not easy to gamble everything on a hope. That move never seems to work out for me.

Even people I thought were my friends don’t seem to be. Oh to my face all seems fine, but then others or by their own inadvertent admission their true selves are revealed. Although I am too optimistic to surrender myself to the seductive lures of paranoia, I see myself guarding myself more. I am unwilling to say too much now. I find myself playing close to the chest as it were. My heart has been played a fool and my judgment has been flawed. Why do I keep making these mistakes? (also do you use a question mark for rhetorical questions?)

It’s one thing to have to look over your shoulder at work, but to look over your shoulder where you feel at home is not a good way to live. I cannot live like this. All too often I find myself looking over my shoulder and rolling up the sleeve I wear my heart on.

Time to rescue myself.

~adieu

I miss my kids. I miss my mom. I want my bed and my cat. 8 hours of flying ahead of me.

~adieu

I pity myself and that is wrong. I need to stop.

Tristian’s familiar laughs and smiles were contrasted by Jaiden’s soft tender voice. Oh, Jaiden may not have intellectually stimulating things to say or can start spouting off phrases – if not entire episodes – of Dora the Explorer, but when he spoke with his own voice and not just repetitive banter, I could hear his heart. “Can we bring my best friend to Chuck E Cheese?”, he said to me softly in the car. Ok, his best friend I came to find out was an octopus named Ollie, but it was his soft tone and the conviction with which he spoke to me. Like a son, and not just the blaring of a TV constantly bombarding me like an advert for random children shows. It nearly broke my heart. I wanted nothing more than to get his best friend, no matter who or what it was, and bring him along. Merely for the fact that my wonderful tender son wanted his best friend to come along.

Di and I took the kids out to pancake breakfast and an easter egg hunt. Nothing really went right, which is to be expected with kids special needs. No amount of planning really makes a difference. The pancake breakfast was at Denny’s instead of the actual place we were supposed to go and the easter egg hunt was one puppet show in before the kids wanted to go home. In the end we celebrated Tristian’s birthday with a small family party on my mom’s patio. Pirate cupcakes and a candle that Tristian himself picked out, where the only decorations. It was wonderful and sad at the same time.

When they left, I waved goodbye and gave the “I love you” sign to which to my amazement, both of my sons returned to me.

The rest of the day and night have been a blur. I just seem to keep thinking of them.

sadness grips me

~adieu

The half an hour of screams of “I want to go to beach!” still ring in my ears. I felt so bad to take him away from there, but I really had no choice. There is no way I could keep up with him and protect him. He might have no fear, but I do.

I hope he understands, but I know he doesn’t.

~adieu

The past few days I have been in California. I’m here to visit my boys and to celebrate Tristian’s birthday. So far everything has been wonderful. The flight was a bit more shaky than I would have liked, but I landed safely. That is the important thing.

Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday I spent with my mother. We took he old car out to Temecula for some casino time and awesome pizza. It’s been so long since we’ve had the opportunity to have some mother-son bonding time so it was good to come out here and have some.

Sunday night I went over to Di’s new place to see the boys for the first time Ina few years. Much too long a time. Oh what a delight it was to be with them. Though I know these are only snapshots of real life with them, I still feel something I really cannot describe. I took Tristian home with me and he slept over.

We woke up Monday morning and had a fabulous day starting at IHOP for funny face pancakes to braving Ghost Rider at Knott’s Berry Farm. I was not very amused by the roller coaster. But I braved it for him. Tuesday we went to Irvine Park and rented a bike to drive around. After the park we had lunch and made an afternoon at Downtown Disney where the Lego store is.

I really missed the boys and it has been great to see some old friends that I have not seen in a long while. But over the past few days I’ve come to realize that I’ve become a hybrid Floridian and I do have important people in my life that I miss. It’s unfortunate that I have to leave and it is fortunate that I have to leave California.

for a long time, my feelings were dead. for all intents and purposes i was a zombie. for the better part of a year, i was unable to feel. i was unwilling to feel. this lack of feeling starved my creativity to the point of a horrific undeath. like all zombies – as if they actually are a real thing – i was mindless and consuming. i was not living. i was not creating. only destroying and feeding off remnants of discarded husks. a scavenger and a carrion feeder brought into its own creation by myself.

my lack of emotions and feelings were brought about by traumatic events all too painful to shut out. so, instead of shutting out, i shut down. i created my own frankenstein’s monster – though he had more feeling than i had at the time – out of myself and i became an empty wilted husk of my former self.

i weep as i write these words. something i have done more lately than not, but something i have not done in a long while. it is hard to weep when you feel nothing. it is easy when you feel greatly. i feel again. for this i am truly grateful and very much indebted to a very amazing woman, Jennifer. without her, i would never have felt love. i would never have felt sorrow. i would never have felt joy. i would never have felt regret. though i do not blame her for the more – shall we say – negative emotions. those are my own doing. more accurately, i feel that for the most part, i am responsible for my own emotional state.

i am no longer the zombie. i feel. i hurt greatly, but i feel.

Oh blighted heart, why must you torture me so? i clear away the cobwebs and clean out my heart. i allow myself to feel again after far too long only to be ripped apart and rendered useless. i was happy for fleeting moments.  unfortunately, all at the expense of the object of my desires.

peel away all these façades and expose my true self. unburdened and unhindered by the puppet strings of the past. the cold stone walls crumple around my heart so i may see through to the green pastures, rolling hills, and the beauty of thine eyes. may God strike me down should i ever make those eyes cry.

I hope I can forgive myself and learn from my errors. I want to be a better person. I want to be me.

I know that I am me. More so now than I have been for quite some time. Unfortunately, it took a bit of a trauma to restart my emotional self. Trauma that I hope to recover from. I just don’t think it was worth the loss. The price was too high.

~adieu