life, or, the strangely uncomfortable place i find myself in spite of liking myself

there is within me a compulsion to apologize both to myself and for myself. i have reached that point in life when dreams become pointless, when reality sets in like a condition, like arthritis. it's wake-up time and i am left with questions.

did i learn anything? can i change the aspects of myself i am uncomfortable with? is it too late? am i what others perceive me to be? what do others perceive me to be? (here's a brief interlude of how others perceive me, or rather, how i perceive others to perceive me.)

my wife sees me as older and thereby unattractive. she could hardly be more disappointed by me or about me. she thinks she was hoodwinked into having babies with me and since she is 11 years my junior she has found herself at a point in life where she feels like a vibrant flower wilting away in a gray garden. (and so we have separated.) my wife loves me for our children and for our time together but she has no idea how to nurture any sort of passion either betwixt us or towards me. i haven't helped that situation. this relationship has changed into one of loving parents who will come together from time to time for events related to our children and as friends of a sort. nothing more.

my dad sees me as outside of christ. he has been born again as a zealot of the first order and so he sees the entire world through a god-colored prism. while he can discuss sports or politics or the weather from time to time without expressing something mystical or jesus related, there is no doubt he is always thinking in those terms. he considers me an atheist as he is unwilling to make a distinction between agnosticism and atheism, (which is fine by me.) it came to my attention recently that he considers my plight as unemployed and looking for work to be a desperate situation as i am outside of christ. apparently he suggested to another family member that my ostracization from his beloved savior is at the root of my unemployment. if only i would turn from my wicked disbelief and embrace the jesus of my father things would turn around for me, (seems to be his position.) i suppose we have a mutual disappointment if not in then at least about one another.

by and large i am perceived as a middle-aged man without a job, with two small children, who drinks too much, who is going through a divorce and who lives in an apartment. none of these perceptions are wrong but how did i get here?

i am middle-aged because i was born in 1965. there is nothing i can do about that. for the most part i am healthy. i have put on some weight but not so much anyone would think of me as obese. my belly is mostly unnoticeable to others and i still hike and play basketball on sundays.

i have two small children. i started late in life and became a father at 39. i am so happy i became a father and i think i am relatively good at it.

i do drink too much. i don't drink at all on 50%of my days as i have my children on those days. of the other 50% and considering i am currently unemployed, i likely drink beers 75% of tat time. on weekdays i often find myself working on my career status, combing the internet job boards, applying for various positions in the realm of customer service management, or touching up my cover letter. i am adept at this now and so I can thoroughly review indeed.com, careerbuilder.com, monster.com, and craigslist and apply for anything new there in two hours, (more or less.) my apartment has been remodeled recently and so i have spent substantial time getting everything back in order on a daily basis. after that, (on days i do not have my kids,) i find myself antsy. i'm reading joseph campbell's 'the power of myth,' currently, so i might pick that up. i check in with facebook. i have been writing a couple of different stories, (autobiographical fiction, really.) i am more connected to the news of the world than ever. (i watched an incredible documentary the other night on the uprising in bahrain; "screaming in the dark.") i read firedoglake and alternet and talkingpointsmemo. i have been cooking a lot and have recently concocted a couple of variations of napa cabbage soup that turned out fantastic. still, i have plenty of time. so later in evenings i sometimes gravitate to my local pub, where sports are always on, the food is good, the beer is cold and the girls who deliver it could hardly be more cute. sometimes they post their lunch specials on facebook and i see those and it makes me want to go there midday for a couple of beers, just to get out and be around people, a few of who are friendly faces i know because they work there but who are always pleasant towards me. money is tight for me these days so sometimes when i think about going to the pub i realize i should go during happy hour in order to save a few bucks. happy hour is four to six, (or all day mondays or 9-midnight on thursdays.) sometimes i drink a little too much which causes me to want to drink a lot too much. i wake up regretting my behavior, even if i realize it hasn't hurt anyone. it costs me money i don't really have to spend, (which again is regrettable,) but i can work up only so much self loathing for that.

i am going through a divorce. it was never my intention and i did not drive us to this point. i wish it wasn't happening. i would rather work on it with my wife, get some counseling and see if we could figure out how to love each other again. (when i say i did not drive us to this point i mean only that she initiated it. i am equally responsible for the feelings we have between us. i did not take good care of the relationship. at some point in time i found her difficult and i thought she turned off the affection in our midst and my response was filled with pride as i hardened myself and withheld from her all i thought was being withheld from me. in retrospect i think i was an ass, [which isn't to forgive her behavior.]) life separated from my spouse and from my children half of the time, (which because of my unemployment has actually accounted for substantially more time with my kids and the best season i have ever spent with them,) is harder. in addition to the uneasiness of not having a partner in life, (a kindred best friend, a lover, an intimate of the first order,) and the loneliness of children removed, (nights alone in contrast to the better part of a decade in which i would often pad down the hallway in the darkened silence of the early morning to ensure blankets covered little bodies susceptible to cold, or in which my youngest still makes his way to my bed around 3:30am when he is with me,) the financial strain is considerable.

i live in an apartment, the apartment my wife and children have lived in these last eight years, (and prior to that i lived across a courtyard in the same 6-unit community.) i am inclined to apologize for that because people my age are supposed to have found their ways to the purchase of a home by my age. in my 20s and even my 30s home ownership did not seem feasible and so i wrote it off as yet another thing that was wrong with my society, our collective perceptions about home ownership and the declining standard of living and all. i did not save whatsoever during those 20 years. i lived life to the fullest but i did not plan or prepare in any way beyond establishing a retirement account. then i had a family and the economy tanked. just before things went bad when everyone was buying a house or refinancing one, my wife and i considered getting into a mortgage. however, for the last five years we have been spending roughly $15,000 on our children's education. i stand by every cent i have spent there in spite of the fact i love paying for public education through my taxes and never imagined my children would be in private schools but things happen. when my daughter was three and we needed to find a pre-school for her, after visiting a few montesorri schools, we preferred the buddhist school with the vegetarian kitchen and the mandarin language program. now my daughter is in the 2nd grade and she is fluent in mandarin and my son is following the same path. our goal is to keep them in that school through the fifth grade in spite of financial pressure, (and recently the people at the school have been cooperative and more in that endeavor.) so, i live in an apartment, quite comfortably, (which is something i could not say when my wife and i were together as she was always discontented by our dwelling and lack of home ownership,) but i apologize for it all the same.

my brother perceives me as a good brother, someone he trusts and who is his best friend outside of his adult son and his wife. perhaps he finds me rigid in my disbelief as he seems not to believe but then he attends church on holy days like easter. (maybe he is just keeping the peace at home or maybe he views it as some sort of superstitious insurance policy.) i know he loves me as i love him and there is something to be said for that kind of mutual regard. in spite of a few disagreements we have managed to avoid the pitfalls brothers sometimes fall into, the cold wars of pride and pity, (similar to what has transpired between my wife and myself.) as much as i wish we were closer, i would enjoy it if we spent more time with each other than the two days a quarter we likely average these days, i understand the physical distance is real and that just to get those eight days per year takes effort on both of our parts. ultimately i am not sure how he perceives me. i know he would love to help me gain employment if he could and i don't know if he thinks i have either been a screw-up for allowing myself to become unemployed or what but all in all he is not the judgmental type.

my children perceive me as a good dad if sometimes strict. we have loving relationships, (between myself and each of them-their relationship is tenuous at best.) my daughter, at seven, has become increasingly class conscious. she doesn't quite understand money, (which could be difficult for her as it has never been of my strengths,) but she goes to school with primarily affluent children and so she is aware that they live in nice, large houses while we live in an apartment. she makes comments about money from time to time that concern me because i don't want it to be something she worries about, nor do i want it to become any sort of primary motivating force for her.

many people, like my sister or my step brothers, view me as something of a curiosity. i think they find me abrasive because i am apt to challenge them on certain things. for example if my sister posts a quote by ronald reagan on her facebook about freedom and how we have to protect it if we want to keep it, as if we have a monopoly on freedom here in america and everywhere else in the world they live bleak, imprisoned lives totally devoid of american exceptionalism, i can't help but say something. i might comment on our declining standard of living or school systems. i might suggest we would have more freedom if we had maintained our factories at home instead of abroad. i might suggest the greater disparity between our upper and lower classes the more indebted, (thereby less free,) the majority of us become. moreover i might comment on reagan's pivotal role in the decline of our manufacturing base or how modern republican policies screw the 99%. in this way i am regarded as a nuisance at least. (that is likely exactly how my sister would view me relative to these types of things.) for others, for one of my step brothers who has taken exception to the certainty i portray when i comment on things, (particularly related to god or church,) i am considered offensive. how dare i confront in such a manner as to suggest his belief system is a sham. (to his credit he is not a judgmental person,) but it is completely lost on him that his beliefs and the beliefs associated with the church he attends condemn me as an unbeliever to eternity in a place of hell-fire and brimstone where i will forever pull my own hair out and gnash my teeth while my skin burns off of my skeleton over and over and over ad nauseum until, until, well, until nothing, eternity just means it keeps going on and on. that hellish outcome compared to me challenging his beliefs for a moment in time, while standing around in the back yard at some family gathering or another, seems fair at least. in fact my values are different. i like to be challenged on virtually everything. i think that serves me. i think it makes me a better person and a better father. (i am highly inclined to share brief maxims with my children. "imagine." "question authority." [or everything, really.]

it is interesting to consider how others view me. i imagine my mother-in-law has a certain perception i can't quite define. i know she likes me. i think of my former boss and i imagine he thinks something happened to me and i changed and became disrespectful, (which to me is just the epitome of a lack of self perception.) i guess the parents of the children my kids go to school with think me quite the oddity. maybe they think i am irresponsible for becoming unemployed. they likely they think i am just strange when they see me daily picking up or dropping off my little ones in some rock and roll t-shirt and with the che guevara tattoo on my calf. they probably think i should grow up or that i am regretful i tattooed a communist on my leg. (nothing could be further from the truth.) many people in my life seem to think i am sad and lonely and they're not far from the truth even if i think they're mistaken. i have some sadness and i am lonely at times. after all life is hard but what i value above all else is balance and while i know i am not perfectly balanced i do think i am in a constant flux teetering back and forth across the level, always avoiding tipping points.

is it strange that i care how others perceive me? should i? what i can tell you is that i know i can't help it. i am one of those people who needs to be loved, like a superstar actor, by all. as much as i know that is impossible, i can't help that compulsion and i am bothered when i have strife in my life or when i feel like i am being misperceived. for example, on the drinking thing, i think there are those who think i am either a drunk or an alcoholic. that bothers me. i get drunk and one can say to my detriment but at some point that is a values question and while i have regrets about not saving money and not being a homeowner, i can't draw that line from my compulsion to drink to my somehow being a bad person because i have not found my way to home ownership in this society and this economy and this lifetime in this place. (does that make sense?) when i get drunk my normal personality is amplified. i do not do things i regret. i am not rude to people. i don't do it alone, ever. i stick to beer outside of an occasional celebratory shot of the hard stuff. i learned a long time ago that hard liquor is the devil, at least in any excess. so when a friend or someone makes a comment such as, (recently a friend said to me regarding the huge lottery prize that was up for grabs,) if i were to win that lottery i would likely but my local karaoke bar, i know the friend did not in any way mean to insult but i can't help but feel somehow misunderstood. i enjoy camaraderie. for me beers is that. it satisfies something i long for, or the act of engaging over beers at least gets me closer to something i am always looking for in the realm of camaraderie.

what do i wish i could do more than anything in the world? organize people around ideas. am i able to do that? do i have any skills in that regard? unfortunately the answer seems to be negative. and so i love to get together in bars and try to sway others to my way of thinking. this is as close to the essence of me as i can think to get.

it is odd waking up in mid-life and realizing i am not a writer and prospects don't look good, (from any standpoint.) my growth as a writer retarded in the mid-90s and ceased altogether at some point in time. i do not have an undergraduate degree, which to me seems like a real problem. beautiful girls are only for glancing at nowadays, and that only slyly lest i be labelled a perv. what have i done with myself? nothing great. that said, i am dignified. i am honest in my everyday dealings with others. i am mostly healthy in my perspective. i work hard to be a good father.

i feel like i have been a disappointment to some people. i am not referring to my parents or family members for the most part. at times in my life, (say, 15 years ago or thereabouts,) i used to find people occasionally gravitating towards me. i did not why. i didn;t understand the phenomenon though as time went on i started to realize they might have been impressed with me. i think maybe they thought i was capable of something great and so they were attracted to me and perhaps i purposefully gave them that impression? i think this could be true to some slight degree even of my wife. i think they thought i talked pretty, (which is to say i was articulate and passionate about what i believed in.) this combo along with my world view, my need to help others, to educate and challenge others, may have been what created this persona that attracted a few others and left me feeling hollow for having disappointed them by ending up in the here and now, working class and fairly impotent in the grand scope of things. (it is worth mentioning that i always aspired to the working class. these are my people and i am of them and i consider this the class to be a part of.)

can i change the aspects of myself i am uncomfortable with? i think i am always trying but the question begs an examination of what aspects leave me cold. i would like to grow a beard, (even though i am almost incapable of such a thing.) i don't think a beard works however, for someone looking for a job. i would like to be in better shape and i have struggled on that front. i have written out detailed schedules for my day including various workout regimens and i have found myself deviating only slightly at first then moreso each day until the structure ends up seeming like a joke and i return to merely trying to exercise more in a vague and casual way, (which means playing basketball on sunday mornings.) i will keep working on it however. fitness points to a larger issue however, which is how much discipline i have in my life. i need more discipline. i want to be disciplined about exercise and about writing and reading. i also want to be more frugal by extinguishing my impulse to get out among the people with beer more often than i currently do. i also want to be better about engendering good will. if nepotism is the only way to get a job, (and it's not,) then i am in a world of hurt. i have always wanted to be hired based on merit but that is a hard thing to do for everyone involved. in any case i want to be able to endear myself to others without doing it purposely or in a disingenuous way as if to gain. a little help getting a job, (a good job that pays well and challenges me to improve on my skills,) would be awesome. beyond not having gainful employment there is little about myself i am uncomfortable with.

i have learned much in this season. i know divorce is not the end of the world. i guess it doesn't matter what others think even though that goes against my deepest-seated insecurities. i should have worked harder to find another job while i was still employed at my last one but that is not how things worked out and it's time to stop feeling bad about that. the fact is i removed myself from a toxic situation and i feel great about that everyday.

so, i apologize to those i have disappointed. and i apologize to myself for screwing up my undergraduate degree and for being imperfect overall. i apologize too, to those who view me with pity. i apologize in advance to my children for my imperfections and for the things i will do which you will remember one day unfavorably. i am human. i apologize to any future love interests that i am not more handsome with a long golden mane of hair and rock, hard abs. i apologize to all authority figures for questioning you and secretly berating you behind your back, especially referees, linesmen, judges, umpires and law enforcement. (i can't help my severe authority complex. had you lived my childhood you would likely understand.) i apologize to those who from a distance think they are better than me. i am always trying to be a better me. i apologize to my wife for not being a better leader within our marriage. i still love you but like you i am not willing to tarry on in the manner we have grown accustomed to. i am sorry too, i do not have the slightest idea of how to bridge the gap that exists there. (I will certainly do better in the future if there is another one day.) i apologize to my dad and his wife for being so throughly disenchanted with their religiosity. i apologize to my friends for being so disinterested in the trivialities germaine to our lives instead always wanting to discuss big ideas and the issues of our day. i apologize to my last employer for being completely unable to communicate with you. since i did not have anything nice to say i found i could not say anything at all. i know i am missing many others i would like to apologize to so i will just say as a means of ending this long and winding rant, i'm sorry.