Fresh

I want you to grow up with a father. I want you to understand the love that I feel for you without the need for me to tell you. I want you to look at me with pride and respect.

You are the thing that drives me. Every choice I make has meaning because you are in the world.

I love you, little one. Never forget that.

Fear

Be what you were meant to be, demonstrate virtue.
Eliminate fear, strive for worthy goals.
Assert yourself, disregard negativity.
Trust your instincts, seek challenge.

Train your mind, become greater than the sum.
Have faith in others, allow them to surprise.
Erase what you made yourself to be, begin again.

Organize your life, learn anew.
Discover importance, forget what you knew.
Do not give in, gain strength through perseverance.
Solidify changes, make it impossible to fail.

Finally, Something Worth Writing

Interesting thing to write about, but my current situation has caused me to take a step back and take a hard look at myself. Maybe it's because I am living in Spokane for the moment, or maybe it was just time that I realized it, but I am realizing that the one thing I thought I had going for me is just self-deception. I am a mediocre writer at the very best, and I have serious doubts that mediocre is accurate.

It started when I remembered what I was like in high school. A while ago, I found some old poems I wrote. They were bad, embarrassingly bad. Then I thought of this chance encounter I had months ago with the teacher that caused me to believe that I had a talent, she basically asked me if I had finally put aside my ridiculous hope of writing a novel. The meeting always irked me. I mean, my wife said I was good, my friends said I was good, my mommy said I was good. Why would they lie...?

After going over all of these seemingly insignificant details of my life, proving exactly how self absorbed I am in the process, I had an epiphany. I didn't start valuing intelligence until college, more accurately, I didn't start valuing intelligence until after I stopped performing competitively athletically. It was as if I realized that I had nothing going for me, so I latched onto the one thing someone had told me I was good at. The tragedy is that I was never actually good at it. It was just a teacher trying to make a difference in a kid's life. It was a teacher trying to get a kid engaged in academics.

After being rejected by a few writing positions during my hunt for work, as well as having freelance articles rejected, I have finally begun to open my eyes. Of course people that love me are going to say they like what I write, I care about writing and they want to be supportive. It makes sense that a teacher is going to try and focus a student that doesn't have any interest in school. No doubt, someone with nothing left is going to attempt to find something of value within himself. These points do not make a good writer, though. They might imply a good support system, which is in itself valuable... for someone who stumbles all the time.

So anyway, to me, this post is valuable. It means I can explore other avenues. It means that the focus of my life's endeavors for the past nine years has amounted to the same as most of the rest of my focuses. Not a lot. It means that I am wandering further into the wilds, more lost than ever.

Knowing you're lost is better than imagining a destination that doesn't exist, though, right?

Thanks for reading.

Self Awareness

Can you imagine what its like to feel like you need to get over your child because she won't be in your life every day? The only way to evade self-destruction is to eliminate the cause of pain. Why is it that for me to succeed at becoming a better father, I need to distance my emotions from the only person in the world I want to be near?

Truth?

It sucks to realize, as the words you speak are coming out of your mouth, that the truth you are speaking is only the truth to you. It sucks to realize that you may in fact be lying to yourself every time you open your mouth. It sucks because how can you know that what you think and say are absolutely true? How can you be sure that the events you describe happened the way you remember? It's enough to make you want to have a mental health professional walk around behind you with a notepad and an "mmhmm" on his lips.

I want to live in a world with complete understanding of absolute truth.

Dirt

I have been feeling the desire to write for a while. The problem, however, is that I do not know who to write to. I am so angry. I am so low. I am so empty.

I watch thirty second videos of my daughter every couple of hours to remind myself that she is still mine. I write text messages to my wife that I never send. I contemplate asking for help when I know I will not want it from those willing to give. There are only three things in my life that I do not hate right now: my child, my dogs, and the hospitality of my friends.

The list of loss grows with every passing day. The welcome received from my friends begins to stale. The quest for work becomes more tedious and more discouraging with every application filled out, every resume handed over, and every cover letter pain stakingly dedicated to specific businesses I know will skim and then discard them. I began this new chapter with hope, accountability, determination. It seems that my hope was placed in the wrong hands. My accountability counts for little. My determination was squandered on ideals unshared.

Even as I write, I know that the thoughts that have plagued me over the past few weeks will find their way onto the page. I waited. I guarded you. I strove to protect you from yourself. I knew that the remains of what we shared hung from a fine thread since our separation, and you held the scissors poised for a clean cut. I let you hold our fate in your hands. I thought you were entitled. I thought that because of all the wrong I had done, I didn't deserve a say, I didn't deserve a voice. I kept silent, I allowed the gnawing resentment to build in my heart as I watched your resentment grow into disdain. Every slight comment, every thoughtless moment quickly apologized for was a shoddy mask for your deteriorating feelings.

Even as you ended us (do you remember our separation? How things were better right before you left), I knew I could do nothing to stop you. As ever, you were ignorant to everything other than your crusade for self-satisfaction. Not once did you stop to examine the truths of our past. Not once did you take into account the times I faced your rage, your verbal and physical attacks with patience and a willingness to forgive. (Or if you did, it was worth nothing compared to your personal trials.) From the ashes of our separation was born not the phoenix of a new beginning, but the grotesque of rage unattended. I beat it back. I challenged it, faced it, and forced it into the depths of your soul and allowed us to love one another again. The change I always begged you for, however, remained unaddressed within you, lurking, awaiting the moment when it would be needed again.

You are right on one point. There is no going back. I broke. I faltered. I fell. I gave in. I forsook. So did you. We are very different people. We fall in different ways. The difference is (and this is why I changed my reality) I was willing to compromise for you, I was willing to change. The only change you were willing to truly make was to leave me behind.

Someday, you will be forced to compare the next man you choose to me. On that day, if you have any ability to step outside of yourself, you will see that no one will love you the way that I did. No one will be so fierce in their devotion. No one will set aside so much of what was thought to be intrinsic to their being in order to accommodate you. No one will see you as clearly or be as attentive to your needs. Then again, you are relentless. Good luck in your search.

I guess this is what we get for basing our relationship around a shared appreciation for sorrow.

I love you, I will do my utmost never to write you like this again.

World of Wednesday: The World and Its Denizens

As anyone who knows me will tell you, my favorite thing to do in my free time is play World of Warcraft. It is immersive, complex, and incredibly fun. I have spent hour upon hour delving the depths of forsaken crypts in search of relics of untold power. I have crossed blades with creatures imaginable only in the waking dreams of twisted souls. Through my adventures, I have gained allies, friends, and the support of the kingdom for which I fight. Most importantly, I have gained a valuable way to spend time with family that we all can enjoy without living near one another.

I have played with my brother in San Fransisco, my parents in Washington State, my cousin in Los Angeles, and friends in Utah and Washington D.C., and those are just the people I play with that I knew before I started playing the game. Since then, some of my closest friends in the real world are people that I met in the game world. When I went through one of the most difficult trials of my life, when I was at my loneliest, the bulk of my emotional support rested on shoulders of two very good friends that I have never seen or spoken to outside of the game.

Now, to some, this may stand as a testament of the dangers of Massive Multiplayer Online Games. The idea that instead of seeking friends in the real world to comfort and fill the void of loneliness, someone would use the computer generated world and its denizens to fulfill basic human needs could be construed as anti-social. Indeed, on my weaker days, I questioned the validity of my friendships with these "Internet people". However, the notion that grounded me, made me able to accept them as true friends, just as they had done for me, was the reality that they are people too. Hidden behind the guise of elves and dwarves, there were real people with real fears, hopes, loves, and dreams. What's more, we shared something in common. We loved the game, and that is a very important thing. Common ground, shared experience, these things make for better ways to relate and understand the trials someone is going through. So, in a sense, I could not have chosen more wisely who to trust with my troubles. These friends understood me in a realm most others would scoff at. They cared (and still do) about my well being and the well being of those that I love. That was a tremendous gift.

I can hear the naysayers now, baffling at how someone could allow himself to fall so far out of touch with reality. That danger is real. I have seen it firsthand, that is another experience the game has given me. Luckily for me, my experience in the game is enriched by those I play with, but grounded in the reality of the family I have outside of it. My wife plays with me. She is a good player. She supports my hobby in the only way she knows how, by joining me. I try and do the same for her. I feel glad that I can exist in two worlds at the same time and manage to do both well. I will never sacrifice the real world for the game world, but I will happily pass the time there so long as I have good friends to do it with.

I love you. I will write to you tomorrow.

Next Week: Player Versus Player