Fine Print

I have become the emotional equivalent of a popup ad.

I offer great things and, at face value, it looks like I can and will deliver.

I have a standard sales routine that sounds great.

Unless you read the fine print.

The fine print, which any good salesman glosses over, states that:

Product is sold "as is".
Warranty is expired.
Product is defective.
Contents have shifted in transit.
Product cannot be repaired by user.


Like so many cans of Ronco spray on hair before me, I have ended up in the trash can after the unwitting buyer has found out that I don't live up to advertised claims.

Let the buyer beware.
There's a sucker born every minute.

I realize that this has been my dating stategy. I go into every "relationship" knowing it is going to end the same way as the one before, so I put forth less and less effort each time.

Instead of evaluating each new relationship on it's own pros and cons, I simply assume that it is going to be more of the same, so I run the same program over and over.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different outcome.

Honestly, I haven't expected a different outcome in a very long time.

But what if I want a different outcome?

Is the force of habit too much to overcome? Has my mental state become so ingrained that I cannot change it?

Is my isolation so much a part of me that I have doomed myself to stay isolated?

I don't know.

Habits can be hard to break... but perhaps not impossible.

Blasphemy

I knew the feeling. I knew it well.
I recognized it from the shaking of my hands. The shallow breaths. The shuddering coils in my neck. The not quite tears in my eyes, which were narrowed and hard.

Rage.

My constant, if seldom seen, companion.

I am described by people I work with as funny. Calm. Cool under pressure. Stoic, at times.

If they could see me now. Alone, in my room, kneeling on the floor. Angry. Enraged.

Torn.

This is inappropriate. It is wrong. Unholy. Disrespectful.

She left me, without warning. She left me alone to face the rest of my life, a broken, hollow man.

How could she?
Didn't she know what would happen to me?
Couldn't she have seen it coming?
How could she do this to me?

It took me years to finally find something that would have been obvious to anyone, had I allowed them to truly know me.

I was angry at May for dying.
I was angry that she left.
I was angry that we never had the chance to live happily ever after.
I was angry that we never had the chance to possibly break up and go our separate ways.

She was dead. Under a tragic circumstance. I cannot be mad at her.

But I am.

Fear of Commitments

A great deal of what I know about being a man, I learned from my father. Some lessons were intentional, others weren't.

When I was a small boy, I was a cub scout. My troop met at my elementary school, led by my friend Rusty's mom. I enjoyed scouting. My older brothers had been scouts, so I wore a hand-me-down uniform shirt. Being a large family, we didn't buy each kid new stuff if suitable old stuff was laying around. I didn't have official uniform pants. I wore a pair of blue corduroy pants instead.

The troop put on a cake auction to raise money for something, I don't remember what. The idea was for each scout to bake a cake, then auction it off at a large meeting of scouts, their families, and friends.

With the help of my mother, I baked a chocolate cake with white frosting, "CUBS" spelled out across the cake in red cinnamon cake decoration. I was pretty proud of it.

The family loaded up into the VW bus to head to the bake sale. I forgot something, so I put the cake on the seat and ran back into the house to retrieve it. I returned to the car and, in my youthful excitement, forgot that the cake was sitting on the seat.

I sat on it.

My father is a good man. My father is an exceptional man. I am certain that this was a situation that he had never encountered before in his parenting career, and he handled it as best he could.

I didn't want to go through with the auction. My corduroy pants were covered in white icing. The cake was smashed. I was embarrassed. I was crying.

My father told me that I had made a commitment to the troop. Men see their commitments through. I would auction my cake, and that was final.

The tables were set up in a large semi-circle. Each scout, on his turn, carried their cake around the semi-circle, where the bidders would "ooh" and "ahhh", then make their bids.

I did as I was told. I walked that semi-circle with my crushed cake, icing stuck in the cords of my backside.

And I was laughed at. Not with. At. Loud, finger pointing, nudge the guy next to you, embarrassing laughter.
Little kids don't really know how to deal with that. Some adults don't either.

I officially stopped scouting shortly thereafter. I stopped going to the meetings immediately, instead hiding until the meetings were over, then going home.

I am a very funny guy. I do humorous things a lot. I make jokes constantly. If I make you laugh, I am happy about it. I am the stereotypical class clown.

When I was in 10th grade, my old friend Rusty told this story to a group of guys, much to their amusement. He was messing with me, as teenage boys do. He didn't mean any harm.

I don't remember hitting Rusty, but I did. Several times.

I'm sorry Rusty.

Rage

I am an angry man.

I have a simmering disdain for people. I have, for a long time. Maybe it is a steady morning diet of Jerry Springer and Maury. Maybe it is a profession that puts me in contact with people when they are at their absolute worst.

These are contributing factors, but not the cause.

I dislike other people because I am not too crazy about myself, at times.
I cannot believe other people genuinely want to be near me, to love me, to be a part of my life... because there are large portions of time when I don't.

I see that I am closed off. I see that I am inconsiderate. I see that I am selfish. And I don't like it. Why would anybody else?

I knew that I was angry at Cheryl. That was a no-brainer. The fact that my anger was born while I was in an altered state (a drunk) made it easier for me to bottle it up and incorporate it into my personality than it was to deal with it.

I knew I was angry at Les. Again, obvious. I had so much going on at the time. I had lost my job, my house, my hometown... it was easier to assign all the hurt, anger, and blame over those things to Les. Instead of these things being separate problems, they became one big problem. It was so big, I didn't know where to begin working on it. Bottling it up and making it part of my personality seemed to take care of it before, so I did it again.

I honestly thought I was healthy. I thought I was well adjusted.

Someone "close" to me finally called me on my issues. I say "close" because a person can only get so close to me before I start shutting them out.
My initial response was, well, anger... and satisfaction. I was right. Letting people into your life only sets you up for being abandoned.

I sent out a matter of fact email to certain people, letting them know that the affair was over. I then sat down and prepared to forget about it and move on.

I didn't forget.
Things she had said to me resonated.
They echoed in my head.
I got defensive.
Angry.
It didn't stop.

After several days of reflecting on what she had said, I went to a bookstore. I went to the self help section, a place I had never been.
I was fine, after all.

I stood and looked at books for over an hour, unable to tell the gurus from the quacks. I picked out several books to purchase. It couldn't hurt me to read them.

One book deals with transference, bringing your past into the present, assigning past roles to new people.

A light went on in my head.
I realized that I had spent most of my adult life trying to cast new women into a role that couldn't be recast... shouldn't be recast.

I also realized that I was very, very angry at May for leaving.

That shook me to the core.