Developments

I think that the SFC is struggling with the new parameters to our relationship. Or maybe I am reading something that isn't really there.

We had some nasty Jamaican rum and tried to talk things out. She wanted to know what about her that was like 'fingernails on the chalkboard' for me.

Like with most everyone I have ever 'liked', I don't have a discernible trait or habit that bothers me about them. Maybe it is because I have a need to be accepted and that prompts my malleability, but since that has been 'always', don't know what doing nitpicking about people will do for me now. Anywho, I look at it as an extension of my desire to 'a yes, a no, a straight line' objective.

If there was anything for me to say, it would be a slight envy and the feeling that whenever I have tried to live my life, I allowed for it to be interrupted. That is what had me identify the 'Darkhorse component' to my life. But instead of it being the unknown change of direction for my life, I do think that it was meant to test my willingness to pursue what direction I really wanted.

Then end of next month is when I will explore with her my intentions to go out west and move to Omaha. I won't beat her over the head with it, but the next time she starts a conversation about 'us' (which is redundant, because what else do we have to talk about?) I hope to have something for her.

Which is not to say that I usually don't or that I will be making things up. She pointed out that as much as I do talk about my feelings and as well as I do express myself, I don't say much about the crux of things. She wanted to hear what gets to me about her, like the way I eat gets to her. Not big things, but pet peeves.

I don't remember situations that happened while we were stationed together, but I do remember the feeling. She inadvertently describe it, when she talk of how I roll my eyes and says, "Yes SFC," and get with the program.

My counter was that is how I remember our relationship when we were kids. This is NOT how I am with other people. Making an example of my ex wife, I told her the way that we mix as people we would always be at opposite sides of the table. Nothing particular about her. She isn't the only 'urban woman' I have dated. Tee Jay is at her level and we got along very well.

That is part of our chemistry.

The way we relate to each other is due to our chemistry. What is different now is that we are together and around each other in a way that had never been explored. As I write, I am trying to think of things that she does that bothers me... but I can't. Whatever got to me has been digested and is now part of the shared state we are in.

I guess with the problem not being about 'her', it is harder to express. How can you tell someone that you want to pursue the things that you feel you have been interrupted from chasing after? And that while she was indirectly a part of that, you never felt comfortable shouldering full responsibility, even though you know that you did it all to yourself?

That thought, that thinking gets twisted up tighter than the Gordian knot it represents in my life. One of several which I have never managed to unwind. At this stage of my life, I don't see the benefit of unraveling them either.

Everyone else has managed to move on and make something of themselves and their lives. The twins are the latest to leap frog and get to their own 'next level'. I don't want to die on this floor. I want to do something more meaningful with my life.

And really, isn't that what going west is really about? Writing that book, going to school and helping in the community? I don't want anyone to struggle to pay for my funeral and I want to leave a better legacy to my daughter than 'my Dad, yeah, he lived.'

I want them to be able to say that he was something more than an absentee father and has been boxer. I want them to say he wrote, he taught and he loved them and was loved in his community.

It makes sense to me to move where I think I will find my peace and love them from there. Host grandchildren and go to weddings from there...

THE PAST IS A DEAD ANIMAL

A (or is it THE) reason that I don't like feeling pity for myself is that I look at it as a sign of disrespect to the life that I did have and of those who have had to do with less and accomplished more. I hadn't ever asked, or hardly ever asked, 'why me?', you know what I am saying? I mean, why did I have to get picked on and why did I have to be on the outside of social groups and float around. 'The area between cliques is where I dare', I would say in an effort to make light of what I was going through. It would have been nice to be on the 'ins' of something.

Sorry if you are looking for specific 'incidents', but sometimes my memory is heretical to itself, you know? I do remember what I FELT and that is more than enough. I recall the stings and the barbs growing up of being pushed around and eventually out of the loop. Don't ever recall missing or questioning why it had to be that way. Back then I didn't get deep with that stuff like Jacques Cousteau. I made a choice that it was the way that it was for a reason and I figured I would find out later why, if I needed to know. Put on my Smiths and Cure records and let them melancholy me to sleep...

For a long time I have found clever and pithy sayings to keep me moving forward through all the trying times that I have faced. But right now, I am running out of them... not so much as running out, but getting worn out having to find the resolve to push myself forward yet again.

Lately, the need to ask 'what if's' has popped in and around my head over time. Hey, I am human too. Comes with the territory. For the most part, I've thought about it and moved on... when it came to 'getting over things', I have gotten over them.

Right now, the memory of what once was and could have been is almost too much for me to bear. More that the memory of what the past FELT LIKE is. And all those possiblities... where did it all go?

I think back to seeing that kid I from Carolina, only now he was the contender and had done the very things that I talked with him about, and how he offered me a job as a sparring partner. The reason that I didn't take that job was less about ego and more about the feeling that I had cheated myself out of being 'him'. To watch him 'be me' was too 'Eddie Kane' for me (you know the scene in the movie 'The Five Heartbeats', where he asks Flash, 'How does it feel to be me?') and I couldn't take the job. 'Being cool' with the boss would have been too much like the sycophant to me. Not to mention the resentment.

"Why... why wasn't 'it' me?", I would have been asking of no one in particular. For me, asking that would have meant the would come an answer echoing back in the darkness of my imagination. And I don't like asking the question because I KNOW that I would have liked the answer even less.

There was a review of a couple of books about Ayn Rand in the Post last Sunday... and while I have heard the stuff before about her as a person, like I do reading thru journals, I see pieces of her imperfections and again I wonder... not at her failings but how she was able to achieve despite what she did despite them.

EVER WONDER WHAT IF HE PUSHED THE BOULDER UP A DIFFERENT HILL..?

A cat that I know from my days as a boxer posted something interesting about the time he wasted sulking over someone he broke up with. He mentioned that he almost always got an opportunity to have a 'second chance' with them. So I guess that was time he wasted, wanting for something with them because he would eventually have that chance with whoever.

His use of the block of time struck me... 17 to 35 ... because from that range in MY life, if I didn't do ANYTHING I know that I wasn't worried about someone who I split with. Regular readers know that I feel that way about my life. Messing around in the moldy, yellowed pages of my past never appealed to me.

It took until I was 35 for me to even think twice about wanting someone from a past relationship... and I wanted to find out what the fuss was all about. Yeah, I was still hung over Tee Jay but as much as I pined over her, I couldn't take the plunge and go after her. Why, when I had told myself that she meant the world to me and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her..?

Because I felt as though I 'gave at the office' the first time. I didn't hold back while we were together. And that pretty much covers how I feel about all of my past relationships. Sure, some of the ladies did deserve better from me, but they didn't get it. But since this isn't about them, what do you want me to do?

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 'CONFIRMED' AND 'VERIFIED'

Sometimes, I sit around and I feel broken. I mean I AM broken, for real though. That is physical not in spirit. I am still the 'same kind of stupid' that I was when I left home for the service. The issue I have with all this is, what happened between 'there' and 'here'.

Nebraska has really let it be known to me how she feels. I used to think that she was hiding how she felt about me. If she didn't feel deeply about me, then she held on to how MY feelings made her feel towards the possiblity that we'd be a item. Now, it seems that she cares more about me than I even hoped. She wants to live the rest of her life with me and sharing love with me.

MTXE

THE COMPETITOR IN ME

"I am not going to sit around and hope." That is something that I am familiar with. Having gone out and having to face difficulty in trying to win or get whatever it is that I want is normal.

Though I don't think that I may have had any discernible impact on the SFC life as she did have one on mine. That is why it is hard to stay. I can't help but think that I would have had what it is that I wanted had our paths not crossed. But they did. And I failed myself...

... but why did she have to happen to me? What could I have been? Where would I have gone?

I know that I told her at the beginning of this, when we first begin to talk to one another, that I had left all that in the past. But that was of course, the polite thing to say. For a cat who didn't have the fall back to catch himself, making the correct decision and being a 'first time go', was everything to me.

So now she has again entered my life when I had plotted a course to take me to where I want to go. And I don't want to let go of my hopes, not this time. Going out to Nebraska was a 'go' for so many reasons, that if Nebraska was going to stay to her then stated tack, I'd be comfortable with my decision to live in Omaha and chill.

Wherever the SFC goes from here, it will be to suit her own purposes and designs. I'd have to put whatever it is that I wanted to the side and live through her dreams. Thanks but no thanks. I will keep my dreams and try to live them.

Hmm... I did expect to be in Omaha in May or June of this year, didn't I ..?

DEATHLESS WORDS

IF YOU DON'T CARE, WHY SHOULD I?

"Who was there at the world's beginning?", asks the narration in a comic book about someone who goes off to embrace his destiny in spite of his personal weaknesses.

I like that because it says to me that no one was there but you at the beginning of whatever it is you complain, moan, blame, and it implies that no one but you will be able to get you out of it. Same thing with the cadence, 'Ain't no use in looking down ... there's no discharge on the ground...' Where you are is where you are at, and for real, unless you can get away from it, nothing really matters.

Whether it is something someone is having happen to them 'again', or it makes them wonder when it is going to be 'my turn', I hate when they direct that towards me. Because I wasn't there when they gave all of themselves to all of whatever they chose to, but since like everyone else, they made a choice. Sure those choices were connected to other choices, but even as they wound their way along, the fact remains that there was a choice to be made. What that choice was, no matter what, is what they have to own.

The entire thinking is so selfish that I locks up my mind. How selfish must a person be, to think that their pain and their agony is so ultra terrible and unique that for them to find themselves again 'sacrificing' for the sake of some unknown and amorphous reason as a relationship, is arrogance.

So, WHEN is it going to be 'my turn'? When WILL it stop 'happening to them'? I DON'T FREAKING KNOW!!

That is why if you haven't walked in someone's shoes, you should watch what you say. You aren't the only one who has had to let go of hopes and dreams, or have what you wanted snatched away from your hands. Then to be surrounded by all the 'what ifs' and reminded of all that you lost and gave up for... what?

For this??

My Plan to remake myself and focus on the building of the rest of my life, and finding my new normal.

REALLY ..?

So this is another situation where I find myself hanging out with a person who is wondering, 'when its going to be my turn' and not believing that 'they have did this again'.

What 'the Nebraska Concept' was for me, was the opportunity to be free of the nagging and lingering issues concerning relationships. Who doesn't feel that they have loved and loved, without that love being returned? How many people are wondering if it is ever going to happen for them, love that is fulfilling and abiding?

I told the SFC's friend that we are both 'the same kind of stupid'. While it was tongue in cheek, it was accurate. Here we sit in an ambigious relationship where neither of us are feeling fulfilled. Our conversation is stilted because we aren't putting a lot of ourselves into what we are saying. Were someone to say that we are both looking for the end of this, I wouldn't argue with them.

When I hear someone say those 'magic words' that indicate they have made yet another mistake that they have made before with me, that is when things are coming to a close. You can come back from a lot of things, but not the conclusion that you have messed up again. How can you? Isn't that when the towel is being thrown in, or if not, in hand at the ready to be tossed?

My Plan to remake myself and focus on the building of the rest of my life, and finding my new normal.

I thought long about the subhead for this journal. I wanted to make this part of my life's journey about me finding my way and pursuing my happiness. This has been a detour. Not an 'unfortunate' one, but a detour nonetheless. Virginia isn't where I am supposed to be. After all, I did have the dream of Skye, KT, and Lexxie with me at the Nebraska State fair. That seemed real, where being here seems like something else.

For such a selfish bastard, I am more self-less that I give myself credit for. No one has even come remotely close to giving up the things that are dearest to them for me. So I can't let myself feel as though there is anything more for me to give. I better do for me, because no one else can be counted on to do it!

VETERAN'S DAY

There are so many things that Veteran's Day has meant to me for the last 20 years that I don't think I can put them all into words.

Growing up, there was a lot of talk about why would a brother want to join a 'white man's Army' and all that. The draft had been stopped, Vietnam was not too long ended, and the carefree disco 70's were in full swing.

There was a lot of negative things said in the hood about being in the service, but for me it was always a real option. A cousin had a good experience when he was in the service, seeing a little bit of Vietnam and getting out and making something of his G.I. Bill. Then the series 'The World At War' and the huge Time-Life books about WW II made me think about how cool it would be go out and fight the Japs in the Pacific, hopping island to island.

My childhood summer's were spent in the jungles of the South Pacific, or liberating the surviving soldier of the marches to Bataan... even now those hot summer days that I find myself outside traveling long distances to nowhere recall those mental images. I have never let go of those memories.

When Page spoke to me her senior year, she asked me about what she wanted to do. She was Navy ROTC and wasn't trying to go straight to college. It wasn't that she didn't have the grades or the ability... but then, what do you call it when someone has the talent to do something but doesn't want to pursue something that many would say should be an obvious direction for them to take with the next step in their life?

I don't know what other advice she was getting about her future, but I remembered how crappy it was for me my junior and senior years. No one sat me down and spoke to me about anything. Wait, Ron and I had discussion about a future, but it was still one of me making up my own mind, rather than having things suggested and discussed. My Mom was in a 'different place' as far as I was concerned and my sister Sherita was the one that her and my Aunt Doris, who lived with us, were focused on.

So I sat down with Page, and we started getting material on the military. I explained the different missions of each branch of service and told her what I thought of each one based on my experience. She went Air Force along with a buddy of hers, who was a little drifty as well. I think it did the both of them a lot of good, giving them exactly what I thought it would, a fighting chance at making a good life.

I hope Page can get her 25 years in ... she will be a young woman still, early 40's, my age now or thereabouts. You do the math.

From watching the interview with Bob Knight, Mike Krzyzewski, and Bill Parcells, I began to feel a remorse for my Military Career. When I was in high school, the service was a 'top five' option, which is why I joined ROTC. It wasn't that I was squared away or anything like that. I was still a kid and was being a hormonally challenged teenager that knew just enough to keep the Army in mind for a career.

Though I had found the socialization part of high school such a challenge that it would affect my academics, turn in me into a underachieving student, I did still have the Army. Considering how my home life was, chaotic because I was rudderless, the Army shot up the charts. Because no matter what, I knew that I had to get out of Detroit.

At the time, had my Mom and Aunt really talked to me about college, I would have listened. But falling to a 'C' grade point average and other troubles like getting kicked out of Renaissance High at the end of my junior year, did not give them hope for me. I wonder why that was ... though I have an idea it was part of the insidiousness that infects the 'Black Matriarchal Complex' that did it. But I certainly aggravated things. Cutting classes and getting caught doing the 'ol' In and Out', while not signs of delinquency, didn't put me in a favorable light.

In the end, I was glad that I decided to take charge and make something happen in my life.

Myself, I had intended to go Air Force. But the Army recruiters were in the front of the office and once they got a hold of me, that was that!! I blew out the ASVAB test, and told them to put me in a job that I did not have to get dirty in!! At first I was in Fianance (ooh, how ironic!!), but when I pushed back my date (I don't remember why that happened or what I was thinking sooo ...) I ended up changing my MOS and that is how I became a 71 Lima.

I think that things shook out the way that they should have. I went to Korea and was having a great time. And this is where 'everything changes' ...

I am having a harder time than I thought dealing with seeing 'my military career' that I did not get to have or live. Another thing about the Sportscenter at West Point, was Sage Steele talking about her father who was a cadet and the first black man to letter at Army. It said so much about where SHE came from, and how she spoke about her father, 'The Colonel', it made my heart skip a beat.

Let's be honest. I would have never gotten married had I been able to stay in the service. Would have never met my ex Wife and would have kept on career tracking while I was in the Army. May have earned a campaign ribbon ... a couple of tabs ... a degree as well, who knows?

What I do know is that I never got to live the life I had wanted to live. That is a fact. Could have boxed forever ... Ray Mercer made it to the Olympic Team and the cat who I used to follow in the agate fight results in Ring Magazine, Carlos Elliot, a Marine station in Japan did get a title shot.

Every single day, a variation of these thoughts run through my mind. Everyday.

So being here in a place that I don't care for, surrounded by the life that was within reach as I try to deal with holding back the bitterness of disappointment, is difficult.

I am going to get up and find something to do, in spite of not wanting to do anything. Once again, I am going to try to live a life at someone's pace.

Do I really want to try this again?

WHAT IS GOING ON?

ESPN SPECIAL FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS FOR VETERANS DAY, 2009

Watching the Marines fight before the pro boxers got into the ring, made me long for what never was. I told the SFC that I was over it ... but how can I be over it, the ending of my career before it ever really had a chance? My unilateral sacrifice for what..?

I wish that I could not remember that night ... but I can, at least the essentials. One of the rare times I was out on the town, in the NCO club at Camp Henry playing slots and eating French Fries with mayonaisse. Man, I was such a kid! The decision to call the CQ desk was due to my roomie Thompson being on the desk.

When I got him, he told me that the SFC had been beat up ... I got angry. She was my friend and I could not imagine anyone doing that to her. Rushing to catch a cab and back to the barracks, and immediately got in the middle of the after effects. I can remember her little 'yobo', a too old and too immature homeboy from Detroit, going back and forth like a little lap dog.

Finding out who caused the ruckus was my next goal and the homey was running around getting on my nerves. Small as well as short, he couldn't exact anything from anyone other than change. Why did I let him tag along with me, I will never know. As soon as I thought about finding the cat ... he invited himself.

The cat was from the area finance unit. We struck out looking for him at the two NCO clubs and in the 'Villes' on both sides of town. Finally got a lead that he was up in his barracks trying to sleep off his hanging out.

Who knows how late it was ... 3 o'clock sounds good enough. I let the small homey come and when he picked up a two by four, I should have stopped and dismissed him. Hell, after we didn't find the cat on the streets as it was, we BOTH should have slept it off and let the MP's handle things.

Vigilante justice indeed ... homey and the SFC were 'bunk buddies', so he should have went on this kind of mission solo. But I loved her much as I could love anyone that I wasn't trying to actually BE in love with. My best friend ... calling her that was an understatement. She was my ONLY friend.

My conscious was 'on' and I knew what I was risking as we walked around Taegu, looking for the Finance cat. Why didn't I dismiss the homey ..? Let him handle what should have been his business? I will never know ...

You could say it was to prepare the both of us for 'now'. And I feel like I am following her along again, as uncertain as ever. She got a chance to make her life work. I know that she had her ups and downs, but when I think about what I gave up at eighteen and what I never had a chance to have ...

... like fighting in front of a bunch of guys in my unit, against someone from another unit or post or even branch of service. A townie or in a tournament. The chance to struggle to make the grade and gain rank. I still wonder if I would have gone on to Fort Dix and went in the enlisted to officer program?

I know that I had intentions on trying to do my 20 years in the service. In fact, still thought about trying to get back in many, many times. But I was so hurt by letting that gift opportunity go that I never tried to see what could have been done on my behalf. After leaving Mookie, I had hoped to finally get a chance to see what I was really capable of, and live for me.

Yet here I am in someone else's house and trying to be a part of somone elses world. Sure, I love the SFC and she is truly a special person in my heart. But I did give her my life once before... and I don't feel beholden to give it to her again.

Did I think about her in the interim ..? How could I not?? All this time ... the last 20 plus years as I have stumbled around looking for my special place, thinking about how if I had went on and taken classes at the USC affiliate, maybe I would have been doing something for myself and not out that night being random ...

... between that and my crappy marriage, I never thought that was fair what I experienced. But what could I do? I have tried as best as I can to 'get over it', but being here sometimes is a constant reminder of what never was for me ... and what I am still hoping for.