I have become so self-absorbed

a couple events from the summer

Run to the Moon was amazing, even though I missed a friend a lot that day.
The trip to Maryland had several tremendous highlights, including Assateague, a wonderful sail, and a great wedding.
The Shawshank Hustle was a blast, and I'm so glad I went, even though my heart was heavy.

Our granddaughter is going through such a challenging time. But she's an amazing kid!

lost refuge

i used to come here to express my inmost thoughts and feelings

now i don't

run to the moon

tomorrow i will have to try to take comfort in who is with me, and desperately hope against the evidence thus far that that is enough to overcome the pain of who is not. 

i loved doing stuff with you. of course, by the time we did this run three years ago you were already over me. i wish you'd told me so. maybe i'd be past this heartache by now. 

i doubt it, though. you are still amazing.

i still wish you all the best, and pray for you regularly. i still refuse to clamor for a piece of you. i think that you think that was what i was doing, but i wasn't.

i may not know who i am anymore
or what i believe
but i know this: 
i am not a man who chooses to hurt his wife. 
there have been days
many days
when this one thought
has kept me alive

a potentially life-threatening habit

so i have this decades-old thought habit that, if i say what it is, will cause the reader to become alarmed and insist i should go (back) into therapy (again) to fix. since i'm not going to do that, let's agree that i'm just going to start trying to break it and you're going to pray for me.

For they could not love you, but still your love was true

These woods really are quite lovely . . . 

Today's word

pungle /PUNG-əl/ - to make a payment or contribution of (money) — usually used with up
2 : pay, contribute — usually used with up

I don't look at the WOTD every day now, and this is my first new word in a long time.

i think too much

i'm about to leave the office, where my inside and outside realities are in harmony (i am alone) to go home where they are not. 

i'm tired of this.

what if

i really only profess because i don't know how else to live?

it was cold, wet, muddy, and fun!

Acura Sports Car Challenge at Mid-Ohio w/ Allan, Tim, and Mike.

don't tell me i'm not

on these two days of the year, i am always and utterly alone. 

soon, probably, i will be on two more, too. 

ugh

multiple dreams of my stepfather last night. some incorporated memories. none were pleasant.

i really do wish him the best in life and in eternity. i hope he finds abundant love and truth and eternal life in Christ. and i choose not to blame him for what my neurons are doing now.

i guess i don't have time for my shit anymore either

A bright spot

Daily cribbage. 

I'll take it. 

if joy is an indicator of an authentic Christian life, i must be an utter fraud.

What if . . .

. . .  instead of building up an immunity to iocaine powder, we just acclimate to its symptoms, but it's still fatal to us?

And what if our iocaine is sin?

Tim

When we were growing up, he seemed so much older than I was. Rick and Mike seemed like my peers. Jim, Dave, and Tim seemed much older. But Tim was only two years senior to me. I don't think that ever struck me until this week.

In the warm months, we'd always walk together to the ballpark and play. I was never as athletic as my cousins, to my dad's dismay. But they never shunned me or made me feel inferior. It always seemed like a couple of them would get into a dust-up over something. I think it was usually lack of hustle or some other attitude issue. It seems to me it was always Tim and Mike in the middle of it, with Tim not able to put up with Mike's issues. As an only son who only had a sister, the fighting was intimidating to me. (I had a good friend who was the same way with his older brother.) But all of my cousins looked out for me.

I miss you already, cousin. Pray for me. God knows I need it.

Another deceased cousin

Alcoholism claims another member of my family. 

i used to think of myself

as a man of faith

The Accident

the autumn after my 12th birthday, my dad (adoptive) was in a very serious car accident. he was on his way to pittsburgh on a business trip and his car veered off the road into a guardrail. the only reason he didn't go through it, they said, was because he was driving a rear-engine volkswagen beetle with more of the weight distributed to the rear of the car. they said that he had fallen asleep at the wheel, and my mom wondered whether there was alcohol involved, as he frequently drank and drove. 

these things probably represent the most likely scenario. it got him sober for a little while, through either an ethical compromise by or the incompetence of our family physician. he told dad that alcohol use might interfere with the recovery of the damaged muscle nerve in his eye. i think he didn't drink for about three months, until the neurosurgeon who didn't know his history told him that was not going to affect his prognosis. anyway, his quality of life took a turn for the worse after the accident, as the loss of functionality of his eye affected his ability to do so many of the athletic activities he loved. this probably led, more than any other single event, to his decision the summer i turned 14 to end his life. but the booze and the son who disappointed him probably contributed, too.

but this morning i am wondering whether the accident was because he decided to turn the wheel.

i guess i'm always going to be living for others

last night i decided

that today would be the day. 
this morning i decided that it isn't.

M-I-C

now it's time to say goodbye
to all our company

this blog has become mostly a bitching space. that isn't good for me.

truth is: life hurts, in old and new ways. but i don't need to remind myself of that. i'm not sure my outlet has been a good idea.

maybe i'm singing the wrong song here, though. in The Wall, Goodbye Cruel World is the song in which Pink closes himself off from the world. maybe that's a better choice as i deal with things.

how very much i love and miss you, dear reader(s).

guess i'll just figure out how to deal with this on my own.

that, too.

what a screwup

Today's words

Several from the Dictionary Devil that I could tell were new(ish), and one that surprised me. Let's start with the marginally familiar ones:

exiguity /ˌeg-zi-ˈgyü-ə-tē/ - the quality or state of being exiguous : SCANTINESS

I've definitely encountered this word before, and without sufficient context it chases me to the dictionary every time

pyrrhic /ˈpir-ik/ - a metrical foot consisting of two short or unaccented syllables

I was familiar with the adjective that describes a heavy-priced victory, and believe I'd encountered this noun before but don't remember for certain

vinculum /viŋ-kyə-ləm/ - 1. a unifying bond : LINK, TIE  2. a straight horizontal mark placed over two or more members of a compound mathematical expression and equivalent to parentheses or brackets about them

I'm pretty sure I've heard of the second definition at some point in my engineering education. But I don't think I've encountered the first before.

loophole /ˈlüp-ˌhōl/ -  1a. a small opening through which small arms may be fired  b. a similar opening to admit light and air or to permit observation 2. a means of escape  especially : an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded 

These days, everyone has heard of the second definition. I'm thinking I may have encountered the first before, too, but maybe only once, and it definitely threw me for a loop while solving the puzzle. 

Nice quote

"People don't run out of dreams, people just run out of time." Glenn Frye

but not true. 

The challenge . . .

. . . of living what i believe and profess

The difference between now and before

(that is, before we were ever friends.)

over the course of twenty years, i'd completely forgotten what it felt like to actually want to live for my own sake. that's how long it had been. i'm talking about more than the mere the hope that things might get to where i'd want to again. actually, that hadn't been there either. but an actual consistent source of joy based on real experiences i could count on had been largely absent, except for brief exceptions to which i desperately clung like a lifeline in a raging storm. 

then, for a brief time . . . well, i find that i can't describe the sublime joy that i found in being your friend. you enjoyed my company and i enjoyed yours. and there was never a desire for an inappropriate physical or even emotional connection. it was just the pleasure of your friendship. i realize now that that ended for you long before it did for me. i'm sorry, first because i ruined it, and secondly because i was too fucking obtuse to notice.

so now that we aren't friends at all (basically, i have to conclude this, based on your last communique and your silence thereafter), i'm back where i used to be. there has been incremental improvement, but mostly my life is back to the status quo. the difference between now and before is that now i remember how very nice it felt to to be glad to be alive, and i am always sad about it.

(it probably doesn't help matters that i'm always physically exhausted now, too.)

wait, though: don't i have plenty of people whose company i enjoy?

yeah, i do.

but ask me how many of them accept me for who i am. 

and, it turns out, neither do you.

hello darkness, my old enemy
always exhausted now
a few insistent thoughts persist
how i miss you
useless efforts to distract myself
the unspoken darkest one
self accusations