Held Up Without a Gun - Introduction

For me, starting at the beginning often feels like a monumental task – with lots of things, actually. However, usually once I do, I get rolling pretty quickly and the rest falls into place. This has been true throughout my life. Facing a giant task, my response has often been to delay and avoid, subconsciously hoping whatever it is will go away. It never does.

I enjoy the process of therapy. Some call it counseling. To me it’s neither, really but if it were one over the other, it’s something far more therapeutic than anything else. I have never seen a shrink of any sort to be told what to do or to be given exercises to help me cope with a challenge or situation. I have gone, or go to be heard. We all want to be heard. Some of us want to be heard because we feel as if we aren’t. I want to be heard in part because I’m not, yet I also don’t talk to those closest to me. I wonder sometimes if I resent some of the closest people to me for not talking to me while pushing them away all at the same time. Paying someone to talk to me; actually, paying someone to listen to me seems like the fairest and most just exchange. Does this mean I see myself as unworthy or uninteresting? I doubt it. I think it’s more a matter of feeling like what I need to say is too much for those closest to me to hear. Besides, I’ve said most of it before, albeit gradually and in real time.

So I figured I’d start this little section of this little webpage for this little corner of my life. I’ve tried this before and I have stalled under the weight of the subject matter. This is one little corner of my life, but it’s the darkest and heaviest corner. It consumes most of my thoughts and shows up in my dreams nearly every night. This corner of my life has triggers that can ruin a day or send me into a dark place for a while. It never seems to change and only seems manageable when I am talking about it. My hope here is that I will continue ‘talking’ about it and that will somehow bring some peace to this little corner of my life. Not totally trusting my ability to keep up and not surrender to the pain that will resurface as a result of my reflection, I begin this story with three strategies:

1)      I am writing five submissions before publishing my first. I want to have some traction under me and some wind at my back before starting to tell a story that could break down. I figure by the time I have five submissions in the bank I will have developed some momentum.

2)      I am not telling anyone that this blog/website is even here until the fifth submission is posted. Again, the genesis of this is rooted in not trusting myself to stay the course of what is sure to be a challenging and emotional process.

3)      This site is not devoted to this corner of my life. This section of this effort will be one of many. I intend to write about what runs through my head. So much of what I post to Facebook or discuss with friends is about politics. I have written extensively about politics in the past. I love American politics and that certainly won’t change. But I want to focus on the rest of it. So the discussion of this part of my life will only be part of this website. I am  hesitantly inviting you into the part of my life I most avoid, but it’s the part of my life that most consumes me, haunts me and makes up who I am. Actually that should read, ‘who I am now’ because this part of my life has changed who I am and who I could have been.

So if you know me at all you know what this ‘part’ or ‘corner’ of my life is. If I were to scan my ‘Facebook friends’ which is a sad exercise – because of the place that social networking has claimed in our lives, not because of the people on that list, I would guess that most of those ‘friends’ know nothing of who I really am. Trust me when I say, there is nothing exciting about starting this chapter. I do so because I feel a need, and have felt a need for a long time that this story has to be told. I feel like I’m hiding. I feel that because I am. I feel like I am avoiding. Again, I am. I feel like I am allowing only a version of myself to be known. I am. I feel eaten up and beaten down as a result.

This will be my attempt to survive this part of my life so that this corner doesn’t collapse and crush me underneath. I owe it to many people to attempt to drag myself up, including myself. This site is called, ‘so cynical’ because that is how many people view me. And, I am cynical. No question about it. Part of my cynicism is rooted in a quest to be funny or ironic. The rest of it is the real me, part who I am by nature and part the version of me I’ve rusted into.

Thanks for joining me for this new phase of therapy.

Held Up Without a Gun - Preface

“Joke's on me, It's gonna be okay
If I can just get through this lonesome day”

The story I am about to present is mine. It is pathetic, sad, embarrassing, painful, predictable, shocking and at times funny. I’m not sure why I want to tell it, but I do. I am not hoping to inspire anyone or move anybody by anything I have to say. I am not trying to reveal myself to you and there is much of this that I’d rather no one know.

I realized something about myself the other night when my Golden Retriever, Nelson jumped up on the couch to sit next to me. He moved in close and propped his head on my lap. His big brown eyes expressed nothing but love and acceptance – each unconditional.

 I moved Nelson off one me. I pushed him on to the cushion next to me. When he inched closer I re-established my space. Then it instantly hit me that this is pretty much how I operate with most of my life with many people – some of which I love deeply. I wanted Nelson in the room. I even wanted him close by, just not touching me. I do this with people. Maybe I do this with you. I want you around, I may even want you near but I probably keep you at a safe distance. Why, I’m not totally sure. Perhaps this is my effort to start the process of changing that.

While this is my story, there are lots of other people involved; real people with real lives. I don’t want to hurt anyone at all – even the ones it may seem like I should want to hurt. So most of the names in what you’ll read have been changed except for mine.

The part of my motive that I do understand is that I want my daughters to have my account of what has happened since the fall of 2006. The proper telling of that story requires going back in time, so there will be lots that happened before them. It’s all relevant.

Most of this focuses on my marriage, separation and divorce. It has been the most thoroughly horrible experience I could ever imagine. I wouldn’t wish my experience on to anyone. Unlike most divorces and custody battles, mine got significantly worse as time went on. While I take my fair share for the failure of my marriage, the only responsibility I take for what has happened since is in the undeserved grace and benefit of doubt I provided my ex-wife. Continually and naively I believed what she told me about wanting me to be a part of the lives of our daughters. Continually and naively I agreed to “slow the process down” or “forego my visit” so that our daughters could adjust. I was hoodwinked and robbed of my children. I was held up without a gun.

The title I’m using is a little known Bruce Springsteen song. I think the title (not the song’s lyrics) perfectly describes what’s gone on.

My girls have not been told a decent thing about me in more than six years. No question that friends or neighbors or teachers who remember me fondly have said nice things about me in their company, but there is no doubt what so ever that their mother has never supported a healthy view of me and has contributed mightily to the destruction and alienation of my relationship with our children.

There is a lot to tell here and I can already tell that the telling of this story is going to be all over the map. It won’t be a total chronological story. I will try to keep things interesting but will not run each post through a master edit.

I can promise you that everything you read will be 100% true. I will not speculate without telling you that I am. I will be as transparent as I can. I feel like that’s important.

I want my daughters to hear my story. I really want to hear theirs. My hope is that one day we will sit together and have a good cry over this painful chapter of our lives. Right now, though the damage that has been inflicted upon my relationships with my girls is significant.

Today is our oldest daughter’s seventeenth birthday. I sent her a card and a present. I also sent her a text message wishing her a happy birthday. This morning I called to say the same thing. I recording answered my call that told me that my number has been blocked on her phone and will not accept my calls.

There has never been abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction or abandonment. I taught each of my girls to ride their bikes. I volunteered in their classrooms every week. I coached their soccer teams and softball teams. They heard ‘I love you’ multiple times a day – every day. I read to them before bed. I cooked for them, fed them and cleaned up after them. I was never less than fifty per cent of the parenting that took place in our home. My crime, the one that has me banished with a blocked phone number and no communication is that I had the nerve to tell their mother that I couldn’t live with her any longer.

I suspect that if and when my ex reads this that she will explode with a vengeance and set out to “destroy” me or my reputation. She’s too late. Everything you will read here has contributed to the destruction of who I was a long time back. Writing this and telling this story is my attempt to claim some measure of who I was back.