Life After Leaving:Dating in Modern Times

Rich in heart,

That's what I've earned.

A wealthy, healthy way of feeling.

Life has struck deep and hard with its trials and tribulations.

Being single, being alone. Modern dating and all its frustrations.

Broken loves like boxers gloves pounding at my face.

I've learned to deal with it with grace.

That's how you survive this race.

Choose to be hardened, or decide to stay warm.

It's a choice, you see.

Divorce, custody.

Dirty words.

Sharp talons ripping at your soul.

Each taking its toll.

Choose to be dulled or let life sharpen you into a sword.

My edge is honed to razor keenness. But I'm not a weapon to destruct.

I'm a weapon to cut.

Slice out the bad things. I'm ultimately APPRECIATIVE for my woes.

I want to be in Love again.

Not again and again and again.

So I choose to take what I've learned,

and earned,

And continue to be a better man.

A better man, a BETTER Dad.

The best that my son has ever had.

This GIFT of pain that I've been given to GAIN,

... I'm thankful for.

I Just don't want more.....

******** I wrote this and realized a few minutes later that none of it was from my heart. It was cold and angry and factual. But the truth is, this has been the most harmful thing I've ever gone through. Worse than my divorce. Worse than my custody case

I loved her. I REALLY TRULY loved her. And she did not believe it because she CAN"T.

Nothing I could do was good enough. She did not get the little romantic things, she was always looking for the hidden meaning. There was none, I simply wanted her to feel.

She can't love she can only own, and now that she doesn't own me, she has to hurt me.

I have to protect myself. Thats all that I have left. ******

Well I did something last week that I never wanted to do. I Filed harassement charges against my ex-girlfriend. All I wanted was for her to leave me alone, but she could not do that.

When she goes out partying, she texts me, "U wish, suck me", "U wish". From 9 pm to 2 am thats what I get.

I ignored them all until last week. Last week I started getting emails from my friends on my myspace page. I created this page only 2 weeks ago and I changed my name and my email so she could not find me, but she must have spent hours looking at pictures because she did.

So my myspace friends, most of whom I've never met, email to tell me that they are getting emails from a dummy myspace account, pretending to be a male friend of my ex-girlfriend. He supposedly knows me too.

This friend, who took the time to search all of Texas to find my hidden myspace, goes on to tell all these people to beware of me. I have devastated a very kind hearted, single mother of two. Her kids are actually in therapy because of what I've done.

On and on and on.

Of course it is too obviously written by her. At one point she even states how beautiful she is and how "all the men at church want to date her."

Ridiculous.

No one is dumb enough to give it any credence and instead she looks silly.

But that was it. I honestly cannot take anymore. I just WANT HER TO LEAVE ME ALONE.

Im 500 miles away from her now! Can she not just go away!

So I filed charges.

The Investigator called her and told her to stop calling, texting or emailing.

Within an hour she had texted me some random nonsense text.

What a rebel.

And so obvious.

The Investigator actually did not believe me until I got the text. Go J! Once again you made yourself look like an ass, but its ok, you'll find a way to blame me for it.

She's just looking for a response, and I'm totally done with her.

Thats going to drive her nuts.

J, Get Help.

Blogging just to blog....

Today I woke up with a feeling of .... something happening. I can't explain it, but as I awoke I felt as if a weight was on me.

The last month or so has had some ups and downs in it, but there really is nothing new that I'm aware of. Nevertheless I have felt all day as if I was going to be receiving bad news from someone.

So, I was bound and determined that I was going to have a good day if it killed me, and so far I have.

It's been a day of unanswered and unreturned phone calls. No replies to texts... even Raoul, the guy that works with me, has been feeling this unexplained and unwarranted feeling of something impending happening, Or maybe that was just lunch... we DID have Mexican food....

So why do we have these days? well I can't explain it, but I believe that, in the past, my intuition has been more correct than mistaken.
Nothing has happened yet....

So, what do I do about it? One word, pray. This is MY feeling, no one else is responsible for it. If this is a spiritual attack, then the authority to denounce and rebuke it has already been given to me and its simply up to me to have the faith that everything happens for a purpose and nothing is going to happen that I cannot handle.

Hmm its almost like a premonition/déjà vu feeling. There's a new word for you! Déjà-nition? Premo-vu?

So, what's been happening in my life lately? You know, its strange, I have no problem talking and listening to people when they want to vent, but I definitely have a hard time writing a blog about myself. As a matter of fact, I have a memory associated with this:
I think I was about 12 years old and I'd been at church camp for two weeks. My mother came to pick me up on the last day of camp, and we gave a ride to a neighbor girl.

I remember sitting in the car listening to her tell my mother about her experiences over the last 2 weeks. She prefaced each sentence with "I did this" or "I did that" or "I said to so-and-so" and I remember being shocked. You mean I can tell someone stuff that I did? I think in the past, whenever I had communicated something specific that I had accomplished to my parents, I had always spoken about it in the third person, as if it was someone else.
I experimented with that a bit.

"I won the archery contest we had during camp."

What a weird feeling! Even stranger now looking back on it and wondering why exactly I had such a hard time taking credit for the good things that I was doing?

Honestly, I believe it was because I had been trying for so long NOT to get attention from my parents for anything at all. Attention from them was not always a good thing.

I remember hearing someone in the Air Force say to me once, Any attention is good attention when it makes you stand out from the crowd.
Not when I was a kid.

Well after my epiphany I think I went a bit overboard. I had to tell EVERYONE my accomplishments, and this lasted well into my 20's. (Hey, they weren't THAT long ago).

I was coined as arrogant. I hated that, but I believed it too. I firmly believe that arrogant people are generally that way because they did not receive the attention they wanted/needed when they were young, so they promote themselves to themselves.

Kinda sad.

So anyway, here I am at 39. I'm healthy, I've survived a horrendous divorce. I had custody of my son then lost him 2 years later.  I had been in a heart-rending and unhealthy relationship for the last you-don't-want-to-know-how-long that has demolished a lot of my friendships because I have continually made poor choices.

I seriously want to mend those bridges.

But I am an optimistic person and I believe that great things will be happening. Maybe they are, and that's what this feeling today is. Maybe this is a mis-interpretation based on the past year. If so, I welcome it.
I'm still single. I'm still alone but am unwilling to fill my time with silliness, dishonesty, manipulation. I will not make the same choices again. I will not be with someone who cannot return affection, who refuses to be vulnerable or who cannot forgive. I must not spend time with anyone that refuses to take responsibility for their actions.
From here my path is up.

It's occurred to me that the worldy path I am on the easy one. The amazing thing is that God's path for me is always nearby. If I'm not currently walking on it I can stop at any point, repent and poof! there's his path again. No matter where I stand, his way is always available. He's always perfectly forgiving. He's always unconditionally loving.
I've heard it said that there is only one thing that is not omniscient or omnipotent about God, and that's his Patience.

In the Bible, the only thing that God has ever lost was his patience.
What thing can you imagine being worse than having God lose patience with you?

I think that I have come near to that this last year.

I'm rambling.... but it feels good to write.

There have been a lot of good things happening this week. I have hopes for growing relationships.

My relationship with my mother is better than its ever been. (Amazing to anyone who knows us).

And with the exception of a very strange Mexican treat, I've not seen hide nor hair of either an Eggplant or a Lima bean. Evil things, especially when combined.

Thank you friends for sticking by me while I was acting like an idiot.

Hang on, I'm becoming me again.

I'm sitting here today wanting to write something, but I cannot think of any specific topic.

I have plenty of unpleasant things I could write about, but just do not feel like it. So what do you do when you want to write but can't think?

Well, I love boxing. I could talk your ear off about my favorite boxers, Arturo Gatti, Mickey Ward and Manny Pacquiao, but no one wants to read that.

Mixed Martial Arts... not only do I love watching it, but I've trained in Brazilian Jiu jitsu. Again though, no one wants to read that either.

So I have an idea. Ill post some of my favorite pictures and explain what was going on when I took them.

These two pictures were taken on the same morning, almost two years ago.

My ex-girlfriend took me up to her Father's house in Arkansas. A surprise birthday party was planned for him and it was my first meeting with her brothers and sisters.

It was an amazing weekend for me. She was on her P's and Q's and we had some very good quality time together.

The second morning I was there I got up early and walked out into an adjacent field by myself. I noticed dew covered spiderwebs everywhere I looked and knelt down low in the grass to see if I could get a close-up to work.

While kneeling I realized just how beautiful the grass was and started snapping photos. These two pictures were taken with a wide-angle lens, focused on the subject using a very large aperture to fully blur the background.

They may be my favorite photos that I've ever taken, if only because of the memories attached.... the next day she broke up... lol. Par for the course.

In October of 2006 I was able to join a mission trip to South Africa. The charity, Ten thousand homes, focuses on building homes for AIDS orphans. Myself and a fellow volunteer, Tyler, left early in the second week to build a home for two young women who were being molested by their uncle. They lived in the town of Cork, South Africa and the local teacher had donated land in the rear of her house for us to build on. We hired these three local tribesmen to help us build the home. I can still remember three of their names, starting with the second from the left:Levis, Stephen and Dominick. They worked for a rate of $4 a day total, which they used to buy themselves food. $4 was a windfall for them. I'd have loved to have paid them more, but that would only have made it more difficult to hire in the future because then the precedent would be set at a much too high rate for that area.

Dominick, here on the far right, showed up the first day with only one shoe on. I asked him where his other shoe was and he replied,

"I lost it".

Ok, no worries. The next day he showed up again, once more without a second shoe. I said to him, "You didn't find your shoe?"

His reply was, "I lost if 6 months ago."

I asked why he was still wearing the one.

"It's my only shoe, why would I throw it away?"

Wow, lesson learned. Those words come to mind now anytime I'm feeling like I am not keeping up with the Jones'.

This is what a charging African Elephant looks like from 30 yards...

While in Africa we went on a drive through the Krueger National Wildlife refuge. Towards the end of the evening we came around a bend in the road and met this guy standing smack dab in its middle. The car ahead of us tried to get around him and he spooked. He turned and the first thing he was was our van and charged.

So there I was hanging out the left side of the van snapping photos while he came rushing at us! No kidding!

This was at 10 feet. Thankfully he turned around at that distance and rushed off of the side of the road. Our van was definitely not as large as he was and if he'd wanted too, he could have killed us all.

Ironically, one week later I was working on a house in Plano Texas. I came through the back gate and through the patio doors charged 2 very angry Great Danes. My first impulse was to turn and run, but then I remembered being charged by the elephant.

I through down my tools and shouted at the dogs, "GET BACK IN THAT HOUSE!"

I don't think they expected that, and they sheepishly turned and re-entered there home.

Kind of put things into perspective for me!

Morning's bells wake me and I step groggily from my bed.

Floor's cold touch creeps upward as I frantically find my socks.

Donning said socks cures the icy attack and I slip/slide towards my door..

and into the hallway.

Silently I ease open his  door and allow my eyes to adjust.

A lump in a fetal shape mounds the comforter of a twin sized bed.

I sneak on tipped toes to its edge and see my field of flowers.

So beautiful. So sweet, so asleep.

I lay down beside him and can feel his warmth even through the down.

"There's a Tyrannosaurus loose", I say, "Only you can save us! Please wake up Sir Joshie, and fight him for us!"

One brilliantly brown eye slides open and peeks at me.

"Super Josh, its time to get up, you have to save the world!"

I'm rewarded with the sun when the corners of his mouth begin to turn up.

The war has just begun. The eye closes and sleep is feigned.

I up the ante by brushing his neck lightly with one finger.

I know Joshua's kryptonite. It's the same as mine.

We are ticklish to the core.

He shivers  like a red wriggler on a hook.

"Daddy", he whispers, "I love you, but stop".

His breath smells so horrible/wonderful. Something died in there during the night.

I don't care, I miss that scent.

"Son", says his father, "It's time for school."