Day 304 - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly...

Life hasn't gotten any easier since my last post, but it has taken a turn towards the ridiculous. And I mean that in a positive way.

As an actor I have played every role from DC Comics' Batman to Mary Shelly's Creature created by Dr. Frankenstein; I've rhythmically race baited as only David Mamet could pen upon a page, and fallen from Presidential Grace as Richard Nixon when dissected by David Frost with surgical precision. But I've never ventured far from home when stepping upon the stage for every performance.

Today I find myself 1400+ miles away from where I landed in January after my life was aborted and the woman I loved abandonded me in Charlotte, NC leaving me homeless almost a year ago. (You can read my initial posts from 2015 to get the history) This week I find myself on the road in Virginia on tour with a small band of brothers performing a Vaudvillian style western show where I play a sort of Bud Abbott Town Marshall accompanied by a Lou Costello Deputy who have to deal with a couple of bad guys deadset on shooting the Marshall as they pass through town.

I'm pushing 50 and have never been on the road as an actor. The irony in this is that I would have never considered this over the last 15 years. There were always those whom I needed to provide for at home - either financially or as a proverbial punching bag for either of the past mates I tied myself to because of my extremely poor past judgement in women. And now after losing damn near everything I find myself the perfect specimen as a "touring actor." Still homeless and broke for all intensive purposes I find a small amount of stability at last becoming somewhat self sufficient for the first time in a year.

And it is Good!

On the flip side I find myself missing my best friend. She who scooped me & my Frances (the cat) up out off the street, managed to stop my drastic 50 pound  poverty & starvation weight loss streak by feeding me daily. And loving me daily. Making me feel wanted again daily. Giving me back joy and laughter daily. Finding my inner child at long last again and giving him back the world as a playground, while having the love and patience to pick him up again and again when he falls down. I love her dearly and miss the kisses she restocks into the dimple on my chin every so often as to "keep my chin up" so they don't fall out! I miss my Frances who, I am told, has been roaming the halls crying and searching for her Daddy! I miss them terribly....

That is the Bad...

The Ugly started on I-40 as we drove by an interchange to I-77 --> Charlotte, NC... 

All at once the pain from my past life overwhelmed me and tears erupted as I looked through the trees rushing by my window. Memories of a family camping trip and white water rafting stabbed at my heart. Sleep was soon invaded by nightmares of a love lost clawing her way back into my peaceful dreams, ransacking every corner of unconsciousness. Like Poe's Raven, casting it's shadow upon my chamber door. An unwelcomed reminder of all I once had... Nevermore...

However, upon opening my eyes and waking from the bad dreams I find myself on the road realizing I no longer need what I once had. It would be an obstacle blocking the stage door that opens up to the sight of smiling children who greet me before and after every performance. And in those smiles I am reminded of why I love what I do and do what I love - why I act. Because it is only there that I am reminded that pain is fleeting, and the joy both given and taken on the stage overcomes a lifetime of sadness, if even for a moment. Followed thereafter by  homecoming kisses filling up an empty chin dimple, and purring yowls of joy twisting through my ankles. ☺️

Day 53 - Blue Christmas.....

Cliche right? The Elvis Presley version of that stupid song just rattles around in my head... I feel like I need to get a rhinestone cape and some gold sunglasses!

I've had old friends from times past reaching out with love to prop me up. And I feel it, and I am grateful. But the sadness of my loss keeps creeping in....

Every day I do my best to let go and push through. But this week has been extraordinarily rough. I think it started when I picked up a couple from a Christmas party Sunday night and was witness to a "make-out" session in my back seat. Two lovers enjoying the Holiday Season together. Since that night I cannot help but see couples walking hand in hand along My Beach. Sharing their love together and enjoying a sunset. 

It hurts. The pain of my love, family, and life lost has swelled into an excruciating ache that I cannot seem to tamper down this Holiday Season. I find myself wondering what She is doing, and what the kids are up to, how the family Christmas will be at her parents' house... It is driving me into a mad and self destructive state. Work doesn't seem to bury my heartbreak this week. My eyes fill with tears driving down the road. I cried myself to sleep last night.... God, I just want to hold them all again!

I hate Christmas! I wish it would hurry up and be over so I don't have to listen to anyone else tell me that they "don't want to see anyone spend Christmas alone - that's just sad!"

No shit!

This hurt will too pass. Time will lessen its sting. Christmas will end as quickly as it came, and I'll go on healing on My Beach. 

But the storm surge came back... With red tide this Christmas...

Day 38 - Happy Anniversary, my Darling...

I write this blog with my own tears flooding from my eyes. And in complete disbelief I say this to the one I love more than any other soul I've encountered in life - For some idiotic reason I am still in love with you, and the void I feel from your loss gets deeper each day. 

I write this to YOU, as I have no other means of communicating with you - You have forbidden any communication lest I be hauled off and incarcerated... (Hence my own disbelief in writing this...) I know you'll see this. And I am forever now trapped in the "Why? Wherefore? What?!?" of it all. 

3 years ago today I found myself completely under your spell. And from what you have told me about our first kiss, you fell under mine. I have never loved another human being as I loved (and still love) you! I remember the anticipation of going out with you a second time! I remember how frightened I was the night we first made love... You were (and still are) the most beautiful woman I have ever set my eyes upon! I remember the countless nights we stayed up until well past dawn just talking to each other, without ever searching to find something to say. I remember you telling me very explicitly that if I wanted to be with you I had to accept the "whole package" of you, your daughter, and your son. And I remember wanting that with you more than anything in the world!!!

I held you up when you were weak. You kept me going when I thought all was lost. You always made it a point to find something positive amongst the chaos and seemingly never ending cycle of turbulence that blasted a hole in the lives we were working to build with each other. 

We BOTH made mistakes. I am not going to point fingers at either of us. We BOTH know where the mistakes were made. We BOTH know the truth and the fiction (I know far more than I ever let on), and that lies between us, and only us. 

I have always been honest with you, and will continue to if I am ever granted the opportunity to communicate with you again. My anger and wreckage were wrong. I regret all of it. You successfully forced my hand to face my greatest fault head on, and work to overcome it. And I still am. 

But my emotions did not manifest themselves without provocation. For every reaction there is a causing action. I know what you did, and were doing for a considerable amount of time. And I did not want to believe it. The final lie broke something great in me to which I snapped. My reaction was wrong, and believe me when I say that I will regret it for the rest of my life. I have no excuse. But your actions that followed had no place nor justification. 

I have never fallen so far, so fast, so deep, and so hard, than into the bottom you threw me into. I still look back in complete disbelief that THE only human I trusted more than any other on this planet could be behind all of it. I know now that you had influence, but even so, you cannot fathom the darkness of the pit you cast me into. You held me like one who would hold a spider, or some other loathsome insect, over the Pit of Hell, worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the Fire. I felt like a disobedient dog dumped under a highway overpass and abandoned. 

You claim that you did what you did because you felt "helping the one I hold dear in the only way possibly left, I'm doing the best thing I can do for everyone involved. It may not be easy for anyone, but it's the only way that open-minded empathy can continue to survive. Help, Assist, Care, Support ... Not Shun"

To be brutally honest with you, you have now risen to the ranks of BOTH a liar AND now a hypocrite. Your actions damn near killed me - and not just from my overly inebriated self disparaging state of mind by my own hand... On three separate incidents after my regrettable actions on 10/10/15 I found myself facing my own mortality from others wanting to take my life from me. Of which, the most prominent still leaving me shaken, when someone had a loaded gun; a 9mm muzzle pressed against the side of my head... That happens ONCE and one tends to find out pretty Goddamned quick what kind of person one is. Your "Help, Assist, Care, Support" - DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO YOUR SHUNNING OF ME (despite your self serving written words) left me homeless and literally fighting for my life. 

Even finding my Mother's corpse almost 30 years ago at the tender age of 16 - her body lying across the backseat of a 1988 Oldsmobile Delta 88 with all doors & windows open in the vehicle, a Lionel Richie tape playing in the car - in an enclosed garage full of toxic exhaust - her body already stiff from rigor mortis - her blood settled in a giant purple blotch across every surface of her skin in contact with the back seat...

EVEN THAT TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE has taken a back seat (no pun intended) to what YOU put me through! 

"Help, Assist, Care, Support..." 

Guess what? I could do without that kind of help, assistance, care, and support!

You took EVERYTHING from me! Not just every material worldly possession I had fought to save after a 3 year battle with my ex-wife, but you took everyone I knew and loved away from me. 

YOU TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME!!! 

You took my love, my family, my friends, my pets, my "stuff," my home... 

YOU STOLE MY LIFE!!!

And NO ONE has questioned it!!!

May God Damn you for that one day. I think we both believe that Karma is a vindictive bitch. We have both seen Her come back around and justify the wrongs wreaked upon us... The Universe IS watching and listening...

And that is how I let anger, fear, aggression, and pain manifest itself in me now: I write it down. I don't smash and break things like an infant child having a tantrum anymore. It is no excuse, but that is all I had to learn from growing up and watching my Father. Again, IT IS NO EXCUSE! In a twisted way I need to thank you for forcing me into the mindset and existence I now own and employ.  Were it not for your actions evicting and excommunicating me from my former life and past self, I would not have begun this journey of self discovery. So, again, I have to say Thank You for that!

And even now, somehow, after all I have been put through - all by your hand, whether you know it or not.... A ward of the state in an asylum (and let make make it perfectly clear right here & right now that I am NOT mentally ill!), the homelessness by surgically removing me from the life I knew, the uncontrollable tears alone in the dark, the overwhelming pain ripping through my soul every minute of every day, the love inside with nowhere to go now, and the seemingly unending loneliness I find each and every day now... Even now, forgiveness flows forth and my soul still aches for you. You have been the first soul in my life where that forgiveness has landed. One word from you and I would fly back as fast as I could - as wrong as it seems - I would take you in my arms in a heartbeat- if only to hold you once more...

You will never be "dead to me" or "blacklisted" by me as such I have to the wrongdoers of me in the past - forever written off and forgotten to me, as you well know...

You are still uncontrollably loved...

I love you unconditionally... I miss you exponentially... 

Happy anniversary, my love... I am eternally sorry for how things ended, and I mourn each and every day because of it!

I am working very hard to live again. To trust again. And to love again... I don't know if my broken soul will ever heal from its damage. But I'm willing to try! I will take the lessons you taught me and make every effort! 

On my beach...

In my new life.....

Where you still live in my heart with my love......

And will forevermore!!!!!!!

I am so utterly sorry...

I love you....

I miss you.....

Happy anniversary, my Darling......

Day 26 - The True Meaning of Thankful!

I just wrapped a 24 hour shift so that I can reach some personal financial goals for next week. I even got a phone number from a pretty woman tonight for the first time in 3 years! The full moon shined down on me yesterday, and last night for a change, instead of turning me into a wild, howling animal it brought forward light, hope, and love of humanity! 😊

So, before I bed down for a well deserved nap today, I wanted to express my Thanks to The Universe...

I am thankful for a roof over my head! 

I am thankful for the food in my belly, small amount as it is (but I need a flat belly if I'm gonna wander the shores of My Beach)! 

I am thankful for the gas in my tank! 

I am thankful for the hundreds of souls beaming with positive light of whom I have met over the last month - restoring some of the faith I had in humanity! 

I am thankful for witnessing a breathtaking sunrise just before I call it a night. 

And I am thankful for those I hold closest and dearest to my heart - the ones who watch over me from this world, and the next!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! After you read this turn to the person closest to you and pull them tight to you, and tell them why & how you are thankful that he/she is in your life and suddenly wrapped in your arms!!!

L