3 a.m. confession

I find that at 3am when I wake, it’s not the same world I left when I fell asleep. Things are darker, more solemn. I think about the other people, like me, up at this hour, wondering what has happened to the light. Not the sun…but the light. Where did that happy go lucky woman disappear to. Why now is there someone who doesn’t think there will be a good ending to this story. The jokester, the prankster are gone and now I have only my thoughts and myself.
It’s quiet here, and not entirely uncomfortable. No distractions. No tricks of that light to make me feel good. I can hear a hum that is my lifeline running out and about into who knows what. We are all alone in our aloneness. Why I don’t know, but there is really no one to help you when you feel like this. A call to a therapist will give you tools and reassurement. A punch of a button and you will have that Hollywood ending that you think you desire.
But what happens if I just sit here?
Quickly the burn behind my face starts the well of tears behind my eyes. What has happened in my dreams that has been so terrible that I’m here safe in my house about to cry? So many questions and the hum doesn’t answer me back.
What if I follow that lifeline out. What then? Where does it lead? Is there some great bearded creature reading it like a ticker tape? Right and wrong good and bad, marking your lifeline until it runs out?
In the end sleep comes back and the light has returned, but this confession has been marked and remembered.

Affairs: prerequisites for politicians and a no-no for me personally

We’re used to them being corrupt…why are we so surprised?

John Edwards admits to extramarital affair

Former U.S. senator and Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards admitted Friday to an extramarital affair. He denied being the father of the woman’s child, as had been alleged in tabloid reports. Edwards told the network that his rise from “a small town boy in North Carolina” who “came from nothing” to a successful lawyer, U.S. senator and national public figure “fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want.” (CNN)

No alimony for wife of gay Former Gov. Jim McGreevey

Former Gov. James E. McGreevey will not have to pay alimony to his ex-wife, a judge ruled Friday in granting the couple a divorce after a tumultuous eight-year marriage that crumbled publicly when McGreevey acknowledged he was a “gay American.” A superior court judge ruled Friday that McGreevey, the nation’s first openly gay governor, must pay $250 a week, or $1,075 a month, in child support for his 6-year-old daughter with Dina Matos.

McGreevey, now a seminary student, said during the couple’s contentious divorce trial that he’s too poor to pay alimony. (365gay)

…

If the Marriage Wasn’t Magic, the Divorce Can Be

I’m honest…to a fault…

My friends can watch a roller-coaster of emotions race up and down my sleeve. Some have even adopted my strange social behavior, due to this convulsion of emotions. These friends might be hosting a party and in the middle, one might state “I’m pulling an H“…and walk quietly upstairs and go to bed. Sometimes I’m already there and so the two of us snuggle in bed and enjoy our existential silence, while the rest of the party and our girlfriends are otherwise occupied. Now you might think that’s strange…which it is…but strange is one of the medals I wear on my lapel proudly…my other one is moody. Great shields those two, and I find as couples go, there’s usually one of the two that can identify with me in this regard.

Here’s the other fact. I’m just not good at hiding anything. Anything…

This becomes a slight problem for a surprise party for friends, but my girlfriend loves it.

She’ll know I feel strongly about something and just look at me, and I blurt it all out…usually in a big dramatic display. Think death of a star explosion when angry, and subsequent black hole when sad. Of course the other half is light from heaven when happy and still deep water when content. It’s a wild ride, I promise you, and I can’t always say that I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think my friends can see it coming also…that’s why they point me to the upstairs. Quasimodo…up to the bell tower with you, before you threaten to kill everyone in the room or pledge your undying love for each of them. I know it sounds a bit extreme, but the pendulum does swing very wide with me.

So what happens to me when I’m hiding upstairs in my friend’s bed and someone “pulls an H”. Maybe I’ve been doing a little drinking at the party. Maybe we both feel like talking and realize how much we understand each other. How much in common we have. How different from out girlfriends or boyfriends we are. Maybe I’ve never looked at her this way. Maybe I’ve always thought she was attractive. Maybe I wonder what it would be like to lean over and kiss her right then. Maybe the idea of something new is a turn on. All these things are maybes, and can anyone say that in 12 years of a relationship they have never once been attracted to someone else? I won’t make you answer that, but I will.

Yeah…there have been strangers on the street and longtime friends that I have had all those thoughts about. The funny thing is I realize them for what they are. Feelings…emotions. That lifelong roller-coaster ride that I’m on. Sure I beat myself up about the “wrong” feelings, but I can also take a step back from those feelings and ask myself what’s behind this. Why am I feeling these emotions right now? What is the pull? Physically? Emotionally? Accept it, surround it, look at it. This one step back gives me a larger and clearer picture. Maybe I see ego and consequences, maybe I see too much wine and insecurity…but what I always know is that I could not ever see the look on my girlfriend’s face if I were to do something so stupid and selfish. I’ve been on the other side of that coin…and I forgave someone…twice. In the end our relationship didn’t work and we went our separate ways. Hindsight is 20/20 but I really wish that she had had the courage to tell me something was wrong. I’m not perfect…how’d you like to be saddled to a moody artist like me?…but I can say without reservation. I will never cheat on my girlfriend…

…and my girlfriend knows it.

I could be upstairs in bed with a good friend snuggled up together whispering about how our girlfriends should be together so they can have all the parties and we should be together hiding in our holes, and my girlfriend can come in and I will not have a bit of guilt on my face…because I know what I have in a wonderful wife of 12 years, and I know what I could loose in a dear friend that understands me…and I have made her a promise that had a ring attached to it…and I want to never have that secret between us. That guilt would destroy me. I could not handle that weight. The funny thing is that I think my friends know it too. I think they know it because they’ve made those same promises to their girlfriends, and so we can joke around, and flirt and tell each other how great we still look in a swimsuit and there’s no hidden agenda. No tension. It’s all good.

Was I always so honorable? No. I had a run in my 20s where I was going from girlfriend to girlfriend with a bit of an overlap. The pattern was to get to a certain point in a relationship 6 months to 2 years and look for something new…the honeymoon was over. Then I grew older and my relationships grew also. I started to see a new kind of love bloom after the honeymoon seed had been buried. 2 years went to 7 and I hdd the idea that I would stay with this person forever. Even that wasn’t written in stone and that relationship ended…and now I’ve made it past 12 in the one I’m in. So what now? I know better. I know that what you might think you will gain from an ego boost you will loose 10 fold. Maybe things aren’t right the relationship, but hiding from them by staying in that relationship, and having an affair is not the answer. Will i stay with this woman until we both die. I have no idea. Right now, it is enough to know that I don’t want to be with anyone else.

So what is it about these politicians that’s different? I think Edwards hit on something in his admission statement.

“a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want”

I think it’s so true. The stereotypical Type A personality: driven to succeed, you tell yourself that nothing is unobtainable. This person also can justify any actions witch will further his or her own success and perceived happiness. the ends justifies the means, and of course the end is “me”. I’m not sure if I want to throw stones here or not. I’m just superstitious enough to think I shouldn’t, but I want to know why this seems to be a habit among politicians. What about the desire to direct and govern the country is linked to the thought that “you can do whatever you want“? Maybe it’s like the thought that surgeons on a whole are egotistical and self absorbed. The thought is that you have “god” complex to cut someone open and think that you can save their lives. I think it goes without saying that doctors are known for their promiscuity among hospital circles also. The end justifies the end. I deserve this because I save a life today. I deserved this because I have the fate of the country on my shoulders. Of course the other side of this coin is that you are lying and justifying it. Where is the honor in that?

The evolution of pain

They told me I could go into that first recovery room…the PACU. I didn’t know they don’t let anyone in there. When I was in that recovery room I saw something I’d never seen before. I saw people that were so helpless it frightened me. They came wheeled in from surgery, naked except for a gown and groggy from anesthesia. As soon as consciousness touched them, they began to moan from pain. Pain from being cut wide open. It was primal. There was no dialog, there was no reason, just this childlike cry of pain. No thought of who would hear, just the cry for help and release. No blood, no incisions. These had been carefully covered. That was what I expected to see, but this was much worse. The helplessness. The pain. You’ve gone willingly to sleep whole and have woken up with something taken out of you. And now you’re awake and can feel the very place it’s been taken.

I believe in evolution…I believe that we have evolved and things are there for a purpose. Physical pain. An indication from your body that there is something wrong with it. Something that needs to be fixed. You were sick, in pain, and something had to be removed. A part of you that you were born with, has gone wrong…gone bad…take it out and you will be better. Pain is that indication…you’re willing to be cut open because you know something is wrong. Take it out remove it…remove the pain. We are animals then. Pain takes us back to that. We want to stop the pain, we want to be better. Do what you will to take away the pain.

Survival, free from pain. Maybe they go together, maybe they don’t. We’ll follow this base instinct. Our bodies telling us there is something wrong. But what about emotional pain? What is wrong then? What needs to be fixed. If it is all just our perception why have such a thing? This emotional pain. It hurts just as much, but who’s there to fix it? We are animals then, wanting the hurt to go away. Lying there in just our gown crying for release. But what is the test to see what needs to be taken out. Who is the surgeon that can operate? It hurts in my heat, do I remove that? I no longer want to think about it, do I cut out my brain? What do you remove so that the pain will go away? How do I survive free from pain?

I’m in the middle of everything

I’m in the middle of everything that scares me. Everything that hurts. Everything that calls for my attention. Everything that demands, wants, and needs, and calls, and pulls, and forces.

A hurricane of glass and concrete swirling around me cutting and biting. People demanding my attention, jobs requiring my accountability, bills to be paid, debts to be settled, futures to be secured, pasts to be laid to rest. This storm boils and churns and I fight to stay upright…to see what needs my attention the most…but it all comes so fast, and all the cuts hurt.

I hear people I love calling for my help and my instinct is to reach out. I’ve been fighting for a while and I’m strong. For some reason their storms seem easier to calm. I can see thru them…so I do. Struggling so long with my own storm, it’s impulsive and satisfying to solve this problem…calm this storm…at least for now…and at least for them.

But my winds are jealous and strong and I soon feel their pull and am drawn back–maybe feeling better from helping someone else–maybe I feel worse. I’ll give my storm the attention it demands, a dutiful Dervish to my storm god.

But last night I dreamed I was standing on a remote island beach. The sun was high in a cloudless sky, as I walked from palm trees towards the water. In one hand I held my fins, mask and snorkel. In the other a stick. With it I wrote 3 questions:

Where did we come from? Where are we going? What is my purpose while I’m here?

I put on my gear and walked into the water. As always when I dive and snorkel, a simple peace overtakes me.

I’m not Helen anymore.

I am just now. I am clear blue water. I am a single yellow tang in a school of thirty. I am a smooth deep breath. I am a warm and cold thermocline. I am soft sand and hard coral. I am a young sea turtle swimming along the reef, looking up to a hand extended from above.

And as I walk out of the water and awake from my dream, I notice that the tide has come in and washed my questions away and I can’t remember them. And I think…does it matter?

How To Become Evil: Chapter 3

The Tools

It’s a poor workman who blames their tools. If that was the case then we’d all be still chipping stone wheels and eating raw meat. What do I mean by that? We always blame our tools, and we always want better ones. Progress…bigger better tools. Technology. We’ve been trying to make things better since the beginning of time.

Even in Eden we were changing the menu and dressing for dinner when it really wasn’t called for. That’s gotten us to this wonderful place called the future. All this technology to make our lives easier…or is it simpler?…does it matter?

The not so old saying goes…if they can put a man on the moon…my ending is– why do we need to go the moon. Why not stay right here and be content with what we have.