Thursday, July 21, 2005

A New Beginning?

I just read my entry from Tuesday, and it's funny how I say that my opportunity with "Laurie" has magically appeared out of nowhere, no thanks to any improvements or efforts I have made recently. Not true. I am starting to get more in touch with my spiritual side, which may have had to happen in order for anything between Laurie and me to work, but the point is, it's happening whether Laurie is part of the picture or not. After all these years of resisting any kind of influence by my God on my life, I am beginning to realize that if I don't let my God into my life, I'm not going to ever have a life. It's been 29 and a half years of resistance on my part to "let go and let God," so to speak. What do I have to show for it? Heartbreak. Bottom-of-the-ocean depths of self-esteem and confidence. No education. The feeling that I'm running in circles and that nothing has improved in my life. And most importantly, every attempt by me to put my trust and love into a person resulting in catastrophe because I didn't have that trust and love for my God or for myself first, which maybe, just maybe, is what "Karen" meant when she said that our relationship was "doomed from the start." Basically, what it comes down to is, when am I going to go a different direction and let spirituality guide me and see what happens? Because all of my resistance to let that into my life has resulted in, all things considered, a pretty fucked-up life thus far. As my aunt has asked me many times, when am I going to try something else, since my way has obviously not been working?

I had a spiritual encounter last night. One of the cassette tapes that the never-to-be-identified burglars stole when I moved into my apartment three years ago was "Real Love," by Lisa Stansfield. For those that don't know, she is a British singer with a powerful voice and old-school R&B flavorings in her singing and music, and I enjoyed listening to her music immensely. The entire second half of the album "Real Love" contains some inspiring singing and songwriting, but there's one song that was always special to me: the last song, "I Will Be Waiting." She doesn't harmonize with any other voices on the song, it's all Lisa, belting out a typical I-understand-that-you-have-to-find-yourself-but-I-will-be-waiting-for-you-when-you're-ready-for-me lyric but doing it in a way that makes your heart ache for her and at the same time makes you pray that you can someday find someone that loves you that much. Well, I ordered the album, on CD this time, from Amazon.com, and I played that song last night for the first time since it was stolen from me years ago. And something in the lyrics made me envision my mother singing to me from heaven, and I don't believe I ever heard the song in that way before. "I will be waiting for you/Waiting for time to heal your wounds/And I will be thinking of you/Knowing love will bring you back to me, cause our love is true," goes the chorus. And I saw clouds and my beautiful mother singing those words to me, telling me that she's waiting in heaven for me to straighten myself up and earn my way up there with her so that we can be reunited. And my eyes teared up and my throat started feeling dry and swollen, and I just buried my hands in my head wondering why I have spent so many years doing things that would make my mom so not proud of me if she were alive. I'm not going to be perfect from here on out, but I have got to make things right between me and my God if I ever hope to spend eternity with my mother. Because the way things stand right now, with some of the things that I have done in my life to other people and to myself, if I died right now, I don't think I would be anywhere near heaven. And I don't even want to think about the physical punishment I have vowed to hand out to any supreme being upon my death. Usually I make those vows after some other incident of bad luck has happened to me, without thinking about what I could have done to not put myself in the position of having that incident happen to me. Yes, I have a lot of anger inside me.

If anyone, Laurie, Karen, anyone were to read this blog and be happy for me that I have finally figured out that I can't ever have the life I want without "letting go and letting God," that's fine, but it is not about other people and how they feel about me. If the day ever came where I joined a church, and boy I didn't think I'd be considering doing that right now, my prejudices about other people and my fear about what others would think of me wouldn't matter either. I have the feeling that so long as the relationship between me and my God is okay, nothing else would matter. I have the feeling that I could walk into a church with someone I hate--Karen, for example--and hold her hand and pray to my God to give me the strength to forgive and let life continue and go along its intended path. I would be able to walk down the street and still assume that no women find me attractive because of my weight and perceived ugliness, but I could be okay with that because the type of woman that would not want me in her life because I'm fat is the type that I wouldn't want in my life because she's ignorant. I could walk into a job interview without fear of rejection because I would have a sense of purpose in my life besides finding a job, and therefore it wouldn't be as big of a deal to me. Mentally, spiritually, maybe even physically, I could find a love for myself that I've never had. It would be a whole new way of living, and then the soulmate that I've been looking for would come into my life, and I would actually be ready for her instead of worrying that it's a mirage and she wouldn't stay with me for the long haul because she can do much better. I'm not there yet, not by a long shot. I'm still weak when it comes to the flesh, and I still don't believe enough in myself to do something radical like dump "Torrie" for no reason other than I don't see her as a future wife. But maybe I'm on my way. And that's better than I was a few weeks ago.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Premonition?

My friend Cassandra tells me that the dream I had last night is a premonition that "Karen's" lifestyle of taking men's hearts and breaking them is about to catch up to her. I don't see how even if Karen is about to go down (not by my hand) I would find out about it, but I guess we'll see. The dream shook me so that I had to call Cassandra when I woke up even though she was in the middle of getting ready to go to work. I had Karen on my mind because Sunday night she updated her Yahoo profile with the notice that she "got a new tattoo...pics to come later in the week." My current dilemma makes it more pathetic than ever that I'm checking up on Karen, but I'll talk about that shortly.

In the dream, I'm still working at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, which gave me the opportunity to read the newspaper every day because I didn't have to pay for it. I don't read the paper now. But I was reading the paper in the dream, and I read one day about a murder in Milwaukee. Didn't think anything of the person arrested for it because I had never heard of her. Then the next day, I read that a second person has been arrested in the murder: Karen. I was shocked. That night, a phone call came at 3A, but it was a co-worker that I had fooled around with before. I figured she maybe wanted to talk about Karen, but true to her real-life nature, the co-worker wanted to talk about herself and some problem she was having. I hung up. The next day I knew I wanted to find Access Hollywood or some tabloid show so that I could make some cash from this. "Yeah, the Milwaukee killers...I know one of them, very intimately. I'll talk for $20,000, take it or leave it." But before I left home, I saw the film of the arrest of Karen on the news. She didn't look like herself. She had lost a considerable amount of weight, and she had straight black hair, which may have been a wig because Karen once told me about getting drunk on a cruise and putting on a wig as part of the drinking. But she was harried and didn't look like the Karen I had been with. I remember getting so close to the TV to check the area codes on the phone numbers on the signs of the surrounding businesses because I couldn't believe they were in Milwaukee arresting Karen because it didn't look like her at all. And then I got too close, and all of a sudden I was part of the arrest. Yes, I became one of the arresting officers. And I got off a zinger worthy of Law & Order before I woke up. I was putting the cuffs on her, and she said that I was hurting her wrists, to which I responded: "Come on baby, you and I both know that this ain't the first time you've been in handcuffs, so just relax like you do with your other niggers, and it won't hurt so much." Then while I read her her Miranda rights, I woke up with chills.

Cassandra says that I became part of the arrest because I was so eager to be a part of the downfall of Karen that I put myself on the scene, "like Fat Albert going into the TV in the movie," she said. I don't know how I'm going to see this supposed fall from grace of Karen, but boy, if it does happen anything like I dreamed, then I will never doubt spirituality or karma again. I hate dreaming about people that I want to see but I can't. And I don't even want to see Karen to be with her again, just to see her, just to see that she's still alive so that I don't happen to miss her eventual demise, which would be one of the best days of my life. Apparently I'll see her new tattoo soon, so that will have to do. When I was dating her, she mentioned wanting to get something Chinese to signify sisterhood as a tribute to her sister. Since I found out about her lies, I've vowed to someday get something in Chinese that says the equivalent of "Karen sucks dick" or, if they don't have a translation of Karen, just "K sucks" or "K is bad." Scar my body with the memory of a whore? Why not? She scarred my heart forever.

And yet I am getting better. Doesn't seem like it I know, but I am. For one, I am now about 95% sure that I'm going to be a mouse and never go up to Milwaukee or Brown Deer or Lake Geneva or wherever this bitch lives and get my revenge. I've discovered that most of my hurt from what happened does not come from Karen herself betraying me. It comes from being betrayed by my first white lover, which is what Karen was; I met "Sarah" a few weeks after I first slept with Karen. You see, after not dating at all for six years after breaking up with "Giselle," my high school girlfriend and the first and so far last black woman I've ever had sex with, when I got up the guts to meet Karen I thought that she was the exact woman that I was looking for when I decided to date a white woman. She didn't give me any lip, she didn't have an attitude, she was loving, caring, and she seemed to think that I was the shit. Yes, the lack of communication and sometimes distant behavior from Karen were red flags, as was the DUI. But those I ignored in order to keep my fantasy alive. And when she asked me to move up there with her after I told her that I was soon losing my job, I was in heaven. I thought this woman was going to take care of me, welcome me into her family (she said she was gonig to introduce me to her parents several times, but never did), show me a peaceful, serene way of living, and most of all, would never hurt me or belittle me like Giselle and just about all other black females in my past did. I mean, for God's sakes, I gave Karen a cheesy poem I had written, and she acted like it was the most profound piece of literature she had ever received. She kept telling me every time I did something small, like bring her roses or a birthday present or a poem, that she wasn't used to being treated so well, or that no one had ever done that for her before. So I thought that I was going to be the big black man in her life, her king, not ruling over her but the object of her innermost desires and wishes, and she my white queen, the center of my world. And when I found out that it was all a mirage and everything she had ever told me was a fucking lie, I lost it. Not just my sanity, but my hopes and dreams and, most importantly, my ability to trust. It's not Karen that I miss. It's the first white woman to treat me like a king that I miss. But realizing that made me see that I can't make Karen pay for doing that to me. It's not her fault that I picked her as the first white woman I loved and trusted. It's my fault. Karen is not attractive. Karen does not have a great personality. Losing Karen was not a great loss to me. Losing that dream was.

I said that my relationship issues highlight how little Karen means to me currently, because she has nothing to do with the decisions I am going to have to make. The "white queen" in my life right now is "Torrie." Why? Um, I don't know, because she doesn't go running when I approach like everyone else does? Seriously, I've known for the duration of our "relationship" that Torrie and I aren't very alike. She's a smoking, drinking, bisexual freak who happened to flirt with me in an online group, and after being screwed by "Jane," I called her flirt and, without knowing what her deal was, raised her and dared her to meet me for a weekend of no-strings sex. And because we haven't had any friction between us, despite her attempt to dump me once because she didn't know if she could commit the time to me, we've stayed together, despite never once actually committing ourselves exclusively to each other. I stepped up the intensity by inserting love into the equation, but did I do that because I really felt it for her or because my insecurities made me believe that I had to do so in order to keep her interested? Or maybe it was to keep myself interested? So anyway, that's where I stand, in a long-distance relationship not because I sincerely want forever with Torrie, but because I don't want to be alone, even though I am alone, waiting for her call every other day or so, talking about nothing because we don't have anything to talk about. Even when we talk for two hours like we did Saturday, I come away feeling like she's just trying to justify herself to me so that she doesn't look like the desperate, lonely woman that she is. And still no love back to me, even as a friend.

Enter "Laurie."

Laurie is a lady on the very same site where I met Torrie that I have been chatting with for a few weeks. She has been trying to convince me that I am a "damn good man" and that I should want the world for myself because I deserve it. She also has insisted that she will make the trip to Chicago to spend time with me when she gets the free time and the money. And she thinks I am attractive, and she says that she needs a "teddy bear" to make her feel safe and comfortable, and she wants to get physical with me. I have a hard time believing in her and trusting her. Why? It's simple: She's slender, blonde, and attractive. In what alternative universe would a slender, blonde, attractive woman have any desire to fly to Chicago to meet a fat black dude with no money? But she says that she feels like we could be soulmates, based on our similar histories dealing with the loss of our parents, and our similar histories dealing with lack of self-esteem, and our similar histories dealing with lying, backstabbing ex-lovers. (At least I don't have to work with mine; Laurie had an affair with her married black supervisor, and despite the affair being over she's still at the same job, fueling her desire to go away somewhere when she can afford to, somewhere like Chicago, for instance.) We chat every day, and every time we chat I feel something pulling me toward her, as if she possesses that love and caring and nurturing that I have been looking for all my life. Personality-wise, I can't remember feeling so strongly about someone. She has such a strong spirit, and she's such an optimist. It couldn't help but rub off on me if we were to spend time together, and goodness knows I need a positive person in my life. But it's too much to spend time with her and not become physical; I just can't imagine seeing someone so attractive sitting across from me, and she thinks that I am special, and I can't take it to the next level. I bet we would be great lovers too. My dilemma is that Torrie hasn't done anything to deserve me cheating on her and lying to her, but she hasn't done anything to deserve being dumped either. If I look at the raw situation and take out my feelings of a deeper connection between me and Laurie, what I would be doing is taking what Torrie and I have, a great sex life but a lot of distance, and trading it for what might be a great sex life but might not, and a lot of distance. Doesn't seem to make much sense. My deeper dilemma is that fate has not been on my side for the first 30 years of my life. I haven't been very lucky with my decisions. Simply put, it's a "seems to good to be true" situation. Without doing anything to improve myself, except going to school but I didn't meet Laurie in school, I have met the woman that can take on the task of making me feel good about myself, nurturing me, building me up, making love to me and not just having sex with me, thinks that I will be the man that she wants in her life, and she's attractive, and she's not over 200 lbs, and she's not already married or a parent, and she can actually have kids, which Torrie cannot. Oh, and she loves the same smooth jazz artists that I do, and she wants to start a fantasy football league with me. Come on. If I start seeing Laurie and let Torrie go, all I can see in the future is a line of excuses sometime next year as to why she can't see me, work, money, etc, while she starts spending more and more time up there in Detroit, where she lives, with someone else, someone more like a real man than me, someone actually in shape, someone with, you know, a job. And finally, a big break-up as she explains to me how fate simply said that she and I weren't meant to me, but she just knows I will recover from this to see my real potential and never settle in a relationship again. Meanwhile, she's off to be with her new soulmate, and I'm all alone. Again.

The funny part is, there is nothing she can say to guarantee that it won't shake down that way. All the spiritual feelings she has, all the good feelings she has about me and how I can be the man that I want to be, all of that doesn't guarantee that she won't someday wake up and look at my love handles and my pot belly and my breasts and think, "Wow, I can do much better than this." Hell, she might say that the first time we sleep together. And what I have now with Torrie may not seem like much, but at least she accepts me in her life and in her bed, and that's better than what I have with Laurie right now. I have nothing with Laurie right now. But I do fear that I could be passing up something with Laurie that would be more special than Torrie, or Sarah, or Giselle, or obviously Karen, or anyone else that I could ever hope to convince to be with me romantically. Basically, if I let Torrie go to give Laurie a shot, I will be unleashing the love and trust that I have held back ever since I let it go onto Karen and got burned for it. Can Laurie handle that? What if she can't? Then what do I do? Why do I almost come to tears every time I chat with Laurie, as if I have never chatted with someone who knows me so well? What if I never meet anyone as special as Laurie again? If I stay loyal to Torrie, what if Torrie lets me go after a while because she finds her soulmate? Hell, what if I'm just a man-ho and I get with Laurie and meet someone else that thinks I'm a damn good man? What if I can't trust anyone deep enough to commit to her monogamously? I haven't been sleeping well lately with all these questions swirling in my already mixed-up mind. I'm going to have to step up and be a man and make some hard decisions real soon, and whether they are the right decisions or not I'm afraid I won't know until it's too late to do anything about it.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Lost

I'm sitting here at my computer on a day off from school, and I feel completely lost. I'm trying to see a side of my life where things are going okay, and I don't see one. I already know my personal life is shit. "Karen" keeps updating her Yahoo profile with meaningless stuff like "I got extensions...lol," teasing me as if to indicate that I have no business still checking her profile, which I don't. "Torrie" and I are about to have The Talk, because a long-distance relationship where only one person makes the effort to see the other can't continue without The Talk to see where everyone stands exactly. And considering my past luck with dating, I don't expect The Talk to have a happy ending. And where will that leave me? Checking Torrie and Karen's profiles until the day I die?

The academic side of my life I suppose is going okay, but it's going very slowly and it has no future for now because I don't have the money to take any classes this fall. My friend Cassandra explained to me how much she's paying in student loans and how long she has to pay it, and fuck, there's no way I'd be able to pay off that kind of money. She tries to make it sound okay by telling me that she would never have her $41,000 per year job if not for her degree, so it's paying for itself. I remind her that this is me we're talking about, so a job paying that much ain't in my future no matter what degree I have. And as further proof, I present my dad, proud owner of a business degree for over 30 years and still living like a homeless person. Success just isn't part of my makeup, unfortunately. That's part of why what Karen did still hurts after 16 months. Stupid me finally thought that I had succeeded in finding a good quality woman that loved me and found me attractive. I should have known better.

My unemployment benefits are about to run out, so I attempted to bring in some income with online gambling. No surprise that didn't turn out well. I deposited $1,000 into my sports betting account from my credit card over the past month, and I won a few bets and built my account up briefly, but soon enough my usual bad luck caught up to me and wiped me out. Even worse was my poker luck. I finished ninth in a 700-person tournament online a few weeks ago, and that turned my $5 entry fee for that tournament into about $110. There's nothing in that account now either. All the tournaments that I've entered since I've been bounced early from them, even the ten-man single table events that theoretically would be much easier to win than a 700-person marathon. I mean I have been knocked out with some great fucking hands too. For instance, and this will sound like a foreign language for non-poker fans, but in one tournament my two down cards were a pair of 7s and of the four community cards out there, one was a 7 and one was an 8, and the other two were lower cards. That means that I have three of a kind. So when I go all-in, putting all 1,200 of my chips on the line, and two different people with more chips than me also go all-in, I figure I'm screwed because to go all-in, these people must have good hands, and if either of them have a pair of 8s, then they have a better hand than me. They both had the same two down cards, a 5 and a 6. That means that they went all-in not because they already had a good hand--they actually had nothing--but because they hoped that the last card in the community would connect their 5 and 6 to the 7 and 8, giving them a straight, which beats my three of a kind. The 4 or the 10 would do it, but if neither came, then they would both have lost all of their chips and been knocked out of the tournament by betting on a straight draw that didn't come. That's insane, to put all your chips on the line even though you don't have so much as a pair! Of course, they were playing against me, so the last card was indeed a 10.

So, here I am, still trudging along but completely lost as to where I'm going to end up. Even those who aren't where they want to be at least have a sense of direction. I feel like I have nothing right now. I spent the last year with a doctor trying to find a way out of the maze that is my mind. The only thing I found was my money missing after every session. So fuck that. But I'm feeling more and more desperate for something to change as I approach 30 years old. I feel like I should have something to show for making it that far. But I won't have a wife, I won't have a family, and unless I knock off a bank, I won't have anything of substance. I might not even have a job or a place of my own. And every night I go to bed, I'm wondering: When does it get better? Or does it ever?

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Always A Sunrise

Taken from an MSN group message board...thanks Foxxi!

ALWAYS A SUNRISE

Look out, look in. Every day has a sunrise.
Wherever you are, like a magic circle, the world is all around you.
Everything has a purpose. Every action a reaction.
All around you there are happenings.

People, places and ideas, all offering you opportunities.
Some to be touched and changed by the very nature of your uniqueness.
Others to be left alone for they are not worthy of you.
Life is a love affair. Love the people around you, love what you do.

Every day dawns with a sunrise. Always, high days and low days.
Blue skies of pleasure, there to enjoy. Celebrate.
Dark clouds of storming hurt, however black, they always pass.
Today was yesterday’s tomorrow; yesterday is gone. History.
And the wonder of yesterday is whatever we didn’t like is behind us.
Make a change. Unlimited you. Greatness from within.

There is no such thing as failure, only learning experiences.
Some things are easy to learn, others hard.
What is easy for one may be hard for another.
Lessons to be learned, not burdens to be carried.
Everyone is different. Everyone is special.
We are all creative. We are all tool makers.

Greatness and humility. Both are you.
Leader and follower. Warrior and water carrier.
Teacher and student. Champion and cheerleader. Who is to say?
One day you are one, the next day you are the other.
Pace setters tread the untrodden path.
Never given away your sunrise day of action to an excuse.

'When the time is right.' 'When I feel like it.' 'When I've enough money.'
Sometimes it’s too easy to justify not taking action.
Sometimes you have to say 'no' to your inner voice ...
when it tries to keep you too comfortably where you're at.
Always a new light. Always a new day. Each day a gift of opportunity.
There is always a sunrise even when it is far from our view.

There is always a door. We simply have to seek.
There is always a key. We simply have to persist.
And, sometimes, we just have to wait a while. Patience does have virtue.
There is always a future. The future is hope and the magic is faith.

It begins with you today. Today a new day. Always.
Today our decision to be the person we really want to be.
Today our choice of courage to accept what we cannot change.
Today our choice to rise to the challenge of changing what we must.
These are the choices of happiness.

Always an answer. You simply have to believe.
The dawn. The magic of a new day given to us.
A love affair. A love affair with today.
Today, a gift of opportunity; to laugh; to learn; to achieve;
to make someone happy, to be happy.
Always a sunrise.


~ By Rex Barker

Friday, July 01, 2005

Inspirational Words To Live By

Taken from an MSN group message board...thanks to Trish.

And yes, I realize how ironic it is that I, the ultimate obsessive little boy that won't let past hurt go, am posting this. But something inside of me realizes that this is the way to do things in life, and maybe someday I'll shock myself and everyone else and actually get it right.

Inspirational Words To Live By

Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one so that when we finally meet the right person, we will know how to be grateful for that gift.

When the door of happiness closes, another opens, but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one which has been opened for us.

The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch and swing with, never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you've ever had.

It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives.

Giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they'll love you back! Don't expect love in return; just wait for it to grow in their heart but if it doesn't, be content it grew in yours. It takes only a minute to get a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone, but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.

Don't go for looks; they can deceive. Don't go for wealth; even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright. Find the one that makes your heart smile.

There are moments in life when you miss someone so much that you just want to pick them from your dreams and hug them for real!

Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do.

May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to make you happy.

Always put yourself in others' shoes. If you feel that it hurts you, it probably hurts the other person, too.

The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.

Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried, for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives. Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss and ends with a tear. The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can't go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.

When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.