Time

  I have nothing but time. No money, no girlfriend, no fun or exciting things on my my horizon. But plenty of time.
   When I was married, it was the opposite. I never had time for myself. There were the kids, the wife, the constant maintenance of house and cars and yard. Now it's just me in my little apt. And time.
   I have tried to find a part-time job but with unemployment at 12% there isn't much out there. I work any OT offered at my job and I wait. I wait for time to heal me physically from the after effects of the cancer and surgery. From the emotional wounds, from the prison and solitude in which I now live. Time is my friend and time is my tormentor. And I wait.
   Einstein said that time was relative, that it wasn't a fixed permanent thing. It changed according to your place in the universe. My place is behind the eight ball. And so I wait. And I hope when change does come it will bring some positives to balance out all the downs of the past year. I have time. I will wait. I have no choice.

Milestones

  Today is the 18th birthday of my 2nd daughter.Last week my oldest daughter turned 30. I remember the days they were born and how happy and proud I was. To know I had a part in creating something as amazing as a new life is easily my greatest accomplishment and has always given me my purpose in life.
   And yet these milestones also tell me that I am alone again. Without them. Like so many fathers I have been delegated to a part-time parent through no choice of my own. We divorced fathers have to fight to be included and are never sure where we fit into our childs' lives after we leave the house.
   It's just another burden we shoulder as we try to move on. And its the heaviest burden of all.
   Cancer and death  never scared me. But living without them is a thought that shakes me to my soul.
    So I will get up in the morning and fight through another day and hope my love is there with them somehow even though I am not.

Quality

    I have been trying to come to a middle ground with my emotional well-being and I think I have come to an epiphany of sorts. It hasn't been easy, and perhaps I have been slower than some and maybe I have come to this were others never go, but at last I am starting to remember who and what I am at the core.
   The whole duality of man thing. Emotional/logical. I do have a German brain and a Sicilian heart. So I have tried to understand what I needed to do while wrestling with the irrational/emotional demands of my ego. For while the purpose of all living things is to exist and reproduce; us humans also need love. So when that love disappears where do you turn?
   I still have the love of my 3 beautiful daughters. They sustain me. And my family and friends. So there is love, and yet I remember this too. Quality.  The quality of a true and purposeful existence.
   I knew this at 14 and it still rings true at 53.At times it's made me feel alone to know I felt this. Most people are only concerned about the immediate things in life. How much money do I have? Who thinks I'm a great person? Do you like me?
  We are social beings and it's hard not to do the things everyone expects you to do even if you don't want to. I honestly have never cared. I have tried to live an honorable life. Life can take my possessions, women I give my heart to can reject me, but I keep my eyes on that truth. Living an honorable life and leaving this world knowing I have truly lived and loved and tried to improve the quality of my life by loving and understanding as many people as I could have.
   So I embrace my pain and hold it close. It tells me I am truly alive. If I were weak or numb to living I would feel nothing. If I didn't think or self-medicated my pain I wouldn't know true happiness. So I recognize my inner turmoil and smile. You haven't  beaten me. You have shown me the way. I will live another day and I will love another day regardless of the cost.
    What's the worst that could happen? Death? Everybody dies,
    And I will live my life on my own terms. Integrity and quality are the words that make me exist and demand  I reach ever and always for the higher plane.

Dreams

  I've finally stopped having dreams about my ex.  That life, our life, is starting to fade... It reminded me about my lifelong dream. It's the American dream. A wife and family, forever.
That was what I wanted. Not fame or riches. Just a family, and love. It makes me think of one of my favorite poems called dreams.
          Hold fast to dreams,
    for if dreams die,
       Life is  a broken-winged bird,
    Who cannot fly.      So it is time to begin the process of moving on. And yet I don't know how to start. At 53 it's hard to begin again. And yet it's also exciting and mysterious. Langston Hughes the writer of that poem had an answer to the dreams poem. It's called "A Dream Deferred"
    What happens to a dream deferred?
  Does it dry up
 like a raisin in the sun?
   Or fester like a sore---
 And then run?
   Does it stink like rotten meat?
 Or crust and sugar over--
   like a syrupy sweet?
 Maybe it just sags
    like a heavy load.
 Or does it explode?
      That is something I must discover myself. Weather I ever find love again or live alone until I go, it is my decision, and it is the unknown.

Hope

  Lest you think it's all doom and gloom, I still have always had hope. That's right, I am not religious, don't know if there is a God or if Jesus is the messiah, but I have always had hope. I don't know why either. It's just there.
  In my darkest times and there have been many, hope has always peeked in and offered a chance. For renewal,salvation, forgiveness, and a new chance.  So now in another time of testing and tribulation I say Fuck you fate, I will survive! You can't beat me. I will go down fighting. For my children, for the familia, I face the darkness, I am a man and I can survive!
  Love and family. Love and family, something neither one of the ex-wifes really understood. For me they are not just words. They are my code, my reason for being. As I have gotten older I've realized this on a deeper and deeper level. They sustain me and give me strength. The world crumbles before them and I am renewed.
  I feel sorry for people that have never learned that, who cling to money and temporary pleasures. Love conquers all-----------For to be truly free you must give yourself regardless of the consequences. Let the chips fall where they may. I will not change no matter the cost!

Survival

  And so it comes down to this. Survival. I have always struggled financially while I was married, and I didn't really mind. I always had my family, that was all I needed.
  Now it's just me. I have less than half the income I once had, and money is even tighter. 
  But that's not the hard part. Not having a partner to face the world is the hard part. Knowing that person has betrayed me and turned into a stranger is still a concept I struggle to come to grips with.
  So I do  not live. I survive, I exist.
   I savor every moment I don't dwell on this, and try to focus on the future. But my present is my purgatory. I'm in an emotional prison and I'm waiting for parole.
   The effects of the cancer and the surgery to remove it are still affecting me physically, so there is an added dynamic to my losing my married/family life. Who can understand or relate to that? Therapy helped me in my darkest time but I can't afford to pay someone to listen to my whining. My Mom has always done that for free. And now I have the people who might be reading my blog {Not exactly fun reading}  And so it goes...

The Demons

  Today I battled the demons. They torment me with memories and "what ifs". They tell me not to go on, there's too much pain and it's too hard. I hate myself for it, but I listen. They try to sway me with their perverse logic and sometimes I get confused enough to think maybe they're right. Especially when I'm having a bad day. And most days are bad days. The victories are few. I try to push them away and clear my head, and wait for the pain to ease and then I busy myself with something, anything to change the constant bad movie being played in my mind.
   Then, slowly, eventually, it will ease up and I can catch my breath.
    At those times I feel stronger, I feel like I can beat his thing and move on. And the demons sit there silently, waiting.
    I will soldier on, the war has just begun. My heart and soul are in the biggest firefight of their lives and I feel like I'm watching from the sidelines.

Creating a new life

  Well I have been alone and on my own for a couple months, so I am creating a new life now. I don't have the same bad relationship with my soon to be ex-wife [that's good]. And I'm not a full-time Dad [that's something I miss very much] but it is what it is. It cannot be denied. So I have tried to weigh the good versus the bad and draw conclusions and come up with some kind of order. That's the hard part. I don't know where I am anymore.
   I mean by that, I was always a happy-go-lucky kind of guy who rolled with the punches of a hardscrabble life and was generally happy, because I had family . Now they're pretty much gone. They're not here. I'm on the outside. Who am I? Pretty damn philosophical.. But I mean where's the ME now? The identity?
    I have always had a good sense of humor, I have always been able to make people laugh. Few things have ever given me more joy than to hear someone laugh over something I said. And now, well, I don't have that. Where did it go? I have struggled to find that guy and get him back. But he's been replaced and I miss that. But...I have developed a sense of empathy and respect for others I don't think I had before. I actually listen to other people and sympathize with their problems and it gives me satisfaction. Maybe I can grow and learn from this, and maybe this is the  start of healing. Maybe this is how it begins...

Loneliness

  Loneliness is the hardest thing I've had to deal with these past 6 months. I have been with my ex-wife for 23 years and our 2 children are 17 [18 this month] and 12.
   I have always put them first. There was never a time when I though of myself and now I have to re-adjust. It's so hard to change and it's not any easier, really.
    I talk to the kids everyday and the youngest, Emily spends 2 nights and 2 days with me, which helps a great deal. The teen, Alison and I have gotten closer and that's nice, but of course it's not the same.
    The pain is worse than anything I've ever felt physically. Some days I don't know if I can bear it.
     I think I'm in the "sad"stage now. I've gone through denial and anger and now I just ruminate over and over about the unfairness, the sadness of it all. I wish it was a bad dream, but it is reality and I have to get over it. I know that intellectually, but the emotions rule my soul, and laugh at my attempts to come to grips with it.
    Mother Teresa once said that loneliness was the worst form of poverty and I know we're you're coming from sister, I surely do...

Cancer and Divorce in the last 6 months and writing my way out...

   It started with a biopsy of  my prostate gland. The second one in two years. They shoot 12 needles into it. The prostate is the size of a walnut. So a biopsy is like a bad prison date.
   They confirmed it was cancer and told me to get a bone scan immediately, which I had to wait a week to hear the results from.
      My wife had  an annoyed look when we were told I had cancer and I felt strangely confident, I could face anything with her by my side, but I felt something when I saw that look, I didn't know what it meant. Only later did I realize the look meant a delay of her plans of starting a new life without me.
      The surgery was tough and I was pretty sore for 3 or 4 days. I also had a catheter for 16 days. It was hard but I was determined to get my life back.   
      After I was able to go back to work in 5 weeks, my wife started to want to spend more time with me. Romantically.  I wasn't yet fully healed plumbing-wise so I did the best I could and adapted with all the creativity I had. It was wonderful and I thought we would get closer, after so many years. 
      She had been going to nursing school full-time and working part-time and I had been working as many hours as I could and doing  most of the housework/child-rearing. We had a plan for me to go to school full-time and work part-time when she got her degree, I don't know when she changed her plan or why and she's never really explained it.
      One day the fun and games stopped. Romance was over and she became cold. She started posting come-hither poses on her Facebook pages and I found out later, talking with old boyfriends.
     Finally I kept asking her over and over one day  "What's wrong?" "Why the sudden distance and coldness?"
    She told me in a text message----I love you I'm just not in love with you.  
     She left 2 weeks later to spend a week in our old hometown getting drunk in our old hometown with "friends".
     My so-called single life had begun.