totally delusional

So it starts with something as simple as she is going to come back right...to gee, I think if I hang out long enough in a hip coffee place someone will actually pay attention to me and that will lead to some conversation, and wow new friend or relationship. Uh, yeah right.

I have spent countless hours in coffee places and my own brand of dinner places working and hanging out hoping that someone might notice me. Fact of the matter is, in the world we live in we are pretty well trained to look down, look away, and not make eye contact with anyone that wants something from us. If you live in a big city it is more a matter of self preservation. You add a pair of sunglasses and some headphones and you can virtually walk around without your invisible wall preventing anyone from getting in.

Problem is now I'm on the outside, desperately hoping that someone will let me in, even if it just for a simple smile or a nod, a hello, something. Hard because that's a lot of survival training to ignore. I started to realize how little I smile at other people. That must be kind of off putting, but I don't even know where to start…I don't know how to just smile at someone? What does my smile even look like at this point.

I decided that it was just silly to think I would meet new friends or someone that I would find interesting sitting in a starbucks or a restaurant, or a bar (at least the kind of bar I would hang out at). That lead to being more active and really trying to put myself out there. Which involved a lot more effort than passively sitting around and hoping that someone will notice me.

I felt like I needed to eat my own dog food which meant the internet would need to be involved. Here is where it all starts to go awry.

So I decided to start lowest common denominator. Craigslist. You can find furniture, a job, a box to move your crap, a car, a motorcycle, so why not someone to hang out with. It seemed really logical as I sat down to creatively craft my ad. I spent a lot of time putting my heart into it.

I posted it, and waited around. I got responses within like 20 minutes. I was shocked. I started opening emails to see what people had thrown back. Thrown back was more than right.

Yeah, there are three kinds of people using craigslist for this purpose:

1). The scammers. They put up a pleasant profile make you think that there is someone normal on craigslist and they might actually have something in common with you. They don't. They are doing one of three things: get you on to a sketch paid dating site, steal your identity so that they can be you and get people to sketch sites or worse, really get you hooked into something and steal your wallet digitally, or last but least sell you sex. If you are down with that cool. It gets frustrating. Now none of this happened to me, but you read about it and I have to say anyone that looked normal was basically someone phishing. I won't be surprised if someone calls me and says that they have seen my ad on craigslist, or at least some phisher with my photo and description out there trying to sucker some poor woman.

2). The freaks. They are just freaky, they are mean, they wantto suck your brain out of your skull. They are coming to get you, and somehow they can track your IP address through a million gateways to your exact location, and they are doing it now, and they are coming. Lock the door, arm yourself. I was utterly frightened by some of the responses I got from the freaks. They were utterly frustrating to me, some of them did have me checking the door before I went to bed.

3). Last but not least, the sad normal people (like me, but they really haven't figured it out, seems like they may have been at this for a while). I don't want to sound snobby, I do feel for these people because generally I was feeling like a sad normal person on craiglist. I certainly was sad, I certainly feel normal. The problem is the normal people have is that they all have been victimized by classes 1 and 2 Every normal person probably gets there about 3 hours with their ad out there. I know there were a lot of people looking at ads, I did it. I certainly wasn’t going to put myself out there and write anything back to them after my experiences with groups 1 and 2. So, if you did see someone that peeked your interest you end up writing a note like this:

"Hi, saw you ad. Wonder if you are real. You probably aren't. I'm not sending you a photo incase you are a scammer. I'm not going to tell you any thing about me, other than I like the fact that you like cats. I'm not saying I have cats, or that I even like cats. I'm just saying I'm glad you like cats. If you are actually real. Well have a good night, and I am not saying in any way that it is night where I am. You probably don't even care because you aren't real."

Really, how are people going to connect on something like that. The first one I got like that I was like WTF???!! What did that even mean? Then after another 20 minutes I started to get it. I tried to respond to one with something like "no, I'm real. I do like cats. It's night here. I hope you have a good night too."

I didn't hear anything ever again from her(?).

Yeah, by the end of the evening I pulled down the ad, stopped looking at other people's ads and went away pissed at myself for even thinking that was a good idea.

One ad said "fk u cl, I'll pay for match." Me too.

So I started thinking about match. I realized that I had already put myself out there with the ad on "cl", I had something to say and I thought it was reasonably clever. More importantly I had sat down to try and encapsulate my extremely 3d personality into something extremely flat and pixilated. Fun.

Yea, okay so here is the next level of delusional thinking I fell into. The people that you think are going to be attracted to you are not. At first you make these blind decisions like "oh she looks nice, and wow we both like animals and she even has a job, and look we both make over 100k a year." yeah. Okay, so, what the hell is she doing on match? Well, what the hell am I doing on match. Okay, sending an email.

Yeah, I received no responses at all to any of my most crafty clever emails. Of course all of these women were thinking to themselves what's the fat, bald, old guy doing pinging me? So I started to think about it. I probably have an over inflated sense of myself being able to attract the women that I thought were "hot". I'm not 30, I don't have an amazingly toned body, and I don't party in SF like I did when I was 25, I just don't. Okay, so reality set in. Stop sending email to 30 year old party girls who are doing a few things: corporate climbing, hiking Mt Tam daily, surfing, skiing on three continents, climbing rocks, and drinking their weight in crappy beer every weekend. I would find that exciting for about 20 minutes. Again, superficially, those were the women that appealed to me, until I realized it would be really painful to actually date any of them. I want to be able to have a reasonable conversation with them, and certainly not trying to chase them up mount tam on my road bike, how are we going to discuss anything?

Oh and a demographic observation: every woman between 28-36 just loves to camp. They even have picture of their camping adventures. Its usually just one, and then you look closely and you see a bathroom and a car in the background. This is just outdoor out of city partying with your favorite crappy beer. I mean come on. Really? No, really? Is camping really considered that hot of an idea? I think guys take women camping because it is a cheap way to keep them captive drinking beer and likely screw outdoors. I don't know, I know I am ranting now, but I was truly amazed and unimpressed. Maybe you have to put camping on your list for market parity. Whatever.

Oh, and I have to admit one other thing; people that seem too much like me, I had to avoid. There was one woman that was like the cute female version of me, but I was almost worried that we would be like brother and sister. There was another woman who seemed really cool and she winked at me, but she was a user experience consultant. I figured we would spend our entire time arguing about user centered design, or user centric design. It just seemed like our "religion" might get in the way.

Now here is where it gets interesting. The women that pinged me. Okay, I was amazed at how many of them started pinging all at the same time. They were all older, they were mainly tall and skinny, a lot of them had children, but they were all EXTREMELY introverted. I'm thinking to myself, hmm, they would probably find me exciting for about 20 minutes. Then it dawned on me... ok, they are doing the same thing I just got done doing. They think that the younger and hopefully more evolved guy is going to be the "boy" that they think they should be able to attract. I just looked at their accomplishments, their well manicured looks, and the background of far and exotic trips, and well designed houses. I realized that I could not be that refined. I didn't have enough game to roll up to their McMansion in Danville in my reasonable priced car with the coffee-can muffler and the flying lizard racing sticker on the back window. I also didn't get the sense that my occasional belch or need to drive fast, and listen to crappy 80's music at top volume was going to be appreciate especially around their 15 year old kids. I might be a potential bad influence.

Then I turned off the computer and sat back and thought about the problem for a while. I also started to realize what an impossible situation this was turning into.

I decided to edit my profile. Be completely honest, just less descriptive, change up the main profile image to something that was a little more fun, and a little less close up. I added a few more one liners and was a bit more snarky.

It immediately dropped my skew to 30-40, still getting the mothers here and there, but I was now shocked at the number of people that have a similar set of interests to me, and oh dear, they are actually normal and a lot of them were really cute, at least to me.

So now here comes the next level of delusional thinking on my part. I decided to lay back a bit see if anyone found me attractive. A few did, enough to "wink" and send emails.

Finally, i get an email with a profile that really fits what I'm looking for, both realistically as well as what I kind of hoped for. A snappy email, saying how cute I am, and how interesting my profile was to them. Now because I am prone to delusions; I'm instantly smitten. Not in love... I mean, for god sakes I know nothing about this person, she could be a serial killer. But it is the first person who has been 1) nice, 2) paid me some complements, and 3) seems attracted to me & is attractive to me.

So we engage in some back and forth and exchange some witty banter, and finally it comes down to: hey, I think we should meet. Her: "yeah, let's meet, when are you available?" I responded.

Nothing.

I sent another email explaining my timing had changed a day later. I thought that was a responsible thing to do. Nothing. It's been three days.

Nothing.

I was crushed. Sad, I admit. Crushed. It was like getting removed from my house all over again. Obviously nowhere near as painful. But again, I had put myself out there and had been crushed. Can we actually trust anyone at this point? Kind of feeling like no...

So, I wrote it off, wrote her off, and shut off all of the email alerts etc. It wasn't a revolt, or a "f this" like cl, but it was something that set me back to reality.

I think my two biggest takeaways from this, one I have written something descriptive about me and put it out there in public, to be reviewed, scrutinized, and on the whole ignored. I did it with little regard for the fact that I was putting myself out there, which I think was a big hurdle. The other thing that I've learned is that everything needs to be approached with reality, and with reality my decisions get a little easier to push forward, it reduces my fear of being out there, and things seem imminently more survivable. All of those skills seem like a necessity for putting yourself out there for dating.

Beyond that, I am trying to put myself in the shoes of the people on the other side and trying to be humane where other's haven't been quite so nice to me. I hoping that somehow that karma pays off for me.

Confusion

…and that feeling of really not knowing…anything.

I realize that my sense of well being changes on a daily basis and I am highly susceptible to anything in my environment. I catch a cold like a 5 year old in a kindergarten class without flu shots. Well no, not actually (trust me I prayed for the killer strain of H1N1…something that would take out the entire Sunset District in San Francisco, or at least the Muni train). I actually feel like my sense of well being is effected by everything. Work, conversations, the coffee, difficulties with anything.

I can't really ditch the feeling that I am being ditched. I feel like I have been put out with the trash. Worthless. I think I'll save all of the feelings of worthlessness for some other blog entry. I don't think I have the strength to go into that abyss today. That and I have to stay somewhat focused or things at work will seriously hit the floor.

I don't know how long I will be alone for, and lately I have been worrying about wheter or not I have totally f'd up my afterlife along with this one. I did stand up in a church and do that whole celestial bond thing. My mom seems to have conveniently bent the traditional Catholic bend, by saying that the whole vow ends with until deth do us part…meaning we are free of that bond after we croak?! Ok. Sure. I guess I'll have less in my after life by fucking the universe here. I guess Steph and her new husband and their kid will live in the bigger house down the block. Maybe me, Tiff, Phil, and Daisy can hang in the hovel down on 40th. You see how my craziness had gotten me to this place.

I guess I don't even know how to fix the here and now and somehow I am worried about what happens after I die.

I have been reading on the internet that these are reasonably "normal" thoughts and feelings. Your sense of loss takes over and you are going to go through this rollercoaster of emotions.

Things are fine. No, wait, no they aren't (too much cream in my coffee). Wow I can't believe how angry I am, I mean for god sakes I did everything I could for her? Oh, geez, I'm sad, I hate being alone, who's going to pass me the gravy at Thanksgiving? Do I still get her a Christmas gift or a Birthday gift? Oh, wow what the hell am I going to do for Christmas?

I actually miss her.

What the hell is the matter with me? No, things are fine. No, wait they aren't (our client just bailed on a multi year contract). Wow I can't believe how angry I am, I mean for god sakes I did everything I could for those people. FUCK, now I am sad again.

Steph used to at least listen to me when these things happened. Now where do I turn? As messed up as it was, a major part of my life has been completely removed and I am left not knowing how to fill the void.

How do I tell Hootie from Hootie and The Blowfish from the singer in the Counting Crows? I guess I'd have to ask them both to sing.

Lastly, in this space of confusion. I start thinking about my friends and my family. Jeebuz the burden I have placed on all of them. Which is the worst for me. I have spent my entire life trying to stay out of the burden space…well unless you are Steph, then you probably doubt that I understand the definition of the word. True. I have such a hard time asking for help, asking for support, and asking to not be alone.

Again, everything I read says that this is a very natural reaction to this situation…well because I guess most humans feel broken and humiliated by this situation. Uh, yeah, that one I don't think is too confusing. That one landed square and I can check that one off.

So what to do?

I don't know. Breath?

No, I think you continue to ask questions, wonder. It's killing me, but I don't really know what else to do.

Did I mention it is killing me?

Oh, but let me thank the people that support me, and that I have burdened: mom and dad, Jeff, Sarah, Jennifer, Jennifer, Damon, Christina, Sara, Miriam, Alan, Dave, the starbucks in downtown Campbell, the starbucks in Los Gatos, the Starbucks on Battery and Clay, and who could forget the starbucks at Levi's Plaza…oh and a shout out for Levi's in general for getting me through last week with their building size ad campaign at Levi's Plaza. Oh and I guess Los Gatos Coffee Roastery.


The soundtrack for this blog was provided by Neko Case, Agent Orange, Frou Frou, Pink Martini, China Forbes, The Shins, Zero 7, and the Sneaker Pimps…and feels a bit like endless sumer crashed into garden state.

Sadness

Okay, so it is truly something you never expect. I know I certainly didn't. You come home, you get into a fight and one day you are alone.

I'm alone. For the first time in a long time. Some context:

I have been married for 7 years, almost to the week. I have known my wife for 20 years almost to the month, and we dated, lived together, or were married roughly 16 of those 20 years. I started dating her about 3 weeks after I graduated from college, and with the exception of a few months of being separated, I pretty much have spent almost every day with her. If we didn't see one another we at least spent some amount of time talking on the phone. Suffice it to say there's a significant hole in my life with her pared out of it.

So what happened?

Well, I wish I could say that it was something dramatic (well not really). It is still painful and dramatic enough without something catastrophic. There was not cheating, (that I know of), there was no smack across the face or anything like that. What there was: a lot of yelling with no one listening, a lot of mean spirited comments in both directions. Two incidents, one on each side that distinctly showed that we could have cared less about the other one. The kind of thing that leaves a deep scar, and something that you can apologize for and make go away. No matter what, you kind of can't take it back. Overall you have two people that have lost respect for one another over a series of a thousand and one cuts. None of them life ending…just another injury.

For the sake of privacy and my own sanity I will not give the details of all those abuses, they are irrelevant at this point. It is definitely one of those things for each of us that we wish we could take back. I know there isn't more than a couple of days that goes by that I don't think about my crappy treatment of my wife, and unfortunately there isn't a few days that go buy where I don’t think about how poorly I was treated.

I just don't know how it went from best friends, lovers, to married, and then finally to two people who are at bitter odds with one another despite the repeated mantra and veneer of "we want want it to be better, more humane, more caring." I haven't really seen that humanity from either of us, and despite being sad (extremely sad) there have certainly been many times over the last few weeks that I have been defensive and spiteful based on feeling hurt, scared, or ias a result of a protective shell I've buit, ready to do battle to continue to protect myself.

Most of all I just feel sad. It's a sadness I can't rid myself of no matter what I do. All of my friends have given their helpful and not so helpful anecdotes.

"time heals all wounds."

"this is the start of a new life for you."

"you'll be better, and you will find your real soul mate, it just takes time"

"you're better than this, and it is good that you finally figured out this was a crappy situation"

"there are other fish in the sea."

So I guess everyone has kind of said some derivative of the person before them, of course I am thankful that they will even listen to me…but what do you really say to someone in my position. I know they are all struggling with it as well, and a lot of them have been there themselves. Here's what I boil it down to:

Yeah, it's going to hurt, and probably for a long time, and of course I am sad. The situation was crap, and (logically) good I can finally see this. Umm, my special someone is out there somewhere, uhh, hmmm, not sure I would even think to look at this point. Though I know I don't want to be alone, at least over the long term.

And I guess if I read between the lines of what some friends have told me: "We never really liked her anyway." Or maybe the slightly softer way of putting it "you guys just aren't good for one another."

Yeah, again, logically I get that. I see it, and everything in me says it is right, but the freaking pain that I am feeling is so acute, so evil, so hard to stay focused on anything else.

I don't remember a presentation I gave to 20 people in a large room at one of my clients last week. I heard it was a good presentation. Probably because I have great support from my coworkers who are some of my best friends.

There are so many things that remind me of her, that it is hard to not trip over something or forget about something that ultimately brings me back to thinking about her and what we were (good and bad). I mistakenly went to the church that we were married in, actually I made a conscious choice to go there to meditate for 5 minutes before walking in the door of my old house to deal with the finances. It slipped my mind that the place I have turned to for sanctuary all these years would be an extremely painful reminder of our relationship and the vows we took there. We vowed to figure out our problems and not leave one another alone and destitute, but sometimes the thing you swear up and down to do are the things daily that you seemingly forget to do.

I lost it. I just started bawling in the back of the church. At that moment I knew just how broken I was.

…so now what.

You know, I don't really know. I think that there are a lot of good and bad things about this situation. I am just going to start writing about them and see what happens. See if is anything that makes me feel better.

There are certainly good days. I have a lot to be thankful for, I know that. I have great family, and amazing friends. I have a lot of people that like and value me. It's just that the person I have spent the last 16 years with is gone. It's a giant void, it creates a lot of uncertainty and doubt in me. I know it will get better as time heals that wound and I start fishing again. ;-) or whatever the blend of that ends up being.

What I've learned to date:

1. Being alone sucks, but I can choose to not be alone all the time. I can hang out with friends and I can hang out with family. If I can't see them daily, it is good to check in with them on the phone.
2. It is good to be busy and doing different things
3. It is good to reach out to people I haven't seen in a while and see what they are up to. Expanding my social circle has always worked well for finding business and getting ideas about my work. In this case it is just good to have support and new ideas.
4. Trying new things, and looking at things that I might have been restricted by in the past that are now open to me. Independence I haven't had really since I was about 23?!! Was it really that long ago.
5. Trying to understand "why" is more and more pointless as each day goes by. I have natural curiosity, and I have a natural need to explain myself. I guess if either one of us really cared or were really willing to listen, and more importantly do anything about it….well we would have when it mattered, the why. I am sure I will deal with all the painful stuff in time, and I am sure that I will process through. Maybe then addressing my own "why". Likely, I will never be able to explain why to her, or understand her why.
6. My memories of the past are mine, and they are never going to changed (good or bad) by anyone. My reality is my reality, is my reality. That is comforting because I can remember things how I chose to remember them. I can stick to the past pieces as I want to see them, and see the pieces I want to. I know that it will all get processed through at some point, but for right now I can look at the good and bad as they come. Not worried that everything is going to be changed by something that someone says.
7. Right now every day isn't seemingly any easier than the last, I am surviving, and right now that is a struggle. Based on all that I have been through over the last 30 days, I imagine it is going to be a really long time before I start to actually feel better.
8. Sticking to a feeling helps me deal with it. I go a little nuts when the feelings change from happy to sad to angry, to sad all in a 60 minute cycle. That is exhausting and it feels like a loop I can't break out of.

I have to take this one out of the numbered list but it is something I know: there will be mistakes, nothing is always as it seems, and there is nothing to say that set of feelings won't continue. I also know there is no going back. It's a sad reality, but as much as I wanted to fight it, a fundamental truth.

No, I haven't lost my fight, I am just admitting it's over. Like it or not, it is time to move on.

Some other crap I can't shake...

I will never sleep in my bed again, I will never come home again to my wife, we will never cook dinner, or hang out on the deck. It's like part of me has died. Unfortunately we are both still walking around about to meet to discuss our bills…which will send all of these feelings through the same wash, soak, spin, dry cycle again.

What do you do?

Breath.

A new leaf

So, a number of things have definitely changed, but as i now read about the past 2.5 years a lot of things have remained the same.

I took down some of my more bitter posts. I am trying to look at everything with fresh eyes, and a different perspective. it's hard, but i know it is the right thing to do.

Nutshell:

Again moved out (though this time for good).
Getting a divorce.
It's difficult, and it is complex. The things that you expect are never quite what you get.

I have been writing about the experience in sequence, and that seems to be hard to do, because it changes daily. Some days are really great, and some days are so dark. Super dark. This week has been dark. Like stock up on Sominex dark. But some how that would be stupid and too too easy. I think one thing i have realized about me is that i am stupid in other ways, and determined to fight for something better.

I think the path has been set, though i have no idea where the path leads to, and for someone that likes to plan things it is hard to just let it go and keep moving.

For once I don't know.

I think i am getting comfortable with that.

"stay tuned"
"see what happens"
"stay curious"