So this blog is all about me. Mostly about my life and the what's and why's of how I got here, from my own perspective. There's no way to start at the beginning, so I'll just pick a point and expand. I've done social services work, variously, all my life. Over the last 10 or so years, when I'm doing my ministry, spreading the good word as it were, I begin with what is possibly the single most trans-formative event in my life - my divorce from my first wife. Don't worry, the story has a happy ending.
I always wanted to be a Dad. As I look back on things, I'm really not at all sure why - maybe it's how I was brought up: be a good son and have a child. I should ask my mom. Still, that notion of how cool it would be to someday have my own family with kid(s) - drove me. Perhaps it drove me too far - but I have no regrets at all. Through the ups and downs I've come to the realization that I am living a charmed, dreamlike existence which must be or should be statistically impossible.
Back to the divorce. Well, way before the divorce there was the marriage and dating. Basically there was this relationship that I fell in love with. I often think that I was in love with the idea of being in love - so much so that I was incapable of seeing that this person who I was in love with, or had this fantasy about perhaps - she was in love with me too, but there weren't enough commonalities to make it work. It seemed many times like things were either 'whatever' or 'NOT IN A ZILLION YEARS' but at least there was communication.
Of course, after a while, the communication dried up and that left silence. A lot of it. Ok - without going into details, because frankly I have forgotten a lot of them, the marriage lasted a few years and right after we made a child, a beautiful little boy, it fell apart. It was pretty clear to me, and I think to her too, that it was over when it finally was OVER. It was sad at the time because I'd finally achieved the 'family' and it was going away. I was pretty bitter. My first transformation came from this ending.
Years earlier I had a friend who told me horrible stories of how his father had treated him and his mother - quite abusive treatment, really - all centered around the fathers anger that the mom had divorced him. I did not want to be THAT DAD. I was really afraid that I could end up like that, drinking too much and angry all the time - and that anger affecting my son in a horrible way.
So I got myself into therapy and told the therapist what my goal was: essentially to forgive and move on the best I could. I met with that therapist for 6 months and the whole time I swear he was living vicariously through me. I was doing the work and he was just listening. There was very little of what I might call guidance. And I was paying him. But he was a nice guy and I liked talking to him so I guess it was worth it. I once asked him if he was living vicariously through me and he readily admitted that he was. You see - it was more than just the deep personal work required to make such a transformation real, it was the whole picture of my life at that time.
Note to self: try and describe that personal work beyond what my goals were/are.
The 'whole picture' included tales into places such as strippers with exceedingly liberal attitudes about right and right now, women I'd woo online or through a variety of avenues - some more than others, and then there was the undercurrent of 'work' which I was determined to do. As I look back on it now, those were very dark days, and at the time although I was convinced of what I had to do - I didn't believe that I could actually do it.
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