Maybe Writing is a way to get out of this…But that’s all it’s good for…getting me out of the current…but why do i want to get out of the current. “Poor people can’t see past their pain…” Thanks Dave Chappell. Now i know what’s been holding me back. Just being concerned with my own pain. How good am i at writing…to move people to want to buy my words.
What more can i do to maximize my potential? What IS my potential? What am i supposed to be doing while I’m here other than taking care of my sons…of which one doesn’t need me much anymore except to pay for things. If this is the pain that I can’t see past, how do i see past it to monetize my life? Is it fair to want to monetize my life?
I watch grown men play games professionally, and i wonder what i can be professional at that would pay me millions? I want to be in a different place than I am. But, i don’t know how to get there. I haven’t known how to do much for the life of me. A shattered femur led to a shattered life, and I’ve been wading through the pieces ever since. Who cares though? That’s the pain i can’t see past…the “Who Cares” pain. There are people who care. They won’t pay millions to know about this pain. Who would? Grieving deaths on top of deaths…so many things going a way that is far less than i would have hoped.
But i haven’t had much of an anticipation for the positive. So….how do i turn it around? How do i get back on a trajectory that was life giving and exciting? How do i do anything when i don’t want to do anything.
All that’s left for me right now is watching grown men play games at a professional level. What am i a professional at? Being Jonah’s dad. It’s making money, but not nearly enough for us to be exploring the world like we wanted. We….me and Julie….now there is no Julie…just what she was trying to build. A dream that was her’s. A dream now deferred. Not only a dream deferred, but a life ended. A life that wasn’t ready to be over. Her life. Our lives. Our son’s lives.
In ways unexplainable right now, lives have ended with the death of my bride. It’s not my goal to remain a “Poor Person” as Dave C. spoke about in his SNL Monologue. This early in my new life with grief and grieving it’s very difficult to see a hopeful future. I’m still dealing with a past that was abruptly altered over night. I was with my bride for almost 19 years. And in an instant, she was physically removed from my side. In a sense, being her caregiver gave me a front row seat to her slow and agonizing deterioration. A level of pain that made the restless leg syndrome she was battling feel like light feathers instead of raging hot needles.
What we battled together day in and night out was unfathomable had I not been there to witness it. The form of cancer she had wasn’t removable, or able to be minimized. And, watching her live with it, without any other type of distraction for myself, was also extremely painful. My love for my bride was tested daily. I didn’t always pass the tests put in front of me as I would have liked.
I know I am not a poor person as eluded to in the monologue, but I am a deeply wounded person who is just trying to figure out how life is supposed to work without my co-pilot. The one who would ensure we were engaged in the world outside of our house walls. So, I watch grown men play games getting paid millions to do so. And I wonder…is there a road for me that lets me get paid millions to do what I love doing? But…with grieving…I struggle to know what I love doing anymore.
The spiral can go up or down in an instant. There is hope in days because I still look forward to eating with my son. I still look forward to the days where we will be traveling to see my oldest son play volleyball! Or there is the dragging out of my days wondering when something will be different. I can only listen to Elvis Presley so much in a day, but I adore Jonah enough to deal with it. That’s all I seem to be able to just “deal with.”
Grief and grieving is painful for sure! It’s showing me how deeply my love for my bride went. Perfect our relationship was not. Littered with challenges was our day to day. Love was what kept us together. Hope in what we were building as two people living lives of unacknowledged loss. So much loss between the two of us that was never addressed. But, maybe that’ll be a topic for a later writing.
Until then, I will continue to enjoy the distraction of grown men playing games getting paid millions!