This past 14 months has flown.. and yet so much of the time went so slowly. I learned just how much of my so called life was centered around this thing called the Internet.. friends, lovers this blog, all gone with the flash of the internal error message. I learned it sucks being broke, and out of necessity I learned that when my back is against the wall I do what I have to.
This blog - what to most casual observers would probably seem frivolous.. this is where I turned with the proceeds of my life, good bad or indifferent. It was where I let it all out. Without it - I was lost at first. I had come to depend so much on my friends here in this virtual world, I missed you guys like you can't imagine. I have been trying to put this together.. the events of this past year, this may take a while.
That job.. lets see - when we left off things were just getting off the ground, - I did well, worked hard and eventually I actually even broke a sales record that hadn't been touched since 1985.. that was cool. I pretty much put my personal life on hold.. all gym and work, life was solitary, and so lonely I thought I would go utterly mad at times. Maybe I needed that, maybe it was just an easy place to hide. Lets face it I hadn't been lucky in love anyway, and my conquests while memorable were not paying my bills. Success or failure rested solely in me, and I was determined not to fail.
Success breads jealousy and contempt. That always sounded overly dramatic to me.. then I experienced it first hand. During the weekly Monday meetings my numbers were flown in the face of a lot of guys who had decades of experience, that had to be hard for them I am sure, but the stuff that got pulled on me was a tad over the top - to include being outed at work. None of which mattered in the end. I got where I got on my own, and when I interviewed and landed another position it was sort of cool to have the owner tell me I wasn't leaving and match the offer I was given.. even cooler when he exceeded it. More about all that later.
On the heals of this, in May of last year my Father returned from his winter away. Something was markedly different. The wall of ice that had existed between us was gone. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had accidentally bumped into him running an errand for my Mother - I had no idea he was back.. the man actually hugged me for the first time since I was.. gah I don't even remember. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop - carefully watching for signs he had been drinking, I was floored. He actually gushed about having heard about my conquests at work via "friends" I left there that day utterly stupefied, but in a good way. He called the following Monday to invite myself and the kids to dinner for Mothers Day, still somewhat stunned from the last encounter I of course said yes. (If you skip back a few posts you'll understand why all this was so left field.)
At work, I was at the end of a month that was nothing less than stellar. My love life was a zero, but for the first time in a long time that didn't matter. My kids were on course, my ex and I had finally rounded the bend to an understanding, I was in a very good place. The dinner was remarkable. One of those storybook events, for that afternoon - all the tribulations of the past had evaporated leaving only a group of people who really just enjoyed each others company. I left there that day feeling that while everything wasn't what I wanted it to be, I was content.
That following week I got a call from my youngest brother. I was in the middle of a closing and let my voicemail pick it up. The message was as follows: "There has been a serious loss, you need to come to Mom and Dad's now." I called immediately, he said he didn't want to go into it on the phone, but that I needed to get there now. All kinds of things rushed through my head. Immediately I thought it was my younger brother, I was convinced it had to be him. He had been drinking heavily since my oldest brother died and last time I saw him he was a mess... then I thought perhaps my mother, her health has been pretty bad. Well you get the picture, 20 minutes of worse case scenario's on the drive, and none of them correct.
When I hit the door at my Mother's My brother greeted me at the door, I didn't even hear the door shut when he just blurted it out. "Dad passed away last night." He had left on a trip the day before, and passed away after having stopped with his Motorhome somewhere in Indiana. They found the Motorhome door ajar, keys in the ignition, and he was slumped on the floor between the seats. The tears just swept over me.. I had carried all these things with me for so long, only to have him defuse me when I had finally accepted that he would never accept me, and all these things, all this emotion, and anger and hurt just flooded out. Then as I was leaving, I got this strange calm. It struck me that for the first time ever, wherever he was, he knew what was in my heart. All the things I could never say - he knew it all. The calm I felt was almost other worldly.
We truly were ok for the first time in memory.
It will be a year on the 23rd. I think about him all the time, and pray that what I felt that day was real, and he really does know what is in my heart.. it's all just love now.
