the_outer.net’s blog

Love Is Not Science

Yesterday
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I love my children. I love them more than my own life. I can't even measure their worth to me in any sort of tangible way. Their love is unbounded. It has no end. They never get tired of me, they never lose love for me and they accept me as another flawed human who lets them down, who gets mad at them, but ultimately gives them all the love they could ever need. They've really been my rock and my strength in a lot of hard times. As many of you know, I've been going through a rough period lately, and I've really clung on to my kids to try to find my way out of it and help it all make sense.

The other day I was having a particularly heavy pity party and I was sitting at my desk when I was just overwhelmed and started to cry. I'm man enough to admit that sometimes emotion pours over me so massively that I can't process it all. I will say that it's been years since I cried over anything. When my grandmother died, I cried for a while and then it was over. I knew she was in bad shape with failing health and mental capacity, so although I knew I'd miss her, I'd heard for over 30 years how much she loved God and wanted to be with Him, so I just couldn't mourn for her in the traditional sense because I knew she was happy and healthy and exactly where she always wanted to be. I guess my family felt I was cold-hearted because of it, but my grandmother and I had an understanding that death wasn't the end, it was merely a transition to another life - a better life. At her funeral I felt remorse, but that feeling was blanketed by joy and - honestly - quite a bit of envy.

So anyway, I'm sitting at my desk just broken down and my son Tyler comes in the room. He doesn't ask what's wrong with me, he doesn't say a single word to me. Slowly he climbed into my lap, laid his head on my chest and cried. We just sat there holding each other and crying and that will always be one of the strongest and most precious memories I'll ever have. He didn't care why I was hurting, he only cared THAT I was hurting and that was enough. After a minute we stopped and he still didn't ask me what was wrong, he simply said "I love you, daddy". That meant the world to me. He did eventually ask me why I was hurting and I said "Sometimes adults just get sad. I'll be ok."

I say all this because on the 3rd of July they'll be flying down to Florida on vacation and will be gone for three weeks and I honestly don't know what I'll do without them. They have been my strength in these hard times and now I don't know what I'll do without them. I wish them a safe trip, lots of fun and all my love.

Is Any Of It Real?

4 days ago
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Regina Spektor - Real Love (Lollapalooza 2007)

All my little plans and schemes,
lost like some forgotten dreams.
Seems that all I really was doing
was waitin' for you.

Just like little girls and boys,
playing with their little toys.
Seems like all we really were doing
was waitin' for love.

lonely to be alone,
no need to be alone.

It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real.

From this moment on I know,
exactly where my life will go.
Seems that all I really was doing
was waitin' for love.

No need to be afraid,
no need to be afraid.

It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real.

Thought I'd been in love before,
but in my heart I wanted more.
Seems like all I really was doing
was waitin' for you.

lonely to be alone,
No need to be alone.

It's real love, yeah it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes, it's real love, it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love....

Another Post

4 days ago
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Well it's a lonely day when someone you care about doesn't care about you anymore. I know life will go on - it is going on, but that doesn't seem to help at the moment. I'm not so far gone as to think I'll never find happiness again or that I won't eventually be happy again, but it sucks to invest so much time and love and energy into someone who ultimately was able to just move on seemingly with little effort. I'm sure we've all been in this situation before. I'm not experiencing anything new, but it's just so hard, especially coupled with the fact that at the end there was so much hatred.

Again, I know a lot of the blame falls on me, but surely not all of it. It came down in the end that she wanted to be with other people and me hanging around (and worse - hanging on) was making her feel bad for her decision. I really do wish her well. Even after the end of it all, I still can't find it in my heart to summon as much hatred as I was shown, and I guess that makes me a weak fool, but that's just who I am.

The Ultimate Coldness

4 days ago
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Well I just had the last conversation with the girl in question. I know she was wound up from me trying to make peace with her, but she basically just broke it down that I wasn't shit, I was never shit and I'd never be shit. Ever. I don't know where you have to go to in your heart to be able to judge someone so completely, and I'm sorry for her sake that she has to be that way. I really am.

Granted, as I've said on this blog before I haven't been a great guy, but come on. There's no one on this planet that is so contemptible for daily actions that you should ever be in a place to tell them that they're worthless and not even worth knowing ever for the rest of your life. For every bad thing I've been, I've surely been some amount of good. She seems to discount all the times I comforted her through hard times and all the times we laughed and cut up and all the good times we shared. It all boiled down to I'm not worth knowing and I just needed to go somewhere and die.

I'm sure with a lot of people I interact with I've done some amount of wrong. Maybe not all of you, but there are a few I can count. I've done what I could to right those wrongs and find some kind of peace with them, and in the end I hope I've shown myself to be a good guy with problems. I can be a jerk - I'm the first around here to lay claim to that - but at my heart I'm not some evil, terrible monster without a hope. I come around and admit my wrongdoing and although it may take time and I might do it kicking and screaming, I see the err of my ways and make an effort to resolve those problems. I tried to do that with her, but she wasn't having it. I went from trying to salvage scraps of the relationship, to trying to fall back to a "wait and see" position, to trying to retain some sort of friendship, to eventually being told that I was worthless and without hope of being anything more than absolutely nothing.

I really don't know what to think at this point. That really is the ultimate betrayal. Had there been any tact whatsoever left in her, she could have even played the "We don't get along and I don't want to talk to you, but I forgive you as a person", because we're all human and we all make mistakes. But to drop the "You're not shit and you never will be" was unnecessarily cruel. Am I wrong here? Am I missing something? I only hope that this is a decision that she can hold on her heart and be proud of for the rest of her life. Maybe in her eyes I'm not worth shit and I never will be, but what kind of a person do you have to be fundamentally to tell someone you supposedly used to care about that you hate them with every fiber of your being? What kind of person is that?

Another Day

5 days ago
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I feel like I've lost my best friend. I just can't get past it. I know I have a lot of good friends, but this is someone I spent every day with, talking to all the time and now nothing. It's hard to go from that kind of connection to just nothing - so hard. I just don't know what to do with myself. I keep expected to hear something. To have them come around and ask about my day or talk about their day, but just nothing. People try to comfort me and tell me it's all ok and for the best, but nothing means anything. Words just don't process against the pain and emptiness I feel. No one fills that void. No one takes their place. I just don't know what to do or say.

Sometimes Words Get In The Way

7 days ago
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Too much can be said, when less is more.

I Am Worth Something After All

Jun 26, 2009
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I've been in such a bad place for so long. I've felt (and still do in a large degree) that I wasn't worth anything at all. I felt lost and alone and damaged, like half a person. Like a dog that gets beat, I pushed people away and snipped and snarled and licked my wounds and wore a shield that read "Go away" in a very bold and scary font. I can't blame this on any one person, event or shortcoming in my life. It's really been a buildup of things that - from a distance - appears to be a chain of events. But the root cause of this is that I felt like I wasn't worth anything.

Self-loathing is really a two-way street. As I said, nothing in my life is solely to blame for this feeling, but there were plenty of things in my life that helped strengthen that opinion. The other side of the street is my personal interaction with others. Hatefulness, resentment, anger, greed, lust, envy - pretty much the whole shopping cart of deadly sins - have poured out of me onto others and maybe that's given them opinion that I wasn't worth anything, but it also reflected back into me, strengthening my own opinion of myself. If I was a good person, how could I be so hateful? If I was good in my heart, how could I be filled with such resentment and anger. This lead to more wounds. This made me more angry and hurt and lost and I felt like even less. This lead to more anger and resentment and the vicious cycle went on and on.

I came to the realization this morning that I am worth something. I'm a good person with a whole lot to give and it's really only been my own anger and resentment and hurt and the nature of the accumulation of my own sin that has damaged my self view. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I am intelligent and funny and talented in a great number of ways - I'm not worthless at all. As a matter of fact, I have a huge amount of worth in the form of potential energy that is long overdue to go kinetic.

I have a deep love of people. Every time I teach a class I ultimately end up hanging around and chit-chatting with one or more people in the class, soaking up all they have to say and cherishing the feelings that I get from them that they are amazed that someone actually wants to listen and care about what they say. This is a quality you just don't find anymore. It's easy to find people who are pretty or kind or funny, but to find someone who truly values who you are and what you have to say is truly a rare find. And in a weird way when the class is over, I know I'll miss the interaction with those people who will go off into the world, never to be seen again.

And even if it isn't always immediately apparent to those who interact with me, through a fault of my own or theirs, I truly am worth something and this new realization will guide all future actions.

The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Jun 26, 2009
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START WITH PART ONE : A Lie Is Self Destruction

Ok, so I've said a lot here about lies and justification, so now let me talk about recovery. When you analyze the nature of lying as it relates to your own lifestyle, this leads you towards recovery. They say the first step to recovery is admission of the problem. This is often not as easy as it sounds. There have been a lot of lies and you know that full disclosure of those lies would end up hurting people even more. Although it would be more desirable to confront those you have hurt, be open and honest with them about what has occurred and apologize for your carelessness, it's not at all an easy thing to do. Often the lies have been so structured and complex that you can be afraid of what they'll say or do in rebuttal, or - even worse - what they'll say or think about you as a person. And ultimately you worry about how much more it will hurt them if the lies were revealed as what they really were.

The good news here is in order to reach a place of peace, the main things you have to focus on is putting right those flaws in your own nature that create this web of lies, and also put your shortcomings before God and ask for His forgiveness and help in strengthening the nature of your character. I went through this process and it does work. There is something therapeutic about admitting this disease and it strengthens the soul to feel yourself fight against your very nature. It is said that God despises a liar. The first liar in the Universe was Satan, who lied to Eve and spiraled mankind into darkness and despair. If the devil himself is the king of liars and the cause and source of lies, how loved is a liar in the Kingdom of Heaven? I would think not so much. But the admission of these lies before God, asking for forgiveness and moving yourself into a place where there can be real honesty is several large steps in the direction of real peace and happiness in this life.

So yeah, I look holier then thou. I look like some idiot preaching on about the nature of God and forgiveness - a hypocrit that is certainly in no authority to be talking about change and forgiveness. My role here is not as judge and jury, because I don't have the power or authority to wrestle those rights and function from God Himself. He is our judge and although lies are targeted towards individuals or organizations on this earth, they are merely the affected parties and they themselves cannot judge your true worth. That is solely up to God and He alone.

So don't think I'm up on some soapbox going "You're all sinners and destined for hell". God said to "Judge not, lest ye be judged" and this is true enough. If I were here truly saying that you're all liars and destined for hell - a hell of your own making - then sure, that would leave me open for the same judgement. Being judgemental puts you in a position of being judged, and God made it very clear that it wasn't our right or privilege to lay judgement on others "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". My sins may not revolve around lying to people, but I am a sinner, there is no doubt. I could not very well point out the splinter in someone else's eye when there is a log in mine. My only real message here is that lies themselves are more dangerous then anyone ever gives credit to, and removing them from your personality can truly lead to a place of deeper peace - a peace I wish for every one of you.

Justification : The Remainder Of Lies

Jun 26, 2009
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So the last topic I covered was the nature of my lies. So when you finally reach a place where you decide that in order to have real things in life, you have to BE real, it's a hard process to break the cycle. You decide that lying in all forms is self-defeating, you can't just resolve to stop lying to others, you also have to pick out the thorns in your side that are causing you to lie to yourself. I lost a lot of really great things in my life early on and I have to sit back and question just how my life would have turned out differently if I had decided early on to be better than my nature and if I'd truly been able to understand that lies were self-defeating. This leads back to the "they'd do it to me" or the "they deserve it for reason X" or "No one's being hurt by this" or living under the false assumption that lying to someone was giving them what they wanted.

After I began to strip out the lies, life started to become easier. I found that if I was truly open and honest with people, the burden on my soul was eased tremendously. Sure there were cases where people lied to me - I knew they were lies - but that was on them. The lies hurt me, but not nearly as much as if I'd fallen back into the trap and started lying as a recourse for their actions. I call it a trap because in these instances it's real easy to say "Well they're doing it, so they deserve it" but this is never a punishment for this person, it's falling back into self-defeat. If someone I know were an alcoholic and they came to my house and cursed me and stole stuff and hurt me in their actions, the last thing I'd do is become an alcoholic so I could go to their house and repay the favor. Who have I hurt there? Sure they get a taste of their own medicine, but in doing this I've subjected myself to the sin and self-destruction of becoming exactly what they were : unreasonable, belligerent, angry and damaged.

But the nature of mankind is lies and deception. I'm not saying all people are liars, but all people lie in some form. Whether you lie to yourself or lie to others, everyone lies in one form or another. Sometimes it's an attempt to be helpful to others. When someone is ravaged by disease or illness, we might lie to them and tell them everything will be ok, when we know for a fact they won't. Whether or not these "white lies" are wrong, I can't say. I am not the judge of human condition, merely an observer, and whether or not we say these things, it all boils down to justification.

I still have a problem with justification. Sometimes it's hard for me to admit that I'm wrong, and I have to say it's not solely about thinking I am always right, but mostly because I can often find ways to justify why I think I'm right. In the moment, it's easy to think you are right about a certain fact, because you've justified the reasons why you would be right. Even though I've tried my best to stop the careless act of blatantly lying to people about things, I still have issue with lying to myself that my words or actions are justified. This, I've found, is often just as bad. Justification for actions which aren't fully correct are just a watered-down form of lying. Justification in an effort to rationalize why you have to be correct about a given topic or argument is really no different than lying to someone and saying "they deserve it because...".

So whether you lie or not is a matter of your own mind. No one can say "Hey, you're lying and you need to change it because you're hurting yourself" because those are words that can't be heard. They just can't be processed. If someone back in the day had said "Look I know you're lying and you need to quit" my immediate reaction would have been "No I'm not", because when you're trapped in that pattern of fail, it's much easier to cover lies with lies. It's easier to lie to the person and tell them you're not lying and also lie to yourself to the point where you can justify it and think those lies are a necessary form of interaction.