I sleep when I'm sad

I discovered that today.  Actually, I think I've always known that, it's just that today was obvious.  I get it that the definition of friends as it applies to us is unique, but it is so hurtfully different that the definition of friends she has for the rest of her friends or that I have for my friends or, for that matter, anyone has for friends.
Nine months will be upon me fast.
Yea, no, today was a hurtful day.  I get that the intent is to stay together for the sake of the kids, but a discovery today about last night really cut me deep.  It would seem that events with her new friend that was the catalyst for this moment in my life are not to include me and shall now be presented in such a way that I won't have enough information to want go.  So, this morning I discover that a mutual friend has a birthday today, and that just happens to be the generic (I assumed) friend that I wouldn't have cared to celebrate her birthday.
So, yea - Along with almost practically not doing anything together and almost exclusively doing stuff instead with friends, we not include not being involved in mutual friend activities.  That was actually quite painful, and just another reminder that the longer I cohabitate, the longer I come off as a fool.  A stupid stupid fool.

No, it's cool. We're just friends.

I hated hearing that when I was so much younger.  There would always be this girl I liked, but she never liked me back that way because we just friends.  Now, imagine you're married to that girl.  How the fuck does that make sense to anyone?  How can anyone be expected to maintain a relationship with the understanding that a decade-plus of emotions or even intamacy are gone because one of them doesn't feel that way about the other.
I'm at a loss of how I can recover from this further-defined state of my marriage.  So far it has been imposible to explain this to friends without them seeing as that sad loser in high-school that thought if he kept trying she would eventualy love him too.  It feels worse when they all ask the clairifying question, "as in friends with benefits?"  Nope.  No benefits.  Friends as in I'll be there to watch the kids if she ever wants to go hang out with her friends and do fun things.  Friends as in...  huh.  There doesn't seem to be a second example.  It's been pretty much the watching of the kids.  I mean, she sleeps in a different room.  Granted, the fact that we have different taste in things has been brought up.  We watch different shows; although there is a number of shows we do both watch, but at different times.  We listen to different music; although I'm pretty sure that can be better defined as I don't really listen to the current hits.  We have different political views; which honestly I think is just something to bring up to illustrate a division because I really don't like any of the political representatives in any political affiliation.
It's getting harder the longer this definition of marriage continues.  We cannot call it a loveless marriage because that has a negative connotation.  We cannot call it a marriage of conveinence because that too sounds bad.  Open marriage?  I fear that will eventually be a new definition; once her desires overcome her resolve to not physically show affection because that would muddle the emotions of friendship she has for me.  Once she has found that target of affection that will perfectly transport me back to my teens where I like this one girl that feels the need to open up to me about her feelings for someone else and asks me what she should do.  Yep - that always never went well for me.
Negative connotation.  When did this world become a place where words that accurate describe something have to be replaced with kinder words that either need to be defined back to the original or immediately remind the interpreter what the speaker really meant.  Part of the decision for seperation is because we are two independant people cohabitating at this point in our relationship.  Sure, that may be a true statement, but one of those people seems to have defined their life as having the other in it.  Without her, I am just me and my kids.  There's my work and my home.  I don't know why I scaled down my work friends to a point where I don't have enough of them to be able to be gone every opportunity, but that's what I did and now I am alone in a marriage with a friend.

Shit.  I don't even think I'm a best friend.  I am that sad friend that's always there when she needs someone to make sure she can do fun things; just not with.

Something about counting eggs in a basket.

I never know what to do with all my incomplete blogs.  They hang out among the list of published blogs, begging for me to delete them.  Granted, no one's going to read them because I'm no longer on the Facebook, but they represent my unfinished thoughts about subjects.  The last one was about the weekend we lost the cat (I say we, but I wasn't present at the actual losing of the cat), and I'm torn between sharing the grief and pain I encountered that weekend and not ever posting it because she's came back on her own.
It did make me realize a lot about what was going on with me.  Especially the fact that I wasn't handling the stress of work and family very well.  My life has quickly become summed into two places where they each have their own stress, each encroach on the other, and neither are a proper escape from the other.  I mean, it's not like I can head over to my girlfriend's house and spend the night there to get away from my family.
So, yea; the cat thing made me realize I needed to take a break from work and home for a little while.  I don't really have the option to break away from my family, so the six days I had off from work did include three of them in the middle with the kids (they had Friday off and of course the weekend).  It's not a bad thing, but I really didn't do anything I personally promised myself I would do.  Like nothing.
I was worried at work that I was beginning to go into auto pilot and my not caring was beginning to show.  The break helped, but all that stress didn't actually go away; it actually got worse because I wasn't there to deal with things.  That part always sucks about work and vacation, you know, where you realize that if you didn't take vacation you wouldn't be more stressed when you came back.  The three days this week fully felt like five.
But yea, the stress kind of didn't go away and I realize I have zero motivation or even care.  Like I said in another post, my life has become my work and my kids; so is absence of anything else, I am a little defeated when I realize I do not have the rich wealth of friends to hang out with.  I mean I have a couple options, but they live far away so you'd have to plan for that, and they have their own lives so there's planning in that too.
I'm not bemoaning the fact that my life if full of friendship acquaintances and a small number of close friends.  It's just that I don't have the people-pool I had to chose from as I did in the Navy or even at my last job.  I have two co-workers that have different live styles than me and the above examples of far-a-way friends.
I woke up this morning to Moon being gone, which means she went to go spend the night at a friend's house.  Again.  Something she has as an option to get away from the loveless marriage she has deemed necessary.  I get that there's no longer going to be any physical expression between us and no desire to hang out with each other; I mean get it, but it's still hard to accept seeing as how it's not the case for me.  It's just hard to be comforted in being told the way things seem are not how they are but then also have the ability to observe and make conclusions to the contrary.  I guess I just miss having that close friend.  My life "evolved" from the pool of friends to that one close friend - who no longer wants to be my friend.

Something about counting eggs in a basket.  I get it now.

Change in my pocket

It's been a couple weeks.  I'm trying to do more in my new lifestyle.  I bought an exercise bike in an effort to not get winded so easily.  After a few days of the stock seat designed for a butt that is nothing but deep crack, I replaced it with a normal Schwin seat that finally allowed me to make it thirty minutes.
By the way, I'm typing this on my tablet I got a few months back that I got a case/keyboard for; so bear with me that this Blogger app doesn't have a spell check.
See?  Changes.  So many changes.
But, no not really.  Still trying to get used to a seperation lifstyle where there is no actual seperation.  Top that with deadlines at work that keep happening one right after another.  I know it may not have been a completely good idea for me to get off of my antidepression antianxiety medication, but I figure I made it thirty years without it; I should try and get back to how I was before I got o them.  If anything, I trace all of the who I was before I became just a solo part of a relationship.  She says that she hasn't felt for me the way she did for quite some time, so I blame the drugs.
Again, just unanswered words in the ether, but I have to pick something to start with that might be taken notice.  It's hard to make an effort when no one seems to notice or care, so we'll see how the no drugs (I know, medication) go.

"What is it, you cunt face?"

A lot has changed since I last posted anything here, yet nothing actually changed.  Because of a sense of abandonment, I reached out to a faceless crowd to gather my thoughts.  I also passive-aggressively posted some things on Facebook, which, coupled with the auto-share feature of this blog to Facebook, required changes.
We had a conversation that helped me in clearing up some mis-perceptions, and I think helped us understand that neither of us handled the outcome very well.  The purposed of this post isn't to go into that, but to apologize for my actions.  I cannot take back what I posted or shared (I can delete them, but the message was conveyed), but I have taken steps to heal what I've done and myself in the process.  This post won't make its way to Facebook via the auto-share function for two reasons.  One, the simplest, I turned that off.  The second, I severed myself from my Facebook-world.
Basically, if you're a Facebook friend of mine and you're reading this, two things have happened.  You realized that I am missing from Facebook.  You're actually reading this because you sought it out.  I mentioned in that last post that it was the equivalent of writing my mom a letter and then burning it.  While a lot of me wanted to just vent to the internet-ether, apparently part of me wanted sympathy.  I got it, and I appreciated the attention; but it was all based on a dual-misunderstanding caused by the unfortunate reactions between two people.

I can't face my life without her, and a failed communication thrust me into despair that this was what was happening.  I have a lot of work to do to fix myself here, so part of that process was to break away from my Facebook-world and deal with the tangibles right in front of me.  So, again, if you're reading this, it's because you came here because you want to be here, and not because I was something to click in a feed.

Darth Kanin

For the past eight Fridays, it has been just me and my kids.  This is my life now.  Maybe it hasn't been eight weeks; it could be less, but every Friday it has just me, Kammie, and Devyn.  I wouldn't trade that for anything really.
"Adventure.  Excitement.  A Jedi craves not these things."
The reality is that I have failed at another marriage/relationship.  I know failure is a harsh adjective for what has happened, but it is what I have chosen to help me accept what has happened.  I spent a lot of time convincing myself that what I perceived was incorrect, only to clear the view of another to what she truly felt; which was the reality.  My new reality.
I know that returning to this medium may seem cowardly because I'm failing to communicate directly with the one that has thrust me into this reality, but I have always felt comfortable in sharing my feelings with the void that is this blog.  A void that no one responds.  A void where no one judges.  A void where I fully embrace that no one cares.
That sounds sad, huh?  It's not.  It's the new age version of what helped me move on with the passing of my mother.  So much so time spent blaming myself when she left me.  I do not remember the "professional" that helped me move on, but the suggestion to write a letter to my mother of all the guilt I felt only to burn it afterwards helped ease my mind.  This is akin to that letter and that burning.  Granted, it'll be on the internet forever, but if you're reading this - it's an unintended side effect of me writing something I figure no one would ever care to read.

So, why the Darth title and Star Wars quote?  Because it has been forced upon me to adjust my life again.  Relationships aside, marriages in my past have always left in physically moving on.  The first one, Kim, moved back to Illinois and I moved back to California (I say moved, but I was in the Navy and was transferring from Dahlgren, ,VA back to San Diego, CA).  The second one, Katie, resulted in me moving back to Arizona; the last place I remembered being happy in my life.  And happiness was why that one ended, just like this time.  The only difference was who was happy.  This time it is her who is no longer happy, and it is 'out there' where her happiness lies.
Which brings us to the Yoda quote and my new Friday nights.  While my marriage, per se, appears to be over, noting has really changed for me.  I accept that she wants to move on and pursue activities or relationships that make her happy, I however am not.  I mean, I don't want to.  I thought I found myself my penguin.  My last true mate.  The last part was correct because I'm not planning on using this opportunity no move on to someone/something new.

Again, these are my new Fridays.  However, as with all other ends, a new beginning must start.  Darth Kanin seeks not a new adventure, but has decided to focus on the two stabilities in his life.  Granted he's reaching out to all his friends through this medium, but then again, I fully expect no one to actually read this.
They say there are five stages to grief, and while I have been trying very hard the last week to convince myself that I am at the acceptance stage; I am fully aware that I have not followed the stages exactly in order (I haven't bargained at all because the external forces are not within my control), but I also know that the reality is what it is, and any attempt to change it will only complicate everything.  At least that's how I feel.
So, there it is.  A relationship's end with me currently trying to keep it in a stasis of normalcy (that's the third time I have used that word this week).  I'm accepting that this stage of a long relationship is over, but I am not at a point where I plan to move on.  She will have her moments away from me that make her happy, but I am where I want to be.  While I prepare to no longer be who I am right now (as I do with every relationship transition), I do it only to better my relationship with my kids.

The Difference Between Being a Racist and Being an Idiot

There's been a lot of talk recently about the rampant level of racism in this country.  I wasn't alive fifty or one-hundred and fifty years ago, so what I'm about to say is purely academic.  If I was alive fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago, I am pretty sure I would hate non-whites for the simple reason that they were non-whites.  I'm also pretty sure it would be extremely easy for me to find other whites that shared my hatred toward non-whites.
Understand, when I say hatred, I mean hatred.  I would hate these people.  I would hate to eat the same food they do.  I would hate to use the same water as them.  I would hate to touch the same doors they use.  I would hate to sit in the same seats as they do.  I would hate them to the point that I would want them dead.
HATE
Pure hate for the simple reason that they were not white like me.

But I'm not alive back then; I'm alive now.  I'm alive at a time where we integrate rather than segregate.  I'm alive at a time where it's okay to use the same things those of another ethnic background use.  I'm alive in a time when it's okay to sit next to them and even touch them.  I'm alive at a time where we even voted them into the highest office in the nation.
But I'm also alive at a time where I have to be careful what others interpret my actions, words or thoughts to mean.  I'm alive at a time where hidden motivations are brought to light in every mixed-race situation like a magician produces a rabbit.  I live in a time where that irrational hated I mentioned above is forced into these situations as if all the progress ever made never existed.

I just cannot understand why.  Just as I cannot understand how a person can hate another person simply for being of another race; I cannot understand why racism has to be the reason for these unfortunately events.  I'm not going to take a side on this Missouri thing, just as I refused to take a side on the Martin thing; but neither of them were a result of racism.  The racial differences between the victim and shooter is not a reason to claim white-on-black violence or to claim there is a huge problem with racism in this county.
I cannot tell if the definition of racism has become so watered down over the past fifty years that is has changed from a form of hatred to any form of perceived-negative action against non-whites, or if this all because crusaders behind a successful crusade have nothing more to do so they manufacture perceptions to keep their crusades going.  I'm not about to say that race relations are 100% perfect, but it's not like it was fifty years ago -- not even close.

The problem with the situations like were experiencing in Missouri and last year in Florida is not racism.  The problem is idiocy; pure and simple.  When I was a kid, I played cops and robbers; and when I played a cop, I pretended to have a gun.  I have watched many a cop movies and cop shows, and all the cops in these movies and shows have guns.  I have been around many cops in my lifetime, and every single one of them had guns.  They even had guns where they were not actively being cops.  Cops have guns.  That's a factual statement that I think everyone can agree to and understand.
The reason why cops have guns is to protect themselves.  It's the same reason why military personnel and security guards have guns.  A situation may arise that they feel they lives are threatened, and the gun is there to protect them.  They don't carry bats, or knives, or hammers, or bricks -- they carry guns.  So when someone attacks them with a bat, or a knife, or a hammer, or a brick -- they defend themselves with their gun.
The thing is -- if you're the type of person that is feels the need to attack a cop, one of three things is going happen.  The cop will rationally take in and assess the situation and find a non-lethal way to disarm and restrain the attacker.  --OR--  The cop will react by drawing their weapon but remain calm enough to fire an effective disabling shot and then restrain the attacker.  --OR--  The cop will panic and shoot the attacker attacking them until that attacker is no longer attacking.  One of these scenarios could result in a dead attacker.  For the record, when a cops panics and shoots an attacker dead, the white attackers die just as easily as the non-white attackers regardless of the race of the cop.  Also, all this will apply to military and security guards too.
The problem in these situations in not whether the individual in a position of authority is racist towards the individual they shot and killed; the problem is the idiot that thought it was a good idea to attack someone with a gun.  Again, we all know cops have guns, and the guns are there to protect them.  So, if you're the type of idiot that thinks it's a good idea to attack someone that might defend themselves with a gun they have, then you're probably going to get shot and could die.  Why?  Because the chance that a cop you're about to attack has the training or mental fortitude to not panic when you threaten the lives is pretty low.

One more thing.  Not only do all cops carry guns so people shouldn't attack them, but there's even a law called 'Assaulting a Police Officer' that you could get charged with if you survive the attack.  I'm pretty sure we all know that little nugget of information.  So, before we all start chalking another one of these tragedies to the rampant racism in this country, can we please remember that there are a lot of idiots out there, and idiocy knows no race?