A letter to Jessica
I doubt you’ll ever read this, but just in case you ever do, I’ll write it so I can go to sleep tonight.
I do love you, and am still very much in love with you. I haven’t felt that you have loved me though in a long time.
I don’t think you’ve ever trusted me, and that hurts more than anything. You’ve been more open to guys you’ve met online after talking to them for a couple minutes than you ever had been with me. I’m sad because you strive so hard to show me the face that nothing was ever wrong while you told everyone else that there was, and told them not to tell me so I didn’t find out. It hurts to know that you never wanted me to know you like you wanted to be known. It hurts that you used the love I tried to give you to build a wall around yourself and use it to repel me like an invading force.
I sit back thinking of what you’ve told me very recently, about your past, your mom and your brother. Then I think of the way you’ve been acting more and more with how you talk about yourself, how you loath yourself, how you have no self esteem. I wish I could help with that. Your history is directly responsible for this, and I wish I could tell you in a way that you would just hear me and listen to me instead of saying I’m trying to tell you how to think. I wish I could tell you how to take your past and use it as a map of what not to do, and how you can be better than your past, all you have to do is try. How you can tell your mom to fuck off by not doing what she did to you to Grace. I know what your brother is something that will not go away, and how your parents acted can’t be fixed now. I know you’ll never talk to me about how you feel about this, but I pray that you will talk to someone and not just swallow it and hope that it’s not going to eat you alive. You can’t swallow coal and make a diamond, a person isn’t strong enough to take that much pressure…not even me.
I wish I could explain better than I have before that love isn’t the feeling you get by the first kiss or the first fuck, because that goes away real quickly. If you define love like this then you haven’t loved me for a very long time. I wish I could tell you that love is in part an emotional feeling, one that seems more apparent when it’s taken from you (in my case anyways). It comes here and there too, when I would catch you reading and looking comfortable, or seeing you sleep in the morning. More than that, love, true love, comes with the price to be paid with honesty, integrity and hard work. This is my interpretation of it anyways. If I went solely by the first feeling of lusting after someone to define it, then I’d say that I’ve only been in love one time, at my first real kiss.
I wish I could tell you that I understand what you are seeking, but it just doesn’t exist in the way you think it should. I wish you would listen when I said that constantly searching for a feeling that is only available when you are in a state that it’d matter least to you is searching for the fountain of youth. It just doesn’t exist. There are plenty of stories that point you in the right direction according to a fable here and a fairy tale there, but ultimately you’ll either have to realize that it’s just not there, or you’ll die looking for something that just doesn’t exist. You think you find it with ever new kiss from every new man in your life, you feel it so close that you can almost grab it, but then it rushes away in a matter of hours or days and you’re stuck loathing yourself because you just weren’t strong enough to grasp it and wrestle it into submission. It’s hugging a cloud.
I wish you could feel how you’ve made me feel. It wasn’t that you told me that I just didn’t satisfy you sexually anymore, but that you told me that you were going to find a way to be satisfied and I’d have to just learn to deal with that. I wish you could feel how that made me feel, as if the person I’ve dedicated myself to just doesn’t care, and will not care, and has never cared. I wish you could feel when you looked at me as callous as you did and expected me to just accept that as a matter of fact. I wish I could tell you how it wrenched me to no end when right after that you got naked and wanted to fuck, like I didn’t matter as long as you got what you wanted.
More than anything, I wish you would just not fight yourself anymore. I wish you didn’t define your life by how miserable you are, and think you’re a stronger person with the more misery you can create and maintain. I wish you would quit putting yourself out there for all these other men knowing that you are going to be rejected solely because you know you’re going to be rejected. I wish you would just understand that even finding a single aspect of yourself that you can love and admire is a start; that you don’t have to love all of you and feel good about all of you all at once. You can just start somewhere.
I wish that you took your religion seriously. I honestly don’t think you can though, because it requires maintaining a little will and a little dedication, a little perseverance and a little love. I don’t think you can because you don’t care about any of that, though I wish you did. I wish you didn’t complain about the overweight guy who has a handicap sticker and doesn’t have to walk that far into the store as someone without any willpower when you can’t even get out of bed a half hour early unless it entails chatting with a guy online before he goes to work.
I wish I could tell you that you are turning into both your mother and the daughter she didn’t raise. I hope that maybe one day you can overcome your past and overcome your upbringing, use them as steps instead of hurdles, and move on with your life. I wish I could be there for that too, but I know that I’ll be long gone by then.
I wish I could tell you that the way you are treating me is the same way everybody else has treated you. I wish you could have opened your eyes and just realized that I was never your enemy. I wish you could see that the hard work I put in isn’t a way to get away from you but a way that we could be together more in the future. I wish you wouldn’t have told me how I was always so mean then immediately told me how I never complimented you. Maybe a compliment would have been paid with one.
I wish you could be positive about at least one thing in your life for even a day. You can always come up with the but statement…I like this about myself but…I wish you could have been happy for at least one day in your life, loved seeing the day outside for what it held, loved seeing your son learn new things instead of being frustrated at what he’s learning. I wish you could have just seen the morning for how beautiful it is instead of a curse of another day that you’re still existing. I wish you would listen when I say that you don’t find yourself beautiful because of this very reason, and if you could overcome it that everybody would find you beautiful, to include yourself.
I know that even if you ever read this you’ll only see that everything in here is negative, and that you will think that it was my last parting shot to make you feel bad, but I hope that one day you may be able to read this with an open mind and accept the other possibilities that there is more than one meaning behind anything, and it’s usually never the worst possible meaning that you want it to be. Sometimes a simple I love you doesn’t mean that I messed up or that I want something or that trouble is coming….maybe sometimes it’s just what it is, and I hope that one day you’ll learn to accept that, even with yourself.
Keep your head on a swivel the next few weeks
There has been increased indications of multiple attacks across the U.S. coinciding with the elections and/or with the new president taking the oath of office. That’s a 2 month time-frame for anybody keeping track.
The indications seem point to multiple attacks during concurrent times at various locations. There isn’t any indications that I’ve been made aware of that that seem to stipulate one general area of the country, nor a minimum size announced in possible attack criteria. This sounds, and is vague, but what it means to me is that anywhere is a target. Anywhere. What it means is that everybody out there needs to pay attention, keep their heads on a swivel, use your gut feelings. It means looking at everyone you see in the eye, paying attention to traffic patterns and your own traffic patterns. It means just paying attention to your surroundings at all times, force yourself not to be complacent, question everything.
It doesn’t mean target a certain ethnicity or religion. With the real upswing in Britain with Polish immigrants turning to radical Islam as a case in point, this is a real critical point. It’s not the middle eastern man or woman, the Pushtu or the Southern Asians. It’s not the Filipinos or the the white woman wearing a headscarf. It’s everybody that you need to be aware of.
Just be aware and vigilant. Pay attention to what you do and what others around you are doing. Trust your gut instincts. If you have a bad feeling, call the local law enforcement. Keep your head on a swivel.
Thinking critically post debate and post bail-out vote failure
I’m not going into a lot of specifics here, because quite frankly I don’t have the time, being at work and all. However, I do want to point out some of the points in various news releases between McCain and Obama during the past day.
I’ve noticed that while John McCain is being very blunt, and to the point on specific issues on Obama’s voting record and requests for earmarks, his campaign is being called an attack campaign. I guess if you don’t know, or can’t respond to what he’s saying, it would leave Obama feeling a bit in the corner.
On Obama’s retorts to what McCain has been pointing out, he hasn’t actually fought a single point. When confronted with the fact that his staff seems to be made of Freddie and Fannie execs, he generalizes by saying that McCain is more or less ‘old school’. As a matter of fact, I can’t think of a single bullet that Obama has let loose to counter any of the accusations on his voting record, his intentions with the taxes, with his staff made of those who profited off of the sub-prime mess, or what he see’s should be the fix.
As far as I’m concerned, McCain is probably one of the least political candidates that I’ve seen in years. He seems very willing to give an answer….though, some of his answers I feel most people don’t have the foresight to understand, however; Obama gives the generalizations that we’re used to in politics…A lot of saying something but nothing really specific. Even worse, he isn’t debating the points against him, just hoping that playing the school yard “Nuh Uhh!” argument will eventually work.
I have to admit that a few months ago I was conflicted on who I was going to vote for. A few months ago, it was a dead even race for me. The past two weeks however, and my annoying ability to read people, I’ve made up my mind.
I want to emplore anybody out there to do the same. Think critically, look at what’s really being said, look at the stakes, and look at the issues. Don’t just sit back on party lines and say “I hate them because I hate them”, or “We need someone with less experience so politics isn’t a key”. Those arguments are hollow.
