Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

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Captain my Captain .....

Feeling "slightly more daring," Virginia? I hope you understand that question/statement.

And Happy New Year to you.

I sit in this bed in the guest bedroom, TV off, listening to the wind in the leaves and trees outside (and the fan on my laptop computer as it churns through it's background programs). It's already down below -5°C and dropping down to at least -10°C (down to -15°C with the windchill) in the AM. The furnace has gone into the nighttime setback and the house is starting to cool down.

I did not stay up until midnight on New Year's Eve. After giving my wife her pain medication, I came back to the guest bedroom, turned off the TV and went to sleep. I awoke at 3AM knowing that the next dose would be soon. She paged me at 3:30 AM and then I was awake for a couple of hours. It seemed a fitting end to a decade that I will say is the least satisfactory in my life. No champagne or sparkling wine. No acknowledgement whatsoever.

Not that there were not accomplishments and completion of some lifetime goals (e.g. I reached the last of the 50 US States and have reached more than 50% of the more than 3144 county and county-equivalents in the US in the last decade. Not quite my "50-by-50" goal but close enough. My map of travels, by county, is on Flickr). But as time went on, what was missing became a large part of my life. It is an adult form of something's wrong (see below).

What I can say about what I miss about New Years is the "specialness" I once felt about it. Whether it was being in a small, intimate party with a few (hundred thousand) friends in Times Square (been there, done that), or really being with close friends to share good times and friendship at midnight, or just to be in bed with my wife to ring out/ring in the year with our own special celebration of lovemaking, there was an anticipation and excitement to it. That was as true of being with my ex-wife and with my current one.

Not anymore and it has not been that way for quite some time

You speak of history being gone, it can be gone even though the two people are still together because one person decided that it was no longer important regardless of what the other felt.

There are parts of my life that are "authentic." And yet, there is this whole side of my life where there is no self-expression of who I am as a loving, sexual being. As for being caring when someone is vulnerable (or even when they are not)...yes, that is a side of my authentic self, an expression of who I am, the generosity of self that I am for other people. That is as natural to me (and to those who know me) as breathing, that for me to be any other way but that would be an indication that something was seriously wrong (with me).


My wife knows that about me. My ex saw some moments of that, too, while were together, though it did not really flourish until we were separated and she was committed to a divorce.

No, there is a combination of things at play here that range from "expectation" that I will do my part as her husband to knowing this side of who I am and trusting that both will be there in this moment of vulnerability.


I appreciated my wife's gift to me. I had an intuitive sense that she might be getting it for me (I have a way about these things), though until I opened it up, I did not know for sure (I had been considering one for myself though I had said nothing about it to her). Already have come the questions about where I am going to put it. Honest answer, I don't know. If I bought one for myself, it would probably be for the office, not home. That appeared to be the "wrong answer." Anyone willing to take bets that it ends up in "her" bedroom since I don't sleep there anymore?

What gets lonely is giving up one part of one's self to have some fragment of another part "survive."

This has gotten a lot longer than I intended but let me add one other thing that fits into several conversations where both you and I have been participating.

No one gets through childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood "undamaged." No one, except those with no memory or no capacity for long-term memory (their past does not exist for them in any tangible way). For some people, the degree of damage as a result of one or more traumas, may be more severe and have more longer lasting effects on lives than we realize.

I assert that almost no one is self-aware enough to even point to these incidents, know what they were and how they shaped our lives. The more traumatic events or incidents that are classifiable as "abuse" are more easily identified and yet, the echoes of those events (both large and small) travel long after the events themselves have passed. And while I'm not advocating abuse, I suggest, as others might, that these defining events are what is required for us to develop some of the very characteristics that others see as our "strengths" and our "best qualities."

You've already identified some of your strengths as a result of some of your early life experiences (and treatment). You and I and everyone else share exactly the same reaction to some initial event (and sometimes recurring series of events), that creates the damage and has us respond. We all responded with the following: "Something is wrong" and it should not be this way. And what we said or did next "froze" something in each and everyone of us whether it was said outloud or quietly to ourselves: "I'll never say, do, or be that way again." Something like "I'll never trust men/women/boys/girls again" for whayever reason you've determined something is wrong (and to avoid that "wrongness" in the future. The first time it happens is at a fairly young age (4-7), old enough to have some mastery of language and enough memory and socialization skills to see things in terms of right and wrong. It also tends to be self-reinforced.

Your identify your independence as stemming from this type of event either in part or almost in full. There are several other episodes that are equally as defining later in your life. They could be different types of events or remind you (though you aren't necessarily conscious of it) of the first time you told yourself that something was wrong. The last formative one usually has to do with your ability (or inability) to "go home" or go back to where you once were late in adolescence.

If you think about what people tell you about your very best qualities or what they like about you or what make you seem special, they probably stem from these events whether they are mundane (some other child embarassing you in front of others causing an image breakdown) or traumatic (the death of a close family member or friend, abuse in the form of mental, physical and/or sexual abuse). Even some less desirable qualities (that can be respected as strengths) can find their origins in the "damage."

You see your own independence as both a strength and a weakness. As a strength because others apparently admire that in you and you are accepting enough to hear what these people say. And a weakness because of what others (men) have to put up with. But Virginia, your problem with your strength isn't that you are independent it that what gives your independence is based in what you've been saying all this time: "something's wrong."

You won't ever be able to change that because you froze that in your memory and you've practiced what to do when you encounter similar situations. But, as an adult, you can notice it and, once noticed, look to see what path you might choose, including the conversation of the 5-year old that once told you "something's wrong." You asked about being able to disassociate, this is part of it too, but I call it awareness.

I am not immune to the same forces and I too, have my own set of "something's wrong" reaction and response that give me qualities that others see as strengths. The difference is an awareness of these conversations and their origins. That comes from operating from a certain point of view that is very different from the "standard" human experience.


That is enough for now. One day, I may have to get to your part of the world to see in New Years.

Right now I seem to be caught in a temporal causality loop and it's time to sleep.

Captain, out.