Pool lessons

[Zues126]

Wow, a Jelly sighting!!! Thank you for dropping by and bumping my thread. If you're anything like me it takes ever increasing bursts of energy to overcome the inertia to post but should you feel the urge know that we will listen.

Hmm, what's new with me. Well, I've been doing pretty well while being aware of the low at the same time. It's kinda weird.

In general, moment to moment, I feel great. Things have never been better. There's no part of my life I don't look forward to, and the time I share with my family is profoundly fulfilling. Just hearing about some of the hardships around the world, be it hurricanes or the loss of a family member, and I realize how precious my time with my family is to me. I know the world will go on when me and my children are gone, but what we have right now is unlike anything I've known before. I don't journal much so if something were to happen to me please someone on the forum track my kids down and let them know that every hardship I've faced in my life was worth it many times over for each meal we got to share together, each page we read together, each joke we made, each trail we explored, each pool ball that plunked over the pocket edge. I finally know what it means to be content.

The bittersweet comes from the loss I have learned to live with but still feel. My wife is gone forever and as deeply as I love my children, I once loved her. Do I love her today? No, she was dead to me a long time ago and the person she is today is a total stranger. I have no feelings for her in particular.

No, the loss comes from the love that I had planned on giving to her that is now going to waste. When I married her I didn't agree to give her my love on our wedding day and then see how I felt the next day. I agreed to give her all of it, forever. Well, my heart goes on beating, and I have this love inside of me that I had pledged to her. And instead of sharing it, I put it in a nice heart shaped box, put a ribbon on it, and then throw it in the trash. The person that had wanted this love from me is long gone and my hearts ongoing generation of love is now just an aching reminder of what was lost.

I'm not interested in rehashing debates about looking for other partners, or why I'm not. I only write these words because it is the only natural progression of my post. I'm not doing that. I am the alien. It seems everyone else is talking about deal breakers, compatibility, red flags, what they want and need in a partner, and writing their books and blogs on how they thing relationships and the world and everyone in it should work. I can't begin to relate to any of it because it all seems so incomprehensible that we would let these trivial things get in the way of what is possible to share with each other.

I feel like a ghost. Like I died three years ago and am just haunting the planet for a bit longer before it's time to go. The rest of the world is bustling around and I don't connect with them. No one can see me, and if they could they wouldn't understand me, and if they tried to reach out our arms would pass through each other's anyway because we simply live in different worlds.

My kids know who I am. They have seen the ghost of their dad. They know what it means to share some time with them. And they know how special that time is. They will always cherish the love that I gave them. And even when they move out, marry off, live their own lives...even when our relationships fade or end...nothing can take away the time we've shared or diminish the wonder that it ever was.

I know we don't have forever, so I just say thank you every day. My job is tough but it continues. It's nice to have a pool table again. I finally paid my entry fee for the US Open last night and felt a jolt of enthusiasm that I haven't felt for years, all the childhood dreams of playing along side of the greats came rushing back. I practice with me kids and they get to spend some time with me in that special trance like world of just feeling the hit of a shot until it becomes your friend.

What else? Not much else to tell. I read a bit. Play a few local and regional pool tournaments. Solve some chess puzzles. Tell bad puns at the dinner table (my mom had bought a plane ticket, and she wanted to get a second for her other son who's name is jason, so I told her if she wanted to add Jason's seat, make sure it was 'adjacent' to hers...this is how ghosts have fun I guess).

Oh, and my best friend. I'm lucky to have him. We play poker together, we're going to a pool tournament in WI in two weekends and the best part is the 5 hour drive. When I have a funny story to share he is the one I tell. Like when I was at the pool tournament on Sunday night and this one match took 2 1/2 hours which is WAY long, so me and another guy made a side bet on when the match would be over, and I drew the line and he picked the 'over', and I thought I was stealing because there was no way it could take that much longer, and then somehow it got closer and closer to the deadline, and finally it was down to three balls but if the minute digit ticked over I would lose, it was down to seconds and the players didn't know we'd made this side bet, it was excruciating, and finally the guy shot in the winning 9 ball and I won the bet and looked at the clock and knew it was so close I started counting out loud, and sure enough I got to seven and the minute changed. I was SEVEN SECONDS away from losing that bet. What a nail biter. The guy I bet with beat me in the finals but that made the whole trip worth it.

I hope no one is worried about me guys, I promise I've never been better. The pain in my heart is a dull constant ache partly from loss and partly from the intensity of the joy in my life. Compared to the stabbing throbbing pain I went through at the end of my marriage this feels like a gentle massage.

My views may differ in some ways but I care for all of you as well and hope you each find some of what you're searching for, and some peace and joy with what you already have. Good night gang!