I hate what I've become over the last two years. I mean, in a lot of ways, I've become much better--the internal personal growth and change I've experienced through all this is actually astounding and wonderful. In one sense, I've finally become the man I've always wanted to be.

I saw it clearly when I went to New York, which I've always avoided, along with other big cities. Instead of being grumpy and irritated and miserable, like I would have been in the past, I was patient, and pleasant, and cheerful, and polite, and tolerant, and kind. And it wasn't because I was making an effort, it just came totally naturally. Exactly how I've always wished I could be. 

But in another sense, the pit of inertia I haven't been able to break out of when I'm here alone is driving me crazy, and I hate it. So much.

This has happened to me three times in my life. The first time was after my accident, when I was stuck in a hospital bed in my living room for months and months on end, literally unable to move around or do anything, but under a constant, relentless, incessant burden of stress and worry and, I see now, PTSD. I went to a bad place then, and even after I was able to start walking again I had a hard time breaking out of it. But eventually I did. I went through my physical therapy. I learned to walk, and function again. I started going to the gym, I went back to college, I started working again, I rededicated myself to my marriage (though that proved to be fruitless). 

Before that I was always active, always doing something. Mostly either working or doing family things, but even when I wasn't, the few things I did for myself were active: fishing, hunting, gardening, keeping chickens, training dogs, fixing or making things with my hands, cutting firewood, just going for walks. Back then I was always doing something: improving something in the yard or fixing something in the house; learning how to do something useful, usually having to do with being self-sufficient and providing for my family. Or I was working out, or running, or training to fight or whatever, to be a better soldier, or policeman, or whatever I was doing or working toward at the time. When I was a sheriff's deputy, I took classes whenever the department offered them: dog-training from the canine officers, manhunting and human tracking from a crazy old mountain-man; when I was working a graveyard shift in the jail, instead of sitting playing solitaire on the computer like the other deputies on duty, I'd go into the training room and watch training videos on arrest control or investigation; or I'd go through the archives and read old case files, to learn about crime, and investigation, and how the job is done. When I was a soldier, I'd go to work at 4 AM, do PT with my unit, which was usually a run of several miles 3 times a week, and calisthenics twice a week, work a physical job all day, training or doing maintenance on the tanks or whatever, come home, work out again, lifting weights on the run days and running on the calisthenics days, do whatever I had to do for my family, then get to bed in time to get 5 or 6 hours of sleep before I had to get up at 4 again to start it all over. The only sedentary pastime I had was reading. One of my favorite things was, after everybody else went to bed, making a cup of tea and opening a volume of Dickens, for a quiet hour or two. Sure, I had movie night with the family or whatever, like anybody else. But the idea of spending endless hours staring at a screen was hateful to me. 

I pretty much always had at least two jobs. There was one point at which I had four. Even after the accident, when I went back to college, I would drive 30-45 minutes to my day job as an editor at a publishing company, leave there, drive the same distance to the Orlando campus of the college I was at, take classes, then drive all the way back past my house, up to the Daytona campus for evening classes, then back home late at night, to take care of the things in the house that only a father does, or on evenings when I didn't have class or on weekends, I'd go to my second job driving a taxi.

The second time was when my injuries and infirmities caught up with me and I stopped working. I sank into an even deeper pit then, which lasted for years. It got really bad. This was when I gained all that weight from being on the antidepressants. It was that one which I was working on escaping and recovering from during those years from when I went back to grad school in Tennessee until year before last. Or was it year before the year before last? Anyway, even through all that, even as hard as it was, even in the darkest, most horrible times, I never completely lost hope. I still believed that good things were possible, and that somehow they were coming for me. 

And during that time, even when I had all my injuries, and disabilities, and pain, and sadness...still, I was out trying to make a change, trying to be better, trying to improve. You know the things I've done. I didn't give up. I enrolled in grad school; I built orchards and planted gardens; I hiked the AT, and the ECT; I trained in between by walking up and down hills with a heavy pack, in spite of my pain; I went to the gym, lifted weights, did cardio, even tried yoga; I took dancing lessons, and music lessons, and studied foreign languages, and volunteered at my church and at charities; I helped homeless people, invited strangers over for Thanksgiving, sent support to orphans and abandoned women in foreign lands; worked to rescue girls from trafficking and sex-slavery. I tried. I really tried, to make something of my life. To make a difference. To do something good in the world.

But this time...I just can't see my way forward. I can't see any goal on the horizon which is sufficiently worth working toward to gather myself to make the effort. I mean, I am making the effort, as best I can in the moment, like I said the other day, but...each day is still a very hard struggle. Almost none of the things I deeply cared about before seem to mean anything at all to me anymore. And it's such a shame, because I really am very happy with who I've become, internally. It's my actual life that's the problem. This is definitely the worst one. I need help. But help is not coming. And this is the only time when I've ever really, seriously struggled with and thought about you-know-what.

I've lost my faith. Not completely: I still believe, in the abstract. I still believe in Him, that He's out there, that He is here with me, in some sense. But I've lost the ability to believe in the practical present that there is any good for me in this life. I've lost the ability to hope. What's the point of being a better man if my life is to be lived completely alone, empty, with no purpose or meaning? What use is it to be good when there's no one to be good to? 

Okay, that's enough now.

Conversation with my son:

"You know how many times I've tried, and how many times Life has knocked me on my ass. I just can't seem to find the motivation or will or purpose this time to get my shit together."

"Well, you know the best way to get your shit together is to get your shit together." 

The boy I raised. Quite right.

But, the real motivation is that he said that he's in exactly the same place (she was his sister, after all), and he needs to see me doing it in order to do it himself. That's the extra motivation I need.

So, resolution: Get up and get my shit together.

Plan:

1) Take the damn antidepressants (for a while).

2) Go on a fast, to  knock off the damn 50 pounds of grief weight that nothing has seemed to be able to touch. Or at least a significant portion of it. And for the other benefits: spiritual and mental clarity, reduction in inflammation (and therefore pain), etc.

These two are synergistic: the reason I keep failing in my fasts is because I feel so completely awful once I get a bit into it. The reason I don't take the antidepressants is because they cause immediate and significant weight gain. Hopefully, they will counteract each other. Rather hard to gain weight on 0 calories.

3) Manage the other undesirable med side-effects with supplementation. They tend to mess about my hormone levels.

4) Start walking at least 3-4 times per week. Also doing the back exercises I got from the physical therapist, to further reduce pain levels and increase functionality. Fasting is the perfect time for this, as you have to take it easy on exercise anyway.

5) Make appointment with VA to start pain management again--we were just going to start it in West Virginia when I left there and came back here. I'm going to get the radiofrequency ablation that I had in my lower back years ago and was so effective done in my upper back and neck.

6) Fucking let it all go.

This passage has made me realize how much I am still in it. Although I have definitely made progress, I am very much still in it. Why haven't any of the doctors or counsellors I've been talking to made this connection? We've been treating what I've been feeling as anxiety, when really, it's grief. As usual, C.S. Lewis understands things better than the rest of the world.

What do I mean when I say that I'm doing better in some ways? I was actually doing much better, for a while. I had that inner healing experience, then discovered some new supplements which work on dopamine and serotonin, and work better than any prescription drug I've ever taken. And I actually felt good and well. But progress is not linear--I've been set back a bit. 

I'm at least past that stage in which I was nearly completely paralyzed--in which I could not bear or face or motivate myself to do absolutely anything beyond the minimum required to exist from day to day. I've started to take some steps to get involved in some things again. I'm taking a Latin class, which I enjoy very much, and a philosophy class, which I don't. I've started to explore possibilities for going to church. Visited a Western Rite Orthodox mission here in Waynesboro a couple of weeks ago. I've been going to confession at the Catholic church just up the road from me, and made an attempt to go to mass there...but the ordinary novo mass, with all its liberal and modern -ness...I just still can't do it. And it was so full. I both want and don't want to be around people. I am lonely, and long for company and companionship, but then sometimes it just feels overwhelming. I'm doing these things, but it still requires a significant effort.

I have met and talked to a couple of women. Both surprisingly beautiful. I keep saying that, every time I meet someone, but it still never ceases to surprise me. Nothing actually going on as of yet. Not sure if there will be, or if I want there to be. Same thing again, I both want and don't want it. It is very lovely to sit and talk to a woman, though. 

I think what's holding me back at the moment is my physical pain and condition. I've made a couple of attempts to start exercising again, done a couple of short fasts, gone on some walks, but I haven't really been able to break out yet of the pit I sank into two years ago. The overwhelming tiredness and weakness is gone, finally, thank God. In New York I was able to walk around, see and do things, almost like a normal person, without that strange, inexplicable fatigue which plagued me from the time of Adina's death until now. But now that I have spent two years under that, I'm in terrible shape. Still 40 or 50 pounds heavier than I was then, fitness is in the pits, pain level has increased a lot. And the thought of starting over, basically where I was 10 or 12 years ago...that all that effort, and work, and suffering, and physical therapy, and pain treatments, I went through for all those years, to try and get myself to a place of semi-full functionality, is gone, was wasted...well again, kind of overwhelming. I know. The only way to do it is to start. But....

The problem is, with all of it, it's hard to find a reason to. It's like, there's no real hope left in the world. No reason sufficiently inspirational to give me the motivation to make the effort. The thing I need, really, is just someone in my life who gives enough of a damn about me to be in my life. Like in New York, with her, life was somehow just fine, in spite of the situation. Getting up in the morning, having someone to say "good morning" to, having a reason to go around and do things, someone to plan the day's activities with, someone to share dinner with, to just talk about things. Someone to watch a movie with or whatever in the evening. Someone to lay her head on my chest, to put our arms around each other, to caress each other. Well, it's a reason to live, isn't it? When everything else has ceased to matter. Which shows that I definitely have made significant progress, because when we were actually together, after the loss, even that was not enough.

Yes, I see the trap. I don't feel like I am able to have a relationship until I get my shit together, myself into better shape, physically and psychologically; but I don't feel like I can get myself into better shape unless I have someone to help me do it, or at least give me a reason to do it. I see the trap, but seeing it doesn't help: I can't seem to get out of it. 

I guess what I want is someone already familiar and intimate, who can fill that role, but with whom I don't have to undergo the exertions of becoming familiar and intimate. Not even necessarily a girlfriend, though--just another human in my daily life.

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting."

"And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job--where the machine seems to run on much as usual--I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? They say an unhappy man wants distractions--something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he'd rather lie there shivering than get up and find one. It's easy to see why the lonely become untidy, finally dirty and disgusting." -- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Why did I not re-read this two years ago? Perhaps it was that tired man wanting a blanket thing. 

I have passed those early stages of it, and have been doing better in many ways. But the truth is that it's not just my daughter that I'm grieving for. And there are setbacks. 

"It is all right to wallow in one's journal; it is a way of getting rid of self-pity and self-indulgence and self-centeredness. What we work out in our journals we don't take out on family and friends."

-- Madeleine L'Engle

Yes, a journal is normally private. But I do it here. Why make my journal public? I don't know, completely. Somehow it just helps. Somehow it makes me feel better. Perhaps because I don't have a living human in my life to actually talk to. This is almost like having someone, and if I wallow and complain, well, whoever reads it is reading it of their own choice, and so I don't feel like I'm inflicting it on them.

And also, and not least importantly, I have some small hope that what I write may be of some help to someone else who may be experiencing, or processing having experienced, some similar grief and heartache. 

I knew before I went that going to New York would do this to me--plunge me back into an emotional pit of loneliness, anger, bitterness, regret...etc. But, well, it had to be done. Whatever the cost to myself. 

Despite what either of us may think about the advisability, desirability, practicability, suitability, or possibility of "us", now, then, or in the future, the feelings are still there. The connection is still there. The intimacy and familiarity are still there. The passion is still there. The bond is still there. And for me, at least, exposing ourselves to them in the person of one another is like opening an angry tiger's cage, or the door of a building on fire which triggers a backdraft.

So, yeah, I went knowing what would happen, went accepting that it would. And so I allow myself a bit of bitterness and anger as part of the process of paying that price, and moving back toward moving on. But like I said, I had to do it. I don't regret it, despite the cost. I'd do it again. And as I said before, in spite of all this, we had a wonderful time. Probably partly because of "all this". Probably, this is the last time we will ever see each other. I actually intend for this to be the last time we ever speak to one another. And so it's very bittersweet. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

In this world, Michael would be labeled as a stalker. A crazy, obsessive, controlling ex. He'd be called pathetic, told he just needs to let go. He'd be called creepy and manipulative for marrying her at her lowest point, her most vulnerable moment. There would be a restraining order against him. In fact, I haven't looked, but I'd be willing to bet money that you could go on Amazon or Youtube right now and find hateful feminists saying exactly these things about the story.

The truth is...the unbearable, awful, evil, horrible. perverse, unfathomable, ugly truth is...that the more kindness a man shows to a woman, the more she despises him.