Losing To Learn How To Live

Spent the last couple of days finally accepting being sick and sleeping a lot. Like more sleep than I've had in a long time. It helped put everything back in perspective. I had lost my perspective for a little bit and through the help of a couple of ghosts, I feel that I've gained it again.

An hour long talk with my ex-wife the other day did wonders for some mental spring cleaning. I'd like to hope that being able to talk to your ex-wife is a sign of personal evolution and not the other way around. I'll get the question "Do you still love her?" all the time from people. Of course, I do, but not in a sleep together way. It's more of a brother and sister way. We break each others balls, but will totally be there for one another in an "In Case of Emergency. Break Glass" moment. It's severely ironic that a person who breached my trust more than anyone also still has the most of it. Call it what you will, but I think it's okay.

A brief text conversation with another ex helped a little bit, too. It was to congratulate her on getting engaged, but quickly moved to how bad I mistreated her and an apology. Again, we are all good now and when she's in town, she has an open invitation to lunch with me. I was a real asshole to her and will own up to it. I feel bad about it, but try to not treat people like that anymore. You've got to fuck up to learn.

So, the thing is, if you truly want to find out things about yourself that will lead to personal growth, go to your largest critics. Go to the people that hate you or hated you. While they can never beat you up as much as you can beat yourself up, they offer some form of atonement and brutal honesty that you need at times.

So, after that, I went to an adult/kids party. It was my old boss' house and there were tons of kids around and everyone were in pairs except for me. It put some stuff in perspective again. Eventually, the life of the party needs to hang up the life. You hear old friends talk about getting "hall passes" every month to go get wasted while you are on a permanent hall pass and while changing a shitty diaper doesn't sound like that much fun, a night in playing Scrabble with someone you care about sounds kind of entertaining. What do you give up for that? Oh, I don't know, nights of four hours of sleep, hangovers, trips to get STD screenings, mornings/weekends of secret regret meetings with yourself, endless disappointments, and people who you don't remember saying "Hello" to you in public places. You have to give up a lot for the "good life," but I'm at least checking out the pamphlets at this point. There's just an overwhelming fear that I would fail at it. Fear of failure, keeping winners losing since 1975.

So, the good news, it's a beautiful day. I've already finished a crossword puzzle and have laundry in while I spot clean my carpet. Totally showered and also found myself smiling like a wackjob crazy for no reason three times this morning. I was gathering up a bunch of crap and decided that I would make the most bizarre donation to the Goodwill today. It's a book called "Penis Pokey" that my sister gave me for Christmas one year. There's not even any words in it, I don't think, so you might like it if you liked the DaVinci Code. So, it's just kind of taking up space and I thought it would make a good donation. I hope to god it actually makes it on the shelf. That would be really, really funny. Here's a pic: