Beginning Again and Moving Forward

So…I’m in the process of getting left.  It would seem that I have been for a while now, but the official date of the “I can’t do this anymore” conversation was 24 June.  Yup.  Irony abounds.  At about the minute they were passing NY’s gay marriage bill, I was having the talk.  Hardy har har.

Now, here’s the thing, this was a LONG time in coming.  I mean years long, long.  So, I’m not exactly what you’d call heartbroken.  I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores, as the story is excruciatingly complicated, but it should suffice for me to say that the both of us were miserable and I was waiting for her to put this dog down.  Which she did.  Thankfully, as I would probably never have told her that it was time for her to go. 

So, why am I sitting here telling this little story?  Because if I don’t sit down and write through some of the anxiety I’m feeling right now, I may wind up going downstairs and pushing her Craigslist perusing ass right the hell out of her chair and onto the floor. 

And also, because it’s sort of the background to the things that I am doing and the life that I’m starting over…again….this time, at 40.

The relationship went for five and half years.  But, it never really got off the ground right…or well…or easily.  It was difficult almost from the start and despite our squabbles being part of what she called “growing pains,” ultimately we never really fixed the squabbles, so much as we kind of ignored the elephants in the room until walking around them became more an exercise in labyrinth maneuvering than problem solving.  If we weren’t catching our clothes on their tusks, we’d be face deep in their asses.

Before we struck up the relationship, I’d had—what I considered—a pretty ok kind of a life.  I had a stable, albeit difficult job, money to afford everything I needed and some of the things that I merely wanted, I went places with friends and was able to find myself time to do what I wanted to.  The only downside was that my lifelong struggle with insecurity and shyness kept me in a rather…mmm…chaste existence.  But, even that was tolerable.

Since the relationship, I didn’t much socialize, money for play things was nearly non-existent and money just for survival was…well…you’d think I was trying out for a professional spot on the US Bill Juggling Team.  They say money can’t buy happiness, and I suppose, for some, that’s true, but money can buy a certain amount of security that brings a sort of happiness with it. 

But, again, I don’t want to rehash this relationship, so much as I just want to say that I’m’ doing some stuff now.  I’m going places again (though, it’s hard to feel comfortable out and about in the world when you spent the last five years of your life stressed out thinking that you had to get home before there were consequences, big or small).

So, I’m going to try to get some of them in here from time to time.  I’ve done a couple of interesting things in the past few weeks, and I guess I’d just like to share…

So…next up, Akron Caves in Akron New York.  I’ll bring you a little bit of that, the next time I sit down with you here.