He Tried...

I’m angry. Don’t read this if you can’t hack it. Fair warning.

Now that my questioning mind has invited the rancor of several women (and one man) of my acquaintance, I’ll suppose I’ll just out with everything...

I have four problems at the moment (with a lot of other asides):

1. The stress of starting another new job. Yes, believe it or not I’m ready to return to some stability. I’m tired of getting to know people and then leaving them behind. I’m sick of having to keep adjusting my living and sleeping schedule. It’s my natural inclination to develop a fairly rigid routine and stick to it, but my world keeps spinning end over end and I can't get footing.

2. There’s a guy at our church whom I absolutely cannot stand, and I think he’s being groomed as an associate pastor or something-–maybe even the replacement to our current pastor. I don’t know. (He sure likes to call himself “pastor.”) I’ve had several interactions with him and every time he opens his mouth I get angry because he has no sense. He’s like a circling housefly. This is the first time I’ve ever experienced such a strong dislike for a guy who seems so nice. He’s Ned Flanders to my Homer Simpson. I love the guy, but I wish to avoid contact with him at all costs, and the irony is stressing me out. It’s becoming even more of a pain to get myself to church because I know he’s going to say something stupid and piss me off. Church is a difficult enough experience to get through, let alone when you’ve got some guy interrupting the worship to blab off shotgun prayers about supporting the President and saving all of America.

My biggest problem with him is that he's never been honest with me when we've conversed. Even though he seems to love talking about himself, he always speaks in vagueries when it comes to his weaknesses or struggles. He seems to be hiding himself behind a religious do-gooder's mask.

And sometimes in life you should really say nothing at all. A few days after my dad died, he said, "Just remember that he's still with you." He was trying to comfort me I guess, but I wanted to say, "Where'd you get that idea, bro? No, he ain't with me: he's somewhere else completely." But I just looked at him.

We attended the same Every Man's Battle and he insisted beforehand that we have separate rooms and separate small groups. "So," he told my wife, "I won't be focused on Steve's stuff while I'm there, instead of on my own stuff." Yeah, right. The truth is he doesn't want me to know his "stuff." We ate together several times and he knows all about my struggles, but he kept his own a secret.

Eventually I'm going to have to tell him outright that he offends me almost constantly. Bah.

3. My wife hates me. Yes, hates me. Or so she says. And I don’t blame her: I feel for her. She thinks I don’t understand her position, but I really do. The problem isn’t my lack of understanding, but my apparent inability to control my emotions. I’m doing okay these days keeping my behavior under wraps, but I can’t bring my heart in line with what my head’s saying. That pisses her off. The struggle pisses her off. And I’m out of ideas for how to fix it all.

4. Right now I would swim through molten lava to get five minutes on the phone with “the other woman.” The heavy reliance I had on porn (especially while I was on the road) is in remission, but I’m still dealing with the withdrawal of having made a decision to have nothing to do with a woman I love.

It’s pandemonium in my heart. Death without a corpse. Pande-fucking-monium.

Most guys I talked to at Every Man’s Battle were dealing with addiction to porn or fantasy, or with going to massage parlors or having lots of anonymous sex in seedy parts of town–-stuff like that. Even among the people I know personally who struggle with sexually addictive behavior, I’m the only one who’s said, “I fell in love with a girl who wasn’t my wife, and physical distance from her hasn’t made my feelings go away. What’s the deal here, man?”

In spite of my stoic outward appearance, I'm a romantic person. I'm way over the top, boy. But I don’t have a lot of gushy, romantic feelings for my wife. In fact I resent her, just as she resents me. My brain says, “There’s no future with that other girl, and it would all end badly.” But my heart won’t agree. Why?

Why the hell won't it agree? Oh God, what if it never goes away? What if this torture goes on for the rest of my life? I'd physically choke it out if I could. I'd beat my body into bloody heaps of warm pulp if it would accomplish anything.

See, this is why I understand Number 3. It’s unfair to Jessica. It doesn’t make sense. If she said, “Leave Steven, just get out,” I wouldn’t blame her at all. I want to feel passion for her again, but in our early years of marriage I dammed my heart towards her because she hurt me. She’s still hurting me. We’re hurting each other. And now I’m really trying, straining to the point of tears and violence to myself, being honest about my feelings, lying in bed at night shaking with the pain and raging conflict. But I can’t get the water to flow again. It’s flowing towards someone I can’t see, talk to, or touch.

Fuck. Just fuck.

I can’t seem to stop sabotaging myself.