Open Hearts

I’m sick to shit of crazy women, and I’m trying to decide whether or not all women are crazy.

The only girls I really get along with are friends, or the wives of friends. Hell, I should thank my friends’ wives. They’re in a select club of people who have preserved a perhaps foolish faith that women are good, worthy souls. Because I consider them unavailable, I’ve been able to get to know them as human beings. And they are all beautiful, stunning, remarkable human beings.

So I know that good women are out there and that I should not harden my heart and turn away.  My friends’ wives may well be the collective saviors of my humanity.

But that doesn’t change the fact that most of my girlfriends to date can best be compared to the most hideous train wrecks you can imagine. It’s all my fault. I attract, and embrace, insanity.  And the insane come to me.  When we’re done, they’ve cheated my heart, they’ve stolen my money, they’ve badmouthed me to mutual friends, and they’ve destroyed my dreams.  Again and again, I let them walk all over me. I let them reign over me with their crippling hangups, their demanding need to belong in a world of their own creation, their despicable self-loathing.  And it’s not just during the relationship, these bitches stay with me for months…years…decades. Hey – remember The Strategy article?  That first comment?  That fucking bitch was out of my life six years ago and, yet, I can expect contact from her every few months.  Sometimes it’s a haughty defense, like her comment.  Sometimes she begs me to meet her at a conference somewhere to fuck her in the ass behind her husband’s back.

If only she were interesting and pornographic.  Her problem, and it’s a problem shared by many of my exes, is that they’re fucking boring.  Predictable on a level that, comparatively speaking, makes an episode of The A-Team nail-bitingly intense.

I think, most of all, it’s the drama that bores me.  That’s also my own fault, I think.  For the last few years, I’ve been unable to take people’s problems seriously.  You know, unless it’s big and horrible. But joblessness, school or life problems, general malaise, and even abuse cases leave me sort of cold.  Without reservation, without hesitation, I would trade my life with the most damaged of victims, the most broken of despairing souls.

It worries me that I’ve become so resentful that, even in cases of child abuse I think, well, at least your parents and family were there.  At least you knew their intentions. Yeah, those intentions were evil beyond reason… But at least you knew.  At least you could point at them and condemn them for what they were.

How lucky you are.

My parents raped and beat me in a far more insidious way. I would have welcomed the violation of my father’s cock or my mother’s wandering hands, or black eyes and broken bones  instead of what they actually did to me. They stole my future, my name, my dreams, my hopes, my expectations, my ideas of love, kindness, and beauty.  Their teachings were that the world is entirely evil, and that everyone is wicked, insane, and hopeless.  Loveless. And that I stand among the evil people, and will share their destiny.

And, just when I thought I could escape their hideous lessons, they dragged me back.  Two years of my life spent, day and night, seven days a week, deconstructing my mother’s estate.  Then 12 years of agonizing, supposedly incurable nerve pain.  And then my dad dies and I enter the same probate adventures.  No one apologizes, either. There is never a resolution.  My mother’s last words to me were to call me sick, evil, cruel, and inhuman.  My father looked me in the eyes and told me that he did what he thought was best for me.

But, of course, I fought back.  I struggled to live and not give in. And, with the exception of that little bump in the road, a miracle surgery returned me to life. It cured my pain.  But, right now, I feel like I didn’t even start breathing until just three years ago.

Subtract one of those three years for recovery.  It was brain surgery, and I lost quite a bit of muscle in my neck, so you know how that goes.  I was fucked up.  So let’s say the last two years is all I’ve really had.  Quite literally born yesterday.

I entered one relationship, post-surgery, with that disclaimer in place.  I needed time to learn how to live.  I needed room to learn even the basic things again – showering, brushing my teeth, and drinking a glass of water without pain.  I needed  room to pay off a debt I had built to try and assuage my troubled mind in the pain years. And she said she understood. She signed on.

It fell apart, left me feeling bad about myself and a few bucks lighter. Left me thinking I had failed in my attempts to steer a different course.

I’m pretty sure that all the shortcomings are my own. I’m looking for a girl that may not exist.  I’m thinking a PhD (or similar education) who loves sex, booze, sci-fi, and travel.  She has to embrace spontaneity.  If I say fuck all this shit, let’s go to fucking France for a month, then she needs to say okay.  Or, at least, plan it with me for something a bit more organized in a few months.

She needs to enjoy gatherings, entertaining and being entertained.  She needs to be interested in hope…healing…living.  That’s what depresses me the most about my relationships.  They have been sought out by a soul crippled with loss, pain, and resentment.  Their broken souls often reflect my own.

Birds of a motherfucking feather, right?

But I have overcome.  Or, rather, I am overcoming.  Because fuck this world, and fuck these people who hurt us, and fuck every goddamned transgression.  It means nothing.  It’s the result of the actions of evil men and women… Of small men and women.  Of people inconsequential, or fucking dead, or so sad that there is no hope of redemption.

Let them burn.

For us?  Wake up, breathe, and begin again.

We are free. That’s what I learned when I woke up from brain surgery. When the sorrow and despair of my world was abruptly detoured to paradise and I went along…albeit kicking and screaming.

I crave freedom.  I want that same freedom in the soul of my mate.  And I’ve been shown that all these dreams I talk about, and all these plans I have, and all these fantasies I hold, are within grasp.  They’re right there. You can see them.  You can work for them.  You can embrace the journey. And, on that journey, you can cry, and fuck, and love, and laugh.

So far, I’ve been on that road alone.  Surrounded by weak, fearful women who do not see the goal, the prize, or even the journey.

But I have seen that there is life beyond all this suffering. My heart will never be able to close again.