ahandfullofdust

WHEN I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.

John Milton. Interesting man, brilliant mind. Read his stuff. He's religious by our standards, and makes no bones about it, but he's cool.

Patience. I have come to understand something. Patience is Pain's older, more experienced sister. Pain will force a white hot knife between your ribs, and then twist savagely. Patience is much, much worse. She'll do the same thing. She'll do it slow and drawn out. And the entire time, she'll weep and keep telling you this is for your own good and she will MEAN EVERY WORD. She will regret the fact it's happening. And most of all, she'll feel regret and sorrow with every inch.

Patience, my friends is a stone cold bitch.

Patience is a suckers game, because it means that while you do the right thing and recieve nothing, the other side is doing wrong and GETTING PAID.

Patience is a fool's passtime because while you wait and hope and relive all that was lost, the other side has no reason to think on what it's doing, and is ENJOYING THIER CHOICE.

Patience is ending where you began, again and again, and hoping something might change in time. (In passing reference, one of the definitions of insanity is to complete the same set of actions again and again, and hoping to see a different result. Interesting similarity.)

Patience is refusing to let the world change you because it's not going to because you know that what you did was right, while the desire of your heart shifts in the wind, and "appreciates" how you feel, but can't force their actions to add up to what they have said and are saying.

Patience is bearing their scorn for valuing them, while they don't value you, and mock you for it.

Patience is a stone cold bitch. But like all stone cold bitches, patience is something that has to be, and must be practiced and acted out and most of all, lived.

The kicker is, Patience has more siblings than pain. Loyalty is one of her family. Tie those two together, and you are messed up on a level of magnitude larger than by patience alone. It's not even the worst they can do. I may, in my meanderings get to the heavy of Patience's crew.... Honor.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, do not deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

From The Man himself, Kipling. Seriously, if you want some poetry with punch and edge, and are willing to give a little because the man wrote for an audience and from the viewpoint of the largest empire ever made, check him out.

Okay, Loyalty.

What a mindfuck this is. Loyalty. Loyalty is a force and an instrument of behavior that I have just not understood as to myself. All through my childhood, I lost contact with friends, but never once have I turned my back on them, no matter what they did or the respect I lost for them. I never tossed a friend or a person aside.

So this is where I am- I gave my trust and loyalty to one person, and she has decided to spit it back on my face. To many, indeed, to most of my friends, even to my parents, this is ample reason for me to toss the issue aside. An excuse and entitlement for me to say "Fine. you're not needed or wanted, and I will not suffer for you any longer."

And for some, for most, that's what it may be. But I find myself caught. This is the person I lived with through thick and thin, better and worse, sickness and health. This is the woman I loved and courted and visited. This is the mother of my children and my first experience physically with a woman and the one person who means (meant?) more to me then family, than upbringing, than my own qualms when I decided to give myself to her.

And she decided it wasn't worth it, and went with something (and someone) new and shiny and easy and less work because the honeymoon period was still on. And I'm left struggling with myself because I have one question about this.

What is my word, my oath and my bond WORTH?

Do I lessen myself and my loyalty by going to and being with and binding myself to another woman? Does it lessen my oath? If one side of a covenant decides to break it, the covenant is void... or is it? Does someone else not being worthy of what was sworn, not being willing or strong enough to face up to the burden and live their oath REALLY release me from my vows? Or does it mean I am left with them? Does it mean that I, as the person who did not break them need to stand vigil over the shattered remnants of what was? Does it make me less of a person to let things fall and become the type of person she became, find someone new and pretend nothing happened, that there was nothing there, and that we actually tried to make things work out, but it didn't?

I find myself unsure.

I want to be with someone. I want to hold to someone, have that comfort. I want to cling to someone in the night when these thoughts swirl churn and make a storm of my mind and memories. To have the safe harbour of another there to shelter in.

If I did... What would that make of me? Of my oath, my vow and my bond? Of what I know in my deepest gut I feel, and that burns within my bones, unable to be shut up for long?

Loyalty.

I have sworn an oath and made a covenant with a woman who was false to it and walked away because it suited her, and she had her selfishness and her friends telling her it would be easier and better to let go. And still, I stay faithful. Because of myself, and my questions, and the seriousness with which I take such commitment. And so, my monument is this: my word is kept. And what wondrous things my oath keeping has wrought...

I MET a Traveler from an antique land,
Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings!
Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Percy Bysshe Shelly

And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

T S Eliot. Man had a way with words, and evoking certain feelings. Me, I'm just a guy trying to find his head again.

About six months ago my wife, whom I loved and still love, asked for a separation from myself and her beau who she had in accordance with our open relationship. I listened, and supported and trusted because I wanted to give her what she needed to recover our relationship. I left, as we all agreed. All three of us. Read that again. All three.

I left. He didn't. Surprise surprise, they kept company with mutual friends of theirs and about three weeks later i was told there was no chance for us any longer. I was also told that I am to see this as normal and healthy and good. after six years of faithfulness, through abuse (by her) through a time when her emotions dictated i not touch her except to be nearby (two years) and through a year of me working to support us all, she chose to walk away. With the man I supported.

I have since been trying to reconcile my overpowering anger at these two execrable examples of human unfaithfulness and deceit with a few facts:
1 I still love my wife
2 I cannot bear a grudge against him because his family deserve better, and he's just being pulled around by his dick by a woman who uses men.
3 I cannot lose any connection to my children as they are not receiving all the love they need from those they live with by default.

I also have a gaping void in my life. My wife was one of few relationships I've had, and my first lover as I had not had sex because I felt it was something important to hold on to for the one I meant to live with.

I would love to have someone in my life right now, but I am left to ask myself- I made a commitment. If I, like her, walk away from that just because it's more convenient and it's easier to do than to tough it out and make things work, can I even honestly commit to anyone else? What does this say about me? About what I think of the worth of the person I get involved with? About whether I can commit if I carry these feelings for someone else?

I haven't found any answers yet, but there are a few oases in the wasteland. I have good friends to talk things out with, and a few not so 'good' who let me savage my wife and her... yeah... in conversation. sometimes it helps, but not always.

So that brings me here. Noting down what it is I feel and think and ask. Topics may range, but this is going to be about me, about finding who and what is left after I was used up and cast aside. Maybe by next year, we'll find whether there IS another side to this desert.

So hey, come along. Look at a place burnt dry by neglect and abuse and manipulation. See the few things that keep me walking.

I'll show you something different than your shadow before us in the dawn and behind us at dusk.

I'll show you fear in a handful of dust.