Ok, so I lied.. I am a little angry. But there isn't anything that can be done about that, now. You moved on, just like you wrote about wanting to. What I've done is let you, meanwhile doing what I can to move forward and continue my campaign, back in my world. You wonder why I don't talk when I very well could? It's because I don't want to be an obstruction. You appear to be happy and fine and going somewhere and the last thing I remember reading for myself is that I was everything that held you from that kind of happiness. The things that I read, that maybe you never intended for me to see, made me see a few things clearly about the nature of you and the nature of us. Not bad things.. true things.

I don't resent you for what you felt. Maybe it's true I was a life sucking individual. Either way, that is my way of showing I care, by letting you stay free and not being one.

The instant I learned everything, reading what you'd written in the final moments and contrasting them to what I remember thinking.. I woke up from that madness I felt for you. And, yes, you did join the ranks of.. everyone else I spent my life furious with.

You'd be mad, too, if.. I wrote you out of my life as you were totally intoxicated with me, and even further.. write some newcomer into it. You'd question everything I ever told you if I took everything promised to you and offered it on a platter to someone else. You'd have burns in the back of your eyes too, if you'd seen me kiss some woman the same way you wanted to be kissed for so long. You wouldn't even have a grade of anger suitable for I made you sit in the best friend's seat while I contemplated the next phase of life with some new woman. Right to your face.

I can't understand if you were or weren't aware of it, but you hurt me.. over a long period of time ..in such a way and to a degree that no one has or.. will ever be able to have achieved again. To this very day I have never felt safe issuing the grade of trust or.. feeling that I did to you. I don't even think it's possible to do it. You never even understood what you took from me. I concluded that's simply because it wasn't the same for you. I was never a real being to you. That's the only thing that makes any sense. I only wish I had known that or.. that you had told me so, at some point long before then.. rather than staying where you didn't want to be.. in "bondage".. longing for "liberation".. and letting me cling to the one thing I believed I had, as times got forbiddingly tough.

You did those things.. and that's what sent me home wanting to burn the pericardium of my heart to glass. That's what drove me insane with anger for a long time after. That is why I did anything and everything to put out the fire in me that seemed to just keep burning.. long after everything was already burnt down. That is why I did hate you, for so long.

I had ..an innumerable amount of nights up crying, and trying to keep quiet at it for keeping that pain a secret... I had so many god awful dreams of you. They continued to tear me down. They wore away at my will to fight, reminding me that there was nothing to be so tenacious over anymore. They reminded me that someone took away, without any effort, what I fought and, little by little, died to protect. They reminded me that you gave it away because you didn't care and you wanted your freedom.

As I've said a number of times. I got back to work. I turned my aggression outward. I wanted to leave this half of the planet, that it would get me out of conscionable physical range of you, my own family, and anyone else who'd contributed to the erupted anger I was letting out. As I've also said, I have you to thank for blowing the cap on that otherwise repressed energy. It's my gratitude that usually kept me from just childishly yelling at you until I can't anymore.

You never knew, because I never told you, but sometime before I left I put an end to things.. or tried to. Much as you aren't one for God, I can't imagine who else would've been able to stop me from doing that and put me up to fight. I made a deal, in a very.. candid discussion about what had just happened.. and that's what I've been living accordingly to, ever since.

You wouldn't understand or believe any of that.. because you don't believe in a God.. but that's what I meant when I told you before I left.. when you sat next to me and asked me if I was alright.. that my issue, my conflict.. my war is with life now.

But this was all.. a while ago. It hasn't been years yet. But I haven't cried about it in what seems like a long time. I haven't been directly angry at you in at least a year. It isn't because I've found a way to forgive you or anyone else on my list.. because I don't truly think I know how to forgive.. but it's because I've been trying to keep my little promise.

I've turned all my effort outward pursuant to creating a life.. taking it back from those who've stolen years from it.. and defying my too long held thoughts that there couldn't be one without you. It's no longer a campaign of aggression.. as that part served it's purpose. I can walk fine now. I have stopped losing any sleep. I gave up all the drugs and drinks that I sought refuge in. Things you looked down on me for doing.

It's been.. how long, now? And what you did didn't kill me, after all. Nothing, not even future steam rollings, ever will come that close to doing so. So why is it important? I survived, instead, and I found my way back to a defensible place in the world, like was my intention. Even as I'm with someone now, though, they've already shown me I'm not safe, with them. And all I can ever think of is how I fell flat on my face with you, still not able to forecast exactly when the hurt will come.. but knowing it will.. and thus knowing not to go all in, even if capable, so as to avoid total destruction.

Am I angry with you now? Today? It would.. seem so, I guess. Obviously I haven't forgotten one moment. I keep it to myself and brush it under the rug as needed, though. I don't have a single soul to talk to about it that I'd trust.. and it won't make a difference if I did. I've no reason nor opportunity to show those kind of wounds, so I don't.

I could be wrong but.. this is the best I can do, while trying move on.

It's difficult to  talk about without.. making this all sound like I'm still dying and swooning over you. Because I'm not. But there are.. so many dozens of things I wanted to say and never did say to you.. before and after you tore yourself away. The irony of that is.. the time for either the nice or spiteful things I wanted to say.. along with the time for holding a grudge.. is long gone now. None of it would do any good to try and confront or express now, though.

I might want to, sometimes. But I know that the time to move on started a long time ago. I have to behave like an adult, just like everyone else. I have to remain a calculated machine until I've gotten where I'm trying to go, in this life.

There's some part of me that's intensely angry, and still another part that's intensely sad. No one knows or cares about either and so I don't reveal them.

I guess this is what you wanted to know. I can't imagine it makes you feel better about it. You should've known these things, already, though.

The same way I haven't stopped living my life though, I wont start holding that stuff against you. All we have left is this cautious shaky friendship.. and I don't even know why it is so cautious or shaky.. but it's something I'd prefer not to extinguish over a past that I buried alive and you.. well God only know's what you did with it.

Things are fine how they are, aren't they?

I'm sure you get a lot of letters from people. Many of them coddle you. Not all of them are pleasant. You probably get more than George Bush ever did.. just because most of us feel a little more connected to you than we did to him.

You listen. He didn't, too often. While I'm not going to blame everything that we were left in afterward on him, the missteps he did make were made because he didn't listen.

He didn't listen when we said Don't go to war. Send special forces to kill Osama, instead. He didn't listen when we said "Hell no" to No Child Left Behind. He didn't listen when we told him to re-ban assault weapons as the last thing we need is even more deadly weapons for the wrong hands to have access to.

But you listen. This is why we write to you, often.. some of it about our lives and some of it about the constructive criticisms we have for you. These are things that you need to hear and listen to, as you seek to run an effective presidency.

The letter you get from me that you get, today, is to tell you some truths that I think you need to hear, right now, this moment.

Right now, you are surrounded by the chorus of cynics.. and they are growing louder and more dissonant just as you described before winning the office. Some of them are coming from the other side of the line. Far too much of it is coming from your own side.

I expect as much from the Republican side, because.. at the end of the day.. they are an opposing political viewpoint.. and so most of what you do won't meet their approval. What I, myself, don't understand is why there are so many Democrat politicians rising up against what you're trying to do.. when virtually every one of them stood beside you and sung your plan's praise during the election. My thought is that they're getting back to the game.. the very one that you said you won't be a part of, if elected.

My advice to you is, therefore, to be mindful of who your friends are.. and to abandon this notion of bipartisanship before it renders all of your first year moot. You won't get elected again to continue your work, if you continue to let so much time be consumed trying to hold hands and agree on everything with everyone. It wouldn't be politics and we would never get into trouble as a nation, if that were possible. It's never truly been a fruitful political virtue in our nation's history, accept for maybe when we were at war and the consensus was to do whatever defeats the enemy. It's wasting time, at this point.. and you've constantly reiterated that we don't have much time. We asked  for a Bull Moose candidate, and this is what you presented yourself to be. This is why we sicced you on Washington. Remember that and act in it's understanding, until the second of the hour of the day your gig is over, Mr President.

Meanwhile, I applaud you for understanding the inconvenient truths of today that.. you might well have to endure an unpopular presidency in order to offset. I also applaud you for finally letting a tinge of anger show. We know that with the crippling and downsizing of industries that used to define this country's muscle, new industries must be seeded. We know that we must match wits with the rest of the world on the subject of social development and reforms. Those who voted for you and those who wanted to but didn't ..did so in recognition of the fact our whole house must change into a place where we can live again, as it is far dilapidated, currently. Supporters of yours like myself have been waiting for a bare few personal things from you, though.. and one of them is that your dissatisfaction with things show in the tone of your voice and the curve of your brow, as it does in ours, everyday. I think that you'd better use it more productively, though, and show it more consistently from this point on.. because otherwise, you give your opposition the idea that they're getting inside you & making you believe you're in over your head, as some have said, from the beginning, that you are. The day you give up, though, is the day everyone abandons all hope*, though.

You say you don't give attention to the poll numbers, and I don't think you should take them to heart. If you're going to, at least be mindful that the current numbers reflect something more than just flat-out disapproval. They reflect the fact that much of the nation is still scared for the future, as well we should be.

The needless tug of war going on in Washington.. with your opposition and some on your side mobilizing for what seems to be a legislative civil war, still believing they can "win" against you.. is making people fearful that the changes we asked you to set into motion won't come in time to save things that are slipping away from us and slipping out of hopeful reach as time goes on.. because the motions to do so will be forever locked in bureaucratic quagmire. We don't flench when the opposition brings up the fact that you're going to create more debt, because the fact is.. these same people weren't so debt conscious before now.. and that's why we went from a national surplus into a debt.

We understand that, one way or another, the federal government has to spend money.. else.. what would we save it for and why should we pay into a hoard, and why not pay taxes if you want productive schools, communicable roads, a viable military and presentable health care that you can't produce for yourself. We understand that means that, even by doing nothing.. we are drifting into debt because the country must always go on and never dead-stop. We, thus, understand that all you're trying to do is make the next round of loans.. or money that we don't have that you must spend count for something. We understand that you are trying to invest in the things that will restore this nation's productivity and render us able to fight our way out of debt in the decades following your administration as we would not be able to, in our current condition.

What the polls don't truly reflect are the number of those who see where you're going with all this.. and thus don't feel a need to speak, since we did that with our votes. Some of us feel the need to be redundant and entertain the compulsory opinion polls.. but most of us will only do as humans do.. sound off only when there's a problem. So, be mindful of the psychology behind the numbers, but not the numbers themselves.. as they are likely to swing and sway, with every first pitch you throw.

There isn't a single soul here who didn't know what you were going to begin doing when you got into the oval office and who had no idea it'd be this hard. We elected you, because you said you'd bring about some very specific changes.. and you'd pull our Johnsons out of most of the fires we've been stuck in, some of which since the Cold War. You said you'd pull us from Iraq by 2010-11. We understand that we've made a mess over there and, in that context, that it isn't as simple as just ordering all the chopper crews to evacuate everyone and then forgetting all about the place, like we did in Viet Nam and Mogadishu. I'm sure those troops who've been able to come home, so far, appreciate it anyway. I'm sure their families do, too. Troops have a job to do, but they are not toy soldiers or expendable units in a videogame. It makes me happy that we have a commander-in-chief who understands that there are human lives on hold and at extreme risk, as we mull over what to do in these places.

So, by now you should understand that.. we understand what you're up to. You should have seen by now that the game goes on whether you want it to or not.. because that's what politics is. What you do from here is to decrease the leniency and levity and bipartisanship that you operate with. I'm sure you've discovered by now that it's not as productive as you'd hoped it would be and that those who feel they can will treat you like the dumb black NBA player who made a wrong turn into the white house will do so for as long as you let them.

Your executive order, from the people, is hereby to take back your streets and finish constructing them the way we asked for them to be rebuilt. You don't have time for the BS you're wading through when you should be steamrolling and cementing over it. To do that, you need to step back, right now, suck in your gut, straighten your back, sharpen your tongue.. and remind those who don't yet get it that you're the chief.. and then get down to your business.

P.S. Leave North Korea the hell alone before they actually do something harmful; They've been on a tangent ever since their name emerged from GWB's mouth. Put Hilary Clinton back on her leash, please. She's going to talk us into bad relations with too many places. Annnnd wolf whistle @ Michelle at some point today, for me.
That is all.

I'm pretty sure this is unhealthy to ask, let alone to answer but since you did..

Her name was Kirsten. Very first love of mine. Very first thing worth living to the best of my ability to enjoy. The love over which I made the first bold decisions of my life and about which wrote the first songs that came from my heart. The same bold attitude and the lessons learned back then are what have led me to a state of war, now.

She and what we had made were taken away suddenly and despite everything I threw at it. She didn't die, though there were many times that she could have and almost did.. because she just wouldn't ..not get into perilous situations. When she did, she reached for my voice or ..I had the ability to otherwise pull her from danger. That's the way it was, for a long time.. because she was a marauding type. At her root, she still is. She's just too "adult" to act on it, now, though.

I got to watch her grow and change from a cute young girl to the loveliest of young women, as I changed from a ugly little troubled boy to a .. well still fairly ogreish man .

She taught me everything I ever knew about love, though she eventually took her's away. She taught me to think differently of myself.. an acceptance that I hadn't been privy to.. and that had been under heavy assault, previous to being with her, even though she took some of that away, too.

She was everything I was ever taught to hate. Her very presence in my life forced me to change from being an indoctrinated racist, though. She never forced me to, directly, but ..the things I felt brushed in conflict with the things I'd been brought up to believe.. and I chose my feelings. I kept her in secret because I'd always thought my family would move to keep her away, the same way they used everything else I loved as a weapon against me. I was right, too.

She came from remarkably similar circumstances.. so if there was anything that I could say I most appreciated about being with her.. it's that it felt comfortable and right to be with her.. even in the few moments I got to be right next to her as it was coming undone. A single wish I carried for a longtime after is that I'd wish we'd have had more time.. more of those moments.. though most of them weren't anything special.

I do know.. she gave kisses that I wished would never end.. even though they always did. She was the first person with which I shared a real meaningful kiss.. and she was perfect. I didn't know what was so great about kissing until I'd had her's. Another learning experience and.. beauty that was painful to count among the lost.

We had become so connected, though. In that space of years.. we seemed to be intertwined and connected beyond convention.

She understood or tried to understand me. I understood or tried to understand her. We were .. I guess like the very best of friends.. like long lost family, even. At the time, I thought it was the greatest thing I could've been given, even as all of life previous to those few years was completely hope-free shit.

She believed in me. She made me believe that she did, anyhow. I could do absolutely anything, and she'd be behind me in support. She would do that.. and she wanted to be a part of whatever it was.. no matter how silly.

I had found something more intoxicating and compelling than any temptation.. the greatest temptation... more deeply powerful than religion.. a bad religion of sorts.. and something that had come to mean more to me than the life I had been living on sheer inertia and borrowed time. I wanted to live and I carried a beautiful dream, from then on.

And that's what mostly she gave to me. Hope.. and all sorts of things I had no sources of before. The very numerous things I had to block out and contend with suddenly no longer mattered.. because there'd be a future filled with important.. and subtly beautiful things. There had already been one, mind you.. because I had a dream before then. It just didn't seem as feasible. But I was willing to trade going anywhere else in the world.. for the little red house in some quiet little place..which is what she expressed as her specific dream.. and letting that be the place where I made my home. It didn't matter where or what kinda house, to me.. only that she'd be there. That was her wish, though, so it became a part of mine.

In the back of my mind, from about halfway through us being together, I knew she'd be gone someday.. or at least I feared it as the one thing on this planet that could utterly destroy me. The day came when she did.. and it did kill me, quite dead. I never expressed those fears before then, except in jest.. because I thought they'd become self-fulfilling if I did.

 As I discovered sometime after I came running.. there was positively nothing I could do to keep what I loved, once she had begun her quest to.."liberate" herself from me. I fought and died for what I'd come to love.. because it's all that I knew to do. I would've happily died from this earth after that, because I truly felt like I'd been defeated with a profound finality, then.

I came to my own simple explanations of why it happened and also I got comfortable with the fact that probably wouldn't be the last time something like that is given to me, only to be taken away.

I don't care to go into detail about how it ended.. because today I'm mostly past the furious emotions I felt back then.. and it won't bring her back nor do anything good to get sore allover again. I did learn better, though.

I had a life to rebuild and many hostile elements to return to working amongst. I, then, had a deep cutting pain to contend with.. one that caused me to lay up crying like I never had over anything before.. and many dozens of injuries at work. The same pain that caused me to pray, even more, for an abrupt death. The same kind people more deserving of life seem to get, daily.

Since I couldn't do that (and I did try..) I changed, into ..several different kinds of beings. None of them completely silenced the dis-integrity that returned sharply to me once she was gone and I had limped away. I had hoped it would, though.

I threw any kind of drug or drink into my body that would allow me to forget all of it long enough to work and work well enough to earn my keep, and eventually earn my freedom again.

A year later, into that life, I cooled again. I stopped .. doing anything accept occasionally drinking, though . When I turned 21, that became a faithful retreat, as no other person has ever been to me. She had never gone too far away, though.. and I now had to deal with.. being shoved into a friend zone.. which was fine if it was all we had left.. but it was one where I had to ..hear about the one person I ever loved.. and her troubles with the assbob for which I was dumped.

It's been nearly 3 years now, and I am.. still reverting back to being.. well less than the terrible individual I first became. I think I am slowly returning back to.. the person I was. She hasn't said a word to me in.. something like a year, now... but I don't think about that too often, as I know.. she's moved on. I have, too, to the best of my ability.. but it was easier for her, somehow.. because she just never blinked about it, at all.

The truth of the matter was.. something I learned a little more as time went. It makes me generally sad to... know that people can go from being ..like family.. to being people on opposite sides of standoffish borders. It's.. disenchanting.. to think that that's just what happened to us, in the end.

Earlier this year, sometime after the new years and Christmas parties I'd been going to.. something inside me said that it was time to open my heart again. It had been locked up and away, like a North Korean fortress.. because I never wanted to give anyone the power I gave her.. only to end up destroyed by it again.

Up until I knew the destructive capability of that power, though, it was the single greatest part of life. It was a beautiful time that I wouldn't change if I could go back and do so. I wouldn't trade it for all the riches on Earth. I kept a lot of relics from a few years ago, to this day, because I don't ever want to forget the days I got them.. and because I don't know what to even do with them, now.

I go.. in and out of relationships now.. (though I've still not yet slept with any one of them.. yup... not one.. ever.. just thought I'd put that out there before anyone interprets that as me succumbing to garden variety male dating .. or.. err.. "recreational" behavior ) and.. it really isn't that I feel anything that I did before for Kirsten, though I do sometimes wonder if she's.. doing good wherever she is, whatever she's doing, ..but.. ever since she left.. and even now as I'm trying to give someone new and serious a chance..  I always felt like and acknowledged her as the one who got away.

She is the one person about whom I'll ever feel that.. along with the complete and totally unconditional love I felt.
I don't think, even today, that it's possible (or wise, even if it's possible) for me to give someone that much again.

She did some bad things to destroy us.. and she never did grab for the second chance that she seemed to want, years ago. She's changed into a completely different person, by now, too. 

But she's always going to be the first person to put her fingerprints on my heart. She's always going to be the one who I should have run toward, sooner. She'll always be the one that I went straight to war for. And she'll forever be the one who got away, who should not have.

If you ask her, I don't think she'd say the same.. because I wasn't her first.. and it seemed easy for her to tear away from me, so I somehow doubt her chemistry toward me is or was ever the same.. but this is the way it's written in my history.

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

  One of the things that seems fundamentally different about me from the people around me is the way that I interpret pictures, art and music. The people around me will see a picture or hear a long piece of music.. the same one I happen to be looking at or listening to.. and they'll see one thing.. one theme.. one statement. They are quick to categorize, and sometimes dismiss.

I took this & a few other photos, today. This is my favorite of the ones I snapped of me.

Am I standing by this window hopelessly observing out.. or am I standing there envisioning tomorrow.. planning my next attack to claim it?

What do you think?