“lose the hero, get with the zero.”

okay, let’s run through the stuff i’ve acquired over the last couple of weeks…

  • like a pen single – the knife (rabid/brille/mute)
  • we share our mothers’ health single – the knife (rabid/brille/mute)
  • silent shout single – the knife (rabid/brille/mute)
  • sillent shout deluxe edition – the knife (rabid/brille/mute)

i decided to try and buy most of the knife’s output. unfortunately, accurate discographies seem hard to come by, and sometimes the european version of a release has one or two things different than the u.s. release. plus some stuff is only available on vinyl. and some stuff is pretty rare. add all that together, and it’s a mess trying to find and buy the stuff. even online, since when someone says they have something you don’t always know if it’s the european or u.s. version. (some people know the difference, some people don’t.)

  • nausea 12″ vinyl – adult. (ersatz audio)

i picked this up on ebay. i don’t even have a record player. mostly i wanted to get a 12″ for the artwork, so i can display it. plus “nausea” is one of my favorite adult. songs.

  • lonely hearts – tara mcpherson (dark horse)
  • built in Texas – abernethy, et. al. (unt press)
  • goodbye to a river – john graves (knopf)

the first is a book of tara mcpherson’s artwork. i really like her style — pop art, fairly minimalist clean lines, limited color complexity, kind of innocent yet also creepy and dark. good stuff. unfortunately, the version i got from amazon looks like they left it laying around at either a mechanic shop or a ink toner manufacturing shop. hopefully i can clean it up.
the second is a book put out by the Texas folklore society. it’s got texts, pictures, and drawings. different sections are written by different people. there are a couple by terry jordan. it covers the different styles of construction in early Texas: houses, barns, windmills, water sources, etc. mostly buildings though. it discusses origins, areas styles were prevalent, variations, etc.
the third is a classic Texas book, but i’ve never owned or read a copy. this is a hardcover version and appears to be the twentieth printing.
i got my new fender dropped off by ups earlier this week. when i pulled off my old fender after the incident, i angled it and pulled it in between the forks. it’s not really meant to be taken off and put on that way, you’re supposed to take the front tire off — but i managed it. so i decided i’d put the new one on the same way. unfortunately, i wasn’t thinking it through and as i was angling it and rocking it i managed to put some pretty nice scrapes about 1″ long on it. *sigh* fortunately, they are on the back side of the fender facing the body and radiator, so it’s not blatantly visible like it would be in some other places. plus i guess i can always do some cover up if i want.
i went to poison girl last friday with a group of people celebrating a co-worker’s birthday. by chance, i happened to run into jason, one of the guys i ride with. i hadn’t seen or talked to him in a number of months. he bought a bigger bike a few months back. we talked for awhile, then i went back to the people i was with. as i was leaving, jason and his friends were sitting at a table near the bar. i stopped and talked to them for awhile. i was squatting since they were sitting, and i was half blocking the foot path so i had to move now and then when people were walking by. all of the sudden i heard a crash and felt something hit me a little. i turned around and there was a bar stool on the floor. along with a young lady in a dress. i looked at the people i was talking to and said “did i cause that?” they said no. she got up and seemed to be okay. i’m not sure if she was sober enough to be embarrassed or not. the poison girl is a cool place, despite the falling girls (or maybe because of it).
last night brad texted me to see if i wanted to meet him at a place in rice village and then ride. i met him and hung out awhile, but we ended up not riding. the funny bit of the story is i was sitting across from a girl about my age and we talked some, she was drinking more than me. i was getting ready to leave and when i got up she said “did i give you my card?” i looked at her and smiled and said “no.” her facial reaction was a bit odd. and she’d been reaching around in her purse, but she started closing it and said “uh…ok.” it was about this point i realized she must not have said what i thought she did. so i said “did you say ‘did i give you my card?'” and she replied, “no, i said *can* i give you my card.” i felt kind of bad after realizing what must have been running through her head and how she probably felt after my response. but it was kind of funny too.

this is your second reminder! the factory warranty….

“this is your 2nd reminder! the factory warranty on your car is about to or has already expired! this is your final warning! we won’t call you back again!”
so how many times have you picked up the phone and heard a bit of silence then a recording saying that, or something similar to it, over the last year or two? i kid you not, in the last few months i’m pretty sure i’ve gotten at least a dozen to a couple of dozen of those. work phone, cell phone, probably home phone if i had the ringer turned on. heck, one time we even got one at the radio station during our show! it’s f’ing out of control.
every time i got one of these i got more and more pissed. it was even more annoying after i had gotten rid of any vehicle they would possibly provide an aftermarket warranty for.
finally, two calls ago (a week or so ago), i decided to talk to them. i listened through the spiel and hit to talk to a representative. i asked them what vehicle they were calling about. they didn’t know, of course. (because they weren’t calling about a specific vehicle, though they won’t admit it.) i told them i was interested. i wanted a warranty on my ’55 chevy bel-air.
they couldn’t warranty that. it needed to be mid 90’s or up (if i recall correctly) with less than 60k miles. okay, what about my ’65 ford f-100 pickup?
nope, that one either. it needs to be a mid 90’s with less than 60k miles. okay, okay, then my ’77 vw camper bus.
they couldn’t do that one either. yet again they explained it needed to be mid 90’s or up. finally, i said okay then i guess my 2004 honda.
they got excited. “okay, a 2004…honda, you said…what model?” vtx1300c. “a v..t…what?” vtx1300c. “that’s not coming up on my computer. how many miles?” about 26k. “okay…just a sec. <hold> back. um…is that an accord?” no. it’s a vtx1300c. they evidently wanted to make the sale even though my motorcycle didn’t show up in their car list, so they said they’d pass me on to their manager for more info.
now they needed my name and address and phone number. after much pausing and acting weird and questions, i gave them the name “jason dean” (christian slater’s character from heathers). i gave them the address of the astrodome. then i asked why they needed my number, since they called me. they said they didn’t have that info. i asked how they called me. they said it was automated and they picked up the calls, so they needed my number in case we got disconnected. i told them to give me their number in case we got disconnected. they said they didn’t have incoming lines. so i gave them my number…which was the main line for the houston police department. (i didn’t tell them that last part.) they thanked me, and i put them on mute. after a bit of hold time, the manager came on the line. i didn’t take it off mute. they said my name several times (and by “my name” i mean “jason”) and eventually hung up.
i smiled. d4mn, it feels good to be a gangsta.
a few days later i got the same automated call again. i went through the same deal, but this time i gave them the phone number for the fbi here in houston.
i must say, i’m enjoying their calls quite a bit more since i started doing this. i feel like i’m wasting their time. if a bunch of people would do this, it might clog up their system with crap. maybe they are using outgoing lines to call the police and the fbi to ask for jason dean. or at the least, maybe they’ll mark my numbers as bad. even though it may lead to nothing, it brings a smile to my face to think about it, and makes me feel a bit better — instead of being annoyed by their stupid calls.

filling the hole with stuff

i’ve gotten a few more things i bought on ebay…
back in 1999 or something, i picked up a garden gargoyle (fake stone) at lowe’s. i got it home and put it on top of the entertainment center. not too long later, i decided i wished i would have gotten a second one so i could put them on the corners (instead of just having one in the middle). by the time i got around to going back to lowe’s, there were none to be had. i figured i’d wait and they’d have some more, but no. over the last few years, i’ve looked online from time to time. a year or so ago i found a place in england that had a picture of a match, but shipping would have made it pretty expensive. well, a couple of weeks ago, i typed in gargoyle statue (which i’d done before over the years) and another of mine was listed! it was $10, and with $10 s/h it came out to $20. but considering how often i’ve seen them over the last 8 to 10 years, i decided i should go ahead and do it. i watched it and no one else bid on it, so at the last minute i bid and got it. interestingly, it’s the same thing but it’s not quite crouched as much and it’s a little lighter in color. but it’s close. and i now have the pair sitting atop my speakers.
years ago, tamara and i picked up a softcover copy of the day i swapped my dad for two goldfish. it’s written by neil gaiman and drawn/painted by dave mckean. it’s also gaiman’s first children’s book. we had it upstairs at our old house in the red room, which was decorated with a lot of kid’s stuff. unfortunately, where it sat was in direct sunlight for several hours a day, so over time the cover got pretty bleached out. partially because of that, when i saw a new version had come out, i went ahead and bought a hardcover version of it. (it also includes a cd of neil reading the book.) anyway, a couple of weeks ago i saw a hardcover version of the original pop up on ebay. it originally cost $22, and they wanted $20 plus $4 s/h (so $24 total). i figured i would have paid that for it brand new, so i was willing to pay that. no one else bid on it, so i snatched it at the last minute.
neilgaimanbibliography.com has been a great help to let me know what gaiman material exists, how many versions are around, who published them, when, etc.
awhile back i was looking around for madman comic book stuff, and i learned that allred has started a new madman series a couple of years ago. issue 13 was the latest. so on ebay i managed to pick up a single lot of madman atomic comics 1-12. friday i went and picked up 13 at bedrock comics.
i’ve read through 11. the artwork is pretty nice, and some of the concept stuff he’s been doing is pretty interesting. the storyline has been kind of bizarre. i mean, it’s always been that way, but it seems kind of disjointed to me this time around. like sometimes it feels like things are paced oddly. there have been some typos or misspellings as well, which makes it feel kind of sloppy or hurried in my mind, even if it’s not. comic books also don’t seem like a cheap thrill to me like they used to — i’m not sure if their relative cost has gotten out of control, or if it’s just me. i guess i also feel like movies, books, and cds seem expensive as well. movies should be about $5 or $6, paperback books should be $5 to $8, cds should be $10 to $12, and comics should be $1 to $1.50. am i just living in the past?
i got several shirts i had ordered from strange candy ink. they have shirts related to madman and the atomics. i got a black madman exclamation bolt short sleeve and a black and white madman exclamation bolt 3/4 sleeve. it took a while to get my order, but when i got the package there was a free blue yellow ringer atomics logo t-shirt in it.
i’ve gotten a few of the things i ordered on amazon:

  • mom: music for our mother ocean – various (surfdog/interscope)
  • like a pen cd single – the knife (brille/mute)
  • marble house cd single – the knife (brille/mute)

i picked up the mom compilation for the helmet cover of bjork’s “army of me”. (thanks for pointing out where i could get it, ash.:) that’s really the only reason i picked it up. although there are a few other tracks i’m insterested in checking out (brian setzer orchestra, reverend horton heat, primus, no doubt, beastie boys).
this past monday i got home from work and ended up falling asleep. i woke up to my phone ringing. i groggily answered it, and it was the guy who backed into my motorcycle. he said he was on 59 near kirby and wanted to know where to go. half asleep, i gave him somewhat confusing directions to my street. he said he’d call me back when he was at the turn. over the next minute or two i woke up more and realized maybe i should have just met him somewhere. after a few minutes i texted him and asked him if he wanted to meet me somewhere if that would be easier. he replied pretty quickly and said whataburger. so i drove over there and met him. he gave me $260, but i told him $250 was fine. he was paying in $20’s so he asked if i had a $10, so i told him $240 was fine. so i got paid. it’s nice things worked out with an accident, unlike the last two times when i got hit by someone.
i had tried calling a local bike shop earlier in the day to get their price on the fender, but they’re closed on mondays. so i called them on saturday (yesterday) to inquire. their price? $400. haha! i had found that one online for $263. (both oem honda parts.) the dealership’s part number didn’t match the one i’d found though, so i got their part number and looked it up online. i found other sites that had them, all a fair bit below $400. so yesterday i ordered one online. total price with shipping? $269.
friday was downtime at work, so that’s why i was able to do some stuff during the day. like going by bedrock comics. i also got stuff printed at an office depot, so yesterday i used the mat cutter to frame some things. i jacked up one mat, so i’ll have to go to Texas art supply and buy another mat. but the other two i did came out pretty well. the only thing left i really need to cut a mat for is the russian political poster i got back when i was working at nasa.
yesterday evening i went over to the potts house and had supper with the family. when i arrived the kids all got excited and started giving out all of their valentine’s day presents. we ate supper, the kids went to bed, then the adults watched snl. as i was leaving, sue asked about the status of my dating life. the rumination on that (along with finding out about yet another marriage of people i know likely falling apart) is what led to my post last night i suppose. maybe one day things will be good in that department. but i’m not holding my breath.

preach it, my brothers.

joel: “[valentine’s day] is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap.”
(from eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, of course.)
alex: “well, put it this way: i feel very low in me self. i can’t see much in the future, and i feel that any second something terrible is going to happen to me.”
(from kubrick’s clockwork orange)
“life is wasted on the living.” –douglas adams

it’s a non-stop party up in here.

after writing most of that last entry, i spent a couple of hours saturday going through some of the containers of junk tamara abandoned when she left behind her failures and moved on to her new hope. at some point, i’ll have a container of stuff to ship off to her parents. the rest of it i’ll give to sue so she can offer it to tamara and then give it to the salvation army or sell it or whatever. i’ve also thrown away a fair bit of stuff, and put junk in the recycling bin. in addition, i’ll have a little collection of stuff myself when i’m done, which will be ceremonially burned.
just to follow up on the replacement speaker, my dad got it a few days ago and hooked it up and everything worked. so he should now hopefully be able to listen to his music in stereo through some decent speakers.
i’ve been buying stuff on ebay lately. mostly trying to back fill some holes in my gaiman/mckean and mike allred collections. there have been a number of years where things were coming out that i wasn’t buying anything (or even aware of what was coming out). i’ve recently gotten these in the mail:

  • modern masters #16: mike allred – eric nolen-weathington (twomorrows)
  • the vault of michael allred (vols 1-4) – allred (aaa pop)
  • it girl mini-bust (#29 of 500) – allred/bowen (bowen designs)

the retail price on the modern masters is $15. i was kind of surprised when i got it — it’s printed on fairly low-quality paper with a pretty thin weight glossy cover. i haven’t read through much of it yet, so i can’t comment on the quality of the content.
i was surprised to see the cost on the the vault… issues was $7 a pop. but the entire thing is printed on high quality glossy paper. plus i’m sure a fair bit of time must have gone into collecting, organizing, and making notes on all the stuff. i read the first two so far, and it’s kind of an overload of info — it gets somewhat tedious, but with some great things here and there. i’m not sure i care as much about picking up the special limited edition (500 prints) version any more. that atomics super deluxe special edition (also 500) though — i’m still wanting one of those.
i picked up the bowen bust on a lark. it was on ebay and no one bid on it until a couple of hours before the auction ended. jack and sue called me about meeting them and scott and kendra (who were in town to visit for a day or two) for supper, so i put in a bid and left. my bid only had to go about $2 over the initial bid to be highest, but when i got back home i saw no one else bid so i’d won it. i couldn’t find online how much it originally sold for, but i was guessing $35. i paid $48 including shipping and everything.
i’ve got a few other things i’ve won, but i’ll wait until after they arrive to comment on them. i also picked up some cds recently through amazon, which should be arriving over the next week or so. i’ll go ahead and say at least most of the stuff from amazon is by the knife. my poking around online for this led me to info about fever ray, the new project by half of the knife. the self-titled cd is already for sale in electronic form, but i still prefer physical media. i found a creepy video and a nice “if i had a heart” remix (by familjen) via the fever ray website.
friday night was the geek gathering. no one i know got towed, which is nice. i got to see and talk to natalie a bit — it’d been a while. i also talked with jamie, who was there with her son. as well as loopylow, lambowolf, barrett, jay, and others.
yesterday i got up and decided i’d drive down to clear lake and stop by the credit union, then go to village pizza and seafood for lunch. it was about 12:15pm when i decided, and the credit union closes at 1pm, but i figured i’d have enough time. until traffic on i45 come to a stop a mile or two before beltway 8. i eventually took an exit and went over to highway 3. which was completely backed up as well. i looked at my watch and it was 1:06pm, so i gave up and turned around. a mile or so inside 610, i45 north came to a stop. i eventually exited on telephone and took a bunch of side streets to near downtown, then hopped back onto 288/59 — which immediately was stop and go. jeebus, what the heck was up with the traffic? i wasted a total of almost 2 hours for nothing. the only saving grace was that it was on my motorcycle. i think the only good part of the day was eating supper at tacos-a-go-go. (although the bjork parody on snl news was pretty hilarious.)
an update on my motorcycle front fender: you know, i think about it every time i have to drive through a wet area on the street and my front tire spews it up into my chest and face. i called the guy a few weeks ago and talked to him a bit. he gave me his email address so i emailed him the info about the replacement part. after a week or two of not hearing anything, i emailed him again and asked if he’d gotten it and what he wanted to do. i hadn’t heard anything as of today, so i called him this evening and he didn’t answer so i left a message. he texted me back soon after and asked if we could meet tomorrow so he could give me money. so hopefully that’ll work out tomorrow.
today i went by Texas art supply and bought some mat boards. i’ve got a few things i’ve got frames for, and i borrowed jack’s mat cutter a week or so ago. i needed to get some of the things printed because they’re a little bigger than a normal sheet of paper, but the copy/print place i went by was closed today. on my way back home i stopped by soundwaves and picked up a couple of cds:

  • forever – freezepop (archenemy)
  • the definitive collection – patsy cline (universal/mca nashville)

on friday after work i used a coupon at border’s to get something for about the same as the best price i could find online. it was a bit annoying though, because the price in the store was a little different than online. since i was already there, i went ahead and bought it. it cost me probably about $5. on top of that, the lady helping me didn’t go to take the box set to the counter (which they have always done), so i asked her if she needed to take it up for me. she asked if i was getting anything else and i said “no” so she told me to just walk down there. as i was walking to the stairs, i was intercepted by an older white female employee and she asked me if she could take it to the counter for me. she wasn’t mean about it, but it kind of put me off because i felt like i was being accused of being in the wrong even though i’d specifically asked the other lady if she needed to carry it down for me. anyway, here’s what i got:

  • the tiffany transcriptions – bob wills and the Texas playboys (collectors’ choice)

it’s a 9 volume box set with an additional cd of mckinney sisters numbers, plus a booklet. the 9 volumes were originally released on rhino as individual cds, but they’ve been out of print for awhile now. (i have volume 4, all songs about Texas, which my brother gave me at some point.) they’ve been remastered and collected into a single box for this release. do you have any idea how many hours…no, days…of bob wills music i have now? a lot.

the past’s welcome is wearing thin

remember that pic i posted a few entries ago that came to me by way of amanda? well, when she sent it to me she mentioned she had a second one. she described it in passing as me “sitting in front of a door with an awesome drawing of a TMNT”. fortunately, that meant it’s not one of the pictures that i shuddered to write about in that past entry. but it piqued my curiosity. i didn’t remember the picture, and i wasn’t sure which tmnt drawing it was referring to. so i asked her if she had scanned it, and if so if she would send me a copy. her response was “Are you sure you want to see this? You didnt seem to like the other one that much, and I have to admit, its the better of the two. 🙂 Well, you asked for it…….”
phliktid-hart-h-3-door.jpg i’ve chopped it up a bit, just because i don’t particularly want to post the whole picture. this shows the door in question, and the chalk drawing of a teenage mutant ninja turtle i did on it. i can see it would have been room h-3 of hart hall — a nice, big corner room with four windows right above the lounge. i tended to stick articles or comics i thought were interesting or funny on my door. i also would put commentaries about any number of things up. drawing or writing stuff in chalk on the door was also something i did a lot. the desk to the left is the right corner of my desk. i can see some comic books, some cds, the drawn/written upon envelope of a postal letter (something else i always did), and some binders…probably for rocket science. looking around my desk right now, it doesn’t appear things have changed much, other than the rocket science. i wasn’t a huge fan of the tmnt, but for some reason i liked drawing them at that point in time. my roommate that year (whose name was bill) had his family visit one time, and his little brother loved the tmnt. so i looked at a comic i had and drew a pretty cool pic in pencil of…raphael, i think…and put it in a comic bag with a backing board and gave it to him. he seemed pretty excited at the time. and you can sort of see my arm and leg on the right, which we’ll get to in a bit.
and now for a major shift…
a couple of weeks ago i was bored and futzing around on the computer and somehow i ended up looking at some stuff from tamara’s blog. i never had done that before, and i hadn’t really ever planned to, but it happened. it was an odd experience. i sort of perused some things and read a few entries.
one thing that struck me was how she only ever mentioned her marriage or my divorce in passing, mostly just to say it was the right thing for her to do. it’s like she denies her feelings from then, her perspectives, her love, her commitment. it’s kind of funny, since we used to laugh about how her dad had seemed to completely block out negative things from his past. he certainly wouldn’t talk about them, but he wouldn’t even admit to remembering things happening. i guess she got those genes. *laugh*
so as i had kind of always assumed, she quickly mentally brushed aside most of the good times and things about me and us (e.g., she claims perhaps the only way we were compatible was enjoying a lack of activity? an absurd claim), erased all of the lying and such she’d done to me and others, and put it all in a nice box that said “right and good choice” and put it on a shelf.

i read some negative comments about me that she’d never told me. for example, she claimed she had hated my last name and avoided using it. she actually seemed to take some amount of literary pleasure in describing how horrific my last name was to her. was this merely her flair for storytelling? or had she always completely hidden this from me? it’s kind of funny if she actually always felt such loathing for it, yet spent all those years biting her tongue so completely that it wasn’t even hinted at or joked about. silly girl.

an interesting bit i learned was how googly she was over alistair while we were still married. haha. the guy she trash-talked. i’m honestly not sure her blog version of events is true though, since she tends to gild things until she gives up on them. (it would be kind of funny if she falls into that female stereotype though — i.e., trash-talking guys they’re actually attracted to.)
in fact, in general most of the mentions about me or our time together or the divorce leads to one of three conclusions: she’s lying now (on her blog); she’s manipulated the past in her mind to try and justify and deal with things; or, she was lying about all kinds of things to me throughout our marriage. i prefer to not believe the last one, and it honestly seems pretty unlikely. the first one is possible…but the middle one seems most likely.
it used to really anger me that she was out there lying about and misrepresenting me and our relationship. it’s still annoying, but time has lessened the anger a lot. plus i doubt she brings it up much. and these days, any direct effects to me are fairly unlikely. and to some degree, i’d think the cracks in the spackling are probably obvious to people.
as a serious aside, one bit of truth from her blog is that she said she probably wouldn’t be here if she’d stayed with me. that certainly seems possible. she had a history, and she was pretty fscked up as time progressed. i felt like she was driving us into the ground, evidently she felt like she was trying to save…herself, our marriage? whatever it was, she was ocd about it. and not in a good way.
obviously the big theme of her blog is her struggle with eating disorders, which almost killed her at least once. i did learn this started right after she broke from me, which i’d always wondered about. interestingly, she seems to somehow on some level blame my being overweight and her time with me. well, sometimes. i honestly didn’t read much of the eating disorder stuff. it’s not a part of my experience with her.
the most curious thing was her entry about the day she ran into me recently at brasil. i’d written about it, but it was interesting to get her perspective. she evidently wished she was skinnier and more put together in the brief moment, but quickly got over it. she then went on to talk about how horribly fat i am. (for the record, i’ve been pretty much the same since some time before we split.) i think she needed to defend that comment about me, since she followed it up by stating that it wasn’t the fat cells that disgusted her, it was knowing that my weight was due to my “ironically narcissistic self-loathing” (if i recall correctly). it’s kind of sad so much of her view seems to be based on weight. it seems she thinks her being skinnier is her being happier/successful/good, and i guess vice versa — therefore my weight must correlate the same. or something. i mean, if i’d lost a bunch of weight would she have had to conclude i was happy? or less narcissistic and/or self-loathing? (heh.)
maybe that’s why she used to drool over that pic of me from years ago…i must have been satisfied and happy then, since i was skinnier. which brings us to the me from the pic above…
phliktid-hart-h-3-me.jpg i sort of remember that printed sweat shirt. why in the world would i be wearing something like that? i remember that watch — a gold fossil with a brown leather band. it was from one of fossil’s first years i think. ah, and the sides of my head are shaved, which is a look i’ve always liked. but i’m not sure it liked me. i think the round mound of bangs make it worse. but they’re wrapping to the side of my head, and they sort of did what they wanted. hopefully the reason i’m wearing that sweater shirt is because it’s cold…i thought my tastes had improved by then.
anyway, i just want to state that i can tell you for a fact i wasn’t happier in those pictures. and my gaining weight over the years, both before and during our marriage, wasn’t due to unhappiness. do i like being overweight? no. have i put in much effort over the years to do much about it? no, not much at all. but perhaps my weight is a sign of my laziness, enjoyment of foods high in starches and fluids with too much sugar, a job and hobbies that involve being sedentary, genetics, and a general lack of enjoyment of exercise.
tying your judgments about someone’s self to their weight — or clothing styles, haircut, cleanliness, punctuality, or any number of other things — is about as valuable as other stereotypes and generalizations. i would have hoped someone with her past — personally running into stereotypes and generalizations and trying to combat them — wouldn’t fall into that kind of trap. but then she surprised me a lot once she had no use for me anymore.
anyway, some of it was new to me, and i tend to think and analyze stuff, so it gave me some new things to mull over. in the end though, i think it helped reinforce that there’s no good justification or reasoning for what happened with her. she’s just…who she is. the good, the bad, the dreamer, the hurt, the broken. when we married, i (we?) believed we would do whatever it took to honour our vows. eventually, through our time together, she fell apart, she gave up, she changed, and i was churned under. i was collateral damage in her quest to find herself and to find happiness. i’ve tried to learn from the events, from mistakes i did make during those times, but the consequences that were brought down upon me still feel inadequate for my mistakes. saying/hearing “life’s not fair” doesn’t really make it better either. then again, perhaps i got the better end of the deal in the long run.