"More Soap..."

Did the trip down to our state capitol Thursday to get the documents I needed.
It was kind of a long haul just to get new birth certs, but what can ya do…?
While there, I also decided to get two copies just in case.
Also my daughter Kelly told me that when she went for her license down in Georgia, they wanted a letter from New Jersey's DMV stating that she had no outstanding violations and was in good standing, etc.
So I decided to go next door to the state office of the DMV, and get an abstract of my driving record just in case.
I’m happy to say that I’m in good standing wit da bastards.

But when all was said and done, I can’t help but wonder…

1. Why a person with whom the New Jersey DMV now claims had “no record of ever having a driver’s license” was hounded for fines over the past years till I paid them.

2. How an abstract of such a “non-existent” record could be printed out then.

3. And mostly, why Jersey City’s DMV told me that they couldn’t accept my birth certificate as I.D. cuz it had a small piece of clear tape on it. Yet when asked for I.D. at the main DMV office in Trenton, I presented them with the very same cert…
they had absolutely no problem with it and accepted it!

Go figure.

But, it was an interesting trip anyhoo, and although Trenton is pretty boring for the most part, I did enjoy walking around and looking at the old architecture.
Wish I woulda took me camera.

My cousin from Florida is up here in Jersey, and her and her husband took me out to dinner lat night.
It was really good to see them, and I had a good time.
I took a trip into N.Y.C. last night, and had a fantastic time alone by myself walking around exploring, etc.
I also saw the movie “The Illusionist”, and I recommend it highly.
(Not just cuz I’m a magician… but because it’s an amazingly great movie.)
It’s probably gonna be the last time I’ll be in the city till sometime in some future trip back up here. If all goes as planned, I’ll hopefully be leaving this coming weekend.
Next to friends and family, it’ll be one of the things I’ll miss about being up here the most.

[What follows next is really just a reiteration & rehash of earlier posts that I feel a need to state again, mainly just for myself. It’s a continuation of an old soap opera, and hopefully a final entry on the subject. So it would prolly be a good idea to go surfing for funny online videos or midget porno sites or something about now. Cuz the rest of this post will be extremely boring to most.]

So when I got home the other night, I wanted to go online to check my mail etc., and called my daughter’s friend with a PC who lives down the block. To my surprise, my daughter answered the phone. She was there futzin’ around on the net too.
When I got there, my daughter (who’s a MySpace addict that checks out everyone’s websites that she knows) told me that my ex-girlfriend had some pretty nasty things on her MySpace page to say about me.
Amazing, how I don’t hear diddley-squat from her in a year after her screwing me over, but at the first mention of my (not having a new girlfriend) but simply having a new female friend…
she decides to crawl out of the woodwork and publicly talk trash about me.
And this is after she rips my heart out and leaves me to bleed.

Yanno… I originally started a “blog” website just cuz I got photo software that had a built-in tool to create one… and I figured wut da Hell… lemme check this out.
Later on when things got really crappier in my life, it provided sort of a theraputic outlet to vent my emotions.
I went thru one of the worst times of my life last year.

When I discovered my ex had been cheating on me and we broke up,
being yet another chapter in my life… I had included it here.
Naturally I was hurt, angry, and most of all…
wishing that it never happened.
It was at a time when my mom was first diagnosed to be dying of cancer, I was going thru a heavy duty drug treatment for my illness, and my world was crumbling around me.
But I was never purposefully malicious in this blog.
I never lied about anything, or blew anything way out of proportion.

And though I wrote down some of my anger at the huge slap in the face that the person who was supposedly the “love of my life” had given me…
more than anything else I also wrote down a bunch of well wishing, heartfelt goodbyes and gratitude for the 7 yrs. with her.
(including love songs of goodbye.)
But apparently, she only read the bad parts of my blog entries…
not any of the good.

So when I read my ex’s MySpace page tonight, it brought back feelings that were just starting to vanish.
A LOT of stuff has happened to me since we parted…
internally and externally.
Admittedly at first reading, it hurt all over again.
Not from the standpoint of still being in love with her…
but from a standpoint of all the feelings of hurt and betrayal coming back.
If someone you love, continually acts as if there’s nothing wrong,
continually tells you they’re madly in love with you,
then kicks you in the guts while you least expect it,
and then leaves when you most vulnerable …
it really sucks.
A year later, the love may go away after while and you gain acceptance of things…
but the pain, hurt and tender scars take a bit longer.
My feelings now are mainly coming from the side that we did have seven great years together, and so it hurts to now hear her talking such crap about me.
I allowed myself to be completely naked with her in terms of thoughts, feelings, and emotions etc.
We shared years of incredible moments of joy.

After all was said & done, in my mind I kinda wanted to somehow remain friends, and I even would include her in my email list that lets friends and family know about my blog updates.
And I enjoyed discovering that she had now her own website.
After reading it was actually happy for her, that she was apparently growing and achieving some of her goals.
No matter what kind of water has passed under the bridge, this was a person that I truly did care about. And always will to some degree.
(I don’t wanna go into a duet here with Julio Iglesias and break into a chorus of “To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before”…
but ya kinda get the drift.)

After a year’s worth of reinspection, introspection and retrospection,
I can finally see the forrest for the trees.
My old N.A. sponsor & mentor who passed away had warned me early on in my relationship about my ex’s erratic “stories” and behavior.
He told me that things she stated early on in our relationship just didn’t add up.
And he had tried to point out to me that she exhibited signs of certain personality disorders, but I just wouldn’t have any part of it.
Love is blind I guess.
So I argued with him, stating that he had no right to judge her, and wasn’t a “professional”.
This was a man who was a licensed counselor working in a hospital for years.
A man who advised doctors & psychiatrists on various matters and had a Master’s Degree in addiction, alcoholism, co-dependency & psychology.

After the shit hit the fan for me last year, and I sought therapy to get me through the wall of fire that I found myself walking thru…
and I was totally honest in my descriptions of what transpired between my ex-girlfriend and me.
And I talked about not only her part in our relationship,
but my own true part in it.
I somehow thought that I was all my fault, and that I had done some really awful thing to make her leave me.
I was amazed then, when she pulled a psychology textbook down from her wall, and opened it up to something called...
“Borderline Personality Disorder”.
The only thing missing next to the definition was a picture of my ex.
It truthfully explained a lot of things to me.
And it enlightened me as to why she was so co-dependant, acted so immature at times while so grown-up at others,
and had trouble being honest with others…
and mainly herself.
I now realized why people like her with such disorders put people up on a pedestal,
then turn around out of the blue and pull the rug out from them…
making them now their enemy and point of blame and hate.
Something she exhibited with her father…
her “hero” one minute… and enemy the next.
It’s one of the distinct traits of her problem.

Not that I’m any bag of donuts myself.
(Well… I actually was a bit of a bag of donuts awhile ago...
but lost a lot of weight.)
I am a recovering drug addict and alcoholic,
with my own areas of co-dependency myself.
But with 10 plus years in recovery, therapy, and self-exploration…
I have come leaps and bounds from where I was years ago.
Self discovery and personal growth is a wonderful thing, once you’re finally honest with yourself and allow it to happen.
And I have been thru all sorts of trials and tribulations, only to bounce back with shining resiliency. I’ve been thru some experiences that seemingly “stronger men” would have crumbled under.
In short, I have my own crosses and baggage that I carry.
But I’ve learned to forgive and forget.
I’ve found out how to learn from my experience and move on.
Like they say, “If it doesn’t kill ya… it only makes you stronger.”

Truthfully when I first read her blog my initial response was to attack back… to post a point by point rebuttal.
But yanno wut…?
It really wouldn’t matter.
I had wondered what in the world she could have possibly told her friends & family as to why we split up all of a sudden.
Now I have some more insight into that.
She can lie about, exaggerate, and manipulate the truth in any manner that she wants…
and have everyone in her world believing it.
But it doesn’t matter anymore, because I left her world awhile back,
and I moved on.
And she can wholeheartedly believe all of her crap herself in an attempt to turn everything around to justify acting childish, irresponsible and cruel, to feel better about herself,
and to have some excuse to tell friends, family and her new "lover" to explain what happened between us.
And I also know her friends & family probably will never read my blog,
or ever hear my side of the story.

But all that matters is… I was there.
I don’t have to “prove” anything to anyone.
I know exactly what happened between us.
I know her part and my part in the reason our relationship ended.
And one blessing and curse about me is that while I can sometimes put on blinders for a short amount of time, and fool myself into a lot of things… I am ultimately my own worst critic, hardest on myself,
yet also amazingly honest with myself.

I have a conscience.

And I know that given all of the circumstances, while with some things I could’ve maybe tried a bit harder in some areas at times…
I’m not guilty of doing anything willfully or intentionally wrong in my last relationship other than going thru a very rough patch in my life.
People can have a many external problems during a relationship that temporarily prevent them from reaching their mutual goals as quickly as they’d like.
Life happens.

Life… is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

So trying to go “tit for tat” here in an attempt to somehow defend myself against what she wrote about me would be fruitless and only turn a painful situation that’s finally getting better…
even uglier again.
I keep restraining my own first instincts to try to re-argue the points in which broke us apart, and to try to print some kind of scorecard to show who did what, exactly and how.
But I know what happened between us… and that’s all that matters.
I am powerless against what she thinks, or what she tells her friends & family.
And more importantly… I don’t have to participate in her world anymore.
Nor do I want to anymore.
Like Walter taught me years ago…

“Other’s thoughts and opinions about you are none of your business…”

That’s for them to deal with.
The only person's opinion of me that ultimately really counts…
is my own.

And holding a resentment against someone is like me taking poison…
and then expecting the other person to die.

Unfortunately some people are a little too immature, a bit too spoiled, and don’t have enough experience in the real world to realize and understand any of that.
But that too is something that I am powerless to change.
I can only pray for the wisdom to change the things in which I am able to in my world… like myself.

So to close…
I’d like to make a public apology for anything that I may have unintentionally done wrong to hurt my ex in our 7 years together.
And to also say… thank you for those 7 wonderful years.
Really.
I really enjoyed our time together,
I really did love her during that time,
and I still care for her well-being now.
I’ve also learned from it all as well.
I’m sorry if as she now states in her latest blog entry…
“I was never really in love with you.”

But if that in fact was really actually true, then she certainly fooled me.
If that truly was the case, then she apparently must have been lying to herself,
and created and caught herself in her own self-imposed trap…
one in which she gnawed my leg off to escape from.

But that was then, and this is now as they say.
I truly do wish her and her new love good health, luck and happiness.

It’s also time for me to do some housecleaning around my websites and this blog.
I’m actually running out of space in some areas, and need to take down some old sad songs posted, and eventually put up newer happier ones.
Stuff that reflects more of my present day moods.

I’d like to reprint a poem I posted for her awhile back.
And just hope that she actually reads it this time.
I hope that someday she will come to realize, that no matter how "wonderful" your partner is...
they don't give you a life...
you create your own for yourself
And I pray that somehow the true sentiment of the poem finally sinks in, and that she realizes that it’s not an attack or a criticism,
but merely a loving wish for her…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After a While

After a while you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn
that love doesn't mean leaning
and company doesn't always mean security.
And you begin to learn
that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn
to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is
too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down
in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
you really are strong
you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn
with every goodbye, you learn...

© 1971 Veronica A. Shoffstall

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Again... goodbye my love.
And hopefully… once and for all,
I don't have to go here again.
To paraphrase what Forrest Gump once said,
“That’s about all that I will say on that subject…”

I have newer, exciting horizons for me just around the corner.
By this time next week, I should be a residentially transplanted official redneck.
(I’m not exactly sure if going from white trash to a redneck is a promotion or a demotion, but I’ll be sure to let all you kids know about it here.)

But for now... I'm over dat soap opera.
And as always, I’m still happily dancing my way thru life,
waiting for the next adventure to start...

"Escape From Noo Frickin' Joisey..."

Seems like I've been tryin' to get outta here for awhile now...

Went to the NJ DMV yesterday.
They got this new "6 Point I.D. System" now, where like a Chinese restaurant...
you gotta have "one from column A, two from column B, one from column C" type documents to add up to 6 points for your proper identification.
Not having a passport or military I.D.'s, etc.,
it kinda left it up to just my birth certificate , marrige license,
and a few other assorted odds & ends.
And all your stuff has be original copies, and not from hospitals, churches, etc... only state stuff is accepted.

Can you say... Nazi's boys and girls?
Gotta love dem dere whacky terrorists...
Makin' dis joint a really fun place to live lately... huh...?
But I digress...

Thank God stuff wuz on da up & up...
but I had it covered!
(or so I thought...)

So I got down dere to da DMV, proper papers in hand...
and upon presenting them to the girl, was told...
"Oh... this birth certificate has tape on it. We need original copies."

I said, "Ya can't get anymore "original" then dat...
it's forty-eight yrs. old... it's da one they handed me mum!"

She said, "Yeah... but it has tape on it."

"Datz cuz it's old sweetheart...
and that "tape" iz prolly older than you." I exclaimed.

"Well, I'm gonna have to check with my supervisor on this sir..."

So after a coupla minutes, she came back and told me...
"I'm sorry sir, but we can't accept this due to the tape.
and the tape also goes across the middle of the document sir..."

I said, "Yeah... but da "tape" iz CLEAR...!!!"

So she then proceeded to tell me how there are new laws concerning "tape" and other such nonsense, and how here in "wonderful Joisey City"... there was a rash of illegal, fraudulent birth certs given out. And so their Vital Statistics Dept. was shut down.
So I would have to write the state capitol Trenton to apply for a new one.
I asked how long it would take for me to recieve one, and she said...
"Oh... shouldn't take more than 6 to 8 weeks..."

I flipped out.

Everywhere else in da damn county you go downtown to city hall, and get one there.
But because of some freakin' corrupt jackasses in this town...
we gotta suffer.
I told her I couldn't wait that long, and so she said I could go to Trenton in person, and get one the same day.

So I asked, "Suppose I get da cert, come back here to apply for my license...
THEN how long would that take...?"

She said due to the fact that my license was suspended over 15+ yrs. ago...
I hadda redo my tests, etc.
She also said they had NO record of me ever having a driver's license in the past.

I said...
"If they didn't have any record of me ever having a license...
then why for the past 15+ yrs. did they keep sending me a fine for a "suspended one"?
What was suspended then?
Wut da figgeddyfarkinfook wuz da FINE for then...?
Did I just plop down a large amount of bucks a coupla weeks ago to payoff a non-existant one...???"

It just makes NOOOOO frickin' sense.
All a bunch of beaurocratic, terroristically fear-based, assinign & idiotic happy horseshit!
But again, I digress...

So continuing on with my original question of exactly how long the whole license obtaining adventure would take...
she told me that because I'm a considered a "new driver",
upon applying and recieving a permit, taking and passing my written test, they would then schedule me for a road test somewhere in da neighborhood of...
THREE FUCKING MONTHS FROM NOW...!!!

I should of originally taken the advice of my cousin Jimmy, an esteemed & retired NY/NJ Port Authority Police Lieutenant now living in Florida, who now loathes New Jersey had told me...
"Fuck Jersey... just go south, tell 'em ya never had a license...
and apply for one down there!"
(I'm a sometimes slow & dumb Pollock Jim... no matter how I try not to be...
Forgive me. I've always respected your advice and knowledge in da past. You, a cop... taught me how to pick handcuffs years ago when I wuz a young magician.
Wutta guy! A dood after me own heart from da start!
But now, I'm gonna take yer advice.)

So I'm gonna take a train ride down to good 'ol Trenton tommorrow, get me schtuff, come back, buy some cheap luggage... and pack.

Hopefully if all goes right, by this time next week...
I'll be in da Land 'O Cotton...
sippin' non-alcoholic mint julips, eatin' peanuts,
helpin' my daughter and her hubby move into their brand-newly built house, and playin' wit me grand monkey Kadee.

(if not... just shoot me...!!!)

I just hope dat after I arrive, da "Cotton Cops" down dere don't catch up wit me for pickin' dat piece of cotton...)

[see a past post back in October, "Just An Old Sweet Song..." about gettin' yelled at by Kelly whilst pickin' a piece 'o cotton by a lonely roadside]

So here I go...

"Mission Impossible"...

"Escape From Joisey!"

<"dump-dump... dump-dump, dump-dump... dump dump...">

"A Curveball..."

Hello again my cheeky wee monkeys...!
Long time no see.
This is my first foray at doing my blog from an internet cafe computer.
Weirdly foreign to say the least.
Well, turns out I haven't left for da south yet.
Bunch of crap that slowed me down...
waiting for insurances checks, doctor appointments, paying off my driver's license fines, and a bunch of other red tape to clear.
My biggest obstacle has been my own slow assed way of doing things.
(I can be da "King of Procrastination"!)
So basically it looks like I'll be up here for a couple more weeks till I pass my driving tests, etc.

But all in all, things have for the most part been... OK.

I lost over 70 lbs. the past months, and am down to a nice fightin' weight of around 170 lbs..
I got a chance to go to da beach.
(Still peeling...)
Got a cellphone thanks to my daughter's friend Misty.
Went up and stayed with my best friend Morty for a few days.
He drove me to a regional DMV up by him to pay off my license and it was fun staying with him.
We bullshitted, caught up with stuff, went to meetings, and he presented me with a beautiful, special color glazed 10 yr. NA cleantime coin.
I'll treasure it forever.
And I also seem to have become Stephie's personal "Mr. Belvedere"...
cleaning, cooking, shopping etc.
But dat comes wit da territory, and ya never stop of being dad I guess.
When I visited Kelly in Ga. last year I did the same thing.
Guess I'm an obcessive/compulsive neat freak.
Gonna make someone a lovely wife one day.
And it's good spending time with Stephie, even though we sometimes bitch and moan at each other.

And just when I started getting used to things calming down and kinda getting quietly lonely and still again... life threw me...
"a curveball".

A few weeks back, I started recieving email from a girl in Maryland.
She found me thru a Hep C messageboard, and then linked to my websites, and to this blog.
She said she was intrigued by my sites, and loved this blog.
It was the first blog that she had ever read, though she admittedly felt as though she was some sort of "voyuer" looking into my life.
But said she was nevertheless tempted to go on reading.
I told her that this was my own weird kinda
"creative outlet/theraputic life journal", and that I posted it for everyone to read should they stumble upon it.
My life is an open book, and I'm not ashamed of anything.
Nor am I too shy to speak about it either most times.
We started emailing each other back and forth over the next weeks, and became thick as thieves.
The two of us have a ton in common, and for reasons that escapes dis "Joisey Boy"...
she said she was somehow was kinda "inspired" by the way I write.
Go figure.
(To ME... I'm about as "inspiring" as a fart in a hurricane. But I'm glad somebody reads dis hoopla that I write, and enjoys it.)

So even though it sounded like a crazy & impulsive thing to do, because I'm moving down south soon and she will be going thru all sorts of stuff come September... she decided...
she just hadda meet me.
Last week, she asked me if I wouldn't mind her driving up to hang out for the day.
Wow! A more than 4 hr. drive up from Maryland just to meet my monkey ass!
Kids, I can tell ya... I was more than flattered, and was even more than excited to meet my new friend!
I couldn't use anymore exclamation marks in dis here blog entry to show just how thrilled I was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
( I think I just broke da exclamation key...)
So I guess in a way, you could say she's my first "website/blog groupie"... (?)
(I always knew something good would come outta spending so much time in cyberspace!)

So Saturday she came up, and met "in poyson" for the first time.
I had seen pictures of her over the past week via email,
but when she got out of the car... all I could think of was ...
Wow!
<"gulp!">
And though she wears these light to dark lenses in her glasses, her eyes are stunning.
But I felt like some "Loungechair Lothairio" constantly commenting about them.
Like any minute she was gonna say, "Cut da corny cliche crap, willya?"
But they really do have an amazing glowing effect to them.
Almost neon at times.
We spent the whole day together in the city.
We covered everywhere from lunch in Chinatown & Little Italy, to lying in the grass talking for hours in Central Park, and then finally strolling down Broadway to Times Square, and back home to my place.
We hit it off amazingly, and really got to know each other more.
Ya know your really comfortable with someone, when you find yourself in each other's arms talking all night...
and she's peeling your sunburnt skin...
and your letting her!
(Flaky 'ol me...)
I felt really bad cuz I had walked her pretty lil butt off, and then she had the long drive home.
But after all was said and done, we got some power naps the next day...
and now both have gained a good friend.
I'm coming out a an extremely long funk.
And she will be going thru her own personal wall of fire over the next few months.
But I know that she'll get thru with flying colors.
We seem to give each other strength and inspiration.
(I certainly know that she does for me.)

I tell her she's like one 'o dem dere "Amazon Wimmenz".
(an inside joke between us for reasons of which I'll keep private.)
She's certainly hit me in the ass with one of her arrows,
I'll tell ya dat much...

Ol' Morty predicted this a while back when I was pitchin' a bitch about being lonely with no one to talk to or play with.
He said, "Watch... at the eleventh hour just before you go down to Georgia, your gonna meet someone. And it's gonna throw ya for a loop."
Well... he was right. I got hit with a "curveball"... right between da eyes.
Anyhoo... my dime just ran out here at da Internet Cafe...
I don't know where this will go down the road, but one thing I DO know...
I now have a wonderful new friend, an ear to listen to me, a shoulder to lean on,
and an "Amazon" to watch over me...