Incident, Part I

(LS Ratio: 4:6. Mood: Seriously, don't ask...)

I was reading a bunch of random blogs about the bad things that happen to people. Bad shit happens to everyone, but not everyone writes about them, so it's always educational to see how people react to life's random incidents.

That got me thinking: how long can one remain damaged by events?

When I landed my job with the government, it really was the last missing brick in the wall of my life. I mean, it's awesome pay, it's in a great office with a great staff, it's a job that I can psychologically leave when I close up shop for the day, and most importantly - for the time - it's a Monday to Friday, nine-to-fiver-type position, meaning for the first time ever in my life, I had full evenings and weekends freed up to do whatever. I could be normal and get my social life back: cottage trips in the summer, weekend getaways to New York or Montreal with the parents or the wife. Date nights, long evening walks, patios. Amazing, simply amazing.

And two weeks into the new job, my wife tells me she wants to separate.

Two months into the new job, I find out the underlying reason behind that is that she was cheating on me with a friend since July. And she didn't tell me: I had to catch her lying to me.

And around the same time, I find out that some of my friends - more than I had originally thought, as I've recently learned - had known about it well before I caught it, and had chosen to say nothing to me. Even those this technically makes them party to the adultery, and thus partly responsible for the damage I had to endure, I've let them off the hook, but take note, I have a long memory (pirates: ye be warned).

And so, just I'd found the last remaining brick, another one fell out, and here I am again, searching.

As damaging events go, this one would have killed many people, it almost killed me: if not for intervention from my friends and family, it would have. And despite having made the most of it, in fact, having done remarkably well by many professional and personal accounts of people in my life, there's a new wrinkle to this business.

For the past three days, I've started having nightmares. Nothing too monstrous, not the stuff of Dean Koontz novels, but dreams where I'm bothered enough to wake up in a sweat. Once, I woke up punching the air.

For instance, I dreamed, two nights ago, that my ex's grandparents, long deceased, all showed up at my family's house. It was Christmas, and they were staying with us for some reason. Now, in waking life, I never met them: they passed not long before my ex and I started dating in high school.

But I've seen pictures, and I had heard a story from my ex that someone in our wedding party - I know who, but I won't say, given the sensitive nature of this topic - who had been present at our ceremony at Webster's Falls had seen all four of them standing around us as we exchanged our vows. No pun intended: the idea that they were there for their granddaughter haunted me, much the same as I wonder if my own grandfathers were around.

Back to the dream. My ex's paternal grandfather handed me a long-stemmed red rose in a box as a Christmas "gift", and it was the oddest thing you could imagine, oddest feeling.

Then my ex showed up with her new boyfriend, who was dressed in the same tux he wore as part of our wedding party - as one of the bride's honour attendants - and started to make out with her in front of me. I knew in the dream mindset that this was a calculated move to piss me off, so I promptly approached him to separate his head from his shoulders. And though I was punching as strongly as I could, I could not hurt him. He just stood there, and I felt so damned helpless, I woke up swinging at air.

Afterwards, I lay there and just interpreted the shit out of what I just seen. (FYI, I tend to be more Jungian than Freudian: Niles Crane, I've got your back, buddy).

What's really significant about the rose, though, is after I woke up and mulled on the dream, it was obvious to me that I had the choice to either take the rose or try to beat the living snot out of my backstabbing former friend.

And, in real life, I'm pretty confident I could disassemble him with the speed and efficiency of a Formula One pit crew member. I have moderate training in taekwondo, and I have been practicing. Truth be told, I haven't ruled out taking advantage of such an opportunity, were it to present itself. A significant part of me honestly craves it. And I am a master of manifestation in my life, I could make this happen if I really wanted to.....but then, that's part of the problem, isn't it?



Revenge is such a primal urge, caveman justice. I've had at least one friend suggest that maybe a fistfight, no holds barred, no consequence, no charges, is what we need to sort this out like men, as long as it doesn't get out of hand. Maybe it's what I need: after all, this asshole already has my woman.

But she was never mine to possess. Women aren't possessions, but I suspect any man worth his testicles will always have that part of him that views them as such, no matter how enlightened or progressive he may otherwise be. For me to pretend to be any different would make me a hypocrite of the highest order: this is how I authentically feel in this moment. And authenticity is everything.

And the other problem with that fistfight solution: I would make sure it got out of hand. I would make it a point to escalate this: as Tom Cruise said in Tropic Thunder, "I'm talking scorched earth, motherfucker".

Because Caveman Jody maintains that he took someone I was in love with for half my life: that's not something that one simple fistfight is going to remedy, and anyone who honestly thinks as much must have a Texas-sized mental block when it comes to the dynamics of romantic love.

And if that were to happen, I would lose everything I have left, which is quite a lot. Meaning that it's not going to happen. Not a chance in hell.

Now, I have been doing a pretty good job facing these issues down, and the differences I've seen in the other blogs between the emo people - of which I'm still one, though I'm getting it out - still stuck in a rut and the ones who are genuinely growing as individuals is that they are willing to not bury their problems, even if it means metaphorically setting themselves on fire, Buddhist-monk style, just for a little while to, as Robin Williams says, "make you deal with your shit".

That's what these dreams are doing. This is the last bit of baggage left from the affair. I've been avoiding accepting this, have avoided even looking at it, but that's a form of suppression in itself. And now that it's in blog form, it's out there. Consider it purged.

So, I'm hereby drafting the following memo:

Dear Subconscious,

I get it. Message received. You can stop the nightmares now and let me sleep my normal nightly 6.5 hours where I'm a Viking or on a road trip down east or flying through the air on my own awesomeness.

Because I'd rather have the rose than bloody knuckles, dong ma? I choose the rose. There's no ambiguity there. Mmmm...kay?

KTHXBYE,

Jody
There, that should take care of that.

But now that I've put it out there, there's a new risk, one shared by every one of the bloggers I've read so far. Especially the ones looking for the same missing brick in their wall of life as I am. Stay tuned...




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