lonely_niceboy
Wanting connections
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2008
- Posts
- 242
As I have spent tonight inside due to the stay at home order so many things are passing through my mind. So many mixed emotions...
I've been giving classes via google classroom all week long due to school closure.. None of this is right, yet i'm amazed at how easily as human beings we can adapt. Already getting on the computer and posting new assignments is starting to feel routine.
As i see the virus make its way to the town next to me and also wreak havoc in NYC not so far away from me --i guess i should be scared. But curiously enough the only thing I'm feeling tonight is regret. Regret that I spent so much of my young adulthoood trying to find the right career path. regret at having had to spend so many hours trying to get somewhere professionally, regret at having had to work overtime so many hours in order to pay off half my student debt. Now in my early 40's i wonder what if...what if i had made more time to date and meet people? what if like my brother i had decided to get married first and figure everything else out later? I wonder if i would have a son or a daughter by now? What would they be like? would i have been a good father? My grandparents passed away and i was never able to make them happy by having them see me marry someone and give them great grandkids... It was somehting my grandma always asked me about...
Ironically, due to my strict faith upbringing I didn't even screw around during my college years. While my buddies were all getting laid inn college, i was hitting the books trying to get an A, convinced i needed to solidify my future. To be honest although as a young man i would get horny a lot, the idea of one night stands--never connecting with anybody--didn't really appeal to me anyway. I always thought i would meet someone and fall in love. We would hold hands, we would laugh together and fight together and eventually figure out that we wanted to do life together. There always seemed to be time, but somehow that slipped through my fingers like sand.
There was someone in my early 20's--i even started to look for a ring, i was going to ask--but then before getting to that point our relationship disintegrated before my eyes. It felt like being in a slow motion nightmare--a roller coaster out of control. All of a sudden it seemed i couldn't do anything right. The arguments became nonstop. My actions always brought displeasure, i no longer knew what to do. Our relationship ended, she went on to date someone else and get married within 3 months of our breakup, and then 2 years later her man just got up and left her one night. Left her pregnant with a special needs child. It took me a long time to finally accept the fact that I was not to blame for the actions she decided to take in her own life. I was not responsible for the horrible path her life took. But I always wondered--was there something more i could have done to make it work? Tonight her and her entire family are sick with suspected COVID-19 (testing kits are hard to come by)...not what i would have wished for them.
There was someone else in my thirties---i fell in love slowly with her, as i got to know her. it took me three years. We were very close, but on the day i finally mustered up enough courage to ask her out, she told me i was more than a friend. i was like family to her--like a brother she never had. She didn't want to imagine her life without me-- but not romantically.. I remember going home that night and weeping like a baby in the privacy of my bedroom. That was almost ten years ago now....yet at times it seems like it happened yesterday. Time is objectively a straight line, yet it's very fluid and we seem to experience it more like a circle sometimes. She left the NYC area and went back to live in her hometown in WI where she eventually met someone and settled down. She is doing well.
And so here i find myself alone on a sat night in the midst of a stay at home order, watching netflix in the background without really watching it. Thinking about what were to happen if i were to suddenly start feeling a tickle in the back of my throat and developing a cough. Most people don't feel anything more than a mild cough, but with my luck and my weak immune system i would most likely develop severe pneumonia and die. It's not death so much that I'm afraid of, it's having had a personal life that was a failure. All men eventually must face their end. I was there by my grandpa's bedside as he went through his own dying process. As i revisit that scene in my mind sometimes, I've often thought to myself-- one day that will be me... and grown to accept its inevitability. How will it be I wonder? Will I have made peace with myself? Can I leave knowing I have had a good life? Will I rest secure in the knowledge that God will accept me into his loving arms?
I've always thought of myself as strong, yet tonight as I sit here and ponder my mortality, the only thing i wish is that i could watch a tv show together with the girl of my dreams, my future wife,---the one i I've never met, that i would have someone to hug me to sleep, that we would make love passionately, that we could share stories in the morning as we took a shower together and then go out to IHOP for breakfast on a lazy sunday morning.
All those things i guess could still happen, but tonight it all feels as if it's a universe away... So much for being strong. Regret is a human emotion, yet it's also one of the most nonsensical. After all, you can't change the past....
I am disgusted and embarrassed at my own weakness for feeling this way...A real man would not have even felt the need to post this...
I've been giving classes via google classroom all week long due to school closure.. None of this is right, yet i'm amazed at how easily as human beings we can adapt. Already getting on the computer and posting new assignments is starting to feel routine.
As i see the virus make its way to the town next to me and also wreak havoc in NYC not so far away from me --i guess i should be scared. But curiously enough the only thing I'm feeling tonight is regret. Regret that I spent so much of my young adulthoood trying to find the right career path. regret at having had to spend so many hours trying to get somewhere professionally, regret at having had to work overtime so many hours in order to pay off half my student debt. Now in my early 40's i wonder what if...what if i had made more time to date and meet people? what if like my brother i had decided to get married first and figure everything else out later? I wonder if i would have a son or a daughter by now? What would they be like? would i have been a good father? My grandparents passed away and i was never able to make them happy by having them see me marry someone and give them great grandkids... It was somehting my grandma always asked me about...
Ironically, due to my strict faith upbringing I didn't even screw around during my college years. While my buddies were all getting laid inn college, i was hitting the books trying to get an A, convinced i needed to solidify my future. To be honest although as a young man i would get horny a lot, the idea of one night stands--never connecting with anybody--didn't really appeal to me anyway. I always thought i would meet someone and fall in love. We would hold hands, we would laugh together and fight together and eventually figure out that we wanted to do life together. There always seemed to be time, but somehow that slipped through my fingers like sand.
There was someone in my early 20's--i even started to look for a ring, i was going to ask--but then before getting to that point our relationship disintegrated before my eyes. It felt like being in a slow motion nightmare--a roller coaster out of control. All of a sudden it seemed i couldn't do anything right. The arguments became nonstop. My actions always brought displeasure, i no longer knew what to do. Our relationship ended, she went on to date someone else and get married within 3 months of our breakup, and then 2 years later her man just got up and left her one night. Left her pregnant with a special needs child. It took me a long time to finally accept the fact that I was not to blame for the actions she decided to take in her own life. I was not responsible for the horrible path her life took. But I always wondered--was there something more i could have done to make it work? Tonight her and her entire family are sick with suspected COVID-19 (testing kits are hard to come by)...not what i would have wished for them.
There was someone else in my thirties---i fell in love slowly with her, as i got to know her. it took me three years. We were very close, but on the day i finally mustered up enough courage to ask her out, she told me i was more than a friend. i was like family to her--like a brother she never had. She didn't want to imagine her life without me-- but not romantically.. I remember going home that night and weeping like a baby in the privacy of my bedroom. That was almost ten years ago now....yet at times it seems like it happened yesterday. Time is objectively a straight line, yet it's very fluid and we seem to experience it more like a circle sometimes. She left the NYC area and went back to live in her hometown in WI where she eventually met someone and settled down. She is doing well.
And so here i find myself alone on a sat night in the midst of a stay at home order, watching netflix in the background without really watching it. Thinking about what were to happen if i were to suddenly start feeling a tickle in the back of my throat and developing a cough. Most people don't feel anything more than a mild cough, but with my luck and my weak immune system i would most likely develop severe pneumonia and die. It's not death so much that I'm afraid of, it's having had a personal life that was a failure. All men eventually must face their end. I was there by my grandpa's bedside as he went through his own dying process. As i revisit that scene in my mind sometimes, I've often thought to myself-- one day that will be me... and grown to accept its inevitability. How will it be I wonder? Will I have made peace with myself? Can I leave knowing I have had a good life? Will I rest secure in the knowledge that God will accept me into his loving arms?
I've always thought of myself as strong, yet tonight as I sit here and ponder my mortality, the only thing i wish is that i could watch a tv show together with the girl of my dreams, my future wife,---the one i I've never met, that i would have someone to hug me to sleep, that we would make love passionately, that we could share stories in the morning as we took a shower together and then go out to IHOP for breakfast on a lazy sunday morning.
All those things i guess could still happen, but tonight it all feels as if it's a universe away... So much for being strong. Regret is a human emotion, yet it's also one of the most nonsensical. After all, you can't change the past....
I am disgusted and embarrassed at my own weakness for feeling this way...A real man would not have even felt the need to post this...
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