Winter

Indeed, Christmas and its season is hard for me. I find myself absolutely toxic with bitterness. Sometimes I vibrate with it. Not in public, because I have some selfcontrol. But it's unseemly, even to me, in my privacy. I am a hard and unrelenting man. I am stupidly stubborn, in my weaknesses. I don't know if it's a tradeoff or not, for the things I'm good at. Call them coeval.

I don't know what to do about my father. I cannot abide the man. Close to loathing. Pity mixed in there, at his folly and wretchedness, but I am wretched too, and it's a choice. I seem to be resolved in my unforgiveness. There is nothing that will make me believe his repentance, believe in the lie of his repentance. The scorpion repents its venom. I've just been backflipping through the fantasy of writing a letter. Yeah, another futile, feckless letter, like this, pouring out my pain and heart and yearning to be loved. What image can best express my meaning here? -- something like stomping to death newborn puppies.

I'm writing this now to encapsulate a searing realization I've just had. I have it not infrequently, but usually I let it subside into the bilge sloshing through my lower decks. One of the things I'm bitter about is that I was not loved in my family. I was the unwanted youngest, bottom dog, lowest on the food chain, in a place that was savage in its emotional and physical abuse, and insane in its disregard for reality. Of course I overstate the matter. Just venting. But even to this day I prefer, strongly, to eat alone, and if not, I absolutely demand peace.

They weren't evil people. Far from it. Just unhappy, rather stupid, and what intelligence they possessed was used to dominate. So it seemed. The result is me. In my adult lifetime I have had and have one friend. Someone who had the patience and humor and wisdom to outwait my aloofness. I had one wife, one meaningful love, on my part at least, and I don't know how to find another. I am ridiculously private -- secretive really. I don't know how to accept invitations. I have to disassociate to accept a gift. I am not ingenerous, but I don't give gifts. What am I trying to communicate by that? It's not normal.

There is no one with moral authority over me, to induce or command or shame me into acting rightly. I must forgive. I will not. No one commends me to my conscience, to risk the flood of my grief. I have neglected many of my obligations. I want to love, and to be loved. I do not believe that I will have more than I have now. If this has to be enough, it will be. I see myself living to an old age, alone, in reduced circumstances but accommodating myself to that. I see myself in the desert. My visions often come true.

I understand why you avoid these pages, return to them but once in a while. I have turned to stone, self-reflected Medusa, Midas to the child of himself. It gets wearing, when the only change you can expect is the new ways I find to communicate futility. Love me, then, and forgive me. It has to start somewhere, and your loyalty is like the light of redemption. How else will I find my way? The thing about love is that we hardly ever deserve it.

J