Regret

I realize now that God does not carefully guard those for whom he hears no prayer.  We hand them over to God and trust they will or may grow into honorable men.  They won't.  I think that God is blind, I think he simply cannot see those upon whom prayer does not shed light.  He sees only those who are foreordained, and those others who are blessed by the blessings we ourselves give them.  If God could look upon the damned, and do nothing, would he be good?  Hell is where the damned cannot see God, and he cannot see them.  But they never saw each other during life, either.  It's just a thought.  A possibility -- God after all is not all-powerful.  He can do only what is possible.

I prayed.  But inadequately.  Insufficient fervor.  Not hysterical enough.  God heard but did not understand.  My faith was not that of a small child -- not moronic enough.

I hadn't realized, hadn't stopped to think about how much time has passed.  I saw Joey only in memory, the young boy he had been, and I understood he had grown into a man, but I could not see it.  A failure of imagination, but practical -- I should not torment myself with the unknowable.  The unsettling fact is that he has not changed at all.  The child is father to the man.  Then it was squandering every discretionary penny on pokemon and pogs.  Now it is hookups for threesomes with lesbians.  Just having fun.

Of course I was never meant to see that, such a truthful expression of sexual interests.  Then again, I can have no real expectation that I am even remembered, or that my disappointment could act as an inhibitor of dishonorable behavior.  Just some guy who was in charge for a while, making kids do extra homework.

Well, I'm a little screwed up sexually anyway. Here I am, with an aggressive sexual appetite,  almost completely suppressed.  I manage it at the cost of near-total disassociation from my body.  No perversions or fetishes, but I'm delicate and not getting more open, more trusting as the years pass. It may be morally correct, but it's not healthy.  A life charted for still waters.  So when I get intimations of those I care about acting in a sexually profligate manner, it distresses me.  There's a right way of conducting oneself.  I seem to be almost alone in thinking this.

He's employed, and has stated- if not pursued-goals, and finished high school and went to college.  But he seems not, from my web gleanings, to be the man I would have wished him to be.  I find no pride here, after my however-many years of hands-on training.  What real good, lasting, did I do.  God may be pleased by our futile strivings to do right, but we need more than rewards in heaven.  Maybe it's a delayed gratification thing?  Work motivated by only a promised blessing.  Who needs motivation, when you have faith.

I called him Joe.  He wrote his name as Joseph.  But he chose I see to be Joey again, the silly, sweet, undisciplined pleasure-seeker, a true child of his earliest upbringing, the product of utterly incompetent and passively malevolent adults, mother such as it was -- I have no words hateful enough to describe her -- grandparents who tolerated/practiced incest.

As for Jason, I might have loved him most.  He certainly needed it. But it is as should be expected.  I cannot imagine this assault would be his first criminal offense.   He came back into my home, aimed like a poisoned dart, to destroy it, and he did.  "At least I got Joey away from you."  Why would the man be different than the boy?  Please, be logical.

These are people I have loved.  I wish I never did.  But I did.  And being me, unteachable for all my acumen, I will say, with words, that I love them still. Knowing me, as the complete fool that I am, it's true.  I feel alone, I feel abandoned, but what am I to expect.  I isolate myself, and accept no comfort.  These boys ... well, men, likewise have rejected a right course.  It is an error shared between us, differing only in quality, not quantity.

Uncertainty allowed hope.  Of course there's hope still, hope in miracles, but it's the kind that disregards present reality. This is very hard on me.  Very hard.  Harder than a prolonged and silent death.  All things considered, it would be better if I had not looked.


J