Entry 76: I'll keep this short in Much Ado About Nothing

I’ll keep this short. I just want to cover last night and the dream, then I’ll publish. Today is a “Lock yourself in your office until the work is complete” kind of day so we’ll see if or how much I write outside of the Grind.

Last night, I decided to abandon getting things done. I was feeling far too crappy. So, I crashed on the couch playing on my phone and playing with the dog and then went to bed early after a long hot bath. But of course playing on my phone is a great pathway to depression these days. The Apps keep coming up with zero connections. Social Media is no longer a place of connecting to others. And TikTok messages? I approach each new message with authenticity. The whole point of what I’m doing there is to encourage Democrats in Iowa to find each other, form a community, discuss how we can try to work against the Christian Nationals who have seized our State House. So, we accept messages via TikTok. But they are always always scammers now. And the scammers ALL have the same script. So rather quickly, I can tell that- instead of an actual person I can communicate with- this is yet another “You’re a lonely man, give me your money” bullshit. To the point where I started cutting to the chase last night. As soon as they tipped their hand completely, I would say, “And now you’re about to ask me if I would take this exchange to Telegram or Signal, right?” and they would typically “readjust but press on”. Something like, “Well, I only use those for my business account; but if you’d like to!” or “I would love to talk to you more on a chat app! What’s your name there?” And then when I don’t respond to that… because I don’t use Apps notoriously used for Scammers due to End to End encryption… I would get follow ups. “You there?” “Why did you end the conversation?” “Aren’t you coming back?” “If you already went to the other app, you forgot to give me your contact info!” shit like that. Which certainly inspires an abundance of emotions. Rage because stop trying to scam me. Rage because why are these the only conversations I am having?! Depression, Despair and Disgust because why are these the only conversations I am having?! It just… it is highlighting my lack of connections and being aggressive and mean spirited about it. I genuinely went to bed with the depression angle and thinking, “Well, this is more evidence on why people like me turn to porn” (though I did not last night) “It is less about wanting a sexual need fed than an emotional need. The idea of some kind of ersatz connection, a false feeling of being in a world that is clearly denying you. An almost desperate need to not feel disconnected from everything and everyone.” I then considered how much I was hating life right now. And I reflected on a comment from PB that essentially felt like it was saying, “Nancy hated her life and it bothered you that she didn’t fix it. You’re hating your life and you’re not fixing it!” But then rapidly, my mind was quick to share: When Nancy hated her life, she had me there trying to help. The frustration about Nancy hating her life is that she was actively rejecting active help… until she accepted the help, and self-sabotaged… and then went totally numb. Shutting out the person she was relying on for everything. THAT was the problem there. She could hate her life as much as she wanted as long as she was part of the relationship. Which is also clearly how she felt when you consider she didn’t even move out before actively trying to find a new guy to date/move in with. Considering how the two biggest events for her in the last 5 years were (1) going from completely celibate with me to unprotected dangerous sexual liaisons, ultimately resulting in a permanent and incurable STI;
(2) On a dating app for people with that STI, finding a man she moved across the country to support while living in his parents’ house.
So… moments like this… as disgusted and depressed and despaired as I am? As much as I miss having a friend and roommate in Nancy… I am never second-guessing the divorce. Yeah, it would be great to have someone to talk to or hug or laugh with; but what happened needed to happen. Honestly- for both of us.

Then I went to sleep.

I had a dream that was essentially “moving into a house you’ve lived in before.” Now, by visual- I had never lived in this house. This is not a house from my real world. But the emotion of the dream was moving into a house that we’d lived in before. And I say “we” there because I was moving in with my wife and kids. I can’t say for sure whether it was Nancy… it didn’t look like Nancy or feel like Nancy but it felt like “Wife”. And helping us move in was my brother, sister-in-law, and niece. And as we explored the house, putting boxes and other items where they should go, there was a central part of the house. A big octagon with a door on 4 walls and a hallway through it- the main Bedroom Area. And the kids and my wife were joking, “I know what Daddy wants to put on these walls!” and they were tittering over the movie and comic book posters that would likely fill this area. I laughed and said, “Actually, I was thinking we could put up family photos in this area.” Which surprised and delighted everyone. The Wife came over and asked me what I was going to do with the posters and artwork, then. I smiled warmly at her and said that she had forgotten about the size and use of the basement. We went down together as a family and I showed them the large area for an entertainment center, a place to put games and do fun family stuff, the access to the 3 season room, the gas remote controlled fireplace. Then we went outside to keep helping. My SIL was cutting through an overgrown vine that was blocking part of the driveway. We had a brief conversation about how the vine had only just been barely cresting the ground last time I lived there. My brother was talking to some of the neighbors who were discussing how the bear on the other side of the street was exceptionally tame and no threat to anyone. The bear even waived when it saw people looking at him. And with a feeling of contentment and jocularity, I turned around and

woke up.

In the waking, all I can say is that the first floor had elements of the house in Tiny Town and the basement was extremely inspired by the first house Nancy and I ever bought. But it had been a very very long time since I had a dream where I had kids. And having a wife, a house, and children.... having pleasant moments in that world where I felt connected, and loved, and sorted? Makes being in this world more difficult. I don’t have kids. I am 40 years old and can’t even so much as get a Dating App conversation or a Single’s Event date. The window where I am likely to have kids is vastly becoming a distant point of improbability. Especially when you consider that I’m not the type of person to be dating a 28 year old when I’m 50! And the wife thing? I sometimes consider. It was a thought I had when I was contemplating divorce. Going from having a wife who ignored me and insulted me and wouldn’t touch me… to single.... simply meant I would continue to be ignored and not be touched. So how much of the active parts of my relationship were bad enough that I would choose, by default, to continue the passive parts of the relationship? Any doubts I had at the time, were wiped away by her actions. Her immediate shift to “trying to find another man to take care of her” and everything that followed screamed resoundingly that it was never about building a life with me but about finding someone to take care of her. And honestly… it seems like I haven’t been able to find a person who is even interested in something outside of me taking care of them. And maybe that’s another reason that the scammers are pissing me off so much. Because we’ve gone beyond “Building, in some way, a relationship to then be taken care of” and have just gone straight to “If I have a conversation with you, will you give me money or provide me an avenue to use you for financial gain?!” I want a fucking connection with someone. Which, all things considered, right now feels like someone in an arid dessert saying “I want to go swimming.” You’ve got to find water first. And it certainly seems like there’s nothing for miles but sand.