A Little Catching Up, Death Of An Icon Creates A Sequence Of Events in Ultimate Randomness

So I am going to start on light note, to update on me and to counterpoint the events I plan to discuss after. So for me. My biggest problem here today has been the...well, the amorous feelings a person normally gets and wishes to express in a physical manner. Maybe I should just speak plainly. I'm horny. Normally, this is not an issue. If It is just normal or a simply physical need akin to the need to use the bathroom, I can deal with that easily enough. Hell, I was dealing with that for years before I was ever in a relationship and that was enough. It is the aspect of it that has grown from being in a relationship that I cannot fix myself. For whatever reason, there are times I just have a physical, emotional need to be with a woman. I'm not sure why that is, but when I was like this were the times later in my marriage that I had sex most often. It is a problem that can't be solved simply by masturbating. Trust me, I've tried. Normally, once every other day and I am good. In this state, there are times I can go at it 4 or 5 times in a day and still feel the need to. I have found it is only reliably quenched with sex. So crap...Kinda stuck on that one. I actively tThatry to avoid women I find attractive, especially those that are off limits, simply because I am prone to staring. I may have mentioned this before, but I am a boob guy. Not that I don't enjoy all of a woman but, like most guys, there is a physical attribute we are more drawn to. Some guys are ass men. Some guys will have sex with anything with two legs. For some guys, it is strictly body shape or tone. And for guys like me, we like boobs and tend to focus in. It isn't that I just like big boobs, though I do have a preference, as anyone who has seen the girls I have had relationships with will tell you. Still, I am not discriminatory. I can't really afford to be, can I? But when I am like this, for the sake of being polite, I try to avoid. Like my ex's best friend. She is particularly...umm, gifted. She is also my ex's best friend and engaged to another friend of ours. I at least have been honest with him and told him that it is possible that I will stare or say something inappropriate at times. She is kinda flirty, but in a safe way. In any case, I really try to avoid having to explain myself at all costs, so I have spent my day since getting home from work at 6:30 in my room watching TV and movies. It is just the easiest thing to do to avoid embarrassing myself or anyone else. Oh well, I suppose that is why God and Al Gore invented the internet. On to more important things...

More important things starting with the death of Robin Williams. Being as I grew up in the 80's and 90's, I grew up watching Robin Williams. I had heard once that he suffered from depression, kinda like me I guess. You can actually kind of see when it started to hit him hardest. If you look at his career pre- and post-Patch Adams, it seems to me his lighter stuff was before and his serious, dark roles came after. At least that is how it seemed to me. And as someone who suffers from depression, I can tell you that it manifests in all sorts of ways. That may be somewhere else where we are similar. I try to deflect my depression using humor and trying to make other people laugh often. Sound familiar? In any case, I heard about his death on the way home from work that day. It may sound weird, but I didn't feel exceptionally surprised about it. Like I said, I had heard about it before and lord knows, it is something that never goes away and never truly gets better. It can only be managed. I have equated it many times in the last few days to cancer. It is something that can be beaten back so much with medication that it goes into remission, but there will always be a possibility that it will come back in the future. There is no cure and eventually it can come back so seriously that it causes death. At least that is my view of it and I feel fairly qualified to talk on the subject. Well, of course, the next morning someone on my Facebook made a dumb, uninformed comment about not understanding why people were giving Robin Williams so much attention and how selfish he was to have killed himself. This person is not qualified to make a judgement. She's not a bad person, but just not knowledgeable on the subject. I explained calmly that suicide is not a selfish act. It is the end result of a person who gets to a point where it seems like the only option to end the pain. And while treatment is an option, even with all the money in the world, there is no guarantee of surcease. Fortunately, most people seem to realize that. I think it was one story or another that I have read since then that explained it best. Suicidal depression is like being in a burning building. Eventually, it can get to a point where it feels like the room you are in is on fire and you have two choices: burn to death or leap from the building. Neither option is particularly good, but most people are going to make the choice they feel will cause them the quickest, least painful end. Depression is painful. It feels like something that slowly burns your soul away, getting to be more and more crushing until finally you either find a way to mitigate the issue, as I have with medication to a point, or it finally eats you alive. I have been at that point too, and have come close a few times, particularly in the last 8 months. There have been at least two times I can think of where I looked at a bottle of pills and thought about downing the whole thing. And it wasn't friends or family that kept me from doing just that. Those few times lately, all that has stopped me is a fear of not knowing what comes after. That is it. As you can imagine, or maybe you can't, that may not be enough one day. I may decide that even nothingness is preferable to my life. I hope that doesn't happen and that my life miraculously gets better and I find someone and get a chance at love and happiness again, but I am a staunch realist and I know that, given my shyness and unwillingness to go out and do things, paired with not even considering going online to a dating site to find someone, and the fact that I am just not the best looking guy in the world, and am very quirky and outside the box, I realize that I am probably going to be alone the rest of my life. It would take a true miracle for that to not happen.

My realism and quirkiness drew me to something in that Facebook conversation thought. It was a link to a site created my a man named Martin Manley. Martin Manley was a statistician who wrote for multiple websites and blogs. On August 15th, 2013, on his 60th birthday, Martin committed suicide. Now, I won't go into all the details in this entry as I plan to give the web address to visit the site he created, but I will explain a few necessary details. Martin, and I will refer to him by first name as, at this point, I have explored the site thoroughly and feel that I know enough personal details to be on a first name basis, should we ever meet in whatever afterlife exists for us, if there is one. Now what sets Martin apart from most people who commit suicide is that he did it for reasons that are not typical. He was not deathly ill. He was not depressed. He was not financially ruined nor did he have to endure the death of a family member that crushed him. When it comes down to it, Martin was just getting older and he was starting to notice a deterioration. Instead of letting his mind deteriorate to the point of being a "drooling, babbling mess," and getting the to point where he would be a burden on others physically and financially, he decided that it was his right to decide how and when he wanted to go out. And before you wonder, he was not married (twice divorced, though still friends with his exes), he had no children, and he was not particularly close to his remaining living family, a brother and a sister. He was financially well off enough to cover the expenses involved with his death as well as take care of some people after the fact. What truly makes this unique is that Martin decided to take his life some 14 months before doing the actual deed. He spent the intervening time dealing with what needed to be dealt with and creating the site. The site is located at martinmanley.org. I strongly encourage anyone who reads this entry to visit the site. Yes, it is sad and yes, it may not make sense to you why Martin would do what he did, but I feel that if you explore the site and read into everything as I did, you will realize that is less about how the man died, though that is included and with detail. The site is really about how Martin lived. It is a fairly comprehensive account of his life. As he had no children of his own and no nieces and nephews, the one thing he regretted in life was that he had no way to pass on a legacy of any sort. After all, who doesn't want to be remembered? As such, he created this site as a way of living on. It was initially paid for 5 years via Yahoo, but has since become something of a public domain site. The idea for him was to write his account before he lost his capacity to do so. He had recently seen a friend who deteriorated mentally and physically very quickly and decided he did not want that for himself. That was another reason for what he did. But as I said before, I cannot hope to explain everything on the site, so again:

martinmanley.org

I truly encourage everyone to explore the site. You may not agree with what Martin did or why he did it, but by giving it a chance, you may just notice your perspective changes just a little bit. I know mine has. I share a fair amount in common with Martin and, while part of me still wonders at what he did, another part of me understands his reasoning. We are both very logical people and his reasoning is very logical in nature. Still, I know not all are like that and not everyone will get it. But like I said, give it a chance. If nothing else, it is likely you will remember more about how a man who lived and how he lived then the way in which he died. Long days and pleasant nights my ka and remember that all things serve the beam. (Sorry, it is a Stephen King reference and if anyone is curious enough to ask about it, I will explain in my next entry).