Random thoughts from a damaged man

*** Well, maybe not all of them are random to most of you who read my entries, but hey OD is the reason I do not have scars on my forehead from banging my head against the wall.***

I may have has an epiphany some time during the night. Not a “A-HA” one, more like a “well, I guess that’s it” one. To some this might sound like more of the usual “poor me” stuff I have been writing on OD since day one, but the whole insignificance I have to the world and people just calmly came over me. The only 4 people I matter to are my boys and that feels like they would just miss the random weekend getaway visits to Dad’s little hovel of an apartment. I used to believe I was loved, cherished, and mattered to a number of important people in my life. My 2 life-long friends who were more brothers to me than my actual brothers were. My sister who I was a constant shadow to for my first 10 years of my life and as close as a little brother big sister could ever be. My ex, who for the 20 years we were together appeared to love me as completely as I did her, unbreakable and faithful through sickness and the death of my parents and my daughter. Friends and acquaintances that I always met with cheerful and loving greetings and great memories. Random strangers in life that I could strike up conversations with. I don’t think I ever had hate from anyone.

Somehow that all ended almost exactly 3 years ago.

Thoughts of my marriage come to mind. How did I make her unhappy and lose her love for me? We lost our first home. Our first 2 boys were born and I was having difficulty keeping a job. I wasn’t lazy, I just worked jobs where free thinkers weren’t appreciated. I managed convenience stores and I fairly regularly “butted” heads with upper management  about my stores. You see, I spent 40 to 60 hours at my store. I learned who my customers were, their needs and wants, how they enjoyed being treated and so on. My employees were treated like family.I looked out for them and never asked of them anything I wasn’t willing to do myself. I even help a couple of them to overcome living on welfare and having a job and benefits. I worked with the venders on product deals and would reset my stores to be almost theft proof and profitable, taking money loosing locations and turning a profit within a years time. Unlike television show and movies though, results do not matter when you don’t follow the collage educated “business” people who have never worked in a C-store in their lives. If you don’t follow plan-o-grams or their “research” that says that widgets sell out in a city store so they should in the country. If you make them look bad to their bosses. I was fired twice because of I refused to sell, push products that essentially were like selling ice to eskimos, even though the locations were turning more than 25% more than budget profits and had regular awesome audits. I was forced out by being forced to take a demotion to a high crime store that should have been closed years ago and no it wasn’t a try to make it profitable opportunity, more like an invitation to be shot, robbed, or even stabbed like the last several clerks and managers thing. Between you and me, convenience stores are better run from the ground up then the top down and much like the armed forces, the Generals need to listen to the Sargents who fight in the trenches to better understand a battlefield.

Any way, we had some money issues, much like all relationships and marriages do in the beginning. We came through all that when the last 2 boys were born and at the time of the “end” of our marriage, we were living comfortable. She is still with her “new” husband, who walked into a life that was established while I lost everything I built, bleed, and busted my ass for over 20 years.  Then I lost the life long friends, because I didn’t just let it roll off me like dirt in a shower. My sister because it may have made her life difficult when it came to her time with her nephews. My acquaintances because the narrative was controlled by the ex and her “boyfriend” while I was still broken and completely out of my mind about it all.

SO, last night it finally all hit home that I am truly alone in this. The support I gave to all others, has and will never come to me and I can’t think that it will anymore. I have to live with the fact that I really don’t matter to people like other do. I left all social media, except for OD, a month ago. People have phone number, my email address, and even my physical address. I received no well wishes for Christmas or New Years. No sympathy messages on what would have been my daughter’s birthday in December and as of yet a simple “how are you” from anyone. I know at all a person has in this world is theirself and how you have to love yourself to be loved. All that stuff. I know my entries come off like I have absolutely no understanding or concepts of these things, but I do and I have worked to be at peace with both of them, yet the world keeps throwing crap at me like a pissed off monkey.

I’m not quite sure that last night I exhaled and made peace with my role in life and the lives of others, but I just feel like I no longer matter to anyone and I’m fine with it. I can live with the rejections of the women I have tried to date that never give things a chance and the past relationships that disappeared without  rhyme or reason. I can also live with the fact that when the time comes I will leave this world in a whimper and so silent that I will be a pile of ashes scattered to the wind for years before most will notice. There’s just those kinds of people and I am one of them and I have always been. I just was too naive to realize it for the last 50 years. I have 4 children who will have some great memories of the guy they call Father, but a lot more of the new man they call Dad and that’s how the world wants it.