OK, so I think I am back to square one. I am back in that feeling of wanting to be single again. It's a feeling that comes around for me over and over again, only this time it's different, I feel it not in anger but more as a possibility. Like a promise to myself that I can have what I want and I don't have to sacrifice it anymore.

I have been listening to a book about the law of attraction and it's helping me to see that I am living a life of "don't wants" and that I focus on that way too much. I am stuck in a pattern of negative thought, feeling and energy, all in a vain attempt to figure out what's wrong with me, Jan, my parents, my kids, my boss, you name it. I am finally coming to realize that staying in this emotional pit of anger is holding me back and making me feel stuck (and sick). For the longest time I have waited for a sign, something to come from the outside, that will "unstick" me. I waited to change, I waited for everyone else to change. I see now that all this waiting is the reason I am stuck.

I tried to break up with Jan not long after we got together. Something in my intuition was telling me it wasn't the right time, or she wasn't the right person, or I wasn't the right person for her. But she pulled me back. I have been trying to break up with her about every three months or so ever since, and in the meantime I have ramped up the stakes all along, by moving in with her, sharing a house and all the responsibilities that entails, bringing us together with the kids to try to make a family and so on, and in the meantime I want out. Every time I get really solid with that decision, she manages to break me down and I stay. So I am waiting now for the right time to tell her and I really think that the only way is for me to start making plans and being absolutely ready.

There is a part of me that is incredibly sad to think that this is going to happen again. There's a part of me that knows that other people are going to be "disappointed" that we are breaking up. There's a part of me that knows that I am going to hurt Jan tremendously by doing this. But none of that makes staying somewhere that is causing me this pain worth it. The pain is emotional, spiritual, and physical. I have been sick the whole time we have been together, and I realize now that it's because I needed something from her that I wasn't getting so I had to create a way to get it. I am manifesting what is missing in our relationship with illness, and I can't do that to my body anymore.

I have to stop waiting for things to change and change them myself.

An open letter to my father:

I am told I need to write this to you even though I am resisting doing it. I feel that by taking the time to write it I am giving something up, my time, my energy, my pride, you name it.

Whatever the case I am going to try to write down some thoughts about being in St Croix with you this Spring. Mainly about how your seeming inability to censor yourself causes pain for me. You are constantly describing women in sexual terms, young girls too. Girls the same age as your granddaughters. It reminds me of when I was their age and I was constantly worried about my breast size and whether or not I would ever "measure up", a fear that led me into too many scary and painful sexual situations (the biggie being the time I gave you the chance to grant me approval). I realize I was desperate to prove that I could be wanted with my little A cup body, and it made me have a totally distorted understanding of what power is. I though I was powerful because I could attract sex, that I was in control when I gave it away so easily, that I would be truly appreciated once I showed ho "good" I was at it.

Some days I even question whether or not identifying as gay was a swing of the pendulum in the other direction, a way to throw all that sexualization of me by you in your face. It's like I needed to take myself out of the running for your sick thoughts, but I probably just fueled them on a whole new level. Now I have to worry about bringing my friends around because I am sure it is so utterly titillating for you.

So now almost 12 years since I came out, after a marriage, two failed relationships, and one that I question daily, I am trying to figure out if any decision I have made about relationships has been about what I want. I find I am almost totally incapable of trusting myself to know what that is. I can't settle down, I can't be happy where I am, I crave aloneness so that I don't have to trust another person because I don't trust myself. I am on a see-saw of emotion every day, wanting to embrace my life and relationship with Jan one minute and wanting to reject and abandon it the next. I never get through one singe day without it being a tug of war between those two extremes.

I believe that it was the schizophrenic nature of my childhood that causes this blocking for me. On one hand you extol the virtues of feminism and on the other you are all about tits and ass. You try to come off as the sensitive enlightened guy and yet you speak to my mother like she's incompetent, useless, not sexy and weak. You expect everyone to bend to your will and you act like a spoiled two year old when you don't get your way. You aren't willing to do anything for yourself and you're killing yourself with alcohol.

All of this makes me reluctant to bring Rachel and Sarah around because you have no impulse control. They are aware of it and thankfully they see it as something wrong with you and not with them. This is why the girls will not be spending the summer with you and Mom. It's not about them wanting to work locally, it's about me not wanting to worry about what you're going to do or say that will cross the line. It's about not wanting them to have porn sites featuring girls as young looking as them pop up on your computer. It's about how much you drink and that you drive when you're drinking. It's about the way you talk to Mom and belittle her and think it's perfectly acceptable.

Ok so after I wrote the post the other day slamming my girlfriend I felt bad about it and by the end of the night I had convinced myself that it was really my parents and not her that I was angry with and that I was being unfairly critical of her. That lasted about a day and now the anger is back. I don't know why I have such a hard time accepting that the way I feel is the way I feel and that I need to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

In the meantime I was in the tub last night thinking about my anger towards my parents...well really I started thinking about a conversation I had just had with my younger daughter in which I felt particularly ineffective as a parent. The problem was that she got herself into a situation that was causing her great stress and by the time she opened up to me about it there wasn't much I could do to help her. So when I pointed that out to her she became even more frustated and began to take her anger at herself out on me. Well, she's thirteen so what would I expect?

So in the tub I got to thinking about it all and how I let my feelings about my parents dictate way too much of my feelings about myself and that maybe I need to shift to focusing on my own kids and my parenting of them in order to get out of the rut. That seemed like a fairly reasonable idea so I think I will go with it. It's not always going to be easy but I think my kids deserve a parent who isn't still stuck in her own emotional adolescence.

Ok, back to my girlfriend. The thing is that every time I am around her or she calls me while I am at work I get this burning pit in my stomach. I dread to see her car pull into the driveway after work. I feel like she is so judgemental and such a reactor and I do not choose that for myself so why do I accept it from her? I am furious with myself for letting this go so long. I feel like I have literally condemmed myself to a life of misery with her because I don't want another break up for me or for my kids. But I FUCKING HATE HER. No, make that I FUCKING HATE MYSELF WHEN I AM AROUND HER. That would be more accurate. I can be having a perfectly nice day and she will call me at work and I feel the stomach pit come on and then it's over, I am angry and bitter and bitchy toward her the rest of the day.

I know she deserves better and so do I. I have tried and tried to turn this around and it doesn't work. I resent her presence in my life and in the kids lives and I wish she would take the fucking hint and just LEAVE. But she won't because, see, she loves me. But what the fuck - if this is her grand version of what being in love is, take it elsewhere I am not interested.

Right now, anyway...

I woke up this morning st around 5:30. Felt OK for a few minutes, then the anxiety started creeping in. Relatively quickly it turned into anger. Bad anger, gut churning anger, if I don't stay angry I am going to cry like a baby anger. About what I am not totally sure. I suspect, though, that is is because my girlfriend is coming home today after staying with a friend's daughter for two nights. I don't have a specific complaint, she didn't do anything to piss me off (well, that's an overstatement, she does things all the time that piss me off), and yet the idea of her being home makes me want to scream and cry and run away.

I am tired of pretending that I want this relationship to work. I am tired of stuffing my feelings all the time when I know it's going to hurt only me in the end. I am tired of living with someone so self righteous, so totally incapable of personal insight, so completely convinced of her own superiority that I want to drag her down into the depths of my own anger and shove it in her fave. Repeatedly and often. I feel like I am so on the edge.

I need to start making plans. I need to stop trying to fake this. I don't love her. I don't even like her. She's rude, overbearing. insecure and an intellectual midget. She sees everything in black and white and can't get her head around the grey. She thinks she the God given authority on parenting yet she's abandoned two kids she's helped to raise. She's a total asshole. And her breath smells like ass.

I have to stop focusing on what I would be giving up if I leave her and concentrate on what I will gain. I will be able to parent my kids the way I want to. I will be able to choose who I spend my time with. I will read all the time and not have her bugging me for attention. I will be able to attend to my own needs on my terms in my way without having to constantly defend myself. I won't have to withhold information because I am afraid of how she will react, even when I know her reaction is ridiculous. I won't have to feel guilty for not wanting to have sex with her.

I want to be in charge of my life again.