The need to connect

"The first transatlantic telegraph cable was made of 340,500 miles of copper and iron wire, designed to stretch 2,876.95 miles along the ocean floor.  Once the cable was in place, you could use electrical impulses and signal code to send any message you wanted to the other side of the world.  Human beings are hard wired with the impulse to share our ideas and the desire to know you’ve been heard…… it’s all part of our need for community.  That’s why were constantly sending out signals and signs, and why we look for them from other people.  We’re always waiting for messages, hoping for connection,  and if we haven’t received a message, that doesn’t always mean it hasn’t been sent to us….sometimes it means we haven’t listened hard enough.

In spite of all our communication technology, no invention is as effective as the sound of the human voice.  When we hear the human voice, we instinctively want to listen,  in the hopes of understanding it….. even when the speaker is searching for the right words to say.  Even when all we hear is yelling, or crying, or singing.  That’s because the human voice resonates differently from anything else in the world.  That’s why we can hear a singers voice over the sound of a full orchestra.  We will always hear that singer, no matter what else surrounds it." Touched

I was listening to the news the other day, as background noise, and heard that facebook of all things is not doing well.  That people are actually BORED with it, and as such, stocks are falling....or something like that.  I didn't pay close attention because, let's face it, I couldn't really give a shit.  But, it occured to me that our need to connect with others has gone from taking years to cross a sea to make the first connection, to never having to really make another connection again.  Our insatiable appitite for satisfying ourselves right now, and the ability for sites like facebook and Tagged to feed that need in a nano second.....sharing the most mundane of daily 'experiences' with each other....has caused us to have burned out.  We are not REALLY connecting that way....and we have now opted out of house calls, voice calls, and shockingly email calls.....in exchange for texting and just posting our lives, never having to truly 'converse' ....we just read what is going on in our dearest loved ones lives....give it a thumbs up "Like"...and move on.  And what's really sad, if you google in the images section, the word 'touch'....99.9% of the results are technology based images. 

That is what I loved about bar hopping this  last weekend.  People were every where...in cars and taxi's....on bikes and walking.  There were 5-6 bars in a 9 square block area....intermingled with residential homes and frat houses.  Between the hours of 11pm and 2am, there was never a time when there wasn't people....REAL people on the street....interacting, talking, touching, laughing and living life.  When people talked, no one gave a thumbs up and shouted "Like"...they listened and laughed with them, and TALKED with them.  As people passed each other on the street, they smiled and said hello.  I made new friends and we talked for hours while dancing a little and sharing pics and things.

Of course at this stage in my marriage/divorce, I cannot be going out all the time....in fact barely at all....so my desire to connect is strong.  I take any form of connection I can...and at this point it is tagged.com.  I have male friends all over the country of every relationship status known to relationships.  I have reconnected with my friends that I ignored due to hanging out with Josh....and have accepted a fairly large group of new friends recently.  A few that I would love to meet in person, and a few that I would love to be cruel and just delete.  And, as always, my favorite...Owen.  Man would I love to meet him in person and tear him UP!  We have the BEST connection, even though it is digital.  And maybe, just maybe, someday we can connect in real life.
~S~

Clinging to snap shots

"There are 31,530000 seconds in a year.  1000 milliseconds in a second.  1 million micro seconds. A billion nano seconds.  And the one "constant", connecting nano seconds to years, is change.  The universe, from atom to galaxy, is in a perpetual state of flux.  But we humans don't like change. It scares us. So we create the illusion of stasis. We want to believe in the world at rest, the world of right now. Yet our great paradox remains the same. The moment we grasp the "now".....that 'now' is gone.  We cling to snap shots, but life is moving pictures, each nano second different than the last. Time forces us to grow and to doubt, because every time we blink our eyes, the world shifts beneath our feet.  Every day,  every moment, every nano second, the world changes.  Electrons bump into each other and react, people collide, and alter each others paths.  Change isn't easy. More often than not, it's wretched and difficult.  But maybe that's a good thing, because it's change that makes us strong, keeps us resilient, and teaches us to evolve."... Touched

I have been clinging to a very few happy snap shots of a 20ys horrible marriage.  Looking back thru the photo album of our life, there are really few truly happy moments.  And most of them were due to external things, not relationship bliss.  Oddly, some of our happiest moments together are from the last few months, yet here we are, in relationship hell again.  He doesn't seem to grasp just how serious I am about leaving.  He asked, rather begged, for another chance...pleading he would do 'anything' to make me happy.  Yet as the first two weeks of this 3 week trial have passed us by, his efforts have been modest, and came to a screeching halt when met with the teeniest of resistance.  I know in his heart he loves me.  That is not in question.  What is in question is the manner in which he has chosen to NOT show it over the years.  He was raised in a home where affection was non existent, even to small children and infants.  But should this be a crutch, a cop out, or MY responsibility to teach him?  I have tried in many ways to show him over the years, and I am at the point that if he can't figure it out, it's just not my problem any more, it is his.  I want out of life what I want, and that is just that. We are not the 20 somethings of our youth when we got married.  I am not a naive little girl any more.  I know I am not innocent in the failings of our marriage, but I have done my part, above and beyond to repair any of my undoings.  He however has no conviction to do the same.  I took near full responsibility for the first affair (stupid...I know) due to circumstances beyond both our control.  Again I completely over looked the second affair, and said nothing to him of my knowlege of it.  I just pulled up my knickers (rather down) and did what I needed to do, to put our relationship back on track....granted it was still no fairy tale fantasy.  I have endured his alcoholism, his tyrades, his perpetual flirting, practically living alone as he spends all his time in the garage.....and "I" have evolved.  He has not.  The world around us changes every moment and I am changing too.  I can finally define what it is I desire and I know it exists out in the open world around me.  I know it is not existing in my home.  He has mistaken this to think that I am some totally new woman, but I really am not.  My desires are things that I have always desired.....but my vision was foggy.  I can clearly see now, that which I have always needed but been too afraid to truly ask for it.  Thinking I didn't desreve it.  Now I know I do.

That last kiss of his with the family friend..."the kiss of death" as I call it.....I asked him why he let it happen.  His reply was...."I couldn't believe a woman like that wanted a man like me".......WTF??

He should.....SHOULD..... feel that way about me.  For god sakes....she isn't THAT fabulous.  I however AM. 

~S~

Escaping the Gyre

"During a storm on January 10, 1992, three 40-foot containers  washed off a ship on its way from China to the United States, releasing 29,000 rubber ducks into the pacific ocean.  10 months later, the first of these rubber ducks washed ashore on the Alaskan coast.  Since then these ducks have been found in Hawaii, South America, Australia, and traveling slowly inside the arctic ice.  But 2000 of the ducks were caught up in the north pacific gyre , known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. A vortex of currents, moving between Japan, Alaska, the pacific north west, and the Aleutian Islands.  Items that get caught in the gyre, usually stay in the gyre, doomed to travel the same path, forever circling in the same waters. But not always. Their paths can be altered by a change in the weather, a storm at see, or a chance encounter with a pod of whales.  20 years after the rubber ducks were lost at sea, they're still arriving on beaches around the world.  The number of ducks in the gyre has decreased.  Which means.... it's possible to break free.  Even after years of circling the same waters, it is possible to find a way to shore." Touched 

That's me.....a 'lil rubber duckie, that has been caught in a vortex of crap, repeating the same patterns for 20ys.  Will I make it out of the gyre?  If so, will I make it safely to shore? 
~S~