Ice Cream Cake Game

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~ this was written yesterday night and posted this morning

Tonight, to console myself over disappointing news, I decided I’d go to a friend’s house for dinner and a movie. It was already decided ahead of time what we’d watch and that I would be bringing ice cream cake. I felt bad bringing the remains of the ice cream cake that I bought for my roommate, to welcome him coming home from graduating Ranger School, so I bought a new one.

An Oreo Cake with chocolate and cookie dough.

As I was walking towards their door from my car, parked across the street in the grass, I saw a mixed group of two girls and two guys. I asked them if they knew any of my friends. When they replied that they knew neither the man or his wife, I introduced myself:

Me: “Hi, I’m Thomas and I love ice cream cake.”

Them: “Is that an ice cream cake?”

Me: “Why yes it is. An oreo ice cream cake.”

*gets to the door*

Me: “Would you like some?”

Them: “Are you serious?”

Me: “Yeah, do you have a knife?”

I ended up introducing them to my friends and getting all their names. Sadly I only remember the name of the girls. Turns out, one of the guys knew my buddy. He was a soldier in my friend’s platoon (my friend was the Platoon Leader). We chatted for a little bit. The group I met were helping a fella and his lady move, but they’d be there for a while. I got’em two slices.

Apparently they all had a stressful day of moving and I made their night by adding ice cream cake to it.

Today was good day, despite its disappointing, frustrating start.

~Wald

“I recall the scent of you when everything was fine…”

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Each time I go through a bad break up, I immediately look back on my memories of the relationship and try to see all the things I did and said, to try and find lessons in them. I do this as it gives me a cold comfort and because I hope to never repeat them again in the future. I’d probably credit me doing this more than any of the tricks of trade I learned regarding women, for my success with them. For each new relationship I had, I instantly put to use the new lessons and saw almost immediate results each time. In fact, each successive serious relationship I had was more satisfying than the last, and each girl was better quality than the last.

However, apparently I haven’t done this to all of them. This break up here, wasn’t really a break up.

“You see, this past weekend, I broke up with my girlfriend. It was the most amicable break up I’ve had the pleasure of enduring to this day. The thing was, I knew it was coming. I knew it the night before. I knew it a month before.

Because I had warnings – repeated warnings.

Many men who say they didn’t see it coming either couldn’t read the signs or didn’t want to.

You know how it goes. The relationship cools down slightly. Comfortable. You’ve got a confidence that’s hard to rock.

Then it happens. Somethings’s amiss.

She doesn’t refer to you by your usual pet name. She doesn’t sign off in the usual manner. She replies to the messages you send slower than usual. She forgets to call you back. She is not as receptive to your advances as you last remember. She asks you what would you would do if she just didn’t want to have sex anymore. You can’t remember the last time she got jealous. She told you that if you broke up, she was happy she met you.

I’m sure you’ll recognize something in there.”

That break up didn’t affect me as bad as it would have because it was never over for me. Because I never had to deal with it. At the time, I was worried about my mother who had a stroke three months prior and losing my job, which was extremely important to me. By the time I had overcome my physical limitations and saved my job I had met someone on tinder, a German girl I called Jora, who surprised me with the caliber of person she was and how quick I was smitten by her.

A single attack of conscience, doing the right thing at an awkward time set the relationship on a collision course from which it didn’t recover. It ended with the girl I thought I might love going completely radio silent on me, including deleting my snapchat, me as a friend on Facebook, and blocking me on all channels of communication. I was…destroyed. Morose. Miserable. Desperate to learn new lessons so that this would never happen again. And I did learn.

But I didn’t learn from my break up with…we’ll call her Mia. I never truly suffered through the break up, truly examined why it ended beyond an increased amount of distance. The thing is, I always believed that distance takes problems and exacerbates them. It is not necessarily the problem in of itself.

However, recently this past December, close to New Year’s I started talking to Mia again. She broke up with her then boyfriend about a week later, something I was not surprised about. Using the lessons I learned from Jora, I immediately set about telling her a lot of my innermost thoughts about what happened and ultimately trying to make her understand that she was in fact important to me and that I did in fact care about her, more than she thought. Because I never fully suffered from the break up, and I realize, never fully accepted it was over, old feelings started to come back. I starting thinking about getting back together with her. After a while, she got wise to me and asked me why I was talking to her so much all of a sudden.

I talked to her pretty much everyday for a large part of January. Some of February. But then I fell back into old habits. From my last conversation with her, she briefly thought about getting back together when I bought and mailed her flowers for Valentine’s day. The first time I’ve ever done anything like that for her, and apparently the first time any boyfriend of hers ever bought her flowers. But then shortly after I disappeared into my old habits and video games, when my life had taken a turn for the worse. She realized that I hadn’t quite changed and that she was that important to me. At least I definitely didn’t act like it.

Last night, I had a long conversation with her, and probably the last one for a while. I started off by asking how she was and how her new banking job was doing. When she asked about me, I didn’t hide that I was hurt, but didn’t focus on it either. While I did want to get back together, still felt like I loved her, her answering my first question of “What are you thinking/What do you want?” quickly dispelled any notion of trying to go that way. So I prolonged the conversation so I could one enjoy her company as much as I could before it was over and two so I could be comfortable enough to tell her what I was really thinking.

She repaid me in full by explaining how she felt good when she broke up with her exe because she didn’t have to worry about someone else. Why they weren’t texting her, what were they doing, why didn’t they want to spend every minute with her. And she didn’t want to meet someone new and lose that good feeling. But she did. She met someone as she was leaving her old job. Told me how she didn’t want to like him, but he was steadfast in texting her every day, all the time. At first she didn’t like it, but it grew on her. She noticed that he was texting her when he woke up, when he was at work, and when he couldn’t see her, he wanted to call her. She felt happy and didn’t know why and that’s when one of her friends told her that she felt loved and cared for (she briefly tried to say that she didn’t need it, but it was very nice to have! 😉 ). There were many other things said and discussed but the important thing is twofold:

  1. Dealing with this situation has been extremely painful for me. I haven’t felt this bad since highschool or my second serious relationship in college.
  2. I’ve realized that I was a terrible boyfriend to this girl in many ways. And I never saw that before. The fact that I was her first and had other redeeming qualities merely meant that I got away with more than I should have. And it’s these many lessons I’m learning, now that I see things with a new lens once again, that give me enough cold comfort to function normally right now, instead of curling into a ball and mulling over what a I gem I had, what a gem I overlooked.

~Wald

Song: Right Through You – Drain

The Biggest Problem In My Life Right Now

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The biggest problem in my life right now is two fold:

  1. I’m still a good journey and a half from where I need to be, to both be the man I want and need to be
  2. I’m almost all talk and little if any concrete action beyond a day or two when it comes to changing my life. I’m always on the precipice of taking this action. Precipice of taking that action. My paradigm is changing. But I haven’t truly made any difficult choices. I’ve put off many important ones and gotten away with them for now. This is worse than just suffering from delusion damage. I see the bars clearly, but like Louis CK, do nothing about them.
    1. If this be the case, then do I not deserve my imprisonment?
    2. If I can hardly see beyond my nose, because hardly anything beyond it is important to me, what kind of a life will I lead? What kind of a life do I deserve?
    3. How can I expect to live if I can’t make a decision?

Facing a firing squad feels easier than facing the conversation I am going to have. And that’s why I have to have it.Wald

Thomas Time

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Hey!

My name’s Thomas and I often introduce myself as “Thomas, like the Train”. Or “Thomas the Train”. Usually I get a laugh or a knowing smile. As a fan myself, of the original Thomas the Train series I get a kick out of that.

A while back, the morning after New Year’s, a friend of mine, we’ll call him ‘Heli’ introduced me to a concept called “Thomas Time”.

Basically, Heli explained that I, ‘Thomas’, when I say I am going to be somewhere, either show up [hours] early or [hours] late. He explained that I am predictable in that I am unpredictable; I often zig instead of zag and vice versa. Planning with me can be an exercise in frustration. The only reason, Heli said, why he doesn’t mind as much as he might, is that I don’t make demands on people’s time, don’t get mad when they don’t clear their schedule for me, and am perfectly happy to do my own thing, even sleep in my own car in the event of a mismatch in schedules or communication.

Recently, I pretty much, torpedoe’d a different friend’s New Year’s Eve. He told me he wasn’t mad at me the next day (knowing that I am how I am), but just doesn’t want to do “Thomas Time” planning anymore. I believe he was mad, may be over it now, but we haven’t talked much since.

I talked on the phone with my Dad about ‘Thomas Time’ and heard knowing laughs. I realize that I’ve been on “Thomas Time” since about 5 years ago when I started seriously chasing girls the first semester of my junior year in college. My friends were mostly insulated from Thomas Time because I knew them in military college, where I was in fact very punctual and easy to make plans with. But my long suffering family knows Thomas Time all too well, even if they didn’t make up a name for it (they probably did and I just don’t remember).

I could say that my flakiness is in part, in response to flaky girls, but that would just be deflecting blame and responsibility.

I realize that if I don’t get a handle on Thomas Time, and eventually retire it, I’ll eventually railroad both over my friendships and relationships with family. It’s part of my New Year’s Resolutions, to get a handle on Thomas Time.

~Wald

Environmentalism

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When I was younger I used to have a theory I called environmentalism, which seemed to better explain people’s’ behavior towards one another than how ‘racism’ did. That is, people develop opinions about the world and others depending one what their environment is comprised of.

For example, if you’re a policeman, you might tend to think of the world in three terms: cops, perpetrators (perps), and civilians. If you meet someone who’s not a cop, you’re already more likely to put them one of two boxes.

When it comes to race, I always thought that no one intrinsically dislike another race. At best, one is indifferent and forms opinions based on the types of people one interacts with. If you’ve got only negative interactions of a race, then you’ll have negative opinions. However, people, races, sexes, all behave differently in different locations and circumstances. For example, whites in the US are different from whites in England. Whites in the North are different from Whites in the South. Same with blacks. Blacks in Chicago are different from Blacks in New York and Blacks in America are wholly different from Blacks in Africa. A man who interacts with Blacks in Chicago is liable to have a vastly different opinion of Blacks than a man who interacts with Blacks in Africa.

I believe that people start with neutral opinions of other people and other places and form them after repeated interactions. If one travels, it gives one a bit of perspective that different people can be even more varied in behavior and beliefs in different areas, even amongst a particular race or nationality.

~Wald

“…and I Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart…”

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This past year has been busy and my motivation to post has been tiny. But this year, I hope to change that. This was meant to go up earlier last year. I think I didn’t publish it because I wasn’t yet happy with it. Instead of letting perfect be the enemy of good, I’m going to publish today. Luckily, I had a little inspiration and was able to add to it.

I wrote this down 9 June 2017, to be published today, 4 July 2017. A two year anniversary.

“Everytime we talk, I remember that day,

Suddenly you clear up the haze,

Don’t be fooled it was no small heart break,

It’ll haunt me, for the rest of my days.

‘

Everytime we talk, I can’t decide,

Whether or not I should push you away,

Or maybe I want to pull you in,

Equivocating, this is my fate,

‘

…and I nearly forgot my broken heart,

It’s given me years of ache,

But still despite all of the enduring pain,

I’m addicted to, this game

‘

Everytime we talk, I feel alive,

It’s not over but you can’t deny,

The cycle goes like day and night,

For now it’s a hello and good bye,

‘

You’re like a habit that I can’t kick,

Everynow and then I need a fix,

More than I deserve, I get my wish,

My eyes roll back as I take a hit,

‘

…and I nearly forgot my broken heart,

It’s given me years of ache,

But still despite all of the enduring pain,

I’m addicted to, this game

‘

I just want to be done learning,

So I can start living, but it’s hard,

After every disaster, looms happy ever after,

But it’s hard…”

~Wald

P.S. The original chorus and the bridge in the lyrics actually fit this poem quite well, but I was trying my best to be original.

“And I nearly forgot my broken heart,

It’s taken me miles away,

From the memory of how it broke apart,

Here we go ’round, again

–

Every single feeling tells me this is leading,

To a heart in broken little pieces,

And you know I need this,

Like a hole…”

Blood on the Risers v.2

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I wrote my own version of the above song as a cadence for my platoon to sing when I went through airborne school a little over a year ago. Sadly, we never got to sing it. I thought I might put it up here so that the pages containing the lyrics don’t get lost in my next move.

There was a paratrooper, he was from 1st platoon,

He jumped outta the plane, thought this is what he wanted to do,

Realized a little too late, he was fresh outta ‘chutes!

He ain’t gonna jump no more!

 

Gory, gory, what a hullava way to die,

Gory, gory, what a hullava way to die,

Gory, gory, what a hullava way to die,

He ain’t gonna jump no more!

 

There was a paratrooper, he was from 2nd platoon,

He curb stomped riggers and smurfs for fun, his boots were bloody blue,

The riggers they had enough, they put a few holes in his chute,

And he ain’t gonna jump no more!

[chorus]

There was a para-hoorah, he was from 3rd platoon,

A dirty, nasty marine, basic trained at Camp Lejeune,

He popped a motorboner, put a hole in his ‘chute,

And he ain’t gonna jump no more!

[chorus]

There was a paratrooper, he was from 4th platoon,

Locked and loaded, high speed and ready to go,

Got up, shuffled, out the door in his airborne boots,

He’s gonna jump some more!

 

Glory, glory, what a hell of a way to fly,

Glory, glory, what a helluva way to fly,

Glory, glory, what a helluva way to fly,

He’s prob’ly gonna jump s’more!

 

The hapless troopers of first, second, and third platoons,

Barrelled through the air, in the hot month of June,

Not a safe space in the sky, their time was coming soon,

And they ain’t gonna jump no more!

[chorus]

There was blood upon their risers, there were brains upon their chutes,

Intestines were a-dangling, from their paratrooper suits,

They were a mess, they picked’em up and poured them from their boots,

They ain’t gonna jump no more!”

Clearly, I was part of fourth platoon, the best platoon.

~A801J

“What hurts the most; having so much to say, and seeing you walk away…”

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No matter how many break-ups you go through, the next one is always going to hurt.

No matter how many break-ups you go through, you’ll never be truly prepared for when a girl just disappears [like a ghost].

What hurts the most was being so close
And havin’ so much to say
And watchin’ you walk away
And never knowin’ what could’ve been
And not seein’ that lovin’ you
Is what I was trying to do

The feeling of not being done yet, yet powerless to do anything about what’s going on or to ascertain what might have been. Powerlessness combined with the fear of the unknown. I don’t care who you are, there’s few things that match this particular pain. Even if you think you’ve seen it all.

It’s hard to deal with the pain of losin’ you everywhere I go
But I’m doing it
It’s hard to force that smile when I see our old friends and I’m alone
Still harder gettin’ up, gettin’ dressed, livin’ with this regret
But I know if I could do it over
I would trade, give away all the words that I saved in my heart
That I left unspoken

Recognize any of that?

After dealing with 4 ghosts in the past two years, one of which confused me, two of which hurt, and the one the rended my heart, I’d like to add to some excellent advice that my good friend Ace has already provided on the subject and answer some potentially frequently asked questions on the subject.

  1. Get a support group of people you trust to whom you can vent about the girl and (over-analyze it if you must). Having a large group of people is important, because you’ll get tired of talking about before anyone in your support group does. Telling the story to more than three people makes the story get old, to the point where you’re actually fed up about it enough to stop thinking about it so hard.
    1. My support group at one point consisted of (* = most important/helpful):
      1. Dad (vent/advice/sounding board)*
      2. Brother (vent)
      3. Sister (vent)
      4. Sister’s Husband (vent/advice)
      5. Mother (vent)
      6. Best Friend (vent/sounding board)
      7. Family friend (vent/sounding board)
      8. Family friend’s Mom (vent/sounding board)
      9. Mentor (vent/advice/sounding board)*
  2. Write it out. Write as much or little (and as meaningful) as possible on the subject as you can allow yourself. This will get some of the pain out of your head and on paper. It’ll help you think less of things because you’ll not worry about forgetting details, especially the good parts. Might help you come to terms with things or see them in a sober light if you take a break and come back for a review.
    1. Here a couple of examples of this in action:
      1. Russian-Thought Criminal
      2. Smarty Pants
  3. Realize there’s a reason for everything and sometimes it’s not you. Sadly, since you don’t know what could have been it’s hard to accept that things are over when you aren’t ready for them. Realize that ultimately, you’re better off that these relationships are over. Yes – I know. As someone who’s employed to get shot at and live, I never thought it could hurt so much to dodge a bullet either.
  4. Give yourself time to recover. Of course it hurts. Attempting to deceive yourself into thinking it doesn’t or that you’re perfectly fine doesn’t work. Often times, bottling your emotions just means that they’ll come out at a time you didn’t expect when you can least afford it. Try to give yourself a reasonable deadline to mourn the relationship. Allow yourself to listen to sad songs. Allow yourself to stare off into space. Allow yourself to drone on about it to your support group. In my experience, the pain leaves sooner when I let it go through rather than attempt to block it or otherwise bottle it up.
  5. Date girls who live close by. It’s easier to see the signs in girls who live close by. They’re less likely to ghost on you as they’re more likely to run into you and you can better gauge how they feel about things and more importantly, you. This doesn’t mean you can unequivocally stop a ghosting, but rather see it before it happens and prepare for it, at least.
  6. If you have something to say, say it. If you think there’s something you need to do, do it. A medium plan executed now is better than a good plan executed later. Women are creatures of the moment. If you don’t say what you need to say or do what you need to do at the moment it’s time, you don’t usually get another chance. So don’t worry too much about saying or doing the wrong thing, as you’ll always regret and beat yourself up over inaction over action. Every time. Sometimes all you can say is that you still like her and that she knows where to find you when she realizes her mistake.
  7. Vocalize your dislike for ghosting to each girl you start to see. Say it’s because you don’t want to waste your time or hers. You may not (ok, probably won’t) get the whole, complete, honest answer why things are over, but you’ll probably at least get clear message that things are over. This will stop you at least from wondering where you stand what you could have done about your heretofore unsure standing. This won’t work 100% of the time, but it’s worked so far for me.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1) Does it ever get easier? Does it ever stop hurting?

No. It doesn’t really get easier and it doesn’t stop hurting. Eventually, you find it within you to carry on despite the pain. To my mind, the quality of girl and circumstances around the ghosting determine the recovery period from a measly couple of weeks to many miserable months.

2) How do I make it hurt less?

Make yourself busy to the point where you don’t have time to sit around and be sorry for yourself (that is not saying do not deal with it!). Eventually you don’t think about it because you don’t have time to and therefore won’t dwell on the pain, cutting old wounds afresh.

3) Is there anything I can do about her leaving?

You can do nothing. Anything else will make it worse and in time you’ll regret. Contacting her in hopes of the small dopamine hits you get from talking to her, seeing her, will take their toll on you when the withdrawal from what you really want from her (everything) hits you.

4. Will she ever come back?

No. Don’t even go there. Out of 6 ghostings, one girl messaged me back 9 months later after no contact, to tell me that she found out she Ovarian cancer shortly before she broke it off and blocked me on all social media. She didn’t come back to me, she just got in touch with me to let me know what happened out of guilt and because she thought I was over her. She was mostly right. Regardless, the more you accept your fate (it’s over) and that there’s nothing you can do about it, the more likely you are to get a second bite of the apple.

Hope this helped.

~Wald

He Mattered

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Bob last posted on 30 March this year, and after checking back in a couple times since then and noticing a lack of updates, I checked the comments section and found my suspicions confirmed.

It seems I’m late to the punch.

Robert Martin Wallace Jr., 60, of Granite City, IL, passed away unexpectedly at 1:07p.m. Thurs. Mar. 30, 2017 at Gateway Regional Medical Center in Granite City.

He was born Aug. 17, 1956 in Granite City to the late Robert Martin & Glenna (Weiss) Wallace Sr.

Bob worked at the Granite City warehouses and wrote his own blog, Uncle Bob’s Treehouse.

He is survived by a sister, Dawn A. Wilkinson of Granite City and her children, Julie, Daniel and Jacob Wilkinson and their spouses and children.
He will be missed, he was one of my favorite bloggers.
The family will hold a private service at a later date.

I’d been reading Bob for almost two years after discovering him late 2014/early 2015. I found his perspective a fresh one amongst a seemingly more and more uniform palate. While I did not agree with everything he wrote, I could never deny that Bob had a point, which made for really good reading. I’d say he was a very good countervailing opinion, in some respects, to keep one balanced in thought amongst our own echo chamber.

I only wish I could get in touch with this man’s family, his sister, her children and say, “You don’t know this, but Uncle Bob mattered.”

God Bless, Uncle Bob.

Save me a seat up there.

~Wald