Joe H.
10:54 p.m.
Wednesday
October 20, 1999

OK. I was wrong. Yes, I admit it. I was wrong in that rant a week or so ago when I was burying the prospect of love under a ton of smirks and bad puns. I'm not sure who I was trying to convince of my hardened heart -- me or you, my trusty internet companion, who may or may not be known to me. It was probably myself. If you have a hard heart, nothing can get through. You will never feel hurt or pain or desperation. At least not until you reach a breaking point and either have a Moment of Clarity or go on a shooting rampage at the local Anne's Hallmark.

What is a Moment of Clarity? I'm glad you asked. I thought I had mentioned it before in one of my rants from early this year, but I'm not so sure I did now. It's a moment when you realize something profound. It doesn't have to be earth shattering, but is usually life shattering. Or it should be anyway. My Moment of Clarity actually has a few moments before it that need mentioning. But first.....

1999 was going to be a great year for me. That's what I thought anyway. What was it I said? "1999 is going to be a good year for me. Something has changed within me in the last few weeks, something I can't really put a finger on. But I know it's there." That was what I said. Boy, I was pretty optimistic back then. Almost without reason, but I felt something simply HAD to give in my life. But let me go back to the rant that line came from and give you the next few sentences: "1999 is going to be a good year for me. Something has changed within me in the last few weeks, something I can't really put a finger on. But I know it's there. Or should I say she? My life is now. Yours can be too. Can you feel it?"

That was nothing short of a load of pure bull.

Too often we put our hopes for our lives on someone else. And I think I was doing that then. I knew there were things I needed to change in my life, of myself, but I didn't think I could do it unless there was someone there for me to change for. In this case, I guess I was hoping to change, hoping to become good enough for someone. And that's just plain wrong. If you want to change your life, you should change it only for that reason. Never change for anyone else.

But I'm actually getting off the point of this rant somehow. And I'm not really sure how to put this. Those first rants are embarrassing. I was new to this. I thought I could and should put everything on these pages from my life. I mean, isn't that what they do on afternoon television? So I went on here and told too much of what was going on in my life. And I've tried to quit that.

But I've had a Moment of Clarity! I saw my life as it had become, not how I had hoped it would be, not as I hope it will be. But as it is. And let me be honest, I'm a selfish, egotistical bastard. I live for me. My feelings get hurt and I turn them off. Fuck you, fuck me, fuck everybody. At least, that's how I tried to be.

Until last Friday when I just happened to ride by the graveyard where my mother, sister and paternal grandparents are buried. I had not been to my sister's gravesite yet. Until that day. I think I may had been trying to convince myself that if I stay away from the family, I could convince myself that she was still alive.

She's gone.

In an rant titled "Forgiveness," I may have led you to believe I was wronged, that nothing was my fault. Poor little Flood; all the shit in the world gets dumped on him. I needed to tell myself that, needed to believe it. But now I see through the lies. I was wrong.

But again, I'm not getting to the original point of this rant. I think I can connect all the dots however. The feeling I had over my family situation naturally affected my feelings of my romantic life. Not that I have one right now, mind you. It's currently in moth balls in the back of my closet. Not that kind of closet though. Stay with me here. But at one time, I thought I was all I needed. I didn't need anyone else. I wanted someone. But that was just because I wanted someone to have fun with, someone I could connect with, while at the same time not getting too attached to this "someone."

So the other night, I had a dream. I only remember bits and pieces of it. It goes a little like this: In this dream, I was perfectly happy. I think I realized it wasn't a blissful "happily ever after" dream. But this one moment of the dream found me happy. And not alone. I'm not sure who the girl was. I doubt she was anyone I know, just some faceless version of no one I've ever met. The only thing I recall of her appearance is that she had long, brown hair. We were dancing to a slow song in an empty room. Which is strange in that I can't dance a lick. But then, this was a dream.

Anyway, when I awoke and remembered the dream, I didn't think much of it. After all, it was just a dream, right? Until later. When I was sitting in a darkened movie theater.

The movie was the new Kevin Costner baseball story, "For the Love of the Game." I had went mainly for the baseball aspect of it. After all, I love the game and "Field Of Dreams" is still one of my favorite movies. OK. Keep in mind that this part is being written some weeks after the movie. Maybe it isn't so odd now that I realize where I left off writing it -- right in the most important section of the rant. Go figure.

So the movie was, of course, about more than baseball. It was just as much a love story as anything. But also, it was about a man, a person, coming to grips with his past and his future. As many of you realize, the past is not always indicative of how the future will turn out whether we are talking about our collective pasts (or history) or each our individual past. And then there was a few other things thrown in, flashbacks to the Costner character playing catch with his father as a young boy, then of his parents watching him win a game at the 1984 World Series. (Just as a note; Costner played a lifelong Detroit Tiger pitcher. In 1984, the Tigers won the World Series.)

So I'm watching this movie bound and determined not to let it get to me. Didn't I say it was just a movie? But the movie was pushing the right buttons within me. Or the wrong ones. Depends on my point of view at any given time as to which it is. My life as I write this is still a little complex, to put it mildly. I was sitting in that movie with my ex-wife, a woman who has in the past hurt me more than anyone else has. And I know I have hurt her greatly too. But we've tried to move past that.

And as I am watching this movie, all I can think of is how happy I was in that freaking dream, dancing with some unseen, unknown woman. And I knew my ex was thinking of me. She has not made it a secret that she cares for me deeply. And I'm sitting there thinking of... someone else, someone other than my ex who I want to be with, although by now I have come to the conclusion (many times even) that we were never meant to be anything more than just friends.

But there were other thoughts dancing in my mind as I sat in that darkened theater. These thoughts are a little harder to pin down. Not that I did such a good job in the last few paragraphs. It just goes to show the confusion I have been feeling these last few months. Nothing makes any sense now. Which is odd. Odd in that my past makes a certain amount of perfect sense to me now. But at the time, it didn't. Which either means I can hope that the present will make some sense to me at some point in the future. Or that my past wasn't as bad as I thought.

So this rant doesn't seem to have a piece of connective tissue in it's text, does it? Which means that it's just like most of the other rants on my page. I guess I'm still trying to get it right as I go along. o exactly what was my Moment of Clarity? It's not that clear to me right now. I think it had something to do with me not closing myself off emotionally or something. Or maybe it was about liking someone more than they like me. Oh, no. That's another rant in itself. Right, buddy?

There's more I need to say, more that I want to say. But.....

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