It’s been a rough last few weeks since returning from my weekend in Southern California, mainly because of a flu or something like it that simply would not completely go away. It has finally fully resolved itself, although I’m still taking the daily Claritin®-D and the Mucinex® to be on the safe side.  Being ill has completely messed up my normal wake/sleep cycles, and usually the only way to reset it is to do an all-nighter and then force myself to bed at a “normal” hour at the end of the night.

I’m both looking forward and not looking forward to Thanksgiving this year—or even to the holidays in general, for that matter. I enjoy the holiday atmosphere, and will especially get to enjoy it in places like Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando, and Busch Gardens Tampa, but I will be spending the holidays—for the most part—alone. Just like I did last year. 

What I am looking forward to is Vee’s visit to here in Florida in a few (hopefully short) months. Not having to be alone, but being with someone I love dearly, is the closest thing to heaven for me.

Posted by email from Steven’s posterous

“Fallen Sanctuary” (Serenity) (Amazon.com)

If there was any doubt as to whether I am sometimes impulsive, this past weekend should have removed those doubts in a hurry.

First, the news. I am in a committed relationship again, and I couldn’t imagine anyone better to be in it with. We were actually classmates in junior high school, lost track of each other for the past decade or more, and through circumstances that could only have been divinely orchestrated, we reconnected from across the miles this past month.

To borrow from Yogi Berra, “It’s like déjà-vu all over again.” Except unlike last time, we actually know each other. We’ve been on the phone and/or on IM nearly every night since.

Friday night, at 11:30 that night, I was on Hotwire booking a flight from Orlando to San Diego that was scheduled to take off in seven hours. Something (or Someone) deep inside of me said I needed to be in California. Yes, I wanted to see “Vee” in person, but there was some other reason that, at the time, I couldn’t put my finger on.

After a stopover in Las Vegas—perhaps the only airport in the country with slot machines in the terminals—I landed in San Diego around 1:45 in the afternoon, and Vee took my breath away meeting me in baggage claim. We talked the entire drive from San Diego to Orange County, where she lives and I grew up. We drove around the old neighborhood and saw the house I grew up in, saw how much had changed in the eight years since I left southern California. The old Lucky supermarket is now split into a Petco and a Trader Joe’s. South Coast Plaza seems to have remodeled from the ground up. The highways now actually have numbered exits (about time!). Traffic didn’t seem any better or worse than when I left it, but it was the weekend.

We spent the afternoon at South Coast Plaza walking around and checking out shops, and taking a break on a bench to share pictures. I hadn’t experienced someone’s head on my should in such a long time that it surprised me when Vee snuggled up and rested on my shoulder to see the pictures with me.

Saturday night we drove up to another friend’s apartment in Fullerton for dinner and drinks (only one glass of wine and some water for me—I knew I was going to be driving). We had the chance to love on her three-month-old baby girl, and the chance to love on our friend. If Vee’s my lover, Chaunté is my sister. I dropped by her house growing up when times were rough on her, and Saturday night the three of us sat outside on the wall and talked and shared and encouraged and just listened.

Vee, Me, and Chaunté

Sitting out there talking like “old times,” three friends reconnecting after so many years. I so needed this. I was “home” for the first time in over ten years. This is what I had been missing. This is why I needed to book that flight at the last minute.

The rest of the weekend was Vee and me simply enjoying each other’s company, spending a Sunday afternoon watching NASCAR together (she may be in California, but she’s still got Alabama in her). The hardest drive was the drive from Orange County back toward San Diego for the flight back to Florida on Monday afternoon. I didn’t want to let go as I held her at the curb.

My weekend ended with a rather profound cognitive dissonance. My heart received so much healing from the weekend, but at the same time I left southern California for Florida with a very broken heart. Not so much because I had to leave the one I love behind, but because the trip as a whole made me realize how sheltered of a life I have been living these last several years and how much more complicated and painful “reality” has become. I can’t imagine how people can live through most of it without some kind of spiritual anchor to keep themselves centered.

I have decided that I must go back to California. The sooner, the better. As much as I love and enjoy living in Florida, its beauty, the lower cost of living, this has never been “home.” And after this past weekend, it can never be “home” again. Instead of coming back home, I’ve left my true home to come back to Florida.

Before all my recovery friends start trying to ring my cell phone, I am not suicidal. I’m actually doing quite well at this moment.

But that title sure grabbed your attention, didn’t it?

Why did that title grab your attention so readily?

Perhaps it’s because that’s a question everybody has asked themselves at some point.  Like when the layoff notice hits the desk. Or when your supposed “love of a lifetime” serves you with the divorce petition and you suddenly have no family. Or when the local Sheriff shows up at your door step with foreclosure and eviction papers. Or when that once-in-a-generation recession hits and you lose everything but the shirt on your back. I’ve been through the first three, although being forced to move out of the family home into my own apartment didn’t require the Sheriff or foreclosure.

Let’s face it—generally speaking, we’re in unprecedented low times in our generation. We’re in times that are lately being compared to the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s, a time that only ended because the United States went to war. This time, unlike last time, the “contagion” has spread around the globe. Much of it is paying the price for the excesses we took when the economy was in much better circumstances. It’s not entirely the fault of politicians, so when laying the blame it helps to take a good look into the mirror as well as through the binoculars. Times like these, when the bills are piling up and the money in the checkbook doesn’t seem to pile anywhere near the stack of bills, it’s easy to ask the question. 

Some—like the father of one of my nieces—answered in the negative and ended his (Godspeed, Joseph). Others—like the new sweetheart of mine that I hope to be able to introduce to you sometime in the future—chose to hang on and keep moving, even though doing so involves a tremendous amount of emotional, physical, and spiritual pain. (Note, it is the general “policy” in this blog that I respect the privacy of those dear in my life, so no names or photos of that special individual here without consent).

This brings me to this question:  What would be the difference if we choose to hang on for just a bit longer?

If there is one thing that we try to hammer into the minds of people in recovery, it’s not to quit.  Hang on, because the breakthrough can be just around that next corner.  If you were to stop now just before it comes, what will you miss!

It turns out that if Joseph (true story, from what I know) would have waited a mere half hour more, and had his cell phone on his person instead of left in his truck, he would have gotten that call from his former boss offering him his old job back. Things would have turned around, but he missed out by mere minutes.  And to even begin to think of the friends and family that will miss him because of one selfish decision.

The first step to gaining back the peace, stability, and serenity we desperately seek is to accept the fact that sometimes life just sucks. It’s the nature of the fallen world we live in.  And you and I are imperfect, flawed human beings in the midst of that fallen world.  Nobody is completely perfect on this planet; there is not a single person on the face of this earth who will not disappoint or hurt us at some time, either intentionally or unintentionally. This is reality; when we can accept that it is, we finally stop beating ourselves up when things screw up. We accept ourselves as we are, but at the same time keep hope and drive to continue to grow and learn from mistakes.  Even better, we finally understand that the “power to grow and change” is outside ourselves.  In the end, it comes from the people we put around us who encourage us and challenge us, and it is the product of our faith.

Growth is the product of cherishing every sacred moment of life.  And every moment of life is sacred.

Anyone who has ever struggled with an addiction knows the meaning of “withdrawal.” It’s the usually unpleasant way that the body struggles to adjust itself when the addictive substance is cut off from it. We’ve heard of “the shakes,” “the sweats,” you name it.

Love is addictive, too—perhaps even in the same way as a narcotic drug. It’s emotionally addictive. And the withdrawal symptoms can be just as severe, just as painful. Withdrawal symptoms can include depression, anger, grief, sometimes even physical illness.

The past several months since the divorce have been the throes of withdrawal from 9½ years of living with that drug called “Love.” There have been a lot of symptoms: the grief of loss, the depression, the anger, the regret that maybe I didn’t do enough or did too much, the times of thinking “If I had only…”. There’s been the emotional—and perhaps physical—withdrawal from things like sex, intimacy, closeness. There is the desire to hole up in my own cave and never trust anyone with my emotions and self again.  I guess that is pretty much what I have done since then. “I Walk Alone”—the song makes perfect sense to me after the past several months.

From having tasted of the past 9½ years I’ve learned other things along the way.

I have many “online” and “virtual” friends thanks to social media and virtual world hangouts like Flickr®, Facebook, MySpace®, Second Life®, etc. The problem is that none of those relationships—as “real” as they may seem—can ever replace physical, face-to-face intimacy.  They can’t curl up and snuggle with you at night and keep you warm in bed. They are not hearts that you can rest your head on and relax to the sound of their beating at the end of a busy and stressful day, or when things aren’t right and you need a real shoulder to cry on and a real ear to listen to you.  They just can’t fill that void that was opened up in the loss of a real, physical, long-term, intimate relationship.

And perhaps this is my biggest regret.

But, like drug withdrawal, the symptoms do pass with time.  How long depends on how grateful I am for what I do have and for the opportunities that lie ahead, and how willing I am not to fall into the trap of withdrawing completely from other people.

I guess for me it may take longer than I thought.

Music has always been my escape. It’s like a medication. My emotions, moods, desires, motivations can change entirely upon a song playing in my iTunes, on the radio, or on a podcast or media stream.

I got to end my summer a few weeks ago on a rockin’ note by riding out to St. Petersburg to see two of my favorite bands from Finland—Nightwish and Sonata Arctica—play live in the Jannus Landing courtyard with about 1,200 screaming fans.

This apparently ended up being the last show of Nightwish’s U.S. tour, as new lead singer Anette Olzon became seriously ill and the remaining concerts on the tour ended up cancelled.

In the meantime, I downloaded from iTunes the solo début album from Nightwish’s original frontwoman, Tarja Turunen, entitled “My Winter Storm.” It’s definitely not Tuomas Holopainen-penned material (but then I’m sure a lot of Nightwish fans are replying that Anette is not Tarja), but there are some good points on this project, and it’s an overall good, although all-over-the-place, album if you can judge it on its own without trying to compare it to her time with Nightwish. It’s a departure from Nightwish. “Die Alive” is the highlight for me—a driving track with a toy-piano-style hook.

The version that’s available on iTunes is the “deluxe” version with some bonus tracks (23 tracks total) but without the DVD and video material that accompanies the physical package. Tarja has some work ahead of her, but she’s already got the fan base from Nightwish, and this album is a good start.

It all happened so quickly this morning that it seemed practically anticlimactic—perhaps because after more than two years of sleeping in bed alone, it was. I’m fairly sure I spent more time making my way through the security checkpoint with my mobile office in tow than I did in the hearing room. In any event, at 9:35 this morning I was leaving the Polk County Courthouse carrying a copy of a final judgment for dissolution of marriage and a receipt for $10.70, the amount paid to have my quitclaim deed on the house recorded with the County.

And with that, it was over. Divorced. A statistic. Just another one of those 70.4 percent of marriages in Polk County, Florida, that end that way (according to the mediator who taught the co-parenting class I was required to attend last month). I came into the marriage with practically nothing, and leave it the same way. I now try to start to rebuild in a part of the country where I have always felt like a fish out of water, with no way to get back into the water (I checked the price on my first apartment in Southern California; it’s now more than double the rent that it was when I lived in it ten years ago: $560 then, $1,106 now for a 450-square-foot studio).

It’s not that I can truly complain about the new living arrangements God has been gracious in getting me into. This is a small apartment, but I really don’t need a whole lot of room. It has the essential things I need, like a dishwasher, clothes washer and dryer, refrigerator, things that I otherwise would have had to go into extreme debt to acquire on my own, for a remarkably low monthly rent. The utilities are just slightly more than half of what I was paying just a couple of months ago in a house. There are no lawns to nearly kill myself in the summer heat and humidity trying to mow, no more ant piles to forget to treat, no bushes to keep trimmed away from the windows so I could see outside (instead of bushes I have a picture postcard view of trees and scrub out of a screened-in balcony). I have had to charge replacements for items I had to leave behind, like a television, a DVD recorder, two tables for workspace, two bookshelves and plastic bins for storage, and a mattress to sleep on. Stores, medical facilities, historic downtown Plant City are all within walking distance. In those terms, I am content.

There are things that I will miss (besides sex). Having the warmth of a woman in the same bed with an arm draped over me or spooned against me at night. Laughing at the four-year-old superhero who’s trying to shoo the dog away from licking his face telling her “Don’t kiss me; I’m the good guy.” Hiding under the covers in the master bedroom with my boy and whistling for the dog while snickering and giggling and waiting for her to jump on the bed and go after our feet.

Nine and half years ago I was absolutely convinced after prayer and fasting that God had put this woman and me together as husband and wife, for life. Was I wrong then? Did it take nine and a half years just to figure that out? Or was I just too naïve/foolish/stupid (pick your term) to pay attention to anything else and blindly rushed into something that was never God’s design to begin with and was doomed to failure from the start? All indications seem to point to that.

Of course, nine and a half years ago I didn’t know that I could be a high-functioning autistic, unable to make personal emotional connections or sustain truly meaningful human relationships, living in the effects of arrested emotional development by the bullying and abandonment I felt as a schoolchild. Then, I was a pornography addict who was still in denial and thinking that marriage would take away all those temptations and thoughts (by the way, Men’s Health magazine is a fantasy, guys; get real) and I could keep my addictions and my marriage in separate mental compartments until the pornography crept its way into emotional lenses through which I saw the world.

In the end, as I wrap up this chapter of life and prepare to move on, I have to simply come out of the denial and admit that beyond “strictly professional,” I suck at interpersonal human relationships, especially ones that have any semblance of romance. That this one lasted as long as it did was a divine miracle that I had nothing to do with, and for that, at the least, I am grateful. I have met very quality and sometimes humorous people and been personally challenged in ways that I would otherwise would not have been because of the relationship, and for that, I am grateful. Most importantly, I have learned a great deal more about myself than I would have without that relationship, and for that I am ultimately grateful and take many lessons learned into the next chapter of my life.

I guess it begs the one question that seems to be on everyone’s mind as this process ends: Would I marry again?

“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5:31–32)

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.” (Matthew 19:3–11)

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

“What did Moses command you?” he replied.

They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”

“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” (Mark 10:2–12)

“Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Luke 16:18)

I know that the overwhelming majority of Christian culture nowadays seems to reject these scriptures, and it’s not my position to evaluate another person’s spirituality upon whether they are in their first or fourth marriage. After all, that’s what God’s grace is for, and I believe that God holds each of us accountable according to our individual knowledge and ability. But speaking solely for myself and for my own spiritual journey and the direction that I feel God wants to take me in, I don’t feel like I can pick and choose which parts of scripture I should apply to my life—even if I don’t always agree with it—and that my spirituality involves living in accordance with the Word of God rather than trying to make the Word of God somehow fit into the way I think I should be able to live my life. It’s not to say that I am or every will be “perfect,” but that I should at least be trying to “walk the talk,” and be transparent and reliant on God’s grace when I don’t or can’t.