Not really looking for anything here but to vent my sadness to people I feel a connection too, so please don't read too much into this it is just my need to get this out.

So I will start this off by saying I am a terrible guy as far as relationships are concerned. I was married once and by the past tense you can probably tell it did not work out. I was brought up in a broken home where I really didn't know my dad more than the occasional time from about 8 to 12. My parents were split and though my dad was only a few hours away he was a selfish man so though I saw him I never really knew him at that time in my life. The messages I got from him then were not the greatest, money is everything and marriage is a crock. "Sleep with every woman you can and never get married" that was his advice. He came around and became a great father once he quite drinking, he did that after he commited arson while drunk and realized how fucked up his life had become. That is when I found out who he was, just in time to lose him to prison. But as far as my relationship psyche was concerned it wasn't the message I should have gotten. Add in a mother with fibromyalgia and working nights as a nurse that ment I was raising my self. All through high school I was sleeping around and never really was able to keep a realationship working for more than 3 or 4 months. Towards the end I finally started to get my shit together and was really connecting with a girl named Jess who I had known for about 2 years. Then the Army came in and I was gone. Jess and I stayed in touch and stayed close. Hell she was the real reason I came home. Everyone who knew us including her parents thought that though we were not actually together we would most definatly be married. Too bad that after three years in the Army I made a poor choice and got married way too soon to my now ex-wife. Less than a year later we were looking to get divorced and I was off to Iraq. Jess and I still talked but she was with someone else. I had hurt her terribly and I will never forgive myself for that. While in Iraq I get into my second longest non-marriage relationship, a whopping 9 months. Now besides these I have had at least 35 other realtionships since leaving for the Army. Not very good to say the least. Well after Iraq I came home and had two more relationships only to be sent back to Iraq for 4 months. Ya home less than 5 weeks and two different woman. Still I am unaware at the time of how bad this really is. Once I am back for good the numbers keep going up and I'm slipping further and further into deppresion and PTSD. Then I meet Michelle at my first Winter Coronet here in Oertha. We court and start a relationship things are really great but I keep doing things to cause problems and I just can't stop no matter how hard I try. Then we go home to surprise my mother for her 50th Birthday. That is when I introduce Michelle to everyone from my pre-Army life. Everyone loves her just as much as I do and everyone tells me to marry her and for some reason it makes me start doing more and more to cause problems. And I find my self thinking about how the grass would be greener on the otherside. All the woman I haven't been with and the ones I had before. Things start to slide a little more. I move back to Anchorage with her and change my whole life to be there with her. I keep loseing focus of what I have and keep doing things to cause problems. I just can't stop though I want too. Then my Father dies. When we had been in Michigan to surprise my mom I took Michelle to meet him and asked him point blank if he had been drinking again. He said yes and I flipped and told him to never talk to me agian till he wasn't drinking. We had talked three times since then once in anger and two joyously after he had stopped drinking. His death was suicide and though I had prepared myself for it for sometime it was still a shock. It turned my life on its ear and I am still finding things I am doing because of it. A month after our return from the funeral I broke it off with Michelle. I had driven us apart out of what I now know was fear of her leaving me and hurting me like my dad did. We worked some of it out and were making a long distance (Fairbanks to Anchorage) go of it again. I thought I had gotten myself back together but really I was a wreck. PTSD worse than ever and depression nearly killing me. I was lying to people when they asked if I was alright. Michelle came to visit over christmas and it was terrible. I was phisically ill I was so unhappy while she was there and I didn't know why. Add to it her going into emergency surgery while there for what they thought was a ruptured appendix but turned out to be something else. After she went home I made the ultimate mistake and really screwed up on New Years eve. It was the end of us. I woke up then, not from sleep but to my problems. I went for help and got it from the VA in counsiling and Medication to help. I wasn't facing what I had become based on those early experiances with my dad's relationship advice. By the time I realised that I had lost the second woman in my life who I could have trully spent the rest of my days with it was too late. During that time she had begged me to try again and I had said no for selfish reasons and tried to keep sleeping about thinking it would be better. Well once I realised why this was all happening and was able to start doing something about it she was already with Jarrod. He was her former long term lover and he and I had dated the same girl a few years prior. I knew that as much as I still loved her it was wrong to interfer. She kept trying to see if I would make a large move and take her back and I sat back thinking that surly he would not make her happy or would screw up. I just couldn't bring myself to interfere with her happiness for my own sake when I wasn't sure I could keep her happy or my fears from killing it again. Well since then (recently) I have been faking a life. Dating a bit and keeping a smile tacked lighty about me. On friday I asked her to have lunch with me on Sunday (today) this means a 3 hour each way drive to meet in the middle and she agreed. Well that night Jerrod preposed to her and she said yes. I found out yesterday after work and an SCA demo at the fair. I thought I had been shot. I was told by my house sister, also Michelles house sister because Michelle was not sure how to tell me and didn't want a blow up over the phone or in person. She had to ask if it meant we couldn't have lunch then last night called herself. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done to tell her congratulations. It nearly killed me inside. Now I am writting this to try and let some of this go. Instead I still listening to the rain falling hard on the roof matching my tears falling from my chin. I go ;later this morning to have lunch with her for my Birthday and I am scared to death that I will not be able to contain my feelings. I just want her to be happy but it is hard to know that I will be watching the second woman of my life that I should have been right too drive away to him and from me for the last time. I love her and have lost her for my own damn fears.

Well its been far to long for an update and if nothing else today has reminded me to always try and stay in touch with friends and loved ones. I was at work today when I was called by my brother to be told that my Father had commited Suicide late Sunday night or Monday morning by slitting his wrists. He was found because he did not show up for a Monday morning restitution hearing about paying back the bitch who had stolen almost a half a million from him and managed to get awarded a huge settlement when my farther got drunk and did something stupid. I am now on my way home from Alaska to Michigan on an hours notice. The viewing is on Saturday and then I will be scattering his ashes on Sunday. Not the greatest times of my life to say the least but I thought getting it out might help. I hope you all are doing better than I am but I will talk to or see you all soon.

Well its been way too long since I updated to say the least. Well I have now officialy (as of 2am yesterday) moved to Anchorage. So I have been spending two days running around in a monkey suit trying to find a job. Lots of leads and a few interviews but no yes's yet. The sad part is that it looks as if I may be selling cars for a living soon, since they seem to like my resume and interview alot. Well only time will tell. On other notes the VA just told me that the Army found the my T12 vertabra is compression fractured and has been since I have been in Baghdad and never told me about it. WHAT THE FUCK! you woul think that this would be something worth telling me about wouldn't you? Ya so that sucks and now the are going to be sending me into get my knee cut apart and cleaned out soon too. But that all depends on when the VA gets thier shit together and gets me an appointment. Oh well all of that is bitching. At least I get to go out and do fighter practice tonight. Ya hitting people with sticks!

I fucking hate PTSD!

I am a grown man and should not be stuck in my own head so bad as to wake up remembering entire nightmares so badly that I have to draw my pistol and clear the whole house and then take the gun and the dog just to go to the outhouse to pee. I shouldn't even be having nightmares to begin with, I'm too old for that shit.

I just don't get it. The nightmare had nothing to do what anything that happend but it had that same overwhelming power over me and I woke up sweeting just the same and parinoid. The girfriend didn't even notice and I couldn't seem to wake her. I thought it would comfort me to have here her to sleep next too but this is the first untriggerd nightmare in months. I just wish all of this crap would do away. I had really been thinking that this shit was done but yet here I am wide awake wasting more of the measly seven hours I could have slept tonight cause I am too damn paranoid to go back to sleep. When will all of this crap just be done.

Well life as usual continues to be strange and inspiring. This has been an odd week to say the least.

My recovery from hospitalization is still on going and I am getting much of my strength and energy back but still just don't feel quite right. That and a week of emotional rollercoasters certainly has made it an eventful week.

Friday after work was me running about to get errands done before a 7 o'clock dinner with Motherchaos and her family that didn't get served till after nine. No big deal but ended up pushing back a few other things. After dinner I went and picked up a friend (one half of a very cool married couple) to watch movies and hang out. Now she is very fun and I used to play with her and others in some impromptu orgies that I used to often be part of and one of the main instigators of. Well she and my GF and I all have wonderful group sex from time to time and she is on the "safe list" from the GF to play with if I feel like it. Well to be honest I have never used the "Safe list" except with my girlfriend until Friday. I think it was a guilt reflex since though I am polyamorous she is not so I simply have not done so. Well while watching the SG's first tour DVD we ended up a little to turned on and with her prompting of the fact that she was on the safe list it was on. I am still not sure how I feel about it but the girlfriend says its fine. I have to say its hard being poly in a relationship with someone who is not.

but all that aside on to Saturday and beyond...

This being the first weekend in about 12 I haven't had the whole weekend planned out at a dead run from thing to thing and at least 600 miles of driving. It was somewhat refreshing and yet scary. In order to fill it I did an SCA demo on Saturday with some really good fighting and some very interested people. Most of all though, the kids really loved the demo which is very good for the SCA here. Then came the real fun shocker. I took a few friends out to see 28 weeks later. No big deal right,...

Wrong!

It was a great movie but had a lot of very realistic military moments in it. Enough so in fact to send me back into the joys of paranoia, depression and guilt associated with my PTSD. I really thought that I was clear of all of those triggered feelings but I guess I am not so lucky. Thank fully I had one of my friends who wanted to hang out and talk for awhile before she went home and then I talked with the Girl friend on the phone till I fell asleep. Made me focus on other stuff long enough to have it all gone when i woke up, and only a few nightmares to boot.

Today was cool though. I woke up fresh after sleeping in to make up for the moments of starting awake and began a day of preparation. The girlfriend moves in tonight/tomorrow morning as she is currently driving up from Anchorage. This will be a three month living together trial for the summer before she goes back to school in the fall. That and a day of SCA fun with a mostly good fighter practice. I have begun to take on a rather Zen perspective to my SCA combat (minus the whole looking for ascension to Buddha thing) and so it is a very serious part of my life. Well I have been having problems with one individual and one of my main concerns is that he has hurt people physically beyond the normal scope of what we endure fighting, me included. And I was prodded into conversation by a Knight I highly respect last week about the individual and why he is a problem. I of course stated that his knack at being so aggressive that he hurts people was my main concern. Well today I tried fighting some new weapon combinations that caused me to have to be aggressive and I managed to hurt two people. Not badly, very minor in fact, but enough for me to feel very downtrodden and sullen. I felt and feel as if I have sunk to the level I just complained about last week. I was told not to worry by both people and they both fought on after a moment to deal with the temporary pain but it still made me feel horrible. At least in the end we all had fun but I still feel like a fool. At least I got to have a few friends over (the couple of whom the wife was the one on Friday) to watch movies. "Blankman" just so she could understand an inside joke he always makes and then "Thank you for Smoking". The later of the two turned out to be a WONDERFUL movie that was very funny and quite intriguing the former of course was very dumb yet funny in its own right.

All in all a good weekend though somewhat tumultuous emotionally.

So, life as it usually does has gotten interesting. I managed to wear myself down to the nub so bad last week that I put myself in the hospital last tuesday with Viral Gastro interitous. In otherwords bad puky, shitty, spewing from both ends stomach infection. While there I managed to get told that I might be one of the lucky contestants who seems to be getting what the Docs are looking to term Gulf War 2 syndrom. Not happy but after a brief over night stay I was released to spend the next threedays on my couch sleeping for all but five hours a day. But all bad stuff aside I did get to travel to Anchorage with MotherChaos for an SCA event. OF course the SCA has been great but tiring as of late however this was a great event. I went to fight and realized that I didn't have the energy and couldn't even hold my sword up once the fighting started. I ended up bowing out after one fight due to still being sick. All in all not my best showing. The weekend was still good and on Sunday I got to work with our current Prince who is an amazing swordsman and he and I worked one on one and it really helped me to refocus and pull my shit together and remember why I do this. All the technique aside it was the mental aspect that I took the most from it. I have started to travel an almost zen path with my fighting thougt process now and I think it will really make a difference in where I am headed.

All that and I realized that I don't like my job even though all the reasons to like it are there. Who knows why but I have to say I just don't like it. Well I will be back with more later but hey at least I am wrtiting right?

OK so I have been totally horrible about updating... I know no exscuse and all but hell it had taken a debilitating hospitalizing sickness to get me to sit down and write. So this whole sickness thing first. I have been sick at least once a week for almost three months now. From little stuff like a cough and the head cold I have had for two and a hlf months continuesly to the spending whole weekends doing nothing but pucking and shitting for hours. not exactly fun but life none the less as of late. Well this all culminated in me having to leave work and drive myself to the ER yesterday with intense abdominal pain. Well it turns out it was a fast hard hitting form of gastro-interitois and not as world ending as it could have been. Well now the Doc and i were talking and it turns out that a lot of the returning veterans have been getting hit like this though most happened 8-12 weeks after return not for two months three to four months after return. In his words its too soon to know if there will be a gulf war II syndrom like with the first gulf war. Well all in all it got me nothing but a lot of meds and an overnight stay courtisey of the US Army.

And now onto the happier updates, or at least mostly happier...

Well I went ahead and got my self a new to me motorcycle last week and am so happy I did. I made an excuse to my self that I was doing it to save on gas and to have a begginers bike on hand for Michelle to learn on but really it was because I missed riding all the time. Ya the others are true as well but I just needed the R&R.

Speaking of R&R I think I may be killing myself with work and responsibilitie. I keep trying to find things that make me happy and they are becoming fewer and farther between. I am fast to anger again like I used to be and the sickness is certainly not helping. I keep trying to be happy and I just seem to have less and less control over my moods than before. The SCA is a great help but as of late it has been stressing me out more and more as time goes by. I just seem to have a lot to do and I never seem to get it all done. Add to it the fact that certain people seem to think that I should be doing things for them instead of helping them and it all adds up to more un-needed stress. I think I just need to find a way to blow of steam more throughly as of late.

So the new job is still going, where I am not sure but its going. The pay is ok but I am starting to realize that I really don't care for the job. I should as its all stuff I love to do but I am just tired when I am there and I never seem to be getting any better. Ya the bosses are happy and all but I am not so sure I am. I think I am going to go back to activly job hunting to see if I can find something I like better. I just think that for as exausted as it makes me and as demanding as the job is I should be making more than $14 and hour.

I am almost done with Phisical therapy as well. Though I am not back at my overly flexable level I am back at what most people live their lives with so the doctors think that is enough. I am still over a month away from being allowed to do even one push-up or basic shest and shoulder weight lifting. To me this may be the most frustrating thing about this whole shoulder ordeal. The pain was one thing but this lack of ability to lead my life like a normal person is killing me.

Well now that I have rambled on forever and tried to make up for a month of none communication I hope you all are well. I will post som pictures and stuff soon so you all can see the change to civilian instead of Army me. Best of wishes and I hope you all are well.

OK so I may just be the luckiest SOB ever! This week has been fucking amazing. I went north back to Fairbanks on Monday thinking I was totally screwed, no job, a speeding ticket on the way home and no idea what I was going to do for money. So on Tuesday I went to a job fair that I found out about at the last minute and was really disappointed by the fact that all of these companies were there and not a fucking one had both an HR person there and was willing to take resumes. SO it was a phenominal waste of time for me and really pissed me off. Afterwards I went to see a guy my friend Curt sent me to see and found that I really liked him and his company and did all the hireing type stuff and was fairly certain I got the job. Well I decided to head back to Anchorage the next day with friends so that I wouldn't have to pay for gas again. This went well and I got a call from the guy on the way down to say that I was starting on monday. Yay! So then I got down and had a wonderful time though I had a few "off" moments where I was a royal ass to my girlfirend and the people around me. I think it was still just me manifesting stress but I still had a great time. To add to it I got my first internet sale kilt out in the mail to the customer. Add to this that I hadn't even made it to the huge and fun weekend I had planned and you can start to see the good coming together. Well today (yesterday actually) brought an SCA event that was a blast followed bytthe Fetish ball at Mad Merna's. This is where you will all be so jelous. Not only did I get to meet Royal and Mollydolly but got to dance the night away with friends. To add to it I got to dance with Royal and though I was not sure what would be considered ok I didn't even really get into it for fear of offending her it was still great and I hope to get to do it again when I am a little more loose. The finishing touch though was gettting to come home with my girlfriend and one of our super cute friends for a super hot threesome. It was both of the girls first threesomes and was a hell of a lot of fun. The last threesome I had with just me and two girls that wasn't part of an orgy was before I was married. I had forgotten how nice it was to have two woman and no one else waiting to jump in, just time to make it good for everyone. Well like I siad you might all call me an SOB but damn when the good luck hits it sure is good!

OK its not much but its something...Its been over a month since I have posted. This is the time I probably should have been posting the most. My life has been both good and bad, up and down. I have been going into great periods of joy only to be followed by imense pain and depresion. This whole surgery thing has really thrown me for a hell of a loop. Being as active as I am I feel like a I have lost some of my identity due to the loss of function. Add in the fact that my pay checks from the Army stop this month and I still don't have a job and you get a terrifiying mix. I just am not sure I know how to deal with it all. Don't get me wrong I am happier now than I have been in years but I am scared to death of where I will end up and what will happen to my life from here. I am still seeing the new girl friend but my head and my heart are in constinat argument over where that should be and where it will be. Thanks only to the SCA do I feel like I have a purpose anymore. At least with my little slice of fantasy I can feel good no matter what. Well I feel like I am ranting but that I guess is the nature of a blog after all. Well I guess this is my way of saying that I am still alive though sometimes I wonder how or why. Well all that aside I hope those of you who do read this are well and that I will be back to myself soon now that my arm is mobile, though a long way from healed.

Ok so I may have forgotten to mention that I have had an injured shoulder for almost four years now and the Army in all there infinate wisdome is just now fixing it. Lots has happened with it in the last two years but this whole one handed typing thing is kicking my ass so will write more when I have more use of my left arm/hand.