Is Loneliness My Fate?

Once again I find myself contemplating my existence in this life. I will soon be fifty three years old, yet my mind believes I am no older than twenty one. I wonder where the years have gone and what, exactly, I have accomplished in all those years that are hidden from my timeline. Did I move through some black-hole or time-warp through decades of life without stopping long enough for those years to implant their images into my memories?

I remember John F. Kennedy, Jr. saluting his father’s casket in 1963, the Watergate hearing in 1972 or 1973, watching Star Wars and Star Trek The Motion Picture in the early 80’s and George HW Bush waging his three day war on Iraq in 1990. I remember the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the whole nation coming together for the first time since Kennedy’s assassination. I also remember the first multi-racial man and first woman to run for President of the United States with the black man winning. These things are all memorable to anyone in this country that is over the age of fifty.

Personally, I remember getting married at twenty and divorced at twenty two with a baby on the way. No, it wasn’t because of baby. I was living in Arizona and she was in Iowa. I didn’t even know about baby until after she was born. I remember getting married again and adopting a great five year old boy and then getting divorced three years later. The third marriage was just as successful. We were together about ten years and out of that came my two youngest. So much for relationships and me; I couldn’t keep someone in my life forever any more than I can travel to the stars and back in a single day.

As Pat Nixon said about her husband, Richard M. Nixon, after he had passed from this life to the next, “He was a man bent on self-destruction.” I believe that I, too, am bent on the same. It seems that no matter what I do, where I go, who I know or how hard I try my lot in life is to fail. The one time that I thought that I was doing well, my bookkeeper asked me, after finishing up my yearly books, if I knew how much I had made. I replied that I had no idea. Fifty Thousand Dollars was the total. You know what I had to show for it? Nothing, nada, nil. Where did all that money go? My dear, sweet wife had spent it all.

A few years ago my misfortune once again reared its’ ugly head and my home caught fire and I lost everything that I had worked for, everything that meant anything to me. I realize that people lose their homes to fire all the time across this blue planet and I am not alone in losing everything for one reason or another. What makes this so bad is that there was no one willing to help my family out, other than my neighbor that took us in until we could find somewhere else to live. Finally the insurance company decided that the house was a total loss and asked me what I wanted to do. I could have the house rebuilt for about two hundred ninety thousand dollars and I would have a1900 remodeled house or I could take their estimate of one hundred twenty thousand and buy something else. I took the latter. I, also, was reimbursed for personal belongings in the sum of fifty thousand dollars, which, at replacement value of things I could replace, was around eighty thousand (and that was not everything as I wasn’t allowed in the house to inventory while the investigation was going on but thieves were and a lot of things were stolen).

So, here I am with one hundred seventy thousand dollars to do with as I pleased. I paid off the mortgage on my home and bought another one valued at one hundred twenty thousand for half price (it was a repo) and replaced a lot of what I had lost. All total I spent about one hundred thirty thousand on both houses and replacing furniture, clothes and personal belongings. The rest was wasted on people that took advantage of my good nature. I ended up selling the house, at a loss, because I couldn’t afford the taxes. Once again, the cruel hand of fate laid waste to a wonderful life.

It is not the financial losses that are my bane, though. It is the feelings of being alone in a world out against me. My children, may the gods of Valhalla bless them, are here with me and I do have a few friends that I would go through the deepest, darkest pits of Tartarus for. So, why do I feel so alone? Am I destined to live a life of loneliness simply because I am who I am, a man bent on self-destruction? Only the gods know for sure.