Got a Dyslexic Heart : Life, Love and Lament

Yup. I did it. I found myself in a relationship with a felon . And I'm not sure how I feel about it now. I'm not talking about someone who committed murder or was a drug dealer or something, but the crime nevertheless was heinous , and I still have difficulty processing just how complicated my life could've gotten had I not ended that association. When I started dating after my divorce, I never fathomed that with all the other things I could've had to deal with, that one of the things I'd be facing is "what happens if I find out my girlfriend is a criminal ???" To be honest, when I first started talking to her, I didn't remember the incident from the local news, and it wasn't something we tackled in those early conversations. Years had passed since her story (and her mugshot) graced the papers, news and internet, and even though the incident was not entirely forgotten (how COULD it be?), I didn't put two-and-two together about a lot of ...

I felt compelled to share this article (link to original article below), because it's becoming a huge deal. Another parent and I were talking about this increasingly-tedious trend-that-won't-fucking-die, and she brought up a good point: those of us with a sense of social responsibility are raising our kids to be image-positive and to base our opinions of people on their character and their merits, NOT on superficiality (looks, body-type, social status, etc), and it's hard to enforce (or justify) it when there are people on social media who literally don't have any photos that haven't been enhanced, filtered, Photoshopped or edited in some way or another. It's "cute" to have some novelty pics on one's profile, that's fine and perfectly acceptable. But it'd be great not to have to pull out the psychology textbook when your kid asks why someone doesn't have any "real" pictures of themselves and go down that rabbit-hole explaining...

If you are an adult over the age of 30, there is a strong likelihood that you have been in at least one reasonably long-term relationship. And statistically, more than half of you also have been in a toxic relationship of some form as well. Sometimes the baggage from those relationships can be fairly common stuff (some mild quirks or personality clashes, lifestyle complications and whatnot), but all too often the toxicity can reach abusive or neglectful levels; physical and emotional abuse, infidelity, being partnered with a narcissist, etc. With the former, we can kind of write it off as just not a good fit, but with the latter, it can lead to actual instances of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or "Complex" Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD). Much like the soldier who returns from war a different person, hypersensitive to certain noises or situations, or with a self-defeating and twisted view of everything and everyone, someone coming out of an unhealthy rel...

A friend inadvertently planted the seed of a beautifully-succinct and profound perspective to me: “Someone can’t expect your world to revolve around them when they’ve already got the rest of the damn world doing it in their minds.” Heavy stuff. Anyhow, I've had to do a lot of research lately on mental health issues, and this one was one I had bookmarked from a while back after a session, originally posted posted May 15, 2009 (link at the bottom to original article). As disturbing as it is to read about some of these things, seeing them firsthand is absolutely nauseating. I've noted the stuff I've personally witnessed, and that should be red flags for everyone. Enjoy, and learn... Victim identity is focus on damages suffered at the hands of other people. The desire to be identified as a victim creates a sense of entitlement and a motive to devalue anyone who does not offer special recognition and validation of victim status or compensation for it. In our ...

So here I am, a week shy of what would have been 7 months in what I originally had thought was pretty much potentially the best relationship I had ever been in. WOULD HAVE BEEN.  Things were basically okay up until a couple of months ago, when my apparently-now-ex got caught up in a downward spiral of self-inflicted circumstances. And now she seems to have moved onto another lap around the counterproductive circle she has been living ever since she moved out of the house to piss off the parents at age 17 with her loser boyfriend and got married. She hates her job, but due to her (we'll just say) very "un-hide-able" and very public criminal record, she cannot just go simply get another job based on her experience, or ANY job at all for that matter. It's hard for a convicted felon to find quality work, at least enough to survive as a single income household. So she's kind of stuck. But hey, it's an income...we don't always get to be happy, so we sometimes ...