.
Que Sera, Sera?

I miss all of you desperately. I wish I knew what to say. I wish I knew what to suggest. I wish I knew what to do in order to pull myself up by my "bootstraps" and feel better. I continue to pray to God and explain to him my fears, my worries and my grief and to ask for help.

I have been trying to shed things in my life. It started as a manner of atonement. I gave up my enjoyable coffee and caffeine products roughly 5 weeks ago. I gave up chatting with others on the Internet roughly 5 weeks ago (I used to spend an occasional late night chatting politics on a few sites). As is typical for most men, I used to supplement the sexual relief and pleasure I received from bedding my wife with occasional self manipulation to release tensions. I too gave the self manipulation up five weeks ago. I have never been a huge drinker, but I used to enjoy spending an occasional afternoon with my elderly father-in-law and have a few drinks as we chatted. It has been several weeks since I gave that up. And, I am working my way towards giving up my pipe as well. I have decreased to 1-2 bowls per day, but it is difficult as of now for me to go beyond that decline.

Is my new life a manner of atonement? Or am I attempting flagellation of myself for my sins? Does it matter? Do I even exist anymore? What will become of me? I cannot focus, I feel muted. Where do I go from here? Is there anything else I can strip away from mywelf to keep me from being hurt further? If I remove enough of the old me, perhaps I can get to a core that is bland, vanilla, but resilient so that the hurt will reflect away from me instead of infiltrate my soul.

I miss who I was. But, to think of who I was only makes me cry. I am not he. I do not know who I am, but...

Que sera, sera, I suppose.

PipeTobacco