[BigV]

I'm gonna wreck my own thread. Too bad too, since I launched it in earnest.

...

I quit.

I need a break. This will be a bad weekend for me. It's been shaping up all week. A bad week, (nevermind) it's coming.

I miss my dad. Both of them, including my stepdad. They're with me every day. I talk to them all the time. I just don't feel comforted by them now. I don't feel them close like I used to.

Love and respect. These two men, E and W, are responsible for my life in several ways, literally and figuratively. There is no one in my life I love and respect more than my fathers. I miss them terribly. They've been gone for years now. I need them still. I use what they have given me, to the best of my ability, and I am still wanting. I am still lacking, still failing.

I just want to catch a break. A time out. I feel chagrined that I struggle with my life. Why? It is complicated. My challenges are far less than what theirs were. My options are far greater. I have many tools and techniques and resources unimaginable to them. But I don't' have any memory of them struggling like I am struggling. I don't have any idea how they overcame the disadvantages they faced. I don't know what they used, what was in them that is not in me that got them through. I am not the man they were. And that makes me feel very very sad.

I have so many advantages, yet I flounder and suffer and fail. Perhaps suffer is not the right word. It is more correct for me to say "feel pain" than suffer. But there's a lot of pain.

I miss my dad.