There is a place in our hearts, that is to say, at the core of our being, that cries out to God. He is listening. He has always been listening. We let our self-created noise interfere.

It is finally August. I look at time as a gift from God. I must be a good steward of that gift. What do I have to show for July? I did clean under the sink and inside the fridge.

I did some serious sleeping, having begun this post around midnight, I am resuming around 11:30 AM.

What persists? My son’s recovery from a Traumatic Brain Injury continues, although not nearly as rapidly as he or anyone else would wish it to happen. Time takes time.

My life with a hoarder continues. My marriage to a hoarder continues. All I can respond to her hoarding is hoarding on my part.

COVID-19 persists. An indirect exposure to a new case has prompted me to isolate. The affected person had been vaccinated, and I’m assuming he has contracted the Delta variant.

The weather is cooler today and rainy. The thought that the worst of the summer heat has gone provides encouragement.

I am wearing my hearing aids and I can hear the birds singing. And some chirping from insects. The sound of water pouring down the drain pipe provides a bass line for the higher pitch of the bird song.

Old problems were mentioned in the title of this post. I think some drastic and dramatic action on my part is necessary to rectify this situation. Maybe that’s why the problems persist. Small actions, consistently applied, may offer the lasting change.

This morning, there is a voicemail from my friend Scott, whom I visited Friday. He leaves a message that his father, who had been vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, had come down with COVID-19, on Saturday.

So I have been vaccinated, with the Pfizer vaccines . What do I do now? Through Scott, I have indirect exposure to a person who has COVID-19. I have been vaccinated. But so had Scott’s father.

Now I am questioning the value of the vaccines and every directive the government has ever made about this disease. Does the government know what it is doing? Are there facts backing the decrees?

Answers, please.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve seen too much. There are too many things I cannot unsee, the tawdry, ostentatious displays of wealth that some people flaunt and others covet. There are the photographic ghosts of Berlin, Verdun, Stalingrad, Hiroshima.

Some images are immediate. There is the image of the EMTs desperately attempting to resuscitate my neighbour, as he is dying from an overdose.

There is the blue tattoo of numbers, a German “7” prominent in the sequence, of a survivor of the Shoah.

It takes only a little while to see too much. And a lifetime goes by attempting to forget.

I am awake at 0245, have been awake for about an hour. I feel weep-y, not sad, necessarily, as if there are tears needing to be shed. Possibly this is nothing more than an allergy.

I went upstairs last night, told J she could pick out a DVD of I Love Lucy episodes. So she picked one from the season where Lucy moved to Connecticut. Not my favourite, but she likes it.

At Nine AM, my son is coming over to thin the day lily beds. His Mom is bringing him over, so I feel like I should have some scones ready for them. Not a big deal really, My son is recovering from a Traumatic Brain Injury, and doesn’t drive, so she’s bringing him over, as if he were 5 rather than 45. I’m giving the lilies we thin out to her, for her garden. The irony is that these lilies came from the gardens of my now deceased ex-wife #2, the woman I married after we divorced.

What goes around comes around. This applies to the good as well as the not-so-good.

This sleep won’t return. I won’t let it. I have to make my self suffer a little longer. I can’t go to sleep beside my wife, much as I want to.

She goes back to work at 1:00 PM, making sure the shelves at Target have products on them for the “guests” to buy. She returns home to me at 6:30 PM.

I’m drinking chamomile/lavender tea, hot. I can taste the lavender this morning. I want and need no more caffeine.

I suck at self care.

I count the days from now to when I have my Social Security Benefit deposited into my checking account. Ten days, from the 18th to the 28th.

I’ve been up about ninety minutes, staring at the railroad tracks on the Ashland Railfan You Tube site, reading obituaries, the popular biographies of everyday people, reading Word Press blog posts, and wondering why I am awake.

I can’t bring myself to go to Mass. I feel more “sinful” than usual, caught up in anger and lust, impure thoughts and selfish thoughts. I need to go to Reconciliation and lay my sins bare.

I worry about my son.

I can’t express to my wife the depth of my loneliness, so it comes out in inappropriate singing.

How do I rid myself of books I will not read? How do I mourn the loss of a self-created fiction that my life is? Maybe we all present characters to the world, whom we hide behind, such that our authentic selves, that soul who answers to God is but the shadow to the world, but the substance to God.

Overthinking is one of my specialties.

Almost midnight, I reflect on this day, these days, wherein I am dealing with my elder son’s Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), the oppressive summer heat, and the continuing issue of my wife’s hoarding.

I’m stressed by any one of these issues on its own. Combine them and I am exhausted, demoralised and weary.

My son is a high-functioning autistic and bipolar. He feels threatened and is very defensive. He doesn’t trust his wife to care for his interests. This is a delusional conclusion on his part.

All of this is hard on me. That’s all I can say really.

Sexually explicit writing. 18+ Oh Hell maybe 70+ NSFW!!!

A finger to start, that’s all. Lubed slick and shiny , to push into the rosette of your asshole then flex it a bit to stretch you.

What if you like it, you ask yourself, at first, afraid you will, then ashamed that you do.

Then another finger joins the first and you feel your asshole stretch. You feel the pressure elsewhere, and are disappointed when both leave.

“If my friends knew…”

And the latex and lubed covered cock presses at your hole, pushes in, settles as you stretch

“That I want, don’t want this, makes me crazy, as my lust joins yours.”

And in the background Sinatra sings Strangers In The Night.

I had a weird dream about surviving a shipwreck and needing to draw all of my loved ones close to me.

There is anger I feel toward politicians and bishops and generals. Everyone who makes life for the humble difficult, who offer cruelty, rather than comfort.

It’s a long slow road to insanity for me. I did not sleep with my wife last night. I started in our bed, but moved to the other bed where the dreams rolled through my head as J. S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion Played on the CD player.

Today they remember the martyred Czar Nicholas II in the Russian Orthodox Church. We have elections wherein we hold the politicians accountable to the people. They give the people access to drugs, whores, gambling. They vote to bankroll the weapons of war and then authorise the wars themselves . Then we delude ourselves that protecting our freedom means killing peasants on the other side of the world. Absurd.

Freedom isn’t free, but we shouldn’t be overcharged for it either.

I want to go back to bed, sleep some more , maybe have restful dreams and hope the spectre of loneliness not afflict me.