I'm taking a long journey, man...

[Rev Dave Man]

Here's my deal.  I'm an extremely fortunate Dude.  I have a special lady friend who feeds the monkey quite well and really treats me like I've never been treated by a lady friend before.  We've only been together for 10 years, married 2 years and my story starts like this:
   Right out of high school I knocked up this chick who made Bunny look like a saint.  Men go one of two ways when this happens to them, they either run away from it or run into it.  I ran into it.  Went from a high school kid smoking dope everyday to being a hard working guy, holding down 2 jobs to pay the rent and raise a family.  She split on me and the 2 kids (I had another with her), and left me holding the ringer.  I wandered and found another lady friend.  I married her shortly after and had 2 more little Lebowski's with her. The oldest is 31 and the youngest is now 15.

I'm about to turn 52 in a couple of months and everything in my life has been predetermined based on mistakes I've made throughout my life, and I own that shit, man, I own it.  But I feel like I never got to really leave this town, take time to myself and just wander to ask the serious questions of life. It's been non stop WORK, RAISE KIDS, WORK MORE, RAISE KIDS MORE. I told my special lady friend that this is really weighing on me and I would like to take a trip.  Alone.  Not for any immoral reasons or to do anything stupid, just to, I dont know, find the real me. 

  I told her I would like to ride my motorcycle to the Pacific Ocean. I've never seen it, never been west of the Rocky Mountains.  She says she supports me, and didn't blink when I told her I'd be gone 2-3 weeks. She said she'd be here to hold down the fort and take care of the kids and the house. She is either an absolute saint or the greatest con-artist I've ever met. 

  Either way, I don't have any desire to keep riding this blue ball around the sun, at least not in the same manner I've been doing it for the past 3 plus decades.  I lost my job due to a work sustained injury that has kept me out of work for almost 2 years now and they exercised their contractual right to eliminate my position.  I don't know what I'm hoping to find on this journey, all I know is that every day I am fighting to maintain my sanity. 

   I had dreams, man.  I had goals, man.  I had a life that I thought I'd pursue after high school.  But that was well over 30 years ago and those dreams are long gone. And there's no way to get them back, hell, I never even finished high school. 

  Inside my head is non stop screaming, it never ceases, the screaming just wont stop.  And now my oldest son who is going through a brutal divorce with his ex using their kids as pawns continues to come to me to dump his baggage, and I just don't have the bandwidth to deal with it, but I can't shut him out either.  I'm slowly losing my ability to cope and the chest pains are far more frequent and far more severe.  This is why I want to get on my motorcycle alone and ride from Niagara Falls to California...plus I've never had an In N Out burger, so that would be nice. 

  I don't know if anyone will ever even read this, but man, I'm at the end of my rope and I really don't know what to do. And the bitch of it all, is that anyone who looks at my life, where I live, the material things I have, would think, "what's this guy got to complain about?"  I have nothing to complain about, I have just been living to make others live, and I've been breaking my body (literally: multiple surgeries from my job of heavy labor over the past 30+ years) to try and make a good life for others, all while not knowing who I am, other than a father and a provider and a companion to my special lady friend. I know there are others who would envy my position, but if you spent ONE DAY in my head, and heard the non stop screaming, you'd do like so many others have, you'd put a stop to it as quickly as possible. And the only reason I haven't is because I know the devastation it would cause to my children.  We had a family member jump over the railing at Niagara Falls and do a swan dive. It wasn't pretty and it devastated my son.

  I need to get away, but it's not the destination that's important, it's what I'm hoping to find along the way.  I may find myself, I may not find anything.  Maybe it's just too late for me and this is where I am until those chest pains put an end to it.  Anyway, if anyone reads this, feel free to tell me what a POS I am, or not...I'm numb at this point.

[BrotherTom]

I've re-read this a few times since you posted, and I've been ruminating on it a lot the last couple of days, trying to think of something positive and uplifting to say. What I've come up with is mostly a lot of rambling, and certainly just one dude's... like... opinion, so take it for what it's worth.

It does sound like the bar has been working you over pretty good. I know what that's like, to lead a life of achievement, then suddenly the carpet pissers show up, and you're wondering how you ended up sitting on the bathroom floor, with your hair dripping half-and-half and toilet water.

I've been there, man. I achieved, in spite of a shitty childhood. I did all the things I was told would get me there, had all the stuff, and the status, and had it all ripped out from under me, leaving me feeling like a failure as a man, a husband, and a father. It was a long road out of that mindset, and my relationship with my special lady... well we almost didn't make it because of it.

I'm going to lay a few clichés on you, but as more than a few fellers, much wiser than myself have said, clichés tend to be clichés for a reason.

Travel is always great for clearing your head. There is nothing like seeing new things, meeting new people, and having new experiences, to help you get some perspective on life. The important thing to remember though, is that the journey happening in your head is the more important one. If you're looking for yourself, outside yourself, you're going to be disappointed.

My special lady and I now make it a point to travel as often as possible, even to little places not far away, just as long as it's somewhere we've never been, so we can experience something new every so often. That sort of stuff helps keep your mind limber.

I've also heard it said quite a bit that "life begins at 50". Now, 50 is not meant to mean exactly the age of 50, it's more of a point in the direction just easing out of middle age. For me, my 50 was closer to 40. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence, and quite a bit of science out there, that suggests that people actually get happier as they get older. This is an idea that runs very counter to everything we're taught in western culture. A lotta folks think this is the case because, as we age, most of us start to figure out what's really important in life. All that stuff you think you need to be happy, you really don't need, and all of those people on TV, supposedly living the good life, are really just nihilists standing in a parking lot next to a burning car, swinging a sword around and yelling about cutting off johnsons.

And all of that work we put in, to get the nice house with the picket fence, the minivan, the big yard... what did that really get us, besides the appearance of achievement? Nothing meaningful, at least in my experience.

I've also found it to be true that happiness is invariably in the little things. Enjoying the little things takes practice. It's a skill that we're born with, but is beat out of us as we get older, and most of us have completely forgotten by our twenties. The Dude himself definitely had this figured out. The things he enjoyed, bowling, White Russians, soaking in a tub while listening to whales, laying on his floor listening to the sounds of bowling balls knocking over pins... this all seems fairly mundane and uninteresting to most people, even stupid, but it's what made him happy, and it's all he wanted out of life.

Most of the time, the things that make us truly happy are right there in front of us the whole time. Odds are that you do little things every day that give you little bits of happiness, but we're all so used to those things, and so focused on the shit that we're told will make us happy, that we don't even see them anymore. As a wise dude once said, the biggest obstacle to happiness tends to be our idea of happiness. It takes time, and practice (a fake-it-till-you-make-it deal, in my case) to reprogram yourself this way, but it's totally doable, and totally worth it, in this dude's opinion.

So to bring this rambling to a close, I think where you're at now is a tough spot, but definitely something you can bounce back from. Lots of other dudes have been there, and came out of it privy to all kinds of new shit, and were back in the lanes, drinking beers with their friends.

I wish you all the best on your journey, man. Make sure to stop and get a selfie in front of the biggest whatever in wherever, if you happen to pass it, and also get some waffles at that waffle place that claims to be world-famous, even though no one has ever heard of it. You'll be glad you did.