"August 16th 1990, 20 Years Minus 6 = Emotional Mathematics"

 On August 16th 1990 I was in Sarajevo covering the breakup and building tensions in Yugoslavia which would lead to a vicious ethnic war and mass genocide. But on that day in what was a beautiful city my life changed forever. Not by bomb, or illness or money, it was changed by love. This was the day that I had my first date with the amazing woman who would become Mrs. Badger.

  I had met J.J. before, and I always had a crush on her, she was a funny, smart, beautiful photographer. I had previously tried to chat her up at the smarmy journalists bar in the Holiday Inn Sarajevo  and she was having no part of me. As her friends were telling me and I quote, " JJ thinks you are a Crazy Little Boy, who had a better  chance of getting pregnant than a date with her" But my heart would not give up. I came up with an idea, that was hatched while drinking with some other cameramen of questionable moral providence. I would show her I was a professional and would write  her a "Relationship Resume"!! fueled with a locally made moonshine and bad Baltic weed  I wrote my resume, complete history of my relationships with references.

  I bribed JJ's Best friend and personal firewall that I would never talk to or attempt to again only if she delivered said document and that JJ would agree to a 1 hour date.  The firewall agreed and soon JJ came by the bar and announced that I would get a 1 hour window to prove I was not just a less hairy ape.
That one hour turned into a 8 hour date, the next day JJ moved into my room and that was the beginning of how I learned to Love & be Loved.

  Today if J.J. was still alive we would have been together for 20 years and probably would have been. Our relationship was not perfect non are. But we saw past our emotional, social, interpersonal quirks because we were best friends, JJ was the first time I experienced unconditional Love outside of my Parents & Grandparents.  A lot of our friends saw us as a perfect couple, maybe because we always respected each other and enjoyed every moment we were together. But we were not perfect,  I as we know have lots of issues, and so did she. We did fight but never in public, we did not moan to friends about each other unless it was child like kidding. When we did fight and we fought a lot, it never got personal or ugly and we never went to bed angry we would stay up all night and find a solution if that is what it took. As sappy as that sounds it really works. when you go to bed angry it ferments, and evolves into something else and that is never pretty.

  These are some the things that J.J. gave me as a person and that left me a much better person than I was when I met her. She taught me to be able to be Loved, a skill I am still working on. JJ always trusted me emotionally even when I was emotionally not well. I learned from her that being silly when things look the darkest is good medicine. I learned there is dignity in accepting who you are. The best gift that I was given was that I am at my core good, kind and have the capacity to Love and Respect back and that I do not have to be perfect in doing it, if I am truly Loved back.

Here is the Math! God and I hate math............

Days we would have been together : 7305 pretty scary number
Days I have still lived after she was gone: 2191


 The second number is more important to me right now, I have come along way since then, seen many things met many friends, and all I have seen, and all I have met have been the direct benefit  of Jennifer June's impact on my life. Do I miss her? Yes of course I do today, on our wedding anniversary, her birthday, her day of passing and ground hog day are the worst on me emotionally. I get through them knowing I was lucky to have 14 years with my best friend and that is not a little thing, not many people can say that at my age. Wherever you are June Bug I hope no one else has written you a Resume........................................

" Easy to Hate Not Easy To Love 28 Years of Being Nuts Around People"

When I was 16 I was finally diagnosed Bipolar, and by all accounts and familial witness statements it was about time. My crazy coming out was not some cryptic Zapruder film like moment replayed over and over again by my loved ones and family. It was a wildly known fact.

   I was and still am not easy to Love for most and I am still easy to hate for some but not all. I am sure a lot of people can say that, hell no one is perfect or everyones friend, that is just too creepy to imagine just look and Tony Robbins and you will understand. But I come with a list of optional emotional accessories that would put a new car dealer to shame. Piggybacking on my illness are a whole host of psycho-social issues that makes being close to me at times difficult. I am also very outspoken a gift I received at age 17 from my grandfather once I found my voice and my shyness ebbed away.

 By behavior has left a wake of emotional detritus behind me and I have burned bridges, almost exclusively personal bridges, maybe because my profession tended to attract folks like me and they can tolerate a lot of shit. I am not mean, despite the tenor of my posts, tweets and conversations. I get that a lot and I can be very polarizing, which I am very aware of and a lot of you know. But I am actually sweet, for those who get to know me. But there is the rub, I do not let many people in, I let you in the yard, on the porch but in the house that I am not so good at (See Fear of Abandonment).

  So who the fuck likes me? I was lucky to be married to a wonderful woman over a decade. She hated me too at first when she did not know me and only agreed to a date to get me out of her hair. She was an amazing woman, with a huge capacity to Love, Forgive, Tolerate and most of all a sense of humor. She let me love her first, that was one of the keys, because only then did I open my front door and let her off the porch. I am good at relationships not starting them for that very reason. I am emotionally guarded, it comes from my illness, mixed with social developmental speed bumps etc but what really matters is that I keep people away. Mrs Badger would not take that crap and firmly yet patiently coaxed me open. I did some really fucked uop shit when she was alive and she still Loved me warts and all. I always wondered how anyone could love me, I am a fucked up mess. She did, in some way I gave her something that no one else did, and all my crap was worth it, I was never abusive, I did not yell, and I still do not. I always respected her and laughed at her bad jokes. Still it was not easy, when you are away on a biz trip and you come home to find out that your husband sold all the furniture and then bought all new stuff in a manic Martha Stewart moment you have to take a second to question your relationship decisions. Still she and others stood by me and still do. I am lucky to have some long standing friendships because I am not a easy friend.

    Today in some kind of way I protect others and myself by not letting them off the porch it is by no means altruistic. I dont do anything really stupid and you are my friend my porch friend. All this changed when Mrs. Badger died. My porch got smaller my yard larger and weirder. \

 For almost 6 years now I have been in a self induced emotional exile, fearful that no one would love me, or want to be around me for more than a short while. This has added to my aura of polarization. And it is not easy to change. I am working on this very hard. it is not easy or right now natural for me, but I am working on it. My yard is getting smaller, cleared of debris and some of you are coming inside already.

 I am making new friends and this is trust me on this scary as shit, scarier than anything I have ever done before and I have done and been some scary ass places the least of which is in my own head. So to the people getting to know me and who want to get to know me better. Be patient, gentle, have a sense of humor, and I hope that you will find in me as a friend what others who have known me for years have found. I am not sure what that is, but it works for my wife and others and maybe I can add something to your lives that makes it a little better.

 loving someone is never blind, it is just love. loving someone living with a mental illness is not easy but for some worth the trip. It may not be me, but it could be someone else. This post was one of the hardest I have written as to admit you are easy to like sucks. But the time was right. I hope you all can open your doors and let those screaming people off your porch the noise is driving me nuts.......................

"CRaZy EYeS or How I use My Illness to Keep a Distance"

  Crazy Eyes... or actions. I have discovered one way that I use my being "Out" as crazy as a tool to in my social life. There are many ways we build walls around us, some of us act like assholes as a way of not letting people get close to us then sit alone and wonder why we have no social life. Others still will find the slightest personal defect and magnify it so it becomes a screen keeping someone away to protect our hearts.

 Me I use my Crazy, and it can be both a passive and active interpersonal denial system. A tool that I have honed over the years as my moat that surrounds my heart. Myself like so many others have been hurt by the actions of people who in some cases were just mean and in others were just being a product of whatever life had conditioned them to be. In my case I have been abandoned.

 I have abandonment issues, they are not as bad as they were in the past but the way they manifest themselves is slicker, more polished now. I have been ill since my teens and in my teens the reaction to my mental illness by my peers was usually through bullying, being excluded, and just plain ignored, or when I did make friends left for the socal dead.

 In some cases this.. well alot of cases this happened due to my behavior and actions when I was manic. Which when I was younger was quite often. It was hard to be friends with me. I was unpredictable, irresponsible, angry and just plain odd. My fault or not it hurt, and the pain went deep. I lost friends and family, I was forgotten or just plain mocked.

 As I got older and wiser maturing into my crazy I learned that I could protect myself with it when I needed to. I used my illness to self destruct good relationships out of fear that they would abandon me first. This pattern went on for years and in some degree still does.

 Today I am out and I tell everyone and anyone that I am Bipolar. I use this in two ways, in a altruistic way in order to break down stigma and educate people. I also use it to weed out folks who may break my heart later or are unable to be friends with someone like me. Better I scare you away then I let you in to hurt me.

 I still fear being alone but I no longer dislike being alone. The people who know me, love me and except me warts and all I have no fear or insecurity about them leaving my life. But I am still cautious of new people, i still push even people who care about me away out of my own fear that "I" will fuck things up like I did so much in the past.

  I call myself a "Asshole" a lot when I am getting to know people like some crazy person fog horn warning them to stay clear of my bat shit rocks. I know I do it and it is a personality flaw that I hate about myself. I hope that by writing this and exposing it that it will become harder and harder for me to do.

 I want to fill my moat in and let people dance on my lawn...........................

"Relationship Structural Engineering or How to Mend Bridges"

 

pic from www.tdot.state.tn

  
Sometime in our quest for self discovery we leave in our wakes a crumbling social infrastructure of broken or in alot of cases personal bridges of disrepair. We pass through the lives of so many people on our journey, some we remember, so we do not and even some we had harmed or had harmed us. Also we neglect alot of our social bridges taking them for granted thinking they will always be strong and be there to carry us when we need them. This is not true, if left un- tended un -cared for these bridges fall apart.

   Now that I see that my life is what it is, I sit and think about these bridges, the ones left, taken for granted, the ones that I crushed like Godzilla in Tokyo and have decided it is time for a infrastructure upgrade. I as you all know can be a asshat, I have in my past treated some friends poorly or worse taken alot of people for granted. I intend to change this starting today.

  It is not easy for us to mend these relationships, sometimes we forget what we are mad over or we are ashamed of how we acted. In the cases of taking some people for granted it is as easy as a phone call... not a e-mail or a facebook poke or a tweet, get away from your digital shield and actually talk to someone.
 See and own your place in a disagreement, let it go it is poison in your well. If someone you care about harmed you, well maybe they have changed, maybe they need to re-build as well.

 This is cheap therapy folks and it will only free your soul. If the bridge cannot be mended, ok at least you inspected it first. But you may rebuild a old relationship or save a current one. Time to inspect our lives because with a poor foundation nothing will stand not even ourselves..........

"Let Me Touch You For Awhile"

  The touch of a human is in my opinion one of the greatest gifts on earth. It bridges our humanity in ways that cannot be imitated, or replaced. I was lucky to be raised in a way that touching people was not only ok, but encouraged, hugs for the sake of hugs are common in my world.

 I need a tactile connection with people it is like air to me, it makes me feel safe, loved, and connected. It reminds me of human kindness and it feel really damn good. Some people seem to not need or like touch, for what ever reason and some I understand and others i do not, but people who do not or cannot show affection thru touch kinda creep me out i do not feel emotionally safe with them.

 The degrees and type of touch vary, from compassion, friendship to romantic and erotic and they all mean much to me;

 The touch of a friend that warm hospitality of a hug or the encouraging pat on the back or shoulder is like a shield that keeps loneliness at bay. It reminds us of being part of a bigger thing, allows us to be open to seek joy in the company of others.

 The touch of compassion, this simple act which when we are low or in pain is healing, compassionate touch is selfless as selfless can get..I am lucky and a better man because of receiving and giving this physical sign of caring.

The Touch of Romance, we all love this or I would like to think we all do. The gentle touch of a lower back, holding and grasping hands in such a way you would think if let go the world would disapear. A hand on my cheek will make me melt, it takes me to a place that I feel sexy, desired, and I know at that moment I am all that matters, nothing else exists at that moment, and when combined with a kiss is the best thing in the world.

The Erotic Touch, that smooth exploration of another's body hands fingers wandering, feeling the response of your lover and focusing on them, as you respond to their touch in kind. This energy is incredible, it creates a connection, intimacy, and passion.

Do not over look the real importance of touch in your life, allow it to remind you that you are loved, let it carry you when you cannot carry yourself, invite it show you passion, connection and your inner sexiness. Breath in the people in your life so go hug someone, touch someone's hand.. Kiss your lover, partner, or someone you always wanted to kiss. Feel the connection to humanity that only the touch of someone can bring.