If anyone has experience in this...

There are things I try not to make a public fetish of, but which consume my mind every day. If you'll pardon me, I'll say that my childhood was abusive in a unique way, meaning there are many actors in my drama. But the one that I always entertained fantasies about revenge, that was my stepdad. He did things to me that shouldn't be done to a child. He was a very, very bad man. Something recently made me want to look him up. I don't know why; old, unrealized revenge fantasies were on my mind, I suppose. But I looked him up, and I'll be damned if the fucker wasn't dead. He died approximately 3 years ago, it turns out. Had a pretty standard glowing obituary. I wonder about his own kids. Did he hate them as much as he hated me? He was married to one woman after my mom for the rest of his life. Was she able to cope with his twisted mind games? He was cremated. I don't know where his ashes where dumped, but it doesn't matter. He's long gone down to be part of the soil now. I suppose I wish I could visit that site, if only so I could burn it and salt it. So this bubbled up to a conscious thought, though not really a feeling: now I understand it when they tell you you have to let go. I can't resolve it. I'll never challenge him to beg for mercy. No confession will be offered. Suddenly, you realize, the only one keeping it alive is you. You in your thoughts and your actions toward others. I lost my opportunity for revenge three years ago, the fucker, and he didn't even leave me a grave to piss on. But I know now that until I've let go of you, you'll always ruin me. You'll always be influencing my decisions. You'll always make me want to be something I don't want to be, which is myself. You were a monster. I remember the monstrous things you did. I can't forgive you. I don't know if I can let go without it, but I have no one to forgive anymore. He's clay somewhere. But I have to let go of the pain. I somehow have to make those events not matter to me anymore. It's not forgiveness; it's release. When I've let go of you, you monster, and watch you recede like a drowning man, I'll be free. If you know how to help, please help. If you don't, that's cool. It's not your fault.

What do you do?

What do you do when you realize this is all there is? That my circumstances, combined with my personality, could have come to no other result than the life I am living now. All things conspired, as if on purpose, to bring me to this point. One change here or there could have steered my life otherwise; one choice or one chance could have changed my life. But the truth that I am where I am means that none of the circumstances of my life would have been any different. I say that even without the bitterness that usually accompanies it. It's just reason. If it could have happened differently, it would have.

What if Hitler had changed his mind about Barbarossa? But he didn't. He couldn't have, because his past is immutable and all circumstances led to that decision. Hitler will always have chosen Barbarossa. I will always have broken Jane's heart. Nothing in all my life, gathered at that moment, not all my wisdom, nothing would have prepared me to have acted any differently than I did. If I chose to live my life a second time, Jane's heart still would have been broken. And now, and for all this life, I will have written this blog. Nothing in my life would have changed the circumstances of now, because if they were going to, they would have.

So the rest of my life is written already, really, as is yours and everyone else's. Random events occur that direct events in their way, but they are no more immutable than the laws of motion. The laws of the universe are right now working to send an asteroid our way that will end all higher life on earth. We don't know when it will strike, but it is following a course right now that avoids all paths but our own.

So whoever you are is whoever you are. Nothing would have changed you. You will have always had the experiences and genetics that combined to make you who you are.

So if you're dismally unhappy, and you realize, this is as good as it gets...what then?

Are we heading toward two economies?

A recent, urgent-seeming article popped up in the Wall Street Journal just a couple of days ago , asking if the middle American class is even necessary to the wealthy. The wealthy now have the money to have their needs met by companies that don't need anyone else to survive. In other words, we're toast. Labor organizing, financial regulators, governmental oversight is all going to fail: the wealthy are, in the end, going to do what they want, because there are enough of them to sustain the economy without paying anyone above minimum wage. (Which I am sure they will soon abolish.)

Here's the hopeful side I'll take out of it. It beats all the negatives that weigh heavy against it. At some point, we are going to get screwed out of jobs by the wealthy. We then come up with a barter system that eventually grows into an economy. We begin picking up fundamental skills and learn to live in a world detached from the producers and industrialists. We'll all be a nation of small shops, local economies, barter systems, and whatever scrapping we need to do to get the actual "dollars" we need for manufactured goods. We'll become a nation like BarterTown, while the wealthy--and the politicians they own--do as they please.

Worked for Louis XVI.

Dear Gov. Walker (R-WI)

I'm so sorry that your state is about to break the workers' unions. I'm also sorry that, even though I have friends in Wisconsin, I won't be visiting them anymore. I'm sorry I won't be buying Wisconsin dairy products anymore, and I'm sorry I won't ever get to visit the Woodman's in Kenosha again. I'm really sorry that I'll be checking labels on the products I see at the store for the Wisconsin origin so that I can put them back.

I'm sorry I won't get to see the Dells again.

We used to be friends, Wisconsin.