Mixed feelings

Hi everyone,

I expected I'd be stoked when I wrote this, but honestly I don't know what I feel or think. I was honestly kind of struggling to work out what to write or how, so absent any better ideas I'll try bullet points.

1.  The big news is I've accepted a job in a regional practice, to begin 1 July. This, I know, is a good thing because it reduces the 'drift' in my life at the moment.

2.  Between now and then I'll go to Louisiana to see Joni and Grace and Rachel. This is causing me strange feelings. I want to see my girls desperately. But, it's as if I'm seeing the happily ever after that I longed for my whole life, and that I helped bring into being, and that even now I sustain in part with money, but which I am now excluded from. I could say it's like forcing a starving man to look at a buffet through 3 feet of glass, only much, much worse.

3.  I tell myself that I can still start again, and move on, and keep looking for my own white picket fence,  but it doesn't help. I'm too Catholic to accept that for me to remarry would be other than a sin. But I know I won't get to be a father like I wanted to be, or to grow old with the woman I love. When I think of that, the other things the world affords lose their savour.

4.  When I do think about (3), things just look grey forever. It's like looking at the next 50 years or so and thinking "ok, I just have to get through it".  For the avoidance of doubt, this isn't a coded way of saying I feel like doing something stupid - of course I don't - but it's a 'heavy' thing, as if I'm not so much living as serving a very long sentence.  Stone walls might not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, but I'm unsure what one does with a vast expanse of not entirely welcome time.

5.  For the first time in I-don't-know-how-many-years I'm on the verge of finishing reading a novel: John Boyne's "The Absolutist". Interedting ideas. Should make a viable review piece.

6.  One thing to remember is a lesson I've learned as a legal practitioner: in any given situation you can do the right thing, the wrong thing, and nothing. Invariably the worst option is to do nothing. So, having the job I have might not be perfect, but it's a step towards where I'm meant to be going and that's a good thing.

7.  My parents really love the girls. Mum keeps buying them little presents. It breaks my heart to know they're unlikely to be allowed to see them again. Yay me. Yay fucking me.  Wasn't it enough for me to fuck me own life up? Why'd I hurt their advanced years to? Yay. Fucking. Me.

That's it I guess.

Seacrest out.