Second ’06

My 2nd entry of ’06.
I watched ‘North Country’ by myself tonight.  The rest of my family (the ones that are here all of the time) are sick and went to bed early.
Her dad stood up for her.  Not when he should have – a long time ago – but he did.  I’ve almost been to the point of JCM – Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did?  2005 was a frustrating year in so many ways.
I’ve been in survival mode for so long I’m not sure when it began.  When I was born perhaps?  But for a brief glowing time in 1999 I was able to feel joy.  Something so rare in my experience I didn’t know what to do with it.  But it seemed that with the busting of the internet stock bubble and my company’s bankruptcy so were the fortunes of my life.  Not so much the money but the personal stuff.
Tonight I learned some things about a guy I have known since about 7th grade.  I wonder if he isn’t messed up more than me and most of his family also. 
I sometimes feel like Bill in "The General’s Daughter".  The guy who loved her but didn’t understand why she would screw everyone but him.  I knew a girl like that once.  Except that whenever she was in trouble she would call me.  Even asked to stay with me when she had no where else to go and I said no.  Because…  ah, so many reasons.  I was engaged even though I didn’t really want to be.  Because she only wanted a place to stay and not me.  I now mostly understand  why she did the things she did but at what cost?  The cost of understanding was to lose 1/2 of my daughter’s life.  I haven’t seen her in quite some time.  I went to a local fast food place with my wife on the way home a few days ago and when we walked in the guy with the headset on for the drive thru immediately said "Hi Bill".  I said Hi back but didn’t know who he was, but asked the girl who took our order as soon as he walked away.  He was her oldest son and I didn’t recognize him.
It still amazes me how children remember how we treated them years later.  She has 3 boys and I actually knew him less than the two younger ones, but he very much remembered me.  He would have been about 5 or 6 one time when things were not going very well for her and he wasn’t behaving all that well.  I sat down with him and talked and told him that his mom was having a hard time right now and she needed his help.   She was very untrusting of me at that time and wanted to know what I had told him.  I didn’t understand why she felt that way, but told her what I had told him.  It took somethings like 2 years before she really saw me as I really was. 
Yeah, this is susposed to all be behind me now.  I detest people who say "Just get over it.".  I find that those are the people who have an adgenda that requires me to behave in a certain way and my not getting over it is getting in their way. 
I will process my feeling and sort them out in my own good time should I live that long.