Ten Years…

It’s actually been a little longer than 10 years, but, I have been working on They Came in Peace, in one form or another, for most of the last decade.

It was a difficult ten years: after I separated from her, I struggled with PTSD from living with a controlling, emotionally and psychologically abusive ex-wife; self-medicating with alcohol, dealing with an undiagnosed behavioral disorder I was desperately trying to get help for…and my world continued getting worse as I struggled with myself, with nightmares and with behaviors I couldn’t control.

I watched as the people I love left me: friends, one by one, either ghosting me or getting fed up of my shit. I ended up alienated from so many people; but honestly, but for a small few, the only people I miss are my children. The only relationships I long to rebuild are the ones I had with my children. My ex-wife did all she could to keep them from me, but she wasn’t doing this to protect them; just to hurt me, because she knew that the greatest joy and privilege of my life is being a father. And in those dark years, the only thing that ever brought me a sense of joy, a sense of peace, was when I could see my children. I was always loving, nurturing positive and happy when I was with them. I only ever tried to be the best person I could when they were in my life.

In the end, all I had left were my nightmares and my solitude. In those early years, those nightmares were tamed when I put them to page in cogent form, creating They Came in Peace: I’ve written about how that book is the only thing that stopped my nightmares; it’s also the only thing that kept me going, when I wasn’t allowed to see my children, when I didn’t even have a friend in the world to talk to.

Writing is cold comfort compared to the loving warmth of family and friends, but this book is important to me, and I think the messages within, both implicit and explicit, are timely and, frighteningly, urgently need to be expressed.

I’m down to the last twenty or so chapters of the trade galley rebuild, then I’m going to take one more pass – just to make sure I didn’t miss anything, and then it’s going to print; well, eprint, I guess. Twenty chapters is a LOT fewer than it sounds; I’ll have this thing ready to download by spring.

[the sound of the universe laughing at me.]

I’ve gotten more and more reflective of the past ten years as I’ve been finishing up the galley. I often find myself wishing that it were as easy to rebuild my life as it was rebuilding They Came in Peace. I went through ego death therapy; not the kind with mushrooms, but the kind where my psychotherapist literally prosecuted every thought and idea that I had, everything I had to say, and made me examine myself and see just how much vile, ugly shit I had encased myself in.

I wanted to destroy, or at least confine the identity of the man I was; a cruel and vindictive bastard so similar to my father…by all accounts I’ve succeeded, and expect to soon have the legal documentation to prove it, though I still have some things to answer for.

But even with the factory reset on my personality and identity, because I truly am a different person now than I was then, there are some things that I cannot change, some things I cannot fix.

I have so many regrets. So many things I wish I could do over. So many people that I’ve lost.

I can’t let go of this book; it may be the one good thing I’ve done with the last ten miserable years of my life.