Another Song Got Me to Thinking, “Little Lion Man” by Mumford & Sons

Weep for yourself, my man,
You’ll never be what is in your heart
Weep little lion man,
You’re not as brave as you were at the start
Rate yourself and rake yourself,
Take all the courage you have left
Wasted on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head

Chorus

But it was not your fault but mine
And it was your heart on the line
I really fucked it up this time
Didn’t I, my dear?
Didn’t I, my dear?

Tremble for yourself, my man,
You know that you have seen this all before
Tremble little lion man,
You’ll never settle any of your scores
Your grace is wasted in your face,
Your boldness stands alone among the wreck
Now learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck

The chorus is played a few more times, which works great when listening to the song, but comes across as a little redundant without the music behind it. (I don’t want to get into any trouble with copyrights, either, so I didn’t include the entirety. Probably will hear from the publishing company anyway.) Suffice it to say that this guy really screwed up. Lots.

Loser

I know how he feels; I screwed up a lot, too. History is written by the winners, however, so you’ll never see this version anywhere else; I lost. This is the loser’s version of things. I didn’t go into this with the intention of screwing anything up, but that’s the way it turned out just the same. Life is like that, you know: you come into it all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and you have every intention of just knocking the tar out of the world, and you come to the slowly dawning revelation that it is going to kick the crap out of you. My father probably felt the same way; I heard enough of things to understand that he simply made the best out of what he was given, which is I’m sure what we all do. Each generation just tries to make it all work. Within the framework of a family, the same mistakes are probably made by every father, even if you’re aware of some of them and try to avoid making the same ones yourself. Looking at the lines of the song written above, it would appear that the members of Mumford & Sons would tend to agree with that sentiment. (I’m just going off of my own interpretation of the lyrics—maybe I’m right, maybe I’m not. For the sake of this blog post, we’re going to just assume I’m on the right trail here.)

As I’ve written before, my father and I did not always get on famously, though there were a lot of years in my youth when we had what seemed like a good relationship. His gruff manner and rush to judgment sometimes meant there would be a few tears, but I had the overall impression that I had a good life, a good set of parents, and a good family in general. I was allowed to do many of the things that I wanted to do, and I was given just about everything I wanted, within reason; I wasn’t allowed to dig a fighting hole in the backyard the way I wanted to, but it’s hard to remember anything I was told I couldn’t do. (Except playing ice hockey atop the frozen surface of our pool—that was a distinct no-no, as evidenced by the three wooden hockey sticks sawed in half by Dad to teach the three of us a lesson.) If we screwed up, we got in trouble, which meant one of three things: no television, grounded to the house, or cleaning our room. Or all three. He wasn’t quiet, either, as the volume definitely went up when he was pissed off at something we had done or said. There was little to no corporal punishment, either, that I can remember. I don’t recall any physical manifestation of his anger visited upon our bodies except one time; my brothers were entering the house, my oldest brother made some sort of wisecrack, my dad went to slap him, and Sandy ducked, causing my brother John to take the slap himself, completely unaware of what he had done to deserve it. Outside of that one incident, no one ever got spanked or slapped…even when they severed the gas line digging a fox hole in the backyard. (If you didn’t get spanked for that, you are not the victim of abuse.)

I had no idea there was a gas line back there. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure that I knew there were such things as ‘gas lines’ in the world. I suppose that is one of those things one is just meant to know without being told; nevertheless, I wasn’t spanked or grounded. There were some loud complaints directed my way, and that was the end of it. Like me, Dad tended to blow up and yell, and then he kind of got over it after venting for a few seconds—or minutes. It seemed like it went on for quite a while, but it was really over pretty quickly.

Did I Mention There Was Arguing?

As I have mentioned in a previous post (Daddy-Friend link), my dad had an issue with alcohol, which he treated with a medication that would make him sick if he drank. Regardless of how this affected him, he was still an alcoholic, and that meant a specific and well-defined litany of behaviors. If one looks at any sort of study on ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics), one of the things that pops up right away as I remember is the inconsistency of love patterns, describing us on one site as “…dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold onto a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings….”

My need for my dad’s love was enormous, and I rarely saw him drink; his tendency to be sharp-tongued made me imagine that I was simply not good enough, I guess. As I figured out later, I entered my teen years with the idea that a) I didn’t want alcohol to have that control over me, and b) it was my responsibility to become a strong-willed man who was not afraid to voice an opinion, even if strong people disagreed with me. Those sound like good things on the surface, and they really are good traits to have, but they also can lead to some head-butting between a father and a son. The thing to remember, too, is that just about every father and son on the planet have to do some head-butting along the way. It’s a rite of passage. As a result, we tended to argue now and again, more than a little and less than a lot; not necessarily about anything important, but voices were raised a little from time to time, especially when there was any kind of questioning as to who I was going to be. (We didn’t really argue about the acting—he just thought it was a waste of my intellect to engage in something so foolish as a career choice.) As far as the drinking goes, I resisted it for the most part until I left for the west coast at the age of 20, though of course there were a couple of times when I over-indulged.

When I moved to California in 1983, I was clearly trying to move far away from home, so I could be my own person and do what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t angry with my dad, but he wanted me to do things the way he wanted to do them, and I just didn’t want to do that. (For the most part…I mean, changing the oil on the car every 3000 miles is a good idea, and he was right about that one; being an engineer probably would have killed me, though.) I knew he had my best interests at heart, but I was never going to be able to do what I wanted to do while I was living under his roof, so I moved away. There was never any abuse—there was just arguing, and strong feelings, and sarcastic comments that might have been annoying, but weren’t going to hurt me in the long run. Made me not really want to have children, but there will be more on that, later.

What You Need to Know About My Dad

At the end of day, my dad did the best he could, just like all of us do. He was a cop, by the way, a thankless job if ever there was one. That is such a loaded occupation for a man to have nowadays, what with all of the civic unrest that is going on at the moment. I’m sure Dad would have a few things to say about all of that if he were still here, but we don’t need to get political. The only thing that needs to be said is that being a police officer was a very hard job, and I don’t think he ever really enjoyed doing it. He had a young family, had never been to college, and had just gotten out of the army; as a result, he didn’t have a ton of options, but letting his family suffer privation was certainly not acceptable. The work was hard, there was a certain sense of camaraderie to be had, and the pay was fair; it would do. Just to make sure it’s clear, it needs to be stated that my dad did what he had to do for work in order to support his family. This is what he taught me about that: you do what you have to in order to provide for your family.

Though he probably didn’t like his job, my father worked as a sheriff for the county for over twenty years. Cops tend to “crack the whip” when people are doing things they shouldn’t, so he tended to parent the same way. By that, I don’t mean he hit us with the whip; just as I believe the phrase was intended when it was first used in 1647 (thanks, Google), the idea was that the sound of the whip cracking would restore order. When Dad barked, we listened and quickly complied with whatever the order was. I grew up that way. Contrary to many nowadays, I didn’t feel maligned that my dad occasionally yelled at us; there are other ways to parent children, but that was the method that was used on me. (Guess which method I used?)

He had a sharp tongue as well, and he could be just as funny as he could be demanding; either way, the sarcastic streak was often employed in our dealings with him. You might be annoyed that he was talking to you that way, but the way he turned a phrase or adopted a certain tone of voice could make you smile at the same time. It’s a way to assert control, I guess, and I know it probably isn’t the best method, but it was what he did and it worked after a fashion. I still maintain that a lot of the reason I was drawn to be an actor to begin with was due to his various character voices he performed for us over the years. The sarcasm made us laugh, and he wasn’t yelling at us. I didn’t know if I would ever have children myself, but I thought I might be more like my dad than I would ever have thought possible; maybe I just wouldn’t be as loud.

I Was Just as Loud as My Dad

The odd thing is that as much as I fought with my dad, I’m pretty sure that I am more like him than anyone else in my family. What that means is that I am just as loud as my father. I’m funny, and I’m outspoken when people ask a group of people a question that they want an answer to—I’m that guy. I hate the silence as they wait for some poor schmuck to put a hand up and tell everyone why they think Cleanser A is a better bargain than Cleanser B. (It’s not that I necessarily have to speak, but the silence is so uncomfortable, and I feel bad for the facilitator who is just standing up there, smiling nervously, and looking at all of us. So I raise my hand.) I usually offer too many opinions in a class discussion, but in my defense, no one else really wants to speak. And I’m usually right, so there’s that. I imagine my dad was the same way when he went back for his college degree at the age of 40 or so.

When I finally got married, I was in my thirties, and I suppose I was hoping that fatherhood might possibly have passed me by. Don’t get me wrong: I love kids. I enjoy talking to them, and goofing around with them; heck, in some ways, I’m just a big kid myself. I have a raunchy and sarcastic sense of humor, though, and I had started to realize that I had more in common with my father than I had ever known. I’ve had issues with alcohol a good number of times, and I have hated much of what I have had to do as far as work. I thought I wanted to be married, and I believed myself ready to be married; this is a very different thing, by the way, and does not have the same meaning as ‘wanting’ to be married. There were a couple of false alarms—pre-engagements—and in retrospect that probably should have told me something; I’ve always struggled with a low self-esteem, a common trait of ACAs, and felt like I was not a successful human being if I was not married. When Jenn popped up, I thought the moment had come.

The reality was that I rushed into it. Jen had made it clear that she wasn’t going to screw around with any debate: we were either going to set a date, or there wouldn’t be any talk of being engaged. In retrospect, I have to wonder if I pushed for marriage as a way of getting the approval of my father, a way to show him perhaps that I was in fact a successful adult. I certainly felt that being married was going to somehow make me more mature, and that was shown to be a fallacy almost immediately after we were married. It wasn’t that it was bad; we didn’t fight a lot, though we did from time to time, of course. I just think that we weren’t a great match, when all was taken together; my desire to continue my career as an actor turned out to be an issue for her after all, thus putting us on the road to the problem with “the job thing.” I was like my dad in many ways, loud, funny, and attractive…and secretly depressed.

Fatherhood and the Other Father

After being married for a couple of years, and following a dark night of the soul when I feared that I was gay, “we” decided to have a baby. I can hear you right now as you read that, screaming at us, “Don’t do it! That’s a terrible reason and time to have a child!” And you’re absolutely right; where were you 22 years ago? It turned out that I was not gay (as far as we know), but what we were was pregnant, within a week of that brilliant idea. I acknowledged that maybe I wasn’t as enthused about Jenn being pregnant as I had hoped I would be, but it was too late to go back now, and we prepared for parenthood as best we could. This meant figuring out a more permanent housing solution, looking at the best school systems, and possibly moving closer to family so that we would have that familial support network that new parents often desperately need.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I couldn’t stand her parents. See, this is one of those things that you should know before you get married; perhaps my mom should have made that point clearer to me before I pulled the trigger on getting hitched. I didn’t really know her parents very well when we were married; I had only met them once or twice. I didn’t realize what a cold fish her father was, and their parenting style was very different from that of my own mom and dad. At the time, I thought that would be a positive for me, as she had chosen to move far away from them, as I had done with my own parents; they were very standoffish and judgmental, and Jen (she eventually dropped the second ‘N’) couldn’t stand to be with them for more than a three day visit. This fact should have rung some alarm bells for me. You’re probably already nodding your head, saying, “Bill, Bill, Bill…you’re not just marrying her, bud; you’re marrying her whole family!” Hadn’t thought about that; if I had, I’d still be single. Her brother-in-law Mark is a great guy, and I got along really well with the other brother-in-law, Steve, but I really didn’t care for anyone else.

And then my son Alex came along, and we went through the birth alone. I’ve meant to write about that day for a long time; you’d think that her mother would at least have come to be with her for that, but you’d be wrong. Everything worked out fine, but it seemed awfully touch and go for a few minutes in the delivery room. Her mom finally came out for a visit a month or so later—just long enough to discourage us from buying a really cool row house that we liked in Philadelphia—but I honestly would have preferred that they just stay away, for all that they helped or supported us. I was working at least one job at that time, changing diapers and watching over my son, still accepting auditions now that Jen had to go back to work. She dreaded it, though, and I took a step toward a career in something less tenuous than acting: I began to sell cars. And, brother, let me tell you what a crappy business that is! Jen meanwhile was missing her new child terribly, and we decided that she would come home, and I would become the sole breadwinner (with two jobs).

The Job Thing

We had now been married three years or so, and it really wasn’t getting any better. My mom came to visit us, as she did often as Alex grew up, much more so than Jen’s mom and dad; I confided in her, as I always have, that I was not happy. It obviously upset her, perhaps even more than when I’d told her I was feeling suicidal several years before, and she tried to bolster me up. In the end, it wasn’t enough to have the support of my mom, as much as she tried to help. The problem, at least in part, was the pressure as the sole provider. Jen would make mention in later years toward the end that there was “always the job thing,” as if my floundering after giving up my acting career was evidence of my lack of responsible partnership. She was lucky: the types of things she was good at were marketable skills; mine, not so much.

No marketable skills for jobs in which I could remain sane at least.

At some point around this time, I officially quit my attempts to make it as an actor. I just felt selfish continuing to struggle when we wanted to have a house and a life, and I wasn’t really being sent out for jobs I wanted anyway. So, I quit, and sold cars full-time. I was completely miserable, as I would continue to be over the span of the next ten years as I tried repeatedly to make one of my bad jobs work. The best was a position with a leasing company that dealt with financial services and corporate leasing, though even there I had to move to a role that was better suited to my particular strengths. Every day I would drop Jen and Alex off at the train station—oh, yes, she had to go back to work because I wasn’t making enough, which was my fault of course. She worked in Philadelphia and left Alex at a day care nearby before she went in. Then 9/11 happened, and in the panic afterward, we realized we had to move Alex to a daycare outside of the city. After that, I would drop Jen off at the train station, and then I would head to Alex’s new daycare near my place of business, which was 45 minutes away from our apartment.

Finally, after a vacation to Disney World at the end of 2003, Jen made it clear that she would like to move to Florida. We had been talking about moving closer to her family, but she vetoed that when she had to acknowledge that she’d then have to be near them; we shifted our focus to Michigan to be close to my family–until I caught her doing job searches for Florida upon our return from the House of Mouse. I felt like we had made some concessions for my acting career, so I agreed to move south with her. And then the “job thing” got really bad. I saw it as an opportunity to really do something I was excited about, and found a job teaching 4^th grade near Orlando. (Of course, I found out later that she told several members of my family that she was annoyed that I would be making so little as a teacher. I was thrilled with the change, but the pay would be yet another pressure point.) Long story short, I was forced to leave the school because of the pay, while Jen worked for an insurance company. She would eventually quit this job with no warning because a friend was starting an ice cream store which she was to manage, and that was a bit scary. The ice cream store took four or five months longer to open than expected, and I took a job in trucking and manufacturing because I could find nothing else. Worst job ever, but I was doing my part. After the ice cream opportunity ended spectacularly, Jen got a job with a temp agency; they offered her a full-time position for a pretty good annual salary, but she wanted to take an entry-level job with Disney, paying little more than I was making as a teacher. I insisted she take the higher paying job so that we could keep the house and start rebuilding our finances; if I had to work an awful job, then she should have to as well. It’s only fair, right? I told her there was NO WAY she could take the job at Disney.

Of course I didn’t say that. I was the one guilty of “the job thing,” but I encouraged her nevertheless that she should pursue the Disney job if it was really something that she wanted. She took the job, starting out as a secretary, and she seemed very happy there. Things had already gotten pretty bad for us, financially, and the damage was pretty much done. The writing was on the wall. Or any other metaphor you would care to use. We ended up losing the house in the market crash that year. It was a bad year in a lot of ways, especially as Alex had been bullied at his new school, the school that I had to pick him up from every day. We were happy to have a reason to leave that area, but I was worried about what was happening with Alex at school, and of course I was not happy at work. The stress was unreal.

The Job Thing, Part Two

We found a house to rent in a different city in the area outside of Orlando, and for the first time in a while, things were getting better. My work life was still awful; the stress of this job was off the charts, and I was fired (for the first time in my life) for doing what I’d been instructed to do, though I had managed to find another job the morning they terminated me. This new job would also be a terrible match for my skillset, and my schedule, and my personality, but other than that it was great. We had wonderful neighbors for really the first time, and Alex had started to take karate classes to build up his self-esteem and his ability to defend himself from bullies. I was working what amounted to second shift, which meant I would go in late in the afternoon and finish a little after midnight; this is totally untrue, however, as I was the supervisor for both dock workers and our truck drivers, so I would have calls coming in all night. I was a zombie. I would come home, eat something, take phone calls, watch a movie, and finally crawl into bed anytime from two until seven in the morning. I got up in the morning, woke and fed Alex, made him a lunch, and saw him off to school. I would then go back to bed until two or so, at which time the whole thing would start again. Alex and I would shoot pucks out back, and then my boss eventually decided I should come in earlier, so I could no longer see Alex in the afternoons.

At this stage of the game, I was only really seeing my wife on the weekends. Since I worked Friday night, and often until very early in the morning, we really only had part of Saturday and Sunday. We tried to do things as a family, but it was often just a trip to Disney World, which had gotten very, very old. (I have a phobia or some kind of problem with crowds, so I was not allowed to come if they were going to the Magic Kingdom, a park which plays particular havoc with my phobia. They didn’t have a good time when I went there with them, according to my wife.) My mother passed away around this time, and I went to the funeral in Michigan…by myself. We were in bad shape, financially, and could only afford one plane ticket. My family offered to pay for tickets for Jen and Alex so they could attend the funeral, but Jen said she didn’t think it was a good idea to pull Alex out of school for so long. (This is the same woman who would let him stay home with a sniffle after I had just told him that he had to go to school anyway, that we sometimes had to work in life, even if we had a cold. One of those pesky value differences in child-rearing that we had never talked about before we were married.) So my wife and my son wouldn’t be at the funeral of my mother; I had to go alone. That was really hard.

Finally, I found a position as a sales person with a staffing company, finding temporary jobs for commercial truck drivers. Anyone that knows me is shaking their head at this point, sighing heavily at yet another terrible option. I was fired for the second time in my life, but found a lifeline at the last possible moment with a trucking company that was moving its business to New York; it turned into a real job somehow, and I was suddenly making more money than I ever had. But it was so not worth the stress, especially as my co-worker was secretly out to have me replaced with a friend of hers. I started doing searches online for painless ways to commit suicide. (Just so you’re aware, there really aren’t any. Some might be less painful, but pain is involved in some form with any of them.) After a trip to Michigan and a long heart-to-heart with my sister the minister, I realized that the problem was that I needed to find meaningful work. When I returned from that trip, I started reworking my resume, which was a good thing. After being fired for the third (and final) time of my life, I finally acknowledged that I was depressed and had been for what turned out to be some fifteen years.

The Job Thing, Part Three

I got a recommendation for a therapist from a friend of mine, and I was prescribed an anti-depressant; for the first time in years, the sun came out. I felt like singing! I was unemployed, contemplating a total career change, and I was happy, for a while anyway. It was necessary to file and begin collecting unemployment compensation, which I had never done before; I never thought a healthy man should accept “handouts” like that, but I did so gladly. Waking up happily every day, I took Alex to school, and then searched for jobs all day via various sources, finally finding one that was tailor-made for me: high school Theatre teacher. And just like that, the “job thing” was no more. There were growing pains to get past, of course, but everything was finally good. Well, the money wasn’t, so that was still an issue. Actually, many things were still an issue; I kept waiting to see if the marriage would get any better, but now that everything else was finally working, I began to see that our marriage was not good.

Even though it might seem like I’m laying all the blame on Jen, I’m really not. We just weren’t good for each other. She didn’t like me. I guess she loved me, but I’m not even sure that that was true anymore. It was clear that she did not like me, however, and that began to be a real problem. The happier I got in my head and in my work, the more I could see how unhappy we were in our marriage. I decided to give it one more year, since I had been depressed for so long. If we couldn’t make it work by February of 2015, I would leave the marriage and go it on my own.

We started fighting more and things deteriorated even further. Alex was playing hockey by this time, so we were doing that as a family, but virtually everything else was done alone. If I wanted to watch a movie or listen to music, I was asked to put my headphones on—no one wanted to be subjected to what I was watching. Alex wanted us to try counseling, but I think I was done. I had had issues with unfaithfulness, and Jen found out about it, telling me she wanted me out of the house. I had hoped that it would be easier on Alex as a teenager than it would have as a younger child, but that hope was misplaced. It was devastating to our relationship. I moved out, continued to work as a teacher, but I didn’t know how to reconnect with Alex. He found out why Jen and I had finally split up, and he was holding me accountable for everything.

Mending the Fences

Even though our relationship was troubled, I eventually tried to take Alex to dinner once a week. I know now that I should have tried harder and sooner, as much of the damage was done by the time we began our weekly dinners. I certainly wasn’t blameless, but I also don’t think anyone stuck up for me along the way. All of my dirty laundry was aired in front our son, and it was clear that someone was feeding him a little misinformation, as he was bringing up things that had not happened the way he had been told. I have no issue being taken to task for the things I did that were wrong—and there were many of them—but it’s clear that no one brought up any of the good stuff I did, or remembered any of the good times we had.

One of the things that has complicated the entire process is that Alex has a tendency to decide something in the heat of the moment, and nothing—but nothing—can change his mind once that has happened. He is bringing up things that did not go down the way that he says they did, and holding me accountable for things that never took place. The way that he talks, I have been drunk and abusive his entire life; to hear him tell it, the reason I quit acting is because I was too drunk to go to an audition. Where did he get that? That is clearly not something he saw himself, as I quit acting in 2001, when he was two years old. Yes, I’ve been drunk. I’ve been drunk recently, several times. I’m loud, as I’ve already discussed. As an ACA, I don’t fight fair—I never learned how, so I can be petulant and aggressive in tone and passive-aggressive in behavior, but in no way could anyone say that I am abusive. I’d hurt myself before I’d hurt anyone else—ANYONE else. When something is my fault, I’ve blamed myself; hell, I have often blamed myself for something for which someone else was responsible.

On Father’s Day last year, my son made it clear he wants nothing to do with me. On Father’s Day. While many will curse me for it, I am kind of past trying. If he doesn’t want me to be his dad, then I guess I won’t be his dad. You can’t change the chemistry, but you can cut the person out of your life if they are not the father figure you want. I won’t lie, it hurts; it hurts a lot. I can’t tell you how much it hurts to feel like you’re willing to accept your part in the way things went, but no one wants to be on your side, even if they know you. That’s where I’m at right now, though. I haven’t seen or spoken to my son in several years. We’ve only connected via text messages, even during a global pandemic, but now I’m blocked from even that; just emailing him to make sure he’s OK is met with hostility. The experience of my work history has absolutely destroyed any desire to speak on the phone, but even the few times I’ve tried to call him have gone straight to voicemail.

The Little Lyin’ Man

The reason I’m talking about this is that I received a text message (first in a year!) from him, detailing my faults, the evils I have perpetrated over the years. He makes me sound like Daddy Dearest. Do I sound that bad to you? If so, I need someone to tell me why. Why would he place blame on me for things I haven’t done? Why would he lay all these wrongs on me for things that never happened? He lied. He’s a little lying man. The problem is that he doesn’t know he’s lying; he’s only repeating the things he’s been told by…someone. (I wonder who it was? Hmmmm….) The way things are sometimes phrased in his rebukes and rejections of me make it clear that the statements didn’t originate with him. For instance, he told me that the reason I left acting was because I’d been drunk and missed an audition. That never happened. I had been hungover for one or two, but that was neither the reason I didn’t get those jobs nor caused me to miss the audition; thinking back, I believe I won the biggest movie role I ever had when I auditioned with a hangover. So, not the reason I quit—does he think I was forced to give it up because of my drinking? Who knows?—and no impact on whether or not I found success. Little…Lyin’…Man.

I’ve gotten little support from anyone over the past years; trust me, I “’rate myself and rake myself” plenty, but what really hurts is that the people who supposedly love me best have been, well, cool toward me. (They’ve been pretty reserved toward my wife Maureen, but that’s a story for another day.) It’s hard to take sometimes, but at least I’m finally happy. I’m with a wonderful woman who supports me, takes care of me…who likes me, at last. I’d like to have others on my side, but this looks like it for a while. I hope that someday my son will see me as I am, and as I was, but for now, I just wanted someone to know my side of it. I’m not a bad guy; I’m really not. If it helps anyone to get past it and move on, I am totally willing to admit that “I really fucked things up this time.”

But is it going to be a life sentence? It was eight years ago. I’m sincerely trying to be what is in my heart. Makes me wonder if the song is about him or about me. That’s part of the question as well, as I sit here and try to determine the best way to deal with it all. I know it’s a problem that I created, or at the very least helped to create. It’s not all my fault, though, and yet I’m tried and convicted in the court of public or familial opinion without ever being given the chance to stand up and tell my side of the story. If you read it, it must be true. I’ve been told that to work this out on social media is not the best or smartest thing to do, but honestly, I never talk to anyone outside of social media! If I don’t talk about it on my blog, which is uploaded to Facebook and Twitter at the same moment that I hit “publish,” where am I supposed to talk about it? We’ve lived up here for three years and have had a grand total of seven visits, two of whom were the ex-boyfriend of my wife. No one wants to talk about it with me. People chat with Alex or even Jen on social media posts—I used to be able to see their comments!—but few engage with me. I shouldn’t talk about it on social media or anywhere else, I guess. Guess it just goes to prove one thing: people don’t listen to me as much as I think they do. Robert Foster strikes again.