Finding a New World

Married for thirty-two years and widowed for eight for a total of forty years makes me the newest kid on the social interaction block. Facebook and Instagram have been my first two social media accounts. Just recently found out that I was going a bit too fast for the comfort of someone I felt a genuine liking to, she kind of likes me also. But that is all and wants us to be ‘just friends’. The more I reach out the less she responds. I guess this is part of the new way things are handled today. You are supposed to get it that if they don’t answer, it means they are not that into you and to leave it at that.

Funny, you do the right thing training and becoming fit for combat to keep yourself and others alive. You even become one of the few, the proud, a Marine. Combat ready and physically fit to go to war. You get lucky and have some women roommates who take you under their wings and teach you to be a human and a gentleman again. You accidentally find your best friend forever and marry her. Live a wonderful life together, raise a beautiful daughter and then have the rug pulled out from underneath you, by God taking her away. Eight years after she’s gone, finally find the courage to grieve for her and discover that there are others you can care for. But don’t overdo it. It just pushes them away more.

I am in ‘time out’ with this person for as long as she feels necessary. Finally understanding and respecting her wishes. Deserve what I am receiving because how else to learn how to play well with others. It took a good while to know and feel like an idiot. Needed to look into the mirror, not pretty, and do the math about age, simply too old for her. Actually, too old for anyone anymore. Good for saying ‘hi’ to and interacting socially around others, but not to be alone with. Preference for me would be to live alone. Alone four years before marriage, on the road alone through a third of marriage and alone now eight years and counting after marriage.

Technically living with family under the same roof but mostly alone 95% of the time. Seldom included in activities and not wanting to engage in mine. So yes, alone. Being gone from the Hawaiian Islands gives a feeling like on an island of loneliness not to be shared. The only real interaction is when servers ask if I need anything. No one is asking how things are going in my life or sharing things in my life. Would like to leave this island of the east coast and return home to my Hawaii. Thought I found friends and a new family only to realize that I am an enigma to this east coast culture. I need to return to the culture I was raised in and belong to. Eighteen months may seem a lifetime to have to wait to go home. It will be over in a blink of an eye for one so old as myself. It is just a moment in time.

Soon the sun, surf, sand, and bountiful ocean will once again have me in its wonderful embrace. I will find my island Ohana and no longer be alone. I will share dinners with friends and Ohana. I will fish, snorkel, hunt and play with Ohana. I will meet and welcome strangers to the islands to enjoy paradise as long as they like. For I will be home and will stay until the day I die. I look forward to greeting you with Aloha to my island home someday.