I Am Love 2021 I am Loneliness without end without my Love by Gary Rinsem
This will be the definitive me, if I can finally do it. It will make me very happy to complete this journal after at least a hundred failures in 26 years. 4-7-2021
I did it. I'm not going to delete another failed attempt. I'd like it shorter, but I'm happy with the result. I finally found a way to write it, and all it took was a broken hip. Part 1) Caesar
When I was young I was witness to three extreme acts of abuse against three girls. My whole life I have remembered those girls. My empathy for them has always been sky high. The third girl is the one I need to tell about.
Without invitation I stepped into the activities of a group of kids two years younger. It was two boys I knew casually and three or more girls I didn't recognize. My presence in the group was ignored.
One of the boys was charged with performing oral sex on one of the girls. It went terribly wrong. The girl had a problem with feminine odor. Between retching and spewing bile, the boy kept muttering the word "anchovies." Bullying continued, but slowed when they decided a Caesar salad was the only place anchovies are used. Through controlled sobbing, the girl was named Caesar.
My empathy for Caesar has never diminished since 1973. I often think of her and worry that she was deeply effected by the incident.
It took on new meaning in 2003, with the possibility that witnessing the event had sealed my fate for life. Part 2) First love
In a dark cafeteria from 40' away, I fell instantly and madly in love with a girl I knew nothing about. I've spent 45 years trying to understand why. Last we saw each other was 1979, yet she is still the center of my life. I miss her immeasurably. Part 3) Love
We had three unbelievable years together, but looking back I expect she was simply too young. When we fell in love she was newly 14 to my nearly 17.
Our fist time taught me the difference between sex and making love. They are activities worlds apart. I've had sex with a vast number of women, but I've only made love with ten. Making love is not about pleasure, it's about a deeper connection with your partner(s). Part 4) Darkness
Darkness began in an instant with words in a phone call. The memory is clear 43 years later. Nothing was said before the words "I want to break up." As I write this, as I calculate the number of years, I simply can't believe it's only been 43. The pain of missing her seems ten times as many years.
In that instant my mind shut down, my life ended as it began in the cafeteria less than three years earlier.
For over four years I wandered, lost as a person can be. I did many things and gave the impression of living, but my mind was locked in a deep dark closet. I had no thoughts of the past or future. No thoughts of love, no memory of the girls I'd known. I even forgot their names during Darkness. My life was buried, inaccessible to me. Part 5) New Life
At nearly 24 years I was an old man beginning Navy boot camp. It's a well established program intended to be a psychological challenge for 18 year old high school boys. The program simply didn't apply to me. There was no challenge to it. My mind went to sleep for a few days while my body ran the course of the program.
I was soon too bored for description. My mind opened up. I spent 20 hours a day examining my lost love. Over and over I relived every tiny memory of us. Time after time I thought through all of our last contacts, searching for anything I could have done differently. There were thousands of options which analysis proved would have saved our love.
The mind works very fast at times and these were the times for it. It only took moments to thoroughly analyze my love. It was done at least 100 times a day for several weeks. There was nothing else to think about.
After thousands of analysis cycles, I was done. I knew everywhere I went wrong and knew the exact cause of hundreds of failures. The cause is simple. I didn't get a Junior or Senior year of High School. There was confusion in my head always, but it overwhelmed when High School was suddenly over.
At the beginning of Junior year, I restarted Freshman year with her and her friends. It continued through my Senior year, living her Sophomore year. There were 33 kids I "broke up with" the instant I fell in love. Only one friendship survived. She hated him and her hatred was deserved. I only associated with kids two years younger.
There was no reason for discussion among her (our) friends concerning the end of school, they were two years away from it. I was never asked "What are you going to do after high school?" The thought of starting an adult life was absolute shock to me. My mind went from teenage confusion to pure chaos.
That's the reason for the loss of my first love. The mental chaos caused by the unexpected end of school, left me unable to function in our relationship. I neglected her. Months passed as I searched for the chance at a career. I searched for a housing solution. I thought only of her and a place we could be together, but I didn't see her often enough.
Darkness faded away in an instant. For the second half of Boot Camp my mind kept analyzing situations, but not the events from my lost love. That was permanently resolved even though she was still the absolute center of my existence. She is still there today. 1975 - 2021 Part 6) Brighter
I had the second half of Boot Camp with a blank mind. To a less extreme degree, I analyzed all the rest of my life. I wrote this in a journal: In order of significance, Who am I?
1) I am Love 2) I am Loneliness without end without my Love 3) I am Fear 4) I am Confusion, but it is quickly clearing 5) I am Comprehension like few people know 6) I am Intelligence far above average
1 & 2 are obvious in this context, 3 is the result of emotional abuse in life. Concerning 4, there was always raging confusion in my mind. Loss of Love turned it to sheer chaos. Confusion and chaos were gone by the end of boot camp.
Number 5 refers to a moment at ten years old. I had the grand epiphany. In an instant I saw the universe as a whole. That comprehension has been with me ever since, but it was boot camp boredom that finally put it in perspective. Prior, it was a warm fuzzy I couldn't verbalize. I was soon to infect 22 women with "Comprehension."
Number 6 was proven beyond my imagination, years later in testing during a job hiring process. I turned down the position because it was in San Diego and required almost constant travel.
At Boot Camp graduation I stood in formation during bizarre proceedings, but I couldn't prevent myself from continually breaking the ordered positions, to turn my face up and stare at the sky. Just days before, comprehension had risen to the foreground of my existence, competing even with love. The sky is the epitome of comprehension.
Part 7) Amazing
The first day out of Boot Camp I fell seriously in love again. She can only be described as indescribable. It took innumerable small events to culminate in our meeting. We were madly in love, almost instantly.
Two months was amazing, but that is all we got. On the night we met we connected more deeply than I had imagined possible. We were separated by Navy orders for me, and unable to find each other due to a bad decision by her. 21 years later I finally found her. We cried on the phone together for six hours.
Loss of my second love hadn't truly sank in when my third and fourth loves latched onto me. In most ways they were identical, two of a kind. They were also diametrical opposites in their core beings. Nothing alike. We three were all very similar and all very different.
I knew bisexual women, but my new exciting loves were new to girls. They had many hurdles to jump and a closet door the Navy forced us to hide behind. I infected them with Comprehension on the day we fell in love. With three of us discussing it, what I'd simply thought of as "Comprehension," was soon titled "The Universe" because it includes all there is.
The military actively hunted homosexuality. There were also strict rules forbidding heterosexual fraternization between shipmates. We had to take extreme measures to be safe. We weren't good enough at hiding. We were soon discovered.
To our great fortune, discovery was by a like minded girl-couple who introduced us to a close group of women from our ship.
It was, of course, an extremely secretive group. There were 20 women from our ship, including three couples. It soon became ten couples.
Calling themselves "The Silent Crew," one of our new confidants soon began calling me Jack. It was a joke among the group, everyone laughed, but nobody would tell us the joke. It was finally revealed that being around me was like having a jackhammer pounding her brain. She claimed it was an intellectual "Delight." The Universe was named "Delight." Eight of them are still important to me. All twenty are loved and missed even though 12 have been missing for over 30 years.
Part 8) Beauty
I had two loves lost and two loves held. Life was bittersweet and required reexamination of norms to reconcile concurrent loves in love with each other. Within a few weeks, we three had studied sources ranging from library and old book stores, to personals ads and porn. We learned that Equal Triples were rare with absolutely zero social understanding. We were on our own to define us. It wasn't difficult with the acceptance that we loved each other beyond words to define.
It was The Crew against the world. We had an unbreakable bond and shared the depths of our minds. We also shared activities in every port.
Part 9) Memory
In December 2003 I began an eight month period of incredible memory function. Random memories flooded my mind, but they were extraordinarily vivid and detailed. Many memories included details I believed were too tiny to be accurately remembered. I thought they couldn't be real, but they gave many chances at confirmation. For instance, one memory included the number on a kid's house from about 1968. I went to the house and found the same unusual house numbers were still on the wall exactly where the memory showed them. I verified numerous memories.
One of the shortest and most vivid memories flashed through my mind on December 15th 2003. The last contact with my second love was a letter. I knew her only by the last name she adopted as a teenager, when she ran away from home. The letter I soon lost, was signed with her real name. I read her name clearly in the image of the letter in a vivid memory. Instantly found on the internet, we cried together for six hours on the phone. As much in Love as we'd been 21 years earlier. As much in Love with her as I am another 17 years past.
Hundreds of vivid memories followed over the next weeks. All were happy or friendly or special moments in time. I went to the locations and relived as many as I could, even driving hours and hiking through the forest. Always, on scene the memory was even more detailed, more fresh and more vivid. One memory had shown numerous details near Woods Canyon Lake. Nothing had changed in the forest.
I experienced three troubling memories over the next several months, among hundreds of vivid memories. They involved the moments in which I'd fallen in Love.
My second love had hard times growing up on the street. The vivid memory was all about the horrors suffered, beatings and rape and forced drug use. I didn't realize until reliving the moment, that this was when I fell in love with her.
A vivid memory proved to me that I fell in Love with my third and fourth Loves in much the same way, during hours of discussing the hardships ahead of them.
I finally understood that empathy was the cause of three out of four of my life's deep Love.
Do you remember Caesar from Part 1? There was a reason for writing about her. One of the first vivid memories put my first Love in the role of Caesar. That event happened two years before we met. I never even flashed on the thought that she was Caesar. I now ignored the possibility as far too unlikely. Months later after finding the majority of these memories to be accurate, I began evaluating a new possibility in my Love for her.
Part 10) How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. There is only one and it is empathy.
What is the source of Love in me?
If the memory placing my first Love in the role of Caesar is correct, then it answers the question at the center of my existence. "Why did I fall in love at first sight from 40' away without even seeing her face?" Obviously, subconsciously I recognized her as Caesar and extreme empathy ruled that instant in time.
I'm certain some of those memories could not have been accurate, my mind fabricated parts of them. The detailed memory of Caesar is no doubt accurate, but the small part of it placing my Love in the role, could easily be a fabrication of my mind.
Since 1975, vast amounts of my energy have been devoted to the question of why she rules my world. I Love her. I miss her. I need her. Always.
Since 2003 I've had a possible answer.
I need it confirmed.
Is Tami Caesar?
Tami and Cindy are the only two people who can resolve this for me. Finally knowing the reason for the entire course of my life, is of supreme importance to me. And... BTW Tami, I love you dearly and I ALWAYS have.
