I spent some more time perusing the JBB Journal archives and found this gem from the last year of my marriage, just a few months before the shit hit the fan…

Loneliness

1:46 A.M. Much on my mind.

I feel lonely. An odd feeling. Or perhaps a feeling that I haven’t paid much attention to in the past. My wife sleeps in the next room and I am lonely. I remember Sting once saying that he felt lonely, that there was no bridging the gap–even when he made love to his wife (ex-wife). This sense of isolation is my humanness, my refusing to let go of something, of breaking down the barrier, of opening myself up to my other, my wife or perhaps my God. Is this the point where I wandered off the path, the Way? Refusing to let go.

Something in my nature refuses to let go of my miserable bit of happiness—my security blanket, though I’ve been promised riches beyond my wildest dreams. I’ve been let down before. I’ve been misunderstood and hurt and neglected and unloved. The worst thing is to be unloved. Even in my Christianity I was not whole within myself. Something I yet lacked. But I proved unwilling to sell all. What was there that I needed to sell? I owned nothing, but I was not free. I sought nothing and nothing was my reward. “Greater is He who lives in you than he who lives in the world.” I knew very little of this greatness. “God help me,” I prayed. But God knew that I prayed with one eye opened and only one hand folded; as feable as the sound of one hand clapping.

So my wife sleeps in the next room and I masturbate in this one. Little wonder I am an isolated infant who only knows a single painful tune. The infant sings this tune when he is wet. He sings this tune when he is hungry. He sings this tune when consciousness is fleeing from him and he doesn’t understand why. We are all infants singing one tune and our mother is not in the room to soothe us. She has gone away and left older brothers and sisters to watch us. Watch us they do, but we are not satisfied. Neither are they, they have forgotten what it is they are here for; And we never knew. We just went on crying. Crying. I am alone. And even though I long to crawl in bed with my wife and feel her near me, her warm body, her acknowledging embrace, I fear the silence that will separate us and the darkness that bids our eyes to sleep. I am alone. God help me. JBB (February 11, 1986)