If Confession Is Good For The Soul Then Why Am I Still In Hell?

It’s been about a week since my connection to the internet was severed. My Acer Aspire 9500 laptop finally bit the dust and gave up the ghost. The display had been showing signs of eminent failure. At least ten vertical lines appeared over the last few months that refused to go away. It was no big deal when the first one appeared. It would flicker in and out. And then one day it became a permanent fixture of the screen. A week later, the second line appeared. It came and it went. And then it too became a part of the screen. The process repeated until there were ten. It didn’t bother me, but it got on the misses nerves.

One day I went to the gym. When I got back, my laptop laid in pieces on the kitchen table. The misses tried to surprise me by replacing the screen with the screen from an old Acer that I bought for parts off eBay to keep my machine running. But the two screens were incompatible. One was a WXGA setup and the other was a WSXGA. By the time the difference was discovered, the female connector on the motherboard that attached to the screen was slightly damaged and neither the old screen nor the new screen would fit properly. My machine would boot up, but you couldn’t see jack on the display which makes it hard to use.

We bit the bullet and decided to cut our losses. We went to the Micro Center and bought a new Toshiba laptop to replace the old Acer. I have a lot of memories tied to that tired old machine. I started my blog on that laptop. I was depressed about the loss. It was something else that I had to give up and let go of.

The old machine had copies of every article I ever published as brother peacemaker. I wanted those articles back. Not only that, there was just a lot of stuff on that old eighty gigabyte hard drive. I had to recover the files and restore programs. The Toshiba had huge shoes to fill and I had to make sure I gave it everything it needed to hit the ground running. We took the old drive out of the Acer, bought an external enclosure with a USB link, installed the old drive, and hooked it to the Toshiba as a secondary drive. I could see my old files still existed on the old drive, but actually accessing the files was another matter altogether. The machine still needed a little work.

Like most things hardware related, I left the misses to get it done. She’s my technical support. She felt bad about trying to help me with my old Acer and causing everything to go belly up. She was going to do everything she could to get all of my data back.

The next day I was still out of commission. I went to the gym early in the morning, came home, and had nothing to do. The Toshiba wasn’t ready for prime time. She was meticulously going through the files and folders making sure I could open everything. I left her to do her job.

Later that afternoon I was lying in the bedroom thinking what the hell was happening with my life. Just a few weeks ago I was making my contribution to corporate America like so many other working slobs. That particular day I was nobody wishing I could just get on a laptop, any laptop, to write an article. The controversy surrounding Charlie Rangel was begging for attention. And the Shirley Sherrod case was still fresh. There were political races coming up and some of them were worth a mention. But I had to be patient. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt that much to miss a day or two. I’ve been pretty consistent with posting new articles since I quit my job. I deserved a small break.

I was on the verge of falling asleep when the misses suddenly burst through the bedroom door. She was livid. She asked me, who the hell is this woman you’re taking showers with? The misses found an email that I had long since forgotten all about. It was from a woman that I had an affair with and had only recently ended it. I had been unfaithful to the woman I had chosen to be my life partner. I had cheated on the woman who had born me my beautiful son. My adrenaline should have dumped into my bloodstream and my heart should have started pounding like a big dog.  But it didn’t.

I calmly confessed. Her anger could have been measured on the Richter scale.  And although my world started to crumble all around me, the confession felt good for my soul. The truth shall set you free is the venerable proverb. It may actually have some merit. My name is Peacemaker, and I am a cheater. I thought you should know something about my character flaw. Please excuse me over the next few days while I try to salvage my relationship. I truly hope someone will have mercy on my soul.