Please continue to keep sharing this website with your friends and family and help me share this story with people that could benefit from knowing they aren’t alone. Please consider helping aclottedjourney.com also, see below for details on that! Happy happy 2022 and welcome to a brand new year of A Clotted Journey, enjoy Part 22, Mowgli and Alex: the Bachelors of Byron! ALSO go and check out the first episode of the brand new podcast brought to you by aclottedjourney.com, CATALYST CORNER!

Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage and I promise you something GREAT will come of it.

Benjamin Mee (We Bought a Zoo)

I had built this up in my had for such a long time, eventually I would take Megan on this date and she would just fall for me and that would be that. Unfortunately, that is definitely not how it went, at first anyway. She got me that coffee and, in my head, I was like, “damn right you better pay for my coffee now that my heart is broken” but on my face I expressed something that had finally been developed over the tribulations of life. This expression that I am talking about was confidence, not the real stuff at first, but the “fake-it-til-you-make-it” confidence. I know that you all may not agree with me, but I truly do believe and have always believed that you will always miss the shots you don’t take. Although Megan didn’t fall head-over-heels for me during our date, I still was on a date with Megan Pierre and that was something to be proud of. All it took was that 30 seconds of courage and here I was getting turned down by a girl of my dreams. Wow life was coming along.

Although I could have taken this opportunity to show her how sad I was I wanted to try something different that I hadn’t been very good at until I learned about the clot that was now my travel companion for life in my spleen. I wanted to have confidence because of how fragile life was. I wanted to have confidence because the choices we make are special, no one ever knows when the last choice you make will be. I wanted fake-it-til-I-made-it. I wanted to do exactly that and, having seen the recent success in my life with exploring the various hobbies I had it was even easier to do. I smiled and kept having an engaging conversation with this beautiful woman.

The walk back to work with her was definitely interesting. We both were a bit caught off guard, I think. For myself I can say that I was still mentally shaken from being turned down and hadn’t been away from her yet to process my feelings in my head, but I was still giving off the persona of confidence. For her, I think that she started to have a thought that it was definitely weird that this guy didn’t seem to be completely destroyed when she turned him down. I don’t know how exactly accurate my account of this moment is, but this is definitely how my ego saw it. I am sure she would tell you a completely different story and probably just assumed I was distraught, but I won’t believe it.

I will always preach having that courage to show your worth in life. I was at this crossroads within my journey and if I was going to let one rejection after all of this growth tear down how I saw myself (especially to others and how they saw my confidence), the world had another thing coming. I was a confident enough to know that despite having this clot in my body, I still had worth that I knew would be a hot commodity for someone’s husband hunt someday. I knew what I brought to the table and I knew that I was always trying to be better, something that I know is priceless in relationships. At this time it appeared that Megan didn’t find me a gem in the see of gems that there are in this world, and it was alright. I was going to keep moving forward and never show her that I was hurt. I wanted her to know that I was looking for someone to compliment my already full life, not complete a broken clotted life. I wasn’t looking for my other half, I wanted another whole.

After that I took a break from putting myself out there on dates very often, not because I was afraid but just because of all of the things that I was involved in with my free time. Riding motorcycle, playing guitar, running, and weightlifting, playing video games, spending time with family, etc. There wasn’t too much time left for anything else! I didn’t let there be. I wanted to take the time to process the rejection and I am very glad that I did. I saw Megan around work every now and then but to be honest with you we didn’t keep in contact after Operation Coffee. I knew that the best offense on getting the love of my life to find me in this world was focusing on making myself the best I could be with what I had. So even if I was sad a little from being rejected, I chose to continue moving forward. I chose to be a better Alex every single day. Sometimes you can’t always have that confidence but you have to trudge through the brick wall causing you to make the same decisions and having the same reactions in life. Similar decisions and similar reactions to unwanted past results will tend to give you similar downstream results. Learn from your decisions. Learn from your reactions.

A dog is the only thing on this earth that loves you more than he loves himself.

One day shortly after all of this excitement with the failed coffee date, my mom texted me a picture of this dog that someone in Rochester needed to get rid of because of a recent divorce. I told my mom that I definitely didn’t need a dog in my life when I could barely take care of myself, but she told me that this dog looked like my childhood dog growing up, one of my best friends, Amber. Here is my puppy Amber when I was growing up:

Amber had recently passed away and it was almost more than I could handle. I wasn’t home and I didnt see her decline as much as my family did, but the pain that I felt when she left this world was something I dont think Ill ever be able to describe. I told my mom that I would send an email to the lady selling the golden retriever here in Rochester. I explained that I had a golden retriever growing up and that I was an active person that would love to have a partner in crime to go on adventures with. She received about a hundred responses I think from this ad but only set up a time for me to meet this pup one Saturday afternoon. I went over to this ladies house and I instantly fell in love with him, Mowgli. Although it was very sad taking him from the family that he had known his entire life thus far (about 2 years), I was determined to give him the best life that I could. Shaking from excitement and shock/nerves, he jumped into my car ready for his next adventure. Here is Mowgli on his first day home:

As you can imagine being furloughed for certain weeks was one of the best things that could have happened to Mowgli and I when we first became family. Long walks, lots of pets, and lots of adventures during the first weeks of us knowing each other. A lot of people noticed this new addition on to my life, especially one person. Although I had health problems going on in my life and had personal problems to deal with, Mowgli gave me that sense of being needed again. I was his world, and him mine.

So excited to keep telling you my story! Stay tuned to find out what happens next!

Thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart for all of your support!

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