Confessions Revisited: Looking Backward From The Forward
Loss can be defined in so many ways.
But no matter what hits you or how it shapes the aftermath, the common denominator is the hole it leaves in your soul. It takes a part of you by the neck and recklessly tosses it into the unknown, leaving you scratching for ways to fill this new void that wasn't there a breath ago.
I'm writing with a heavy heart and a busy head today, so forgive me if I fail to hit the mark. This is my way of attempting to fill the said void, as it always has been. I'm feeling neither crafty nor poetic ... I just need to write, share, connect to something, and hopefully do it effectively enough to open the door for someone to relate on a deeper level.
So here I am.
About eleven or twelve years ago, I felt very lost and needed to make sense of where I was and how I got there. My way of doing that was sitting down and retracing each step of my journey as far back as my overactive mind would allow. Eleven extremely cathartic months later, I hit the save button on a completed memoir of my path to that point.
While I was very proud of myself for buckling down and staying the course long enough to hammer this thing out, I thought twice about my initial plans to publish it. It was a very real story that left no stone unturned, you see.
It was too real, though. I had accomplished my goal of honesty and forthcomingness, but much of the finished product was cringy to me.
It's not that it wasn't well written, because it certainly was and I was pleased with the craftsmanship. The issue was that it contained too much dirt that others probably shouldn't have known about me. Because I didn't want all this time, work, and brainpower to go to waste (as I saw it), I did share it with some family members and about forty or fifty people via email who were interested in reading it.
The feedback was quite encouraging from most, although I know a lot of what I wrote was extremely difficult for some to digest. I did not hold back ... I let it roll.
Unfortunately, I think it hurt some hearts that got in the path as it rolled. All these years later and lessons learned, I regret that the most. I never used real names, because I think doing so is highly irresponsible and drags people into the public eye where they have no say over how they are portrayed. It's cruel, actually.
But when it came to myself, I went all out - every misstep, every misfortune, every victory, every success, every loss, and every method of coping ... some good, some bad, and some ugly.
Very ugly.
Looking back, I'm glad I never published it for consumption at large. It's bad enough that there may be copies still floating around out there that could come back to hang me by the hand of some jealous jackass with a simpleton's mindset.
But whatever, I guess. Bring it. I will survive, and I just might stomp a goofy ass into the ground in the process.
I'm kidding ... that Billy Badass bullshit is juvenile, boring, pointless, and does not apply here. I'm just emotional, and anger definitely has its place on that wheel. Forgive me for allowing my defensive, immature inner child to momentarily take center stage and sing off-key.
I'm all better now. Back to the land of rationality and love-speak where everyone knows that the bird is the word.
Hugs and high-fives all around ...
I thought that my book was lost due to a computer issue, but I was able to be resourceful enough to recently recover it from an old laptop I thought had died many moons ago.
I tried to read it, hoping I could find sections to share in this forum. But time and time again, my burning nerves wouldn't allow me to continue. It was entirely too personal, and after the trip I've been on lately, I felt somewhat depressed over that story I told as a whole while being maybe a little overprotective of myself these days.
What's that they say about leaving sleeping dogs lie? Something like, don't wake them up or they will rip your nuts off? Or your lady parts, if you don't happen to have nuts?
Or that saying about not poking the bears - they might steal your ham sammich and baked beans.
I will say this, though. Writing that book saved my life through revelations aplenty. I learned so much about myself in the process, and I only forgot about half of it since immortalizing those thoughts within the circuitry of my trusty old computer.
The section below is the final wrapup of that story; the ultimate lesson learned about the meaning of every trial, tribulation, challenge, and triumph. I am not only comfortable sharing it, I feel I need to.
Because not only did I need a reminder myself, but I also think it could help someone through something vile, or just reaffirm a positive mindset to make sense of the senseless. This is exactly what I needed.
I only wish I could have shared it with a troubled soul who is no longer around to realize it as of a few crazy days ago. I feel a sense of purpose in helping others, and I couldn't reach him despite trying. I will never let that happen again as long as I can help it.
I promise.
So here it is. If you are struggling, please reach out to someone. If you know someone who is having a hard time, please reach out to them. Nobody knows what's really going on inside of another person. A meaningful connection can make all the difference, if even for a moment.
Because life is but a series of moments with no precise number in the tank.
They all count tremendously.
From my current self as well as my former that wrote the following message many years ago, we both wish you well and peace while looking backward from the forward.
Read on ...
Confessions And The Death Of Ego
As I conclude my journey, I accept complete responsibility for the decisions I have made throughout my life, even as misguided as some of them happened to be.
Having said that ...
I am a highly sensitive and extremely perceptive individual, perhaps a bit too much for my own good. My lack of trust for much of humanity has left me isolated. Meanwhile, there is also a longing in me to feel connected to people, which certainly causes a heightened state of conflict.
That, I have learned, is par for the course when it comes to me, for I am a walking contradiction ... an exception to more rules than should be possible. I am anti-love, anti-hate, anti-whore, anti- puritan, anti-commercial, anti-drug, anti-sober, anti-sex, anti-abstinence, anti-negative, anti- positive, anti-this, and anti-that.
And let’s not leave out anti-intellectual, anti-ignorance, anti- leader, anti-follower, anti-saint, anti-sinner, anti-God, anti-Satan, anti-social, anti-loner, anti-me, and anti-you. I am all of the above and then some.
Any questions?
There have been periods of time when I have considered myself untouchable. However, time has taught me my lessons, and I now fully grasp that I am anything but. Time is a thief, a bandit, and, at times, a clown. It has stripped me down to nothing as the years have passed.
Good friends are few and far between, and some edification I have learned about human nature is unsettling at best. Whatever the case may be, this ride has been an incredibly strange, peculiarly sobering journey in which karma has served to tax me tenfold for every joy I have ever known.
My intentions have always been good, but good intentions alone are not nearly enough to get you by. Not in this lifetime. In this world, it takes careful planning from the time we are born until we take our last breath – from the cradle to the fucking grave.
But sometimes plans change, requiring adaptability and perseverance beyond anything we could ever consciously prepare for. Jobs are lost, families are broken, people die, friends become separated and life rolls on without concern or discrimination.
Nobody is immune to setbacks or misfortunes.
The trick is to find a balance among our blessings and shortcomings while reaping peace somewhere between the lines. Life is not the fairy-tale we all envision at some point along the way. It is dirty and unfair at times, but can also be more beautiful than mere words alone can express.
When I spoke of regret, there is one I definitely left out.
I, truthfully and wholeheartedly, do regret just how much of my life I spent hoping and praying it would end. One glaring fact which has rung consistently as I have told my story is that there was so much pain involved throughout so many years. Even the good times were laced with some sort of discomfort, preventing me from really enjoying anything that didn’t involve a microphone and a stage.
However, with this pain comes an invaluable truth – searching for the meaning of life is an arduous task that can separate a person from reality, should one become too absorbed in the endless questions concerning our own existence.
Through the emancipation of existential burdens such as reason and purpose, life is viewed in its most primal form, thereby presenting itself most accessible. Why do we always search for the reasons as to why things occur? Why isn’t it just as feasible that life is a succession of randomness and coincidence without a pre-existing purpose or plan?
Why must there be a rhyme to all reason?
After years of driving myself to the edge of madness in the pursuit of such rationale, I have come to the conclusion that it is all in vain. Life just happens ... it is coincidence that certain things happen and people come into our lives. The reasoning is just our way of finding comfort through justification. We sleep better at night thinking there is some master plan out there for us and that we have a higher calling.
Actually, we are merely a temporary condition of the universe, primed for extinction like all things prehistoric. So why, then, do we feel like our own private worlds are so big when, in fact, each of us is so very small in the big picture?
Because our egos insist ...
Our egos insist we are so much more than we are; that life is a game, and those who garner the most wealth or notoriety somehow win in the end. It is the ego that inflates our false sense of confidence, then drops us to our knees in times of loss and struggle. What are people going to think of me? What will they say? Why am I such a failure?
These are all unnecessary queries of the ego, destroying us ... tainting the thrill of simply being alive.
The trick is to allow life to flow through you enough to taste its delicacy and to be one with the flow of our own energies, no matter what anybody else has to say about it. To look at life as a random string of events is much more cohesive to my own existence because so many things have happened to me which appeared to have no principle.
I always thought a big mystery was solved when a revelation appeared to me so vividly. But that was the coincidence at play.
Things just happen; some good, some bad. People fall into each others’ lives; some relationships are fulfilling, while others are truly disastrous. Our reactions are what guide us to our destinations, and our feedback is completely based on our perceptions.
It all comes back to perception, does it not?
That’s not to say life is meaningless by any means, because life really is a gift. You could choose any number of theories as to how we got here, be they religious, scientific, or a solid foundation of both ... whichever combination you find most comfortable and are able to make sense out of.
But the only certainty in life is that it will someday end. And until evidence of an afterlife is discovered, I must assume this is it, the only chance to experience life for everything it was meant to be.
As long as I can be with those closest to me, as long as there are trees, mountains, and water, as long as I can still watch the sun set on a gorgeous summer evening and color the sky with radiance, I will know I am still alive. These are the gifts – the true meanings of life.
Just keep breathing until your final breath escapes you.
When that time comes, will it really matter what happened to you as a child, how much money you had, or how publicly renowned you were for whatever reason? No, it will not. What will matter is the positive impact you had on those closest to you – or even perfect strangers, for that matter - and the legacy you left in the hearts and minds of the loved ones who are left to cherish the memories.
That is how the spirit lives on forever ...that is how we never die.
Through it all, I know I am a survivor, and my perceptions can be angled toward a more peaceful mind.
Through it all, I know there is good in the world, and life is much more valuable than all of my petty troubles.
Through it all, I know I was meant to enjoy all of this. We all were ...
Just sit and watch a sunset with your favorite song sometime if you have never slowed down long enough to take that trip.
Hopefully, you’ll see what I mean.
