I will say that this entry comes with a basic, forewarning that while not everything in my life has been a scene of beauty, I can say that there is beauty. Even in my ugliness.
I mentioned the show RENT to you –
This was a play that became a movie which is significant to me because the reason for my focus on this is because there was a man who lived his entire life and died before seeing his opening day.
Could you imagine?
Now, of course, one could argue that somehow he was around to see everything. One could say that the writer of this play was there in spirit.
Aain, I mention his name because his name is worth another mention.
Maybe he did see what he created.
I suppose that one could say the eyes in heaven never blink, not once.
One could say that that which is of flesh is of flesh and that which is of spirit is of spirit. And the spirit of us can never die.
One could say that the eyes of the spirit can see more clearly than you or I could possibly imagine.
I like to think this way too.
I need to because thinking this way helps me.
I have this fear which is perhaps different but similar to yours or to anyone else’s when age creeps up. I am afraid that I’ll never have the chance to pull off my trick.
Also, I have fears that there are remnants and wreckages from my past that might prohibit or prevent me from performing or perfecting my trick.
Like the story of Moses, which took place since he disobeyed a direct order to save his own face.
(I’m telling you, ego and insecurity is a bitch!)
Moses was never allowed to step foot in the promised land. He was told to talk to a rock; but instead, Moses hit the rock with his staff because he lacked faith and thought that no one would believe him. So – The Big Man said, “Didn’t I tell you what to do?”
And Moses, well – he did what he did and disobeyed The Man upstairs.
Moses was not allowed to enter the promise land but he was allowed to look at it from a far. He was allowed to see it but Moses was never allowed to have his feet touch the soil of a land in which he delivered his people there – yet, he disobeyed a direct order from the High-command – from the Big Guy, himself, and because of this, Moses had to face his punishment.
See what I mean about the remnants of our past?
Moses had the wreckage of his past too yet he’s still pretty important – at least I can say that Moses is pretty important as far as the bible goes. People are still talking about him. That’s for sure. . .
Now, wait –
I am not comparing myself to Moses or to anyone else for that matter. I am not here to live in the past. However, I do acknowledge my past exists and yes, I fully admit to the nature of my wrongs.
To go forward, I actively look to adjust my life to pay for the secrets of my sins. I do this not because there’s a man with a collar standing at an altar. I’m not here to satisfy any priests or rabbis or anything like that –
No, I have come to amend my heart because, in fact, I am guilty of wrongs. I have made mistakes. I have done the wrong things to good people.
Yes, I have done this. And more.
I do not live in the past anymore but there are times when the ghosts from my past come along to remind me where I have been. They creep up to say “Hey, remember me?” And I say yes – intimately.
I think the ghosts like to come back to remind me about what I have done.
Okay. Sure.
I have committed crimes. I have paid for my sins to the best of my ability because due to a need to find inner peace; and as a means to achieve a self-sufficient level of redemption, I continue to amend what I have done because I want to improve and perfect my spirit.
I am not a saint. I’m definitely not a Boy Scout,
not by a longshot.
I can’t say that I always deserve a medal of honor nor can I even declare the right to have a good, old fashioned merit badge.
Then again, it’s like I said.
Ego and insecurity is a bitch!
Mark Twain once wrote – Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.
I get this.
The bitch about this quote is that we know the difference between right and wrong.
There is such a thing – right and wrong, I mean.
We know the difference yet we do what we do sometimes.
But okay, sometimes, I can say that my wrongs have led me to the right places, which is here (with you, of course).
I do not dwell in my past because yesterday is gone.
I don’t live there anymore.
I say this and, at the same time, I have the occasional dreams which resurface at times when my stressors are high.
I have old memories which can be triggered or unlocked.
I can see the faces of people. I can see the person I was – and though I am not that person anymore, I am still accountable for my actions.
I wish I could pay this back – or forward and feel better.
I wish I could correct some of the unchangeable wrongs from my past and redeem or solve my previous life.
I wish I could take away the pain or the sadness or the betrayals.
But I understand that I am where I am now which is far better than I ever gave myself credit for.
I was asked by someone, “Do you ever think that you’ll have paid back enough?
I asked back, “You mean do I ever think that I’ll be square with the house again, so-to-speak?”
They replied, “Yes. When do you think you will have paid back enough to be even?”
In fairness, my answer is that we all owe.
We all have to replace the divots that we leave behind.
I think of it this way: We all have to do time in one way or another.
We all have to serve penance, at least in some kind of fashion.
We all have to pay for what we’ve taken and like Moses, there are times when we’ve disobeyed or been disloyal and due to our ego or the insecurity or due to a personal flaw or character defect of some kind – and maybe we reacted or maybe we said things out of anger – or maybe we were afraid to be laughed at or seen as a joke (or we were too afraid that we are the joke or the joke is on us) or perhaps we hurt someone or maybe we betrayed someone or maybe we betrayed ourselves and self-destructively – maybe we blew up, like a bomb, and we exploded on everyone who loves us.
Maybe we detonated amongst our loved ones and the collateral damage was worse on those we loved than the internal bomb which blew up in our souls and was suppose to kill us – but no, we just hurt everyone else.
There are memories which resurface. There are unfortunate impositions that come to mind and as an item from my past, they hurt me.
There are old pains and old wounds that somehow weep and bleed in colorless blood which means no one else can see them. No one can see the cuts or openness of the wound itself. But that doesn’t mean the wounds aren’t there.
There are so many unseeable things that people go through yet they can smile and you would never know. They can cover up the bruises from their life or they can draw the curtains to their homes, in a figurative sense, and no one would know how empty they are on the inside.
Hence, the saying is true: Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.
I agree with this.
There are remnants from my past and faces of people who I saw at their last breath.
There are moments that resurface and the old me, or the callous and yet cowardly version of myself, is a frightening version because at that time, I allowed my vengeance to take hold.
I allowed my hatred to grab me and my resentments had the ability to lead me.
I was as I thought I was.
I was mean. I was angry.
Vicious and cruel
I was hateful and spiteful and calculative. Selfishly, I was self-centered, self-serving and equally self-destructive because while I was all of these things that I mentioned – I was truthfully none of these things. And I knew it.
I was never tough. I was never a gangster nor should I have been
I was never a trigger man. Yet, with regret, I admit to the old errors of my ways with a humbled heart and a bowing head, held low with humility, I admit to holding a pistol in my hand – more than once. It was only fate that kept me from having the worst regret of all –
So why am I offering this in a journal about bucket lists?
Here’s why . .
My main focus is to remove the blockages and to rid myself of the pitfalls of my yesterdays.
I want to do this because these items are things that keep people like us from reaching our personal greatness.
I used to be filled with hate.
Then I realized if I am capable of this kind of hate then I must be capable of love just the same.
But I was too afraid.
I was too afraid to love.
I was too afraid to be hurt again or made a fool of.
I was too afraid that I would expose myself and be less-than enough or be rejected and seen as worthless or worse, ugly . . .
I have had my share of betrayals. I was called another man’s name at the worst possible moment and yes, I swore I would never allow myself to be that vulnerable again.
I swore that I would never give myself away. I swore that I would never allow someone “in” on me.
I built walls instead of bridges.
This is not just about intimate relationships because intimacy has many levels and to be fair, every relationship we have has its own level of intimacy.
Even the hateful ones.
I exhale . . .
I had a dream last night.
I was being brought through a series of courtrooms and led by faceless people who would not speak yet I knew that I was about to stand trial.
I saw the face of a woman. She was sitting in a chair.
The last time I saw her face was when she was lying dead in the street.
This had nothing to do with me. I was a witness. However at the time, my coldness was at a level in which even my inner demons shook their heads, as if to say, “I think you might be taking this evil thing a bit too far!”
This woman was tiny, young and beautiful. Mayan, perhaps or possibly Incan and perhaps like an Azteca princess, with almond shaped eyes and perfect skin – loving, like a young woman, pure for her love and sweetly awaiting her true love’s kiss. I saw her last and she was perfectly preserved with her last and final facial expression. But her body was badly crushed.
She was whole in my dream and she recognized me somehow. Her face was not angry; but more, she was looking at me as if her face could tell her story.
Why?
This is what I’ve guessed her facial expression was asking me.
She was hit by a car that took off. But the real damage was done because the car that hit the young woman knocked her in the air which she might have survived.
She might have lived had it not been for the limo that hit her when her body returned to the ground and then knocked the young woman to the sky again. This was right before landing, finally and then she was crushed by the tire of a big Ford pick-up.
She was looking at me in my dream. I was heading in to a courtroom to be persecuted and facing a jury that was not of my peers. No, these were the faces of people I had seen in my angry days. They were those who I had harmed.
There was a man who saw me at my angriest. I bore down on him, extending a violent threat, which, at the time, was my intention to be sure that he never forgot me (or my hate for him).
The members of the jury were the results of my younger violence. One them, I suppose, was the leader in all of this – hers was the face I saw on the day that I was placed into custody, handcuffed and taken away.
I have heard people tell me to forgive myself for these things. It’s not that I haven’t.
It’s more the fact that I am who I am and where I am now is fortunate compared to where I might have been.
Although small, my youthful crimes and young adult history is part of my story.
I am whole now. I have my eyes, which aren’t what they used to be. I have ten fingers and ten toes. While my back isn’t so great and as I write to you – I am like an old man, nursing myself through sciatica and the pains that run down the back of my leg. I am a supervisor at work. I have become a respected person in my community. I have rebuilt my life more times than I care to admit.
Even now, I am going through another personal renovation, so-to-speak.
I am rebuilding my life while deconstructing my mental or personal complications.
I am ridding myself of my past and here I am, to tell you this –
There are parts of me and pieces of my history that are hurtful and sad.
Hence, this is my reason for becoming a helpful coach and mental health professional.
I want to strike a line through these things too.
I want to repay and replace the divots in the ground of my old battlefields.
I want to repair the frayed edges of my old-self so that my new-self can evolve without any stoppages or blockages or roadblocks ahead.
I want to be square with the house.
It is selfish of me yet I offer myself in such a way that is truly unselfish because I do believe in penance.
I do believe in repaying for our sins and also, I do not believe this should be easy or painless.
I don’t mind empathy now. I don’t mind the hurt or the disturbances.
I used to though.
I used to “feel” everything, which was frightening to me.
I saw my feelings and emotions as a means of weakness and vulnerability.
I viewed this like an army with an exposed rear-flank, to which an enemy of any kind could come along and throw teargas and smoke me out.
They could defeat me and leave me exposed or weak.
Then what?
I remember being unlikable.
Also, I remember being “undateable” and I remember being told by someone, “I could never be with you because ‘you’ could never take care of me.”
I remember being told that I could never take care of myself.
I was told that I was not good. I have been called a loser. I have been called a bum. It’s been a long time since anyone called me a junkie; however, I have been called this too.
Even recently.
In fact, someone looked to hit me with a low blow and they “questioned” my sobriety just to get their licks in. But I know why. They did this because they knew how much this would hurt.
I cannot fix or control anything beyond my reach.
I know this.
At the same time, I post this as an item for my list today. I post this for now and for each day. Going forward, I want to give back and pay back now.
I want this because while I can appreciate paying for what I owe, I would rather pay up front because after learning about high-interest loans – I would rather pay what I owe now because interest is a bigger bitch than our egos and insecurity.
So, let me get right on it . . .
If I miss the curtain call for my big debut or if I am forbidden to step in to the promised land, then all I can say is yes – that’s on me. But this is who I am now and this is what I have done in return, humbly and honestly.
I can go back to the very first words that I wrote for the very first time on the first day when I began this commitment. I go back to the words I write when I began to train myself to become a writer which were as follows: My redemption has nothing to do with your response.
I still support this sentiment, both fully and wholeheartedly. I accept the fact that redemption takes work. Life takes work. This list of mine or the so-called bucket list or the reports which I submit to you on a daily basis are the testament of the work I am putting in.
I am no big shot.
I am no guru.
I am no better nor worse.
I am a man, at least I claim to be.
I am a person with a heart.
I have eyes which see and hopes that burst from my spirit.
As for the eyes in heaven which never blink – I know there are items that have been witnessed and I know there are moments I need to address and issues that need to be resolved.
I want to be clear on this so that I when I cross, I will never be so blind again nor removed from the promised land or exiled and sent to the place below.
I have seen death more than once.
I have seen ugly truths as they reared their heads.
I have seen hate, both up-close and personal.
I have seen destruction both internally and externally.
However –
I can say that I have seen beauty.
I can say that I have seen and felt love.
I can say that my list, which I am compiling now, is made to address my future and to clear myself from the remnants of my past I am allowing myself the permission to expose my truth and evolve as a person.
Today’s goal –
I want to make sure that someone knows how much I love them.
So, I’ll be sure to tell them.
I will make a meal – which I’ve started already.
(I love to make stews in the fall and winter months. It’s just a bucket of love with garlic and olive oil and some bread to sop-up the juices from a sauce that can’t be beat.)
I will do something to replace at least one of my divots that I’ve left behind.
I will address at least one wrong today – and make it right.
And at the end of the day, I will clean myself and take a long shower so that when the fog on the mirror goes away and my reflection is clear, I will come to a constructive conclusion and be proud of what I see –
“Just for today.”
By the way –
I do know what love looks like
(and so do you)
Soft features and eyes that welcome me to feel and smile, which inspires me to grow and evolve and to be better, one step, each day.
Oh, and my love has curves for days . . .
Perfect. Soft.
Gentle . . .
Better than a princess, whether Mayan, Incan, or even Azteca –
My love has the look of beauty, pure as ever, overwhelming at times – especially when I dream of her in a red dress, red lipstick, hair tied back to expose the softness of her face and while standing on Europe’s time, I imagine her somewhere with me by the coast of my dreams in Monte or maybe The Riviera, or perhaps better yet – Baja Sur at the Isla Espiritu Santo
Island of The Holy Spirit . . .
See?
Now there’s another item to add to the list.
Reclaim my right to my love
Set a date
Make a trip
And see the world through a set of brand new eyes
(redeemed)
The Written Addiction 