I have spent years this way.
I have been on a search. I’ve been looking and waiting and wondering or hoping that, if at all, one day I would find my way.
I’ve often looked around and wondered how challenges to me seemed so simple to other people.
Is it me?
Have I done something wrong?
Was I out the day they taught us about the word tenacity?
Or am I like the underdog, cold-nosed and hungry, and able to endure pain or the neglect and the rejection from your common, everyday crowds?
Am I so different?
Or am I no different at all? Perhaps, I’m only human and therefore, I often wonder if being an empath or feeling empathy is a benefit or a weakness and a drain.
Then again, if I were any other way, then I’d never be me.
Right?
I am sending this out into the atmosphere for the Universe to grab hold of my words and take them away wherever they take the spoken whispers in the dark at night. I am leaving this here to close one journal so that I can open the next one.
Here is my line in the sand. This is my last command, which is to say that my private and personal solders in my heart have no choice and no say. There is no retreat and there is no surrender, at least not anymore. There is only this: the final call and since their boots are laced, I need the soldiers in my heart to create my best defense, which is to attack and move forward instead of submitting to an unknown enemy who has moved beyond my gates and poisoned my troops.
This is a call to action.
This means the time to act is now.
Not “when?”
So, I have to clear the cobwebs in my mind and free the symptoms in my heart.
I have to be unrelenting and unapologetic.
Now. . .
I have often wondered that if I do find my way, would I be unimpressed or unenthused, as if to say — I went through all of that for this?
Perhaps my search was fruitless in the sense that what I was looking for was always right in front of me. I was always capable.
I just didn’t know it.
While I grant that money doesn’t always buy happiness, and even if it does, or if at best, if we can only rent happiness for a while; I’m learning that the old saying I was told as a kid is true.
“Wherever you go . . . there you are.”
I have run from myself. I have hidden. I have tried to dress myself in different colors or shade my truths with the various lies and made-up stories with hopes to embellish my soul, or make me seem more attractive or beautiful.
I have told you about my bouts with the “what now” questions and the “what if” questions and, of course, there is always the “when” questions, as in, “when is it my turn?”
When am I going to stop?
When am I going to start?
When am I going to put aside the resentments or the biases that ruin my potential?
When will I allow the past to be the past or when will I allow the unresolved tensions to soften into something unbothersome, or unobjectionable?
When will I let myself be free and steer away from my co-dependent natures so that I can be an individual? Better yet, when will I be okay to allow myself to be me?
When am I going to allow my better properties the chance to blossom?
When will I allow myself the right to choose, or change, or improve my potential to the point where I am improving on a daily basis? When will I allow myself the right to start this process now?
When?
When, as in what time or according to which circumstance?
What has to happen for me to prioritize my success as a person?
And I don’t mean this from a physical performance or as a professional.
No, when I ask about the time or when will I allow myself to become more successful as a person, I mean this in the total sense and not in a singular regard.
Does there need to be a moment of darkness for me to appreciate or understand what it means to have light or to be lightless? Or in fact, do I have to survive the dark to understand the beams of hope? Or to understand the value of brightness, is it necessary for me to experience the abandonment of light?
Do I have to fall to learn how to get back up?
Do I have to fail in order for me to succeed?
I have always planned my life according to the schedules of “when” however, as I grow older and further from my beginning or closer to my end, I am starting to understand that time is critical.
I am learning that there are times when there is no good time.
All you can do is act and respond.
I have seen and lived through several accounts when timing is everything yet, my timing was not always perfect. Either way, and whether we move slow, pause, or lean forward and attack; there is always an action and yes, for every action, there is always a reaction.
We tend to forget this.
I have gone and come back. I have lost and gained. I have grown and, in some ways, I have shrunk or reverted back to an old sentiment. I have gained ground and lost yards.
I have gone back to an older setting; in which case, I fell backwards. I slid from my growth.
I have gotten ahead, and after the swiftness of one poor decision, or this could be a result of several decisions, I can see the decay which takes place from our self-degenerative and diseased concepts.
I can see how our thoughts turn against us, and, as if to sink into the cesspool of emotional quicksand, I can see it all now—I can see the flaws of personal self-destructiveness. I can see how thoughts can steer us away from greatness. I can see how assumptions can decay our better thinking and turn sanity into something toxic and hence, we drive ourselves crazy, especially with jealousy.
I am not a stranger to my own madness. No, not at all.
I have lived with me for as long as I can remember. Or maybe longer.
I am equally aware of my own flaws and defects; however, I am closing in on the later quarters of my life. I am closer to the end than I am the beginning.
Then again, no one knows the hour or the day, am I right?
No one knows when their last breath will be. No one knows who will come and who will go.
In any case, we can only hope.
We can only wish and work.
So, in the event that we find a way to pull off a trick, or if we find ourselves on the other side of the door, and if somehow, we find a way to exceed beyond the limits of our assumptions; or if we find a way to understand the value of this moment, as in, understanding the value of right here and right now—then perhaps we have learned the present value of the word, “when.”
This is “when” becomes “now.”
I have said this before.
And I am saying this again.
I agree that timing is important. I also understand there are times to wait. There are times when we need to understand the value of patience. But even as we wait, there has to be a plan.
There has to be a strategy.
More than anything else, there has to be a willingness to execute, as if to say, we can’t walk around and wait for opportunities to come our way. We can’t be so passive anymore.
We have to plant the seeds and nurture them.
We have to do what it takes.
We have to understand that nothing happens if nothing happens.
We can’t always wait for the “when” moments to save us.
We have to act now.
Sometimes, and even at the worst times or as hard as it may be to stand up or walk away, or to start over and get moving, we can’t allow time to pass. We have to train ourselves emotionally; otherwise, we can suffer the emotional atrophy of muscles that will never grow strong enough to make our dreams become real.
We cannot improve without training. More than anything, I will leave you with this—I can’t let time keep moving.
No, because as the days pass me by, I have found that windows close and opportunities shrivel like dying roses that never showed love.
I see this now.
I need to invest my time wisely, especially when it comes to my health and the health of my relationships.
So, if it’s true that nothing changes if nothing changes—then let me start by changing now.
Let me start here instead of waiting for something to happen or come my way.
I don’t want to question the “what now” or the “what ifs” anymore.
I have the need for more.
Since I don’t know the distance between here and my finish line, at least I know that I can’t sit back anymore. I know that my plethora of tomorrows has dwindled down do a fortunate few.
Since my ending is closer than my beginning—and if this is true, then now is a good time to begin my comeback.
Now is the time to shed the weights of life that hold me down. But more importantly, now is the time to move—
I have been still (or stuck) for too long.
So—
Rather than ask myself the question, “What now?
or “what if?”
and rather than worry about “When?”
I’m thinking about this differently.
I’m thinking about now.
I’m thinking about what my old friend Todd used to tell me.
He used to say, “You’re going about this all wrong. We’re in the effort business, remember?
We’re not in the result business.”
Oftentimes, the results are out of my control
but my effort—that’s all me.
And without effort, most likely, there will be no results.
I admit it. Maybe I want too much.
I want it all
And all of me wants to start this now, as in “right now!”
Not “when?”
Understand?
I hope that you do.
The Written Addiction 