Here I go again, dreaming out loud with hopes that the words leave my heart and reach an altar peace somewhere, or somehow find my intended destination of something we’ve called happily ever after.
I am not here to ask for immunity nor am I expecting all to be healed or forgotten.
I mean, after all, we all have a past and we all have our mistakes and the weight of regrettable things that we say out of anger.
Everyone has bad memories and nobody wants to repeat the unwanted yesterdays. So, in fear, we refuse to go gentle or to allow ourselves to feel or be vulnerable because, yes, we have all felt foolish before.
I know that I have,
And I know what this has done for me.
(Absolutely nothing.)
Here I go again.
I am dreaming out loud, specifically, to facilitate or materialize my dreams. I am here to scream or whisper or in whichever way possible, I am here to convey the matters of my heart.
I am here to state my case and to create my life by voicing the need for my dreams. I want this. I want the dream. I want all of this to happen and to come true.
I am here to shout this from the rooftop and have this so-called vision of mine become real, as if to format into some kind of life, which is neither far, nor beyond my reach.
Instead, everything I want is right here. It always has been.
Everything I want is here, as in right now, and right before my eyes.
I say this with the understanding that people can travel around the world as they look to find themselves; and later, they come to the realization that they were right where they needed to be. We’ve always been where we needed to be. We’ve been here the entire time,
at least I’ve been.
I know people who have traveled the world and have seen everything and they still come up short. I know there are people who want their dream—only, they never believed what they saw or dreamt, or what they felt, or they never dreamed that who they are is enough to make their dreams come true.
I understand this all too well.
Therefore, I understand the waste this creates and the devastation that takes place in the aftermath of a dream that went unlived.
I know about my dreams.
I want to make them so.
I want to separate myself from the recent and distant past and see to it that I create a new future. That means I have to start now. This means I need to value and learn how to live in the moment.
I cannot borrow problems from my past and project them to become my future.
I have to move on and go, be and do.
I have to choose my path and start now.
I need to make a move that will allow me to look back in amazement when I realize that, man, I really did go “that far,” and somehow, perhaps even despite myself or despite my best efforts and intentions, I circled back to here, or to where we are now.
Yes, at last, I realized that I traveled in circles and yes, I wore myself out.
Despite my failures, I kept going—and here I am.
I am still here and still fighting for the love of my life.
I am the one who endured, the one who wept, the one who pained or cried, and somehow, I came out clean on the other side. This is my hope and not my plea.
I am not begging, which is not to say that I have never begged before or that I will never beg again.
No, my point is not that I am standing before you in a bow of weakness. Instead, I have chosen to stand here, willingly, as a man, hopeful that who I am is enough to be counted and chosen.
Somehow . . .
Here I am again, thinking about the places I have never seen, as if to assign these dreams as some kind of pilgrimage. I view this like my trip to Chimayo with hopes that either God, Himself or the spirit of whichever Mexican Indians allow me the grace of salvation (in your heart).
I am like those who seek, or those who are seeking the hopes of peace and understanding, or seeking the wealth from my heart, and hoping to find an intercession of divine clarity—as if to be redeemed, or as if to be healed and saved, or washed by the rains like the desert sand in Old New Mexico. Thus, I can be cleansed from the dryness of my former regrets.
I want to be green again, I want to re-soil and plant my new life and allow this to be a garden without the weeds of anger or resentment.
I am grown. I am a man. I am still a child, and I am still learning, still healing, and I am still finding out that I have more to say and more to do—only, I am also aware, the same as a person who faces an impending judgment, facing the demons of impending doom, and facing the anticipation of different woes of, say, the past decisions of my old or inclement life.
I want the sun on my face. I want the world to reappear in such a way that I can find myself, like a dream I’ve had of me, warm and happy, sitting beside the ocean, somewhere down in the Gulf of Mexico, admiring the quiet and enjoying a refreshing drink. You know the kind, right?
This is the kind of vacation drink with a wedge of pineapple and some tiny umbrella that sticks out from the top of a fishbowl glass—and ah, nothing is ever inclement again.
Not the weather, not my dreams and nothing whatsoever, not even the weight of my spirit’s past or the unforgiven and not even the undefendable choices we make can get in my way. I want to be away from the outcomes that take place when irrational fears and emotion take place.
Dear Universe,
Hear me.
I want to be clear, like an unblemished sky. I want to feel the sanctimony of enlightenment and be rescued from the chains or poor indecision and past results.
I want to be free.
I want to be distant and weightless and saved from the heavy thoughts that weigh us down or keep us stuck.
I want to feel like the words, Old Havana, and simply allow myself to surrender my feet into the white sands of some far away beach and believe in the salvation of surrender.
Surrender to win, as they say.
Stop the fights now.
The end is worth it.
I say this to the universe, to put this out there to whichever gods might carry this message to you.
And feel this too, from my heart.
It is not my intention to cry or lament about life or the facts that I am who I am.
This is what it is, and life is exceptional in either regard. However, one cannot simply dream or have dreams and leave them silent like a child who never had the chance to run or play.
I want to run.
I want to play too.
I want to cast away my doubts and abandon all that is behind me (or us) and find that great plateau, or the grand stage, which is set for two.
It is here. Right here.
The moment at hand is more pivotal and volatile and yes, this moment is more valuable than you’d think. Everything is more valuable than we think, including the things we say or the promises we make.
Everything is counted. There is a number for everything.
Make no mistake about this.
Everything is numbered, including our days, which is why I am pleading not to waste another one.
I do not want to be that boy who waits on Christmas Eve, who tosses and turns and hopes and pleads with the powers that be, with the Santa dreams, or the elf gods, nor do I want to be that boy who is afraid to dream or wake up to find that nothing is there (for me) under the tree, except for some crazy trinkets and an ugly stuffed animal that I never asked for.
I have come here to announce that I am a searcher. I am a seeker.
I always have been.
I am looking for freedom, redemption which, at last glance and as I have written to you about this in the past, I understand that my redemption has nothing to do with “your” response.
This was the very first line I ever wrote to myself the day I decided to commit to becoming a writer.
I add quotations around the word, “your” because the intention is to point out the meaning of the word and how this is not about “you” per se.
But more, this is only my way to acknowledge that as I grow and look to improve, I have to remind myself to maintain my focus on another thought of mine.
This is another thought that I have written about at great lengths. Yes, this is the thought and the awareness that beyond anything else, I am always the square root to my own equation.
I am the sum of my efforts or the lack thereof.
I have to remind myself of a saying which I was told several times.
Only, there was one time when I heard this differently.
I am in the effort business.
Not the results business.
I cannot control people, places or things.
I can neither confirm nor deny any of the said allegations against me nor can I adjust or condemn or fix or fight the world.
I cannot concern or allow myself the distractions that come from the snarls and growls of my so-called enemies. Besides, isn’t this what enemies do?
Enemies will always growl and snarl—it’s when they smile, then yes, that’s when I know that something is in the mail or that I have something on the way.
But so what?
Either way, I want to be done with this.
I want to be free from this and free from the thoughts that draw me back into the murky waters or the shallows and muddy puddles of self-doubt, which are not deep at all, but one could drown here, much easier than out in the oceans of love, or the oceans of hope, and dreams of happily ever after.
I am not here to beg or plea.
Instead, I am here to dream out loud and say this with no uncertainties.
And so, in an effort to leave nothing unsaid, or any stones unturned, I am here to stake my claim.
I want to rescue myself from the stale life of dreams deferred or surrendered to the blackness of indecision. I want to rid myself from the nonsense of insecurity, and disbelief that someone like me could have something like this—a life that is all-inclusive, all-encompassing, and all-forgiving.
I want this. I really do.
I want this with all of my heart.
I want this as if to be more than just absolved, but bathed and cleansed, and redeemed, and resurrected in the eyes of self. I want to stand here, exactly where I am and be freed from the burdens of self, or self-deprecation, destruction, and the self-harming ideas which does nothing else but allows doubt to spread like weeds and choke the gardens of my dream—and yes, this is about my dreams which, of course, if you haven’t realized by now — this is you.
This is me, here.
These are the bodies of my dreams, and these are the fingers of my life, looking to scratch the surface of the sands. These are my eyes, looking to see myself, somewhere deserving, and somewhere pleasant like at the gates of where I call paradise and the entryway of the hall which leads to the castles known as happily ever after.
All aboard . . .
I understand that I cannot erase the wrongs from the past nor can I do much about the fights that I face right now. But again, I am in the effort business.
Not the result business.
And nothing happens without effort.
So, let me try.
Just so you know, I understand what it feels like to drown in thin air. I know what it feels like to scream and to be unheard. I can understand what it’s like to be barely breathing.
I also conclude that I am the secret, the key, and the way our from this prison.
Perhaps I am the only way and the only path to find my own redemption. I am the secret to my own endurance. I am the light. I am the source and the breath of fresh air.
I am the key. Yes. I am.
However, and I have said this before—
I am the key, but I am nothing without you, the cylinder, into which I turn.
I have known you forever and somehow, I know you more now that we have moved away and back and forth.
You are my everything.
You are the meaning of my very first poem I wrote before I met you. And yes, I agree, this was wasted on the wrong people. But, that does not make any of my words less-true.
It should have been you.
It should have always been you.
And you—
this is who you are
(to me).
If I listen, I can hear you in my thoughts
and if I look, I can see you in my dreams
and behind the movie screens on my eyelids
But I only hope that one day soon—
I can hold you in my arms.
Forever~
The Written Addiction 