Random, Aimless and Unplanned – Opening Up to The ‘Inner Kid’

I know we talk about things all the time—
you and I . . .
At the same time, there are days when I am alone and times when I am thinking, of course, and I’m thinking all too much and all too often. Often enough, my thinking can become unfair or turn to an idea that stirs the anxiety machine.
But then again, I’m sure you already knew that.
And I’m sure that you understand.
Last night was no different.
I lay awake and looked up at my ceiling. The ceiling can look infinite sometimes but only those who know about this would understand, as in the general insomniacs or the bleeding hearts or hopeful romantics, or even the brokenhearted lonely ones, or the ones who dream and missed their window or their calling.
They get it.
Just like you do. (I hope.)

I lay awake all too often. But it’s been like this since I was very young.
I think about the most random far-out things too.
I think about love. I think about my ability and inability to love equally or evenly and how my fear-based concerns have been a blockage for as long as I can recall.
I think about romantic strolls. I think about pivotal points in my life and moments when I chose to go left instead of right and, of course, I always wonder what might have happened if I only followed my heart, and walked the other way.

I have ideas and words that rumble through my head.
I wish I could write them down because, in fairness, they flow quite freely. But then I’ll be too jazzed or too amped to fall back asleep.
Do you get it?
Not that I can sleep anyway, but I usually find that I can fall back to sleep just moments before my alarm goes off.
I suppose this is how it goes for people like us.

In any case, I think about the various stories and the different riots of genius which take place in my head. I think of how I relive old moments. Some bad and some good. Some of the moments are unmatchable and beautiful, just like the face of a girl, who knows how to melt my heart.

I think about the craziness of my life and the impurity of my basic existence. And I say basic with the intent that I am impure, and at the same time, I know that there is purity beneath me.
I know there is good in my heart and that there are intentions that outweigh the crazy ideas and the aggression of brokenhearted madness and general disappointments of how things turn out.
And I wonder. Of course, I do.
Doesn’t everyone?
I think about the impurity of unfortunate selfishness and how this sabotages the goodness from the heart or causes us to blush when we’re caught in a selfish lie.
Yes, I am guilty of this. Then again, I am far from alone.
I agree with the quote from Mark Twain, “Man is the only animal that blushes . . . or needs to.”
I know why I have to blush.
I know what I’ve done. And again, I know I’m not alone.
Perhaps there’s not a long list of people who choose to be honest about this, but at risk of sounding hard on myself, or like I’m beating myself up, I would prefer to expose the truth than hide my lies and act like I’m better than who I am.
And I am better . . .
But I’m far from perfect.

I often lay awake and wonder.
I wonder if my path will find a correction or if my purpose will resurface, or if my dreams and my passion will reunite again; and more, I wonder if the script will turn out the way I’ve always hoped it would and the narrator of my story will fill the voids of happily ever after.

I was thinking about school. I was thinking about the time and date and month of this entry which is September 6, early in the morning, and kids are returning to their classrooms.
Man, my anxiety went through the roof when I was in class.

I was thinking about the life I have and the work I do and, of course, I was thinking about the difference between this and the life I’ve always wanted for myself.

I want to be an educator.
I want to be a helper.
I want to offer and show that as bad as we can be sometimes, there are so many great qualities we have. Lastly, I want to prove that life is meant for living, and that dying alive is not living.
It’s just existing.
I want to share my mishaps with hopes to open the eyes of people who have a shot at the good stuff, and how they need to hold on to that good stuff, or quite possibly, lose it forever,
I want to be a teacher. But to be fair about teaching, I’d have to call out the truth about my history of learning and learning how to do new things.

I was never a good student. Then again, I was never inspired by the lessons in school.
At the same time, I’m not sure that the lessons in school are conducive to teach us about real life—and I think about this often because isn’t this what school is meant for?
Aren’t we supposed to learn here?

We go to school to learn. At the same time, the lessons we need to learn the most are never taught in classes.
None of my teachers ever taught me how to be happy. I never sat in a classroom and learned how to be satisfied or fulfilled.
In all fairness, I never learned about love in any of my classrooms. If anything, I learned more about life in the hallways or in the locker rooms, or in the back alleys, the courtyards, and in the cafeteria.
No class ever taught me about rejection. No class ever taught me how to deal with a breakup. As best as I can recall, there was never a class on how to express love and not give in to intimidation or insecurity.
I wish there was a class like this.

I learned more about the need for social interaction and the importance of connection from the different levels of popularity. I learned more about how people are in the school cafeterias as well as the break rooms at work or at the water coolers where the gossip mills and rumor factories chew the fat of people who ruins people’s reputation. I learned about this more than anything that was ever taught in any of my classes.
Oh, and trust me, this is a valuable lesson.
A valuable lesson, indeed.
Sure, math is valuable. So is science and history. English is too. But life has shown me less needs to understand the coefficient of X or Y and less about geometry and algebra, and more about the needs to learn how to socialize, speak, survive, interact and who to trust, and who not to.
We learn by not learning. If that makes sense.
Some might say trial and error.
Some might say life is a series of “sink or swim,” moments. We either learn how to swim or we see how long we can go under water and hold our breath.

I learned more about the different cliques and the social needs, the draws for attention, the need for validation, and the hope to be included and wanted or desired, and yes, I learned more about the difference between inclusive and exclusive, fair and unfair in the lunchroom at school than I ever did in Mr. Syden’s Earth Science class.

I learned more about humiliation in Mrs. Critchley’s 3^rd grade classroom, or in Mr. Josephson’s 6^th grade class, or Mr. Czerski’s English class and so on.
The crazy thing about this is that all of this went undiscussed until I was older. This is when I was old enough to earn the right to question or speak up for myself. But more, this was also years later when I grew strong enough to speak up for that ‘inner kid,’ who no one defended.

I used to stutter when I was nervous.
I would stutter when I’d read out loud, and let’s be very clear, I was never a good student. I could not retain information. I was horrible in math class. I was awful when it came to tests. At the same time, none of this had anything to do with my intelligence.
I was smart. I just needed a different way to understand and obtain information.
It’s funny, too, because I have seen some of my teachers, decades later, and well . . .
Let’s say this was interesting for me.

One of the teachers was someone I knew and remembered them by face only. The other I knew by both name and face. And I knew him very well.
The kinder one told me, “I always knew you had it in you,” and he smiled.
He shook my hand too.
The other –
This person humiliated me in front of a classroom, more than once—and at one point, I will admit that I swore to physically punish him for this. I swore that I would not only punish him, but I would humble and humiliate him in a bloody fashion and with all of my heart and all of my rage and with ever ounce of my longstanding resentment, I was going to disable this man in such a gruesome and violent way that he would not only remember me or how he treated me, but he would regret what he did for the rest of his short-lived existence.

However, when I saw this man, I saw his misery. I saw how he went nowhere in his life and that similar to most people, he never broke out of his sorry shell. He never broke away from an unwanted existence to do what he really wanted to do.
And who knows?
Maybe he really wanted to be a teacher.
Maybe he was good at teaching, at one point.

Maybe this was his passion or maybe he saw nothing wrong with his aggressive style or publicly humiliating students, like me.
I can’t answer that—but I can say that when I saw this man, rather than force him down a series of concrete steps, bouncing his face to be scraped up and perhaps blasting him at the back of his head with my boot and ensuring his face hit the edge of the bricked steps at the local diner—I realized that, no different from anyone else, this was just another sad person who let his life turn in a sad or poor direction. The miserable bastard still looked the same—miserable as all hell! Grimacing with an old man’s scowl, bushy eyebrows, folded downward, head bent forward, as if to prove his arrogant misery. Yes. This was him.
Absolutely.

I thought about this last night as I lay awake. I thought about how life can pass us by. I thought about the years that flew by or how I missed the opportunities to do what I really wanted to do.
I thought about how it was when I started working in an industry, long ago.
I thought how I figured to myself, “I’ll just do this until I figure out what I want to do with my life.”
I’m still here. I guess I’m still trying to figure this out . . .
I thought about how wasting time wastes our options and how time moves and how we can literally waste years, or even decades, and never do what we really want to do or be with our true love or have the life that we’ve always wished for.

I had a taste of the life I wanted—or so, I thought.
I must have reverted to an old setting or lost my way.
But that’s okay.
I recognized something in myself last night.

I thought about a life unchallenged.
I thought about a life with no purpose and no direction, no hope, and nothing to put a fresh breath in our lungs.
I thought about the journals I write and how I stopped publishing them. I thought about the classes I did or the presentations I ran and the lectures I did while standing in front of students who wanted to learn how to help other people.
People like me –

A life unlived is the biggest waste of all.
And love unused is not only a waste, but a crime amongst the burden of “self.”

I don’t ever want to be like that old, grumpy teacher.
I don’t ever want to be mean (again) or hurtful, vindictive, rude and miserable.

I understand that life comes with changes and corrections.
I know that we all find ourselves in times of sadness, loss, heartache and yes, love does not always conquer all. Sadly love can change and love can fade or even disappear.
But that’s not what I want.

No.

I want it all. And maybe I want too much.
Or, maybe I want to open up that business of mine, whether it’s “the farm” or a wellness academy with hopes to bring good health and healing to the hearts of anyone who needs to be heard, helped or healed.
I have to begin within.
And this is to you . . .
The real me

Dear Kid—

I know you are there inside of me. And I know you have dreams. I know you want to come out and play and I know you want to be unafraid because, in fairness to you, no one wants to be picked on.
No one wants to be laughed at. No one wants to be called stupid. And yes, you and I have some healing to do.
So, please don’t worry.
I know that you are there. And I try to sing to you on nights when you cannot sleep.
But just so you know, I’m only a man, which only means I’m a kid too. I’m just a little bit older.
That’s all.
This also means that I hurt too, and I have to heal just like anyone else, but trust me, you and I will always be together. I swear that I will never abandon you.
I won’t let anyone hurt you.
It’s okay. We can talk some more later, or at night, like always when neither of us can sleep.

I know we had to put our world on hold for a while. And I know you liked the chance to come out of your shell when I was on stage.
But don’t worry.
I’m still listening to you.
I might seem distracted but that’s only because I have some “grown folks” business going on.
We all have to deal with this sometimes
Including you.

I’m right here. We are not alone.
We are going to be fine . . .
It’s just life, kid.
That’s all, okay?
And so you know . . .
You and I have been through worse before—and yes, we’ve been through this before too (and you know what I mean) but trust me when I tell you, nothing is over.
We will have the chance to play again soon.
Okay?

“I just . . well, I want to be me . . .”

I hear you, kid.
And if it makes you feel any better . . .
I feel the same way too.

“Do you promise we’re going to be okay?”
Trust me . . .
I want everything you want.
And I want it more now than ever before.
Does that make you feel better?

“A little.”

Good because a little can become a lot
really soon.
(If we work together.)