I admit it.
Sure, it’s easy for me to get in touch with “the other side” or the dark side, so-to-speak. And yes,
I admit to my understanding of outrage and hatred. In fact, I understand jealousy, rage, contempt, fury, and wrath and revenge.
I know all of these things, and I know them all too well.
As a matter of fact, we all grew up together. Come to think of it, we run into each other every time there’s some flashback or some kind of old reunion.
I swear these old kids have never grown up and yes, they still cause trouble more than anyone else.
I talk about this a lot.
Don’t I?
I talk about the past and the relevance of our internal conversations.
I talk about the inner voice, all the time, and how it feels to relive old fights and arguments. I’ve done this quite often, but to no avail.
Not only do I replay the old fights and arguments, I rehearse them because, at minimum, I wish I had said something better, or that I said something different. In some cases, I wish I said nothing at all and in other cases, I wish I spoke up and told the truth or spoke from the heart instead of burying the hatchet in the skull’s of my best interest.
I am not too far behind anyone. Then again, I am not too far ahead, as far as learning goes.
No, I suppose it is safe to say that I am learning at my own pace. Sometimes, the pace is slow. Sometimes, this is challenging. Sometimes, I can admit the lessons go overlooked or forgotten. I’m sure I’m not alone here.
I forget what I’ve learned until I am reminded, of course, or should I say I forget until I am painfully reminded.
This happens when I find myself either back on the chopping block, or in hard times, or sad, or there are times when I wonder about the frequently asked question which is, “Why do things like this keep happening to me?”
I remember someone who used to sit in one of my jail lectures asked me “Why do I always find myself in here?”
He meant jail.
My answer was simple. “It’s because you keep getting arrested.”
“Yeah, I know, but why?”
“Because you keep breaking the law.”
We all understand things from an intellectual mindset.
But there is an emotional chapter that we tend to read into, and too deeply, which is why I’m starting to realize that actions are merely symptoms.
I have mine.
You have yours.
The guy in jail had his too, but he won’t be working on them quite the same for at least another 10 – 15 years
I go back to the talks I’ve had about the body and the mind and the soul’s personal math. I go back to the theories and ideas of personal and interpersonal chemistry.
I think about the inaccuracies of my math and how I add the wrong figures and multiply them, which inevitably divided me from my best self and subtracts me from the square root of my own equation.
I go back to the way people come in and out of our life and, of course, I think about the reasons behind this. I think about the relevance of coincidence and the reasons behind the way we overlap or interconnect and coincide with other pathways of people, places and things.
If I’m on the right track, then I’m on the right track, which means I have to pay attention to the turns. Otherwise, I might lose what I value most.
And that’s you . . .
I do believe in the motivation of purpose. I believe in the need to have reason and the need to be heard. I believe in the need to be valid, and yes, I heartily believe in the soul’s need to be wanted, or to be included, and accepted. As for the heart, I believe in the heart’s need to not just be invited, but to be involved and valued as in crucial and necessary.
I believe in this.
I believe in the lost emotional stages of feeling misplaced or how it feels to be out of place, or if the world around us is unfitting or uncomfortable. To expand upon this, when love is vacant or empty. When I say empty, I mean this, as in vapid, or otherwise, to offer nothing more than the flatness of stale milk, no thrill, no feeling of warmth, no chaos, which is needed sometimes, and no passion, then what is this?
Of course, I want peace.
I want to feel the calm from the storm, to which of course, I’m sure that by now—everyone has had to brave a storm or two. We have all been hit hard.
We all know that life comes with twists and turns.
No one escapes life unscathed.
No one gets out of this life alive, which is all the more reason for me (and you) to want to explode and to live now.
I remember reading a line from a chapter which said, “no one among us is able to maintain anything like perfect adherence.”
I know this is true.
I come with my bag of tricks, goodies, bullshit, and all the jazz that comes with trauma and tragedy, chaos, resentment, biases and, of course, I come with a long-listed history of letdowns, defeats, betrayals, crimes, and sins. I come with this and everything else that goes along with being imperfect.
I come with my special brand of selfishness, lies, insecurities, fears, and irrational beliefs that linger from the remnants of my past life.
I come with every bad thing under the sun. I come with both public and private humiliations that is compiled with items that steal my pride or offer me away with bouts of regret and shame.
Yes, this is me.
I was thinking again—and yes, we all know how dangerous thinking can be.
Right?
I came across a quote from the great Bob Marley.
By the way, this was a random and out of nowhere yet, this quote is fitting and timely.
Marley was talking about love.
He said, “if she is amazing, she won’t be easy. If she’s easy, she won’t be amazing. If she’s worth it, you won’t give up. If you give up, you’re not worthy.
The truth is everybody is going to hurt you. You just have to find the one worth hurting for.”
God, I just want to be worthy.
However, I am not sure about my worthiness or my value. It is often that I see the worst over the best, which is unfair to me and to others as well because, hey, let’s look at it like this – I have already borrowed the bad news, and of course—we all know what happens when you borrow something, right?
We have to pay it back with interest!
I have had battles and wars and eruptions that took place in my thoughts and I have allowed them to shadow the forecast of an expected and an unfortunate future. And then what?
I prepared for this.
I invested in my future projection, and in preparation for my letdowns or assumed arguments, I borrowed artillery to bomb the future with a response to explode with painful words, and thus, I was drawn into a fight or a war that never really happened—or needed to.
I have convinced myself of everything that could go wrong, which did nothing else but cause me to prepare. I had no choice now.
I had to prepare and take cover, or in other words, I had to respond and self-destruct because if I believed this as true, then Goddammit, it had to be true,
So, in my expectation of the letdown, the downfall, or in the anticipation for the worst, I was already primed to fight.
The enemies in my brain released the call that rang out to my trillion foot soldiers and thus, they were all sent to fight to the death.
Do you know what this does?
I’ll tell you what this does.
This sends a distress signal alerting the system to prepare for a nuclear fallout that is expected to be worse than any biblical proportion. Hence, I mistook smiles for manipulation. I was prepared for war, not peace.
Hence, the snipers in my mind shot down the innocent bystanders because after all—my soldiers were taught, trained, and told to prepare for war—and I mean an all-out war, where you’ll have no choice other than to fight to the death.
But in the end, or in all fairness and in all honesty, this is how we set up the worst case scenario. We assumed the worse is real so we make the worst happen. We push the button to start with a preemptive strike; therefore, in most cases, it is us (or should I say me) who pushed the red button first.
Life in the mind is not always the right path towards mindfulness.
I admit to doing this.
Sabotage.
I admit to taking my own bait.
I’ve fallen for my own tricks.
I’ve set myself up and later, I found myself alone with my self-fulfilled prophecy, and sitting with no one else but me and my pity-pot which is when I remembered the lessons I keep forgetting.
I often say this and now is a good time to say this again.
I am only a man.
I’m only a man which, of course, if you were to read the above, then, I assume there would be some questions about who I am, in fact, do I have redeeming qualities?
Well, I do.
Faults and flaws to the side—
I know that I have love in my heart. I know that I have feelings and wishes, dreams, needs and desires for better things.
I know that despite my challenges, I am at least brave enough to call them out first, before being pointed at or accused.
I know that I can laugh. I know that I can give a smile and I can have fun.
I know that I can dance, at least somewhat, and I know that at some point, the spirits of my dreams and in combination with the efforts of both fate and destiny, along with the ever-loving Mother Herself, Mother Earth, and in connection with the Almighty, The Father, and with spin of the world and the powers from the great universe, I swear that I will have my moment.
I will find my place where I am at the gates of my dream. When the time arrives and when the hands of fate and the winds of destiny blow my sails to find my destination, I will hold this, love this, and whether I have been hurt or not, I will follow the words of Bob Marley because above all else, I want to be worth it too.
Nothing in this world, and I do mean nothing, can be forced together if it doesn’t fit.
Despite the battles and the unfit things that take place in life, and regardless of whatever took place before today, I know that love like this can never die, not even after the heart stops or the lungs lose their breath.
But –
I don’t want to lose my breath.
I don’t want my heart to fail.
I don’t want to let myself slip into the darkness of my fears nor do I want to give in to the inaccuracy of my thinking errors.
I have work to do though.
I admit that.
Then again, we all do.
(you included)
I have love to give, a heart to share, and one day, I have a dance to claim for the rest of my life. From that day forward, I swear it’ll be to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, now and until death do us part
I do . . .
The Written Addiction 