And Oh, About That Thing

There is a big world out there, far beyond what we see or what we think. There is so much more than what we see on the surface.
There are people who come from everywhere and then there are people of different color, different backgrounds, and some people will speak different languages.
People will come from different places, or even locally, someone who comes from the town next to you, although close in proximity, they still grew up with a different culture, a different way of talking, at least to some regard.

I often think about the kids from the neighborhood and how we talked or the things that we said. I think about our made up words, that were common, yet, they meant something different to us.
Go to the next town over, and even though the geography is literally blocks away from me, or us, sayings are different, schools were different, and language can be different and so can our terms of use, which can alter from one place to another.

At the same time, there is an ever-evolving and ongoing relatable feature of life, which means no matter where we go, or despite our differences, there are amazing similarities.
We all have a core. We all have the run of basic emotions. And we all have needs. We all have our own versions of love, or the ideas about life, or how life should be.

I spent last night on the sand, in the darker part of the beach, away from the crowds and the vacationers.
I needed to get away, or even further away from where I was.
I looked out at sea. I felt the heavy wind that blew right through me.
I stood there and looked at the container ships that anchored in the distance, across from the beach in Fort Lauderdale. I noticed them, sitting like a sleeping machine with their lights, sharing a location, or to brighten the deck of a huge boat with containers and workers and people aboard.

I could hear a man screaming his drunken diatribe to the sky, cursing the stars, which were unclear to see because of a cloud cover that came overhead last night.

I heard the sound of mental illness, which is nothing new to me. I heard the loud winds. I heard the drunk screaming about his life or his rights.
I heard the sands whipping around me. While I say this to you, nothing was unbearable or too uncomfortable to stay as long as I did.

I appreciated the darkness of the night and the distant lights that acted like emotional beacons
I looked out at the sea.
I looked back at the year (or so) behind me. I thought about the consequences of words or how every action comes with a reaction. I thought about aftermaths of mistakes or the recent passing of my friend who, as I mentioned, is the inspiration behind this journal.

I don’t have to worry about where I will sleep tonight. Therefore, I cannot claim to be homeless or own that concern. I am not sick, nor is there anything cancerous throughout my body.
Nothing is killing me slowly, or quickly, nor is there anything physically dying in me.
However, I can relate to the emotional results of “feeling” a certain way.
I am not poor, nor am I wealthy, nor are my earnings the same as they were when times were better.
I have much to be thankful for and much to be grateful for and, of course, I admit and say this from an intellectual standpoint.

I have no idea what it would be like to lose both parents at the same time. I don’t know what it’s like to live as an only child, or to live in a house with two brothers or sisters.

I don’t know what loss is like to anyone else. However, I can relate.
I can see what I see or hear what I hear, or take in the stories that come my way.
I might not see things the same as you or other people, which is fine. You and I grew up differently. We have different thresholds for pain. We endure things differently. We see things differently and we all have our own interpretation. And that’s okay.
No. Wait.
This is more than okay.
This is amazing because otherwise, we would always be the same and thus, we would never know what it’s like to enjoy a different perspective, or to discover a new culture, or to hear a song from a different genre, and be blown away to tears.

I am not like you or anyone else. However, similar to you and similar to everyone else, I have ideas and hopes.
I have feelings. I have desires.
I have needs. I have fears.
I have secrets that frighten me and memories that kill me; and yes, I have a past that is not altogether bright and fair and, of course, I have a history of dark reminders that act like the mouth from a perfect storm, to which, I am afraid that one day, these things will come for me and swallow me whole.

I have this, but more, I have a heart. I have the child within, whom I have tried to protect from the bullies, and the beatings or the tortures. I have a heart. I have love. I have the silly nature of a child who wishes to laugh and play a simple game, or maybe two.

I have the need for touch. I am not overly sensationalized by sex anymore.
I suppose this is something that has changed with age. Or wait, maybe this changed because there is more to be valued and more to the levels of true intimacy than the orgasmic finality that ends the session with someone screaming, “I’m coming!”
I do not believe that any “body” will do. I do not believe that intercourse is all there is to sex or sexuality.
No, there’s more. And I want more.

I see this as a reflection of how limited I used to be.
I say this because now, in my current fold, I see the need to hold more and kiss more and to touch more and extend life as a session of ongoing fourplay.
Of course, the results of an orgasm is explosive and beautiful.
Absolutely, I agree.
However, the feel of the end result is only momentary. I want to feel orgasmic permanently. Therefore, I want to make love to the love of my life, permanently — to which, I wonder out loud, am I asking too much?
Maybe.
Or, maybe not.

I sat on the beach and looked around at the beauty of nothingness.
I looked up at the heavens. I looked out at the darkness above the sea.

I saw nothing and I saw everything.
I felt the flood of my emotions and the weight of all that’s taken place.
I felt the pain of my loneliness and the hurt from my fears that something is terminally wrong with me and that my diagnosis is grim. I felt the swell of my emotions, and while speaking out loud, literally, while sitting alone in the dark night on the beach in Southern Florida, I wept.

I have questions, like, say, to my friend, about the pain he felt, and while I wonder if the bullet hurt worse, and while I know the mess was brutal and worse than anything imaginable—I think to myself about the termination of life and the ongoing or the lingering sadness that remains or is felt by friends and loved ones.

I asked, “How could you do this?”
At the same time, I understand.
I was asked how could I do what I did.

I remember my thinking.
I remember the idea that it wasn’t dying so much as it was the need to make everything stop — but no, nothing ever stops. Time doesn’t stop ticking and the world never stops moving.
Sometimes, the world is like a runaway roller coaster, off the rails and no matter what you do, you can’t find balance or keep your stomach from dropping.

Sometimes, the people around us remind us of the pain we feel, and despite the kindness or the nice things people say, most people never seem to understand that their kindness stings like alcohol to a cut or a scrape—and most fail to understand the concept that their purity from the heart stings the impurities in our mind.

And to you, R.O.

I don’t know what you went through. I don’t know what happened that night, and I don’t know what flipped the light switch, or let the rage go.
I don’t know what your life looked like through your eyes. I only know what you looked like through mine.
You were my friend. And you still are, if that’s okay with you.

I sat on the beach and I wept.
I wept for my friend.
I wept for his family.
I wept for the damages left behind.
And I wept for me because my friend didn’t want to die.
He just wanted everything to stop.

I relate to this.
Regardless of our differences, I would rather find the similarities because maybe someone might call me and this information might save their life (or my own).

I have talked about these ideas with others who understood and agreed while answering suicide prevention hotlines.
I was asked if I was grateful that my plan didn’t work.
I answered this honestly, to which I received hell from a professional overseeing me.
I was told that I went about this wrong.
My response was the kid was talking, right?
He’s still alive, isn’t he.
Talking leads to living.
Lying and feeling shame leads to dying.

“So go fuck off back to your desk and let me do my job!”
No one argued with me,
not even the supervisor.

My honest answer about surviving suicide: I’m not always grateful.
The idea of suicide to me was to control what I had no control over.
Life is out of control, pretty often.
I needed the ride to stop but the emergency buttons weren’t working.

There are times (like now) when I am hurting or when I am faced with life-altering challenges.
There are moments when memories surface and hurt me as deeply as my soul.
And there are times when I think about the choices I made and how they were geared and self-destructive because I wasn’t happy. I was angry and outrages — and, as a result, I was even more unhappy from the consequences from my actions, which was only a reaction to make sense of an ongoing fear or assumption which I was preparing for.
I believed in my failure so greatly that it hurt me.
The anticipation of my failure hurt me so badly that I materialized and facilitated the results I was so afraid of.

I cried out loud, last night.
I wept like a weak little child.
I cried one of those “ugly cries,” and then I let the wind dry my tears. I let the sea and the tides take away my prayers and secrets.

I walked back to my hotel and heard a man notice the writing on my shirt, which is where I train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
He told me not to arm bar anyone.
I explained, “Not me. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
The man chuckled friendly and said until the fight starts and you choke someone’s head off.”
He told his wife, “I bet you that guy is tough as hell,” in his southern accent.
(Tourists, you know?)

I told him, “I am not tough.”
And I’m not.

I am not tough,
not at all.
Life is tough.
So was my friend.

And so are you.

I did a thing to help the pain and let my tears run.

Did it help?

Not much.
But which is tough?
To do something?
Or to do nothing at all?

And oh, about that thing . . .

R.O.

I’m still here for you, if you ever need me.
I know I can’t hear your questions or hear what you have to say, but I promise to look for the signs.

Watch over me, my friend.

Always