I often go back and consider what my life might have been like if I were to make one simple change. Perhaps I have spent too much time on this.
Or maybe this is enough to motivate me and keep my past from being my present.
I pick a time or an age and consider the differences that might have been. Then again, hindsight has perfect vision, which makes it easier for people to beat themselves up when they think about the conclusions or the unwanted criticisms.
We all have dreams.
We all have plans too.
I say these things are enough to keep us alive, even if we feel like we’re dead, or like someone in our life is killing us –
(slowly).
No one knows the outcomes. No one knows the hour or the day, or so I am told.
Either way, I wonder what could have been if I went back to who I was. I wonder if I could have intervened, like back when I was a boy, or when I was too afraid to come to be me.
I have asked myself this question more times than I can count.
But here I go again.
If I could go back to any age and tell myself one thing or one piece of advice, what age would I pick and what would I say?
What advice would I give?
My answer is often similar.
I change the ages but what I would say remains the same.
“Don’t listen!”
What would have happened if I had said yes to some of the invitations from my youth?
Rather than allow my social status or worry about the different “levels of cool,” or the so-called echelons of popularity, what would have happened to me if I chose to stand as I was?
What would I be like now if I nurtured who I was then?
I imagine the different pods and groups of kids.
I could have gone to sit at another table.
And then what?
I imagine a life like this:
No people pleasing. No fears of social concerns.
Imagine?
No need to compete or keep up with the crowd.
I’d never have to worry about the differences in my appearance.
Am I too ugly? Too short?
Did I say too much?
Or did I fail to say anything?
No worrying about those who like me, or who don’t, or of course, if I could choose to ignore the popular draws and trends, I envision my life without the formation of irrational rejection.
I wonder. . .
What would I be like if I went right instead of left?
What if my call to be someone else was answered?
Or wait –
How would I be now if I walked away then . . . what would I look like if I decided to leave when the feeling inside told me, “this isn’t right,” and rather than agree or follow like sheep, what would my strength be like now if I stood up for myself and walked away then?
Am I the only one who asks these questions?
I don’t think so . . .
There were times when I was thinking that maybe I could make a break for it.
Maybe I could walk away from the different people, places and things.
Maybe I could take up a hobby or learn to build model cars or airplanes.
Maybe I could stop the noise in my head and simply shove off, so-to-speak, which is what I eventually tried to do in a synthetic way, of course.
My drug use can be defined as simple.
I chose to cast off and find a way to euthanize the mind and stall the minutes.
I dosed myself to nullify the vacant cobwebs in my brain to somehow soften the edges and settle the anxious discomforts.
I did this so that I can lay my thoughts to rest and place them somewhere unobjectionable.
I dangled, like a lifeless flower, which was dead and absent of color and hung to the vine of winterized branch.
That was me, years ago.
I suppose there were times which were pivotal for me.
I wonder if their meanings were all tied to some kind of trauma or a different brand of rejection.
Who knows?
But maybe . . .
I say this because I was never tough.
I was resilient, maybe.
But I was never tough.
Durable, I can see.
Relentless, I would say.
I could take a beating.
I could withstand severe punishment.
I understand personal, external, and both social and financial torment; and while I agree the scars ran deep and that my scars rooted and spread, almost weed like, and infested — I cannot say that I was tough or brave. At the same time, I can say that I was always brave enough to show up the next day.
Either friendless or alone.
I’m still here.
I was thinking about the way I was.
I was thinking about the work that it takes to be lazy.
I think about how the job itself is less laborious or burdensome than the work we create after avoidance and procrastination takes place.
I used to write poems as a kid.
I never told anyone.
I never shared them because first, I swore that I was too stupid for something like this, — and secondly, I could hardly spell my own name let alone spell the words that would pour out from my head.
My first thought of you is this, deep
. . .and I wonder too
How is it the stars align?
How do the prophets know
where the gates of heaven
can open from within?
How do dreams grow
and so on
because, and to be honest
my first thought of you
is more than just a thought-
it’s a dream to be
to breathe
to feel
and to find you
without wondering
or worrying
if this dream will still be real
when I wake up
“Are you the one” I asked.
“My last first love?“
“Yes,” she tells me.
“Did you bring your share,” she asked.
“I brought all that I have and all that I am”
“Good,” she replied and said,
“I’ve been waiting too”
She told me.
“Place it on my wedding finger,”
exposing her hand to me,
kneeling.
“We have work to do.” She told me
“I know,” I answered.
I’ve been working for this
my whole life.
“Funny,” she assured me
“Because your life just started —
Now!“
~
I used to sit on the roof of my childhood home in the middle of the night. I used to look up at the nighttime sky in winter. I drank from a little flask. I smoked my brand of cigarettes.
I blew out my last smoke and spewed this upwards at the heaven.
I was a teenager, long-haired, curious and scared, and frightened that I was too far gone and too faulty to be considered by anyone.
(namely you)
I wish I knew you then . . .
At least, I wish I knew you better because somehow, it seems as if I had always known you.
We can call ourselves kindred, I suppose.
Or at least this is how it seems to me.
We are like two kindred spirits or to me, I see us more like two grown kids who still have so many dreams. I still have mine. You can have them if you don’t have your own to play with.
I don’t mind sharing.
I’d love to be young again with you and still wish it was fine or safe enough to chase fireflies at the birth of evening when the summertime came around.
I wish I could have met you then, as in “before,” or as in before the “before and after” of what took place, which was wrong and terrible, and painful too.
I know.
I wish I could have met you before you listened to the wrong ones who told you otherwise about your beauty, or made you judge your skin, which is beautiful to the touch and mesmerizing to the senses.
I wish I could have told you the same thing that I wish I could have told myself.
Don’t listen.
They are wrong.
You can do whatever you dream.
You can be you around me.
Safe too. I promise.
Do you want to play?
I like to play too.
We can play anything your inner child desires because, at least now, the adult in me understands how to stand up and defend that child inside who was never brave enough to come out.
You can come out now.
I promise you. All the bullies are gone.
Bring whatever you choose to bring with you.
I promise you will not have to defend yourself or worry again.
Like The Son of Man once told, “In my Father’s house, there are many rooms.”
I love this part of the story.
“If this were not so, would I promise you that I go there to prepare a place for you?”
The Son continued, “And if I go there to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that you may also be where I am.”
I love this for different reasons.
My house does not have many rooms. And mine is nowhere near equipped like the Kingdom of Heaven.
I am small in many ways. I am weak too.
I am poor in contrast or fail in comparison.
But at least I am strong enough (now) to declare my truths and set the stage to reach for my dreams.
Although small and humble, I have this for you.
I am here in defiance of all the bullies and social injustices, and despite my past or the wreckage of my regrettable yesterdays; I am here to go, be, and do the things I have always dreamed of with you.
I cannot go back and unweave what was already woven.
But I can stop the machines that mis-weave or tie me in knots.
I am small and perhaps too weak or too damaged.
Perhaps I might be irreparable or unsalvageable — but in my heart, there is this one room which I built for you. Much like this room where I am now, and where I come to speak with you, each and every morning, I am here nonetheless, modest and stripped of all things, except for this one thing that I have, which is me. And this is all yours.
I have no gifts.
I have no wealth.
I have no intentions other than to grow and build and to play or chase the fireflies when they come back around next summer.
I listened to you.
You know?
I know your story.
I know why you stay away from certain things.
I know the people who hurt you.
I know about them and their wrongs.
I know this the same as I know about me and my wrongs.
I know about the tiny secrets that no one else knows, which are the things that can either make you smile or cry, depending on the secret.
It amazes me too how you say you wonder if this is about you.
Right?
Or is this about someone else?
Is this more like a movie and you’re watching another matinee?
It’s you.
Yes.
I have changed over the years and so has my life and my focus too.
I have learned and lost.
Just know that I am still here, despite my falls and breaks and damaged ends.
I am here despite the truths and the lies.
No matter what you think or see or say, I can say that no matter how things start or end, finish or cease to exist, nothing about you is average.
No matter where I am or where I go, this is true.
Nothing about you is ugly or wrong.
Nothing.
Don’t listen to the nonsense anymore.
Please.
I believed in the ugly things for way too long.
And look what this has done for me.
Look at this?
I don’t know a lot.
But I know this much:
No one can hurt or destroy pure beauty.
No one can trick or poison or scar you anymore.
No hand can molest the soul enough to make someone impure, and no words can steal the truth, which is this that I have seen ugly things before. I have seen hate and I have seen terrible and violent things.
And gruesome things too.
I have seen desperation in the most dilapidated forms
I know what ugly is.
And I know what average is too.
and trust me —
You couldn’t be either of them if you tried.
Anyway, I am alone for now.
I am thinking about the things I could have said or done.
But a life unsaid or undone is a life that remains unknown.
I don’t want to “not” know anymore.
I don’t know what tomorrow brings.
I only know that regardless of what comes, in my house there is only one other room, and if this were not so, would I go here to prepare this place and plead for you to marry me?
The rest of this is out of my control ~
The Written Addiction 