All For More (Or Less)

Beware the smiles you see, I was told.
Not all of them are friendly.

Be careful who you listen to, I was told.
Everybody has an angle.
Everyone has their own truth.

Tread carefully . . .
The weather gets rough from time to time.
I heard the guards whistle this morning. I assume this was one of their many codes to warn one another.
But I don’t know.
At least, not for sure.

I was never too quick, and wore, I was an easy target for much of my life. I say this because any good predator knows how to stalk an easy prey.
It’s simple too.  
It’s easy to find your place on the so-called food chain.
All you have to do is look around and find the weaknesses.
Everyone has them. Even the weakest can be the strongest if they learn how to exploit the news of their enemies, and watch, as the enemy of their enemies consume them in the worst ways possible.
Really.
Truths like this are far more apparent than we think.

Besides, how else can a weakling like me survive?

If I am being honest, I was at least smart enough to find tricks by learning the rules of engagement.
For example, the easiest way to hurt a thief is to steal from them. The best way to hurt a conman is to con them. Or if you want to hurt a cheater, then cheat on them and expose their vulnerabilities to all the other thieves around them.
Do this and you’ll see them suffer the consequences of fears that used to plague them.
it’s simple.
Bully a bully and they will be beaten in ways that you couldn’t possibly imagine

I understand this.
And partly, my understanding isn’t just because I was beaten like this.
No, this is because I was pulverized by the same things and punished, both privately and publicly.
I was ripped to shreds.
Uncovered and humiliated.
I’ve been there too.

I was never big or strong or tough. And I’m not tough.
Not by any means.

No, I had to be inventive for me to survive. I had to learn where to hide, and how to move, how to duck, and how to blend in to camouflage myself as a so-called human.

I always go back to the lessons of my youth which are not so different from the lessons I’ve had to endure, here, in Purgatory’s prison system.

Not everyone is your friend.
Smiles can be dangerous too.
And sure . . .
Bullies are “a dime a dozen” around here. And yes, everyone has an angle. Everyone has their own agenda and as for safety, any port in the storm does not always keep you safe.

We are born like this.
You do know this.
Right?
We are taught about the different levels of social status. And dig it, —we start to learn about this when we are young.
Think about the sandbox or the playground when we were just kids.
Think about the kid who came along with the best toys. Or think about the kids who were stronger than the rest.
Think about the good-looking and the athletes.

I think about this all the time.
I think about the ability to fit in. Or in my case, I think about my inability to fit in or be comfortable in the so-called social norm.

I think about the injustice of unwanted things, like the inappropriate touch from a trusted grownup.
Or I think about the invisible scars that come from bullies who cause us to question our worth, —or if I’m honest, I think about the thoughts a child should have or how a child should be happy to laugh and play.

I think about the dared edge of the blade or how this hurt, but the pain made sense to me.

I think about the marks and the imprints or the indentations of say, unfair treatment or unintentional abuse, which is real and true.
Not all abuse or neglect is as it seems.
Not all forms of love are good or healthy.
We all just as fucked up as the next one in line.

No one tells you that your parents are human.
No one realizes that Moms and Dads are just people with all the same faults and flaws, —and likewise, as much as I love my parents and miss them dearly; they had their own challenges to handle.
Just like me.

I never asked to be as I am.
And I never wanted to be this afraid or this weak.
I never wanted to be this hateful or this outraged. And I never wanted to be evil or calculative.
I never wanted to be the one who pulled the trigger or destroyed things the way I did.
But I was. And yes, this was me.
I hurt good people.
And some might say that I ruined them,
And I am sorry with every ounce of my spirit and from every bot of my soul; i am sorry for this with all of my heart.

This is what I did.
And this is why.

No one ever bullies the crazy kid.
No one challenges the tough guy, —and if someone does, a real tough guy knows how to handle himself.
Or at least, this is what I thought.

And me?
I am not tough.
I’ve never been tough or strong.
No.
I have been afraid before. I’ve been petrified.
I have been hurt too. I’ve been scared and beaten before. But at the same time, everyone has their own slips and falls.
We all have our own bumps, and bruises.

I suppose the worst feelings of my life are the ones when I found myself the victim, to which I swore that I would never be a victim again.

I would never allow myself to feel or to be vulnerable or to be so gullible enough to believe that people actually care . . .
I swore that I would never be the fool.
But I was often the fool to my own mind.

I was never seen as beautiful.
I was never the one . . .
You know?
I was never the person who was desired or the one who girls fell upon.
I was fair to midland, which means I was only average at best.

My biggest fears were simple.
I was afraid that I will always be unwanted or that I would only be average.
I was afraid to be exposed or to be humiliated in front of the world, as if to be publicly demolished.
I was afraid that no matter where I went, how far I ran or wherever I chose to hide; my biggest fear is that people would look at me and know the truth, —which is that I was a joke.
I was the punchline.
I was the ugly one or pitiful.
I was always afraid that people would see my scars.
I was afraid to be weak.

I swore that I was the mark, the target, and I was the weakling or the prey that was too slow to keep up with the pack.
I believed all of this about me and hence; I was the weakling who was otherwise hunted and devoured and swallowed whole, just to be spit out as a means of degradation because the taste of me was too sour and unwanted.

This is my worst fear, —to find out that all my fears are true and that I am just a loser.
Unwanted. Undesired.
And Ugly.

I lived around the ugliest forms of hatred that mankind could create.
I have not seen the worst of the world.
But what I saw was the worst to me.
My truths are mine. So is my trauma.
And worst of all, my biggest sin which is part of my plea-deal is that I committed the same crimes that were committed against me.

If I could, I would grab the old version of me and my past and I would shake this person. or kick the shit out of them.
If I could,
And I can too because beating myself up is something I learned to do at a professional level.

I lent myself to the worst forms of betrayal and hatred.
And why?
Or better yet, why would anyone admit to something like this?
This is not a case of “me” being hard on “me.”
No, I call this being honest
But why?

Well, my answer to this is simple.
No one can punish me now.
No one can hold me to the fires anymore.

No one can convict me or accuse me because I have come clean, despite the consequences and despite the allegations or the arguments.
I took this away from my enemies.
And even in the face of retaliation, whether it be mild or critical or even deadly; no one can accuse me or say anything about me that I am not brave enough to say about myself.

The guards are starting to wake up the rest of the inmates.
I can hear the stirs in my neighboring cells.
it’s time to wake up, they say.
But I have been awake for hours.

It was snowing this morning.
I like this.
I thought about the way snow falls when we were kids or how we’d see this if we were young again.

The snow was not heavy or anything like that.
it was nice though.
It was nice to see the soft pillows of white flakes as they fell from the sky. And it was nice to think about the purity of life, which was something that happened before the bullies came along and took our purity away.

There are beautiful things around us.
And too, there are beauties that our eyes fail to see, after the molesters caused us to be too sad to hope for anything beautiful again.

My biggest regret is that I became no different from the demons I feared and the enemies who I hated.
And I did this because this was my best defense.
I did this because being offensive seemed to be the best defensive move—or in other terms, I’d hurt them before they hurt me.
Understand?

And still, at the bottom of it all; I was just a scared kid.
Little as ever and hopelessly hopeful.
Weak too, but still strong enough to dream
Or even now, grown, and I far more sizable than the last time I was bullied, —I’m still just a frightened little boy.

Come to think of it, I was asked to do a presentation in a classroom. This was years ago.
I was asked about being bullied.
And I was asked how I made this stop.

What could I tell them?
Should I have told them the truth?
Should I have told them that I decided to find my vengeance in violence?
Should I tell them that I acted crazy or that I lit things on fire?
Should I tell them that this is why I chose the culture and the images, which I found both terrible and safe?
Should I tell them that drugs were a great way to mask all of this?
Or if I told them any of the above, would this have been helpful?
Or would this just give them ideas?

This is why I chose crime . . .
This is why I sold drugs . . .
This is why I brought myself to the edge of life and death because how could anybody kill me if I can’t even kill myself?

I told them the truth.
I told them that I was afraid and that I was insecure. I told them that I hid behind things so that no one could see that I was weak.
I told them that I didn’t know how to defend myself
or ask for help . . .

One of the students asked me if I remember the last time I was bullied.
The student meant when I was a kid.

“How’d you make him stop,” I was asked.
I looked at the teacher.
She nodded as if to allow me my truth.

“How’d you get them him to leave you alone?”
I tried to answer this with a distraction from the truth.

I allowed the expression on my face to slip back to match the character I pretended to be. And I say pretend because I was nothing more than a coward.
I allowed my hatred and my rage and my disgust for the world come forward.
I let the little kid in me who was tired of being victimized come forward and scream with all the hate in his heart.

I let myself show the murderous side of me, which is the side of me that I hate most.
I felt the emotion bubble, but my so-called inner child was too afraid to let the class see me as I am, which is weak.
I let my regrets come forward too.
I wept and then stopped myself.

“Please,” asked the student.
“I have to know,” he said to me.
I could see he was tired of being hurt and in the calmness of my outrage, I ground my teeth and answer back, “I bit him in the face!”

The facial expressions on the students in the classroom turned uncomfortable.

The funny thing is these kids thought I was tough.
I am not tough.
I am weak.

If I was tough then I would be fine to be myself and unafraid to be who I am, regardless of who cares, who smiles, or who likes me.

I’d have found you years ago, if I was tough.
And I would have been strong enough to keep you as mine.
If I was strong, I’d have been happy to be poor because I’d have been with you and that would’ve made me wealthy beyond compare.

If I was tough, I would have held my love far more dearly and realized that nothing in the world is more important than love, charity, and the ability to hold you clos
and smile . . .

It’s never too late to start over.
And when the lights on the main stage come on and it’s time to dance, I promise you that when we marry, I will love you like the ocean loves the shores.
I will love an compliment you like the sun loves and adores the New York City skyline.
I will hold you like the palm of God the Father holds the sun at its earliest dawn. And I will adore, admire and worship you like the moon worships the stars enough to make the rest of the universe envious.

You may not love me like I love you.
And I might not deserve the love I have always dreamed of.
And this might be the sentence I receive or the punishment that I deserve; to see you, and know you, but not have you as “all mine!”

But no matter what you think –

I love you

and no one in this world will love you

more than me