I wanted to put yesterday into perspective. Or better yet, I wanted to add color so that I could find contrast in the shadows of this thing I called my youth.
And, so, I had to count backwards to make this possible. Of course, counting the years that went back was enough to make me shake my head. This is crazy for me to realize that, including yesterday, 38 Father’s Days have passed since The Old Man, my Father, was around.
37 years have gone by. This means I have made 37 trips around the sun since the month of December in the year 1989.
And of course, I ask this out loud.
Where has the time gone?
Wasn’t I just here, not that long ago?
Wasn’t I younger not that long ago?
The lines in my face and the grays in my beard are interesting to me. The scars on my body and the aches in my knees and my back are uncomfortable to say the least.
Of all things I know, I know this for sure:
Time and age will always be undefeated.
I was born in the month of September in the year 1972.
This is when the seed began to sprout and I, being nothing more than a young sapling, grew from here until the man I am now.
I was just a kid when my Father passed away.
Just a boy . . .
The Old Man died when I was 17.
I was 17 and lost.
I was scared, and uncomfortable. I had the consequences and the remnants of bad choices and ugly consequences weighing over me. All of this was my burden and quite literally, this weighed upon me like a sentence from a judge about to bang the gavel. And so it was too, a judge, a gavel, and a prosecution looking to persecute me for my crimes against my community as well as humanity.
I was working through this thing called my teenage crisis and therefore, I was skin and bones. I had the obvious and visible side effects of substance abuse.
I was unappealing and sickly to say the least.
In fact, The Old Man told me one of his most frustrating things was hearing me talk because I mumbled and hardly opened my mouth when I spoke.
He told me that I sounded like I fried my brain. He hated the way I walked because it seemed like I dragged my feet, as if I lacked the ability or strength to walk in full or meaningful strides.
The summer of 89 was not something I’d ever want to revisit. I do not want to recount or look back like I used to.
No, I have enough nightmares that have lasted me lifetimes.
I have bad dreams of hollow faces, sunken eyes, and terrible memories of a zombie like apocalypse in junkie hallways or recollections of seeing a man knifed by crackhead and brutalized in dark alleys.
This makes me crazy to say but people died, long before the internet came around, and long before social media looked to monetize and commercialize the horrors of street life and overdoses.
But in my case, this sickness is a symptom of a painful loss, which I claim and feel and I have processed this for 37 years.
I cannot say that I remember the last time I threw a ball back and forth or played a game of catch with The Old Man.
I don’t remember our last successful fishing trip and I cannot say that I remember much of the summer of 89 itself. At least my memories fail me with a clouded haze. This is until, of course, the end of August, which is when all hell broke loose.
However, all of this is neither here nor there and none of the above is more important than the obvious truth.
I was just a boy.
I saw grown man tragedies and grown man deaths.
However, all of this leads me to realize the following.
Time and age is always undefeated.
We assume too much and seldom do we say enough of the important things in our hearts. We leave too many stones unturned.
We allow fear too much room.
We let ourselves go in too many random ways.
We do . . .
I used to be afraid to go and get lost.
I was always afraid to try new things.
I was afraid to suck at something new.
I was afraid to be the fool, which was foolish of me to begin with.
I was afraid that I might not know how to find my way home.
But dare I say this to you; then let me say this to you from a confessor’s point of view.
Get lost.
Go outside.
Go. Be. Do.
No words are bigger than these three small words.
These three words are small and mighty enough to have the greatest impact on our life.
Go. Be. Do.
How many times did you let an opportunity go by because of some kind of thought or intimidation or worry that something can or might go wrong?
As the confessor here, I admit that I let too many chances slip away.
“He who hesitates has lost,” is a true statement.
I know this because I have lost too much.
And this is not to say that caution is not important.
No.
Caution is necessary and fear?
Fear is a great thing.
Fear is an excellent motivator; however, fear is only a form of energy.
Fear is like electricity, in which case fear needs direction. Otherwise the lights never go on and we find ourselves alive and living in the darkness of lifelong regrets.
My findings are this –
Leave nothing undone.
Leave nothing unsaid.
Let yourself be known.
Let your heart be clear.
Never hold this back.
No matter what.
Do not allow your pride or your emotional defects hurt you or your loved ones.
Do not let a day pass without letting those you care for understand exactly what they mean to you.
Do not let yourself slip away or let your truest feelings slip into an unknown abyss.
Never . . . .
By all means, never assume that your loved ones, your lover, your best friend, your family, and never assume that your parents or your children know exactly how you feel about them.
Even if they do know, let them know more.
Words and actions are the meaningful things that we leave behind. These are the tiny memories that resurface after life in the flesh fades and becomes life in the spirit.
And please remember:
That which is of flesh, is of the flesh.
That which is of the spirit, is of the spirit.
The problem with life in the flesh is we are a series of compilations and mixture of imperfections. These are the things that lead us to thoughts of pride or envy.
These are the items that amplify the insecure natures which degrade us and devalue our existence.
The problem with life in the flesh are the thinking errors we have and the left-behind traumas which go on for decades. These are the issues that live deep in our spirit and lay buried and unaddressed, and equally unresolved.
No good things come from this.
The problem with life in the flesh are the faults and flaws that make us susceptible to insecure thinking.
It is our thinking that can draw us into the shallows of an inaccurate or overly exaggerated belief system.
These are the things that cause us to “die alive, and drown us in the thin air of our confused and emotional quicksand.
We tend to forget that parents are humans too.
So, dare I admit to being flawed, but yes.
I am flawed.
We are all flawed.
We all make mistakes.
We all have emotions and yes, everyone has their own demons to face. We all have invisible scars that no one else can see or touch.
Ah, but me?
I can see mine.
I can feel them too.
And I know this because they hurt.
All the time.
In fairness to something I heard on social media yesterday, I paraphrase and reword; yet, I agree wholeheartedly.
“The biggest scars on my heart were never put there by my enemies.”
These scars were placed there, for life, and worst of all; they were placed there by the people I loved and “supposedly” loved me back.
“Supposedly”
I quote the word supposedly to put emphasis on the meaning because in fairness to the truth; love does not come without intrusion or pain.
Love does not come without mistakes or human error.
Love does not come without sin or crimes or worse, love is completely human and as humans, love is frequently wrong no matter how right things are.
I am not so great or so high above anyone in this world.
I am a man.
Period, and that’s all.
I am a man with a complete list of faults and complaints and while I openly confess to the nature of my crimes; I am no better than any other emotional felon in this world. I am no more or less deadly than a predator and nor do I have the right to claim to be better than any other selfish, self-centered bastard in the world.
I shook too many trees.
I took too many chances to beat the system.
I cheated and I lied and cursed and I took the Lord’s name in vain.
I did. . .
I hurt too many people in each and every imaginable way and yes; I agree.
I will have to face these things.
I will have to answer for this, in this life or the next.
I will have to atone and account for these things.
I will . . .
And so, I pass this onward like a man defiant of his own death. I offer this confession as a man seeking a resurrection “of self.”
I want to clean my house before the hour of my demise.
And so . . .
Here I go.
I am penitent with hopes that like Dismas, Himself, perhaps I may be absolved one day too and be welcomed in The Kingdom of Heaven.
If I could relive the last day of The Old Man’s life, I would have told him my truth.
I would have confessed to my sins.
I would have confessed to my emotional sins as well.
If I could relive the last moment before I said goodbye, I would have washed his feet so that my Father’s soles would be prepared to walk along the grounds in Paradise.
We waste too much time.
And time is not as abundant as it used to be.
I know.
Dear Pop.
I went fishing on a party boat the other day.
I helped a young boy pull in a shark.
He’s a good kid.
This was worth everything to me.
The kid caught a sand shark that was a little more than four feet in length. And the fish was heavy enough that the boy couldn’t pull it over the rail.
But I helped him.
That smile he smiled will always be a memory for him.
Me too.
I don’t remember the last time I caught a big fish or the last successful fishing trip we went on.
I wish there were more of these things.
But wishes and reality are often separate and far from each other.
I learned from this, Pop.
I get what you used to try and teach me.
I saw fatherless kids too, wishing like me and hoping that somehow, Father’s Day could have a nice meaning again.
Time and age are always going to be undefeated,
So, to go forward, I will never allow time and age to beat me to the punch. I will never allow time or age the right to take away my ability to stake my claim and tell the world exactly how I feel.
I love you
Too much was left unsaid but somehow; I swear, you were out there.
(with me)
I figured it was your sense of humor when I thought about a bird shitting on me and how this is supposed to be good luck.
And two minutes later
A seabird flew overhead and shit on my shirt.
I laughed
So did everyone else on the party boat,
And two minutes later I caught a nice sized fluke . . .
I miss you, Pop.
I apologize for the way I let you down in my youth and in my adulthood.
But hey, I’m only human and of the flesh.
At least I’m learning though . . .
Right?
The Written Addiction 