This one was not easy –
But necessary things are not always easy things to do.
And so –
Here it goes.
There is nothing quite like the moonlight when you sit on the roof somewhere and look up. I love this. I love being far above the ground and far above the regular world.
I can call this a safe place, despite perhaps the dangers of falling.
But I know I won’t fall.
Not from up here.
I have been doing this rooftop thing in one way or another for decades now.
I remember being a kid.
I don’t know how old I was the first time.
I was south of my teenage years but not by much.
I was south of my troubles too, but I could feel them approaching.
I suppose I was coming into the awareness of, “Me.”
And all of this, all of that and all that I saw and learned and all that I believed may or may not have been fact or fiction
But this is life from a subjective sense.
I was growing. I was seeing things for the first time and God; the small pond was so big to me than.
I say this with a figurative comparison to a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in a cup-sized bowl and watched by some kind of all-knowing eye called “God.”.
I was growing aware and witnessing the differences in the crowd.
I was more aware of my differences. Or perhaps I should say I was infinitely aware of say, me being smaller or me being weaker.
No one likes the weakest kid and when they do, none of this is out of adoration but instead – this is pity.
But hey, being pitied and adored is better than being pitied and ignored, I guess.
I was learning more about the Darwinism and the power of a flock. And thus, I started to see things about the dependency of the herd and the needs people have, such as the desire for power or the need to be led or followed.
I was becoming aware.
I was learning too fast and in the shadows of my taller friends or the people who I assumed had more; I was learning about the shades and the different variations of cool.
I was aware of the different stations in the school cafeteria.
I knew where the cool kids sat and where the bad kids sat and I knew the tables where the jocks or the athletes and the pretty governed the sheep.
I knew who had money and of course; I knew it was clear how they differed from those who had none.
It was clear to me; and all of this was growing clearer that everyone comes with a list of characteristics, and each person has their own value. Everyone has their own version of pretty or beautiful, or ugly and the worst version of all is to look or be unwantable.
There was the pretty crowd. There was the tough crowd.
There were good kids and bad kids and somewhere in the middle of this were the basic and the in-between kids.
These are the poor souls who went overlooked and uninvited.
Then . . .
there were the empty or faceless and the unmemorable kids. There were those who had to weave through the classrooms and the hallways and they always spoke like unheard whispers.
Never included. Never invited.
Never wanted. Never desired.
Never seen for their beauty.
Never appreciated.
Never heard and hardly seen and even if they were soon, who cared?
I suppose my biggest fear was to be somewhere in that empty or lost crowd.
I want to be someone.
I wanted to be wanted or to be “cool” if there is such a thing.
I was petrified to be empty.
I was afraid to be too bland or too plain or too muted by an exciting world.
I hope you understand this –
Too average to be loved.
Too mediocre to have anyone look at me and care.
Too unworthy to catch the eye of someone so beautiful.
(like the girl of my dreams)
Or wait, no.
I was afraid to be too meaningless and outshined by such a beautiful and due to my list above; my greatest fear is to be seen but unseen, heard but never understood, and invited but never important enough to make the scene or spark a flame and be on site.
To be locked out
always looking in
you know?
I used to climb out of my bedroom window which was upstairs in my small humble house.
I would limb out and sit on the roof.
I’d look at the stars at night.
I’d look at the moon.
There were different stages of this.
There was the pre-teen stage.
Then there was the experimental stage.
There was the pack of Marlboro Reds stage, which was me as a teen and smoking cigarettes beneath a midnight sky.
The alcohol stage came soon.
Then the weed stages.
Then the psychedelics came in.
Then the chemistry turned worse.
But that is another story altogether.
I remember the moon during my dope nods and the stars too.
I think they might remember me too but either way –
I am told that I am unrecognizable from my previous and former self
There is something to this. The need to escape and climb out of where I was.
There has always been this need to “get away,” so to speak, or to find myself or some kind of peace or balance when all else appeared to be imbalance.
And please –
I was not so tortured and yes; I was tortured.
I was young. I was confused. I was scared.
I was insecure.
But what else did I know?
No one talks about their feelings. Do they?
No one humbles themselves.
No one shows their cracks or their flaws or their weak points.
Do they?
I used to rehearse what I would say, “just in case,” and if the opportunity allowed, I could be cool when I delivered my lines, like some kind of rock star or street gangster.
I would rehearse this in the mirror sometimes
Then I would practice my responses to be cool or to look unaffected or untouched.
This way . . .
no one could hurt me
or touch me
or make me more scared of the dark.
I know there were good times.
I had good times. I know I did.
Even during the chaos, there were good times.
Of course there were memorable times.
Absolutely, there was.
I had my good times in the crowd, and I had my wild times and crazy times and yes, of course; I had nights that were perfect enough to be remembered.
At the same time, there was a distance between me and the rest of the world.
I have no other way to describe this.
There was always a difference or a barrier between me and everyone else.
There was always a difference.
Always . . .
And there was something inside of me.
This was my only beautiful thing, which is like a voice of a child and a purity of truth to which, Dear God, I used to try and keep this down and keep this from the light –
The truth
My youth
My realest version of me.
God forbid anyone saw him or hurt him again.
And why?
Why are there such cruelties in this world?
And sometimes, like, say, at nighttime when I’d go out on the roof.
You know?
I used to let that version of me come forward.
“it’s okay. you can come out and play for a while.”
I used to let him have his time out of the cage.
yes . . . cage, dungeon are just semantics, at least I think so
I used to let him speak his mind and be open about this.
Play now or forever hold your peace, kid . . .
The lock was always ticking and predators never take lunch breaks.
I have news for you . . .
None of this is your fault.
I say this outwardly and openly to you and me.
The mental mirror can always distort images, people, places and things.
Memories are often inaccurate or dishonest.
And so . . .
I have news for you –
The things you saw are not things you are built for
We are not built with the intention to hate
We are not supposed to witness such cruelties and the things you saw are things you are not designed to see.
Think about the descriptions of unrelenting anxiety.
Think about what happens when we have unrelenting fears or worries and the anticipation of that old friend we know as “impending doom.”
Think about a car and how a car cannot run at full speed all the time.
This about a engine with a full open throttle at all times, and if so, or if an engine revs too high then the RPMs climb too high for too long. And then BOOM!
the engine explodes or gives way.
We are no different.
This is life in an anxious depressive and ongoing state.
And yes. I am sorry.
It is wrong.
It is wrong to see death.
It is wrong to see moral atrocities.
It is wrong to be bullied.
It is wrong to be beaten, but the culling of the herd is real and so, it is a case of survival of the fittest.
it is a case of the herd learning to rid the weakest and to dispose of the ugly, the sick, the diseased or the unwanted.
And so, therefore, you grow in fear. You grow with caution.
Yu move with a sense of defense.
No one wants the weakling.
You grow your insecurities like a field of wild vines that spread out of control like a viral weed that suffocates the gardens of you and your truth.
There is this spot inside of me . . .
This is a place of angst and despair.
I know where it is.
There is a room in my trillion mansions which exist in my head.
And I say this to which I am still homeless and aimless, hopeless and despondent, because I am also dissident, and detached.
There is a part of me who is forever untouchable and unreachable and thus; there is a truth to me which remains alone, abandoned or discarded. I hate this part of me
This is the part that is unwanted and weak and worse, there is room inside of one of the trillion mansions in my head, of which I was used for a grown man’s amusement.
There is a room which marks that places where I was abused and ditched and rejected as if to be as meaningless as an empty container of fast food in the garbage or an old leaf that once lived but now died.
I am lightyears away from that young boy.
I am decades away from that crazy teenager fueled by the gas of hate and anger.
I am decades later, fully grown in size but still learning and maturing on a daily basis.
And yet, I still rehearse what I would say, “just in case,” and I still hurt and I still fear.
But here . . .
right here . . .
I let that piece of me and that little boy come out here to see the light.
I used to let him come here to speak with his lover but she is gone now.
All of that past is dead gone and buried.
But ah, my child still mourns because like any kid, the inner child does not understand.
a little kid . . .
never understands the reason for moral injuries.
No one gets it.
No one knows why we have mean, cruel, and hard facts of things we are not built to see, endure, or process.
We are not supposed to have these things
And yet –
we have them by the boatload.
You are not built to witness murder or torture.
And yet, all of this is televised and glorified and blasted on every kind of social media.
You are not built with the intention of being hurt or abused and yet, we live in an abusive world and we make our way through abusive times.
I am told I have “a look.”
But I do not see this
A man at the gym and I had a talk about life.
This that took a spin and went deep, really quickly.
I explained about my reasons for exercise which go beyond the need to be in shape instead of fat or ugly.
This means more to me than my fears of being unsightly.
I am weak.
I am afraid.
I am that boy who was tossed aside and beaten.
I did not reveal more; however, I am that boy and I am that kid.
Still . . .
I have grown into a man and I am still that fear that swells and tells me someone out there is either looking to hurt me, steal from me or bury me with shame.
I explained that “I am not dangerous, by any means.”
The man explained, “I would argue that one.”
“You don’t carry yourself that way,” he said.
I don’t know much about this . . .
Whether I carry myself well or not, or whether I look tough or not, or whether I punish my fears and growl as I push weights at the gym – I am still that little boy.
I am weak and skinny and too puny to fight back.
I am that kid, that teenager, or that young man in my twenties or a grown man who had to work for a living but never knew what I was doing.
I am still that one who took to the rooftop of New York City buildings beneath the moonlight.
I am still that kid who needs to climb out and get away.
I still count stars and speak with the moon.
I still let that boy come out because in all reality; this is my realest version of self.
This is my most special and prized possession.
I had to learn to how bluff-charge, which is when an animal uses a non-contact, defensive move to warn off a enemy or predator.
I learned how to ruffle my own feathers to look bigger and protect myself.
And when my bluff was not enough, I had to become inventive.
Understand?
Weapons take many forms
I had to create different versions of violence.
I had to become calculative and stealth-like.
I had to plan ways to elicit an ugly revenge.
Or better, I had to find unexpected ways inflict a special and personal brand of pain.
In fact, I wanted to create a pain that outlasts the burdens of a physical strike or a bullet or a knife wound.
I cannot let anyone hurt that boy.
Not anymore,
He’s been hurt enough. Or wait. No
He is me, right?
I could not let him be beaten again.
I could not let him be rejected or discarded again.
I cannot allow him to be bullied again or laughed at or worse, I cannot let him come forward and share himself, just to be deceived or defeated and lied to, I could never let him come to a level of awareness and find out that he was a joke and his friends were never friends to begin with.
Every so often, I let him out.
The little boy, I mean
Like when I find myself on rooftops or elsewhere so no one can interrupt us.
o like here and now for example
this is him
all him . . .
But no one touches him here.
not even me
I let him out to cheer and I let him play.
I let him pretend that “she” is coming back and that we will never be alone.
we will have a family again (someday)
I let him think his dreams will come true for a while, and like all kids who fear that play time is over, I tell the boy “it’s time to go now.”
I tell him he has put his toys away and go back inside for cover.
We can’t let the world know or the predators see.
He cries for a while
And so do I
But this is why we hide
So no one sees and no knows
And no one can hurt us
and no one knows what keeps us weak –
Understand?
