After years of collecting my personal data and studying myself to find a better perspective, I have gathered my past experiences to add them to a pile of my secret yesterdays. I can see how the pile is so high that I swear I could pile them up to the sun.
I find myself asking the constant and age-old questions about me and the black and white difference between good and evil.
First, I have to say that no, I am not a bad man. However, I can attest that yes, I have done bad things.
Perhaps one could argue that I am not a good man either. But yes, I know that I have done good things too.
After all, I am only human.
I am flawed like the rest of us. I have highs and lows and I have two columns next to my name which define the difference between my wins and losses.
And yes. I have both.
I swear and I know and I have heard stories from so-called monsters and terrible people who preyed like mad predators to the sick and suffering in concrete jungles. I think about the terms of how someone claims themselves to be a product of their environment. Is it this? Or is it that people are also victims of an unavoidable circumstance?
I am not them and they are not me
At the same time, I struggle with the fates between fact and fiction and the undisguised version of mas a man
There are people who I knew and who I sat with and spoke with. They came from tough backgrounds. They survived their tough past.
I have seen people rise from the sewers and somehow; they soared from the underground to the top of the mountain.
But how?
What made them successful?
What taught them the ability to endure and to survive?
And more, what do they have that most do not?
Or how in the world did they come from nothing and accomplish everything?
What makes them so different from me?
No. We are not all born or created equal.
There is no secret when it comes to the secrets of genetics.
There is such a thing as greatness.
There are people with undeniable talents.
And there are people who are born gifted or they come from royalty or they come from a lucky gene pool.
Born rich or born poor.
Born strong or born weak.
Either way –
How does someone overcome themselves?
How does a man discard their own demons and in the end, how do people walk through hell and come out clean on the other side?
I love this idea?
I love thinking about this as I sift through the thoughts of brimstone.
I wonder about me and the contributions to my own ignorance.
Or now, I sit here with you and reflect upon my contributions to my own and sorry negligence. I consider my own self-made and self-taught catastrophes, and I add them a pile of things that led me to my tragic demise.
I was thinking about a picture of a sign from the other day.
I saw the sign while scrolling through social media.
The sign read “apparently, I am not old enough to know better.”
I laughed
I smiled, as if to be thankful for the small gifts that remind me that no, I am not the only one.
I am not alone and no, I am not the only person who lives with my own special brand of crazy.
I wonder though.
I wonder if it is possible to be the villain and a hero at the or the hero to be the villain at the same time.
Or maybe the two are interchangeable.
And maybe I, myself, are as subjective as ever and perhaps I am seemingly curious and confused and sad. And yes. Maybe I get carried away.
Maybe I am confused about the ideas between the sweet and the sinister, or the good and bad, or good and evil.
Maybe the contrast between the two is necessary to shade the difference, and, so, maybe I need this to create an understanding that even Angels can wreak havoc, if necessary.
I listened to a man in a jailhouse program.
He was honest and true about his mistakes.
He would rather be someone else. I know because he told me so.
He would have rather been like a common or everyday “John Doe,” and be easily unknown.
He swore it
And, ff this were possible, he would be free to shed his own skin and free to remove the meaning behind his face tattoos. His past could be removed or vanish and disappear like the past 10-15 years which he spent in a cage.
I relate to this.
However, I relate to this differently and perhaps softly.
However, I relate to the regrets of my rage or my shortsighted life.
I relate to the regrets and the resentments that failed me
I relate to anxious choices and fearful alibis that could not account for my crimes or excuse me enough to absolve me from my sins.
I went to Church yesterday
I watched a young kid gain his steps to his religious goals.
I saw faith, blind and real and true as ever.
I struggled with my presence.
I struggled to find peace of comfort. I had a feeling inside of me, as if I were stained or poisoned and unhealable in the house redemption.
I felt a stir inside of me, as if I were not worthy of redemption.
I am not like the parable regarding the tax collector.
I am far from the Prodigal Son.
I am only me, searching and hoping that somehow, in the end, you will come and find me
And so, when you do
Neither of us will be lost
or alone
Ever again
