What we’re about to do is go back to a time that was influential to my early survival.
I will not make any excuses or look to alter, minimize, or glorify any of this. I want to be as clear when I report that none of this was cool. None of this was glamorous in any way, shape or form. However, I want to give you this view of me from a time when my life was about to change direction.
As it is with so many others, it took tragedy to open my eyes.
It took pain and loss for me to viscerally understand the depths of my lessons which is why I am going to take you back to the later part of October 1989.

So, you freak out sometimes.
Yeah, me too.

It’s not crazy. Not at all. No, it’s just this thing that happens. It’s a thing that comes from inside which is something that I have or maybe we have. Maybe everyone has it and in reality, we all freak out sometimes.
Maybe, this is all just a momentary lapse of hysteria and it’s nothing more than that.
At least not really.

There is a long standing argument that to someone who believes they have nothing, there is someone else who sees them as a person with everything. Yet, there is a person who has everything and to them, it’s as if they have nothing.
And so it goes this way sometimes. Life.
Or is it life and the common misperceptions of what life is?
Sometimes, there are people who overlook the simplest things. There are those who overlook the simplest accomplishment or say; simply breathing, which to someone else, this is all uphill; yet, this is life.
Sometimes, this is us. Mistaken, misguided and frequently misinformed.

This trip will be a little different today –
This will take us around the world and back again, from youth to the present. To be clear, I think this trip was necessary for me. I think this will help us build some understanding between us about why we say things and why people lie.

I can remember the first time I ever heard the quote, “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.” This comes from Mark Twain.
The quote continues, “If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”
I think I get it.

This one comes without apology and, to be clear, I have had the great pleasure of working with and being in the presence of the greatest people in the world. To them, what I am about to say will make sense.
There are times when my emotions are high and times before I speak or do a presentation that I can feel the burning inside of me. I can feel a rage that’s about to burst and sometimes, I will express this in a way as if to say the crowd is in trouble, which means I am going to explode. On a few occasions, there were speakers before me who either misspoke or misused information or, for whatever the reason, might have been their presentation or something about their demeanor either hurt or offended me. Sometimes, like now, my emotions are high before my speaking engagements to which I would then turn to the person closest to me and say, “They’re dead!”

I will look to my trusted, most closest people and they can see it in my eyes.
They know where this comes from which is not a bad place at all. No, quite the opposite. This is me trying to right the wrongs of our crazy thought patterns that cause us to work against each other.
So, with this being explained, I will continue and explain that the following will need to connect with your imagination.
Again, there will be no apologies for the emotions to come.
So, here we go.

I assume that like most people, I have places in my life that are more like special sanctuaries or places of reverence than anything else. These are places that lead me toward feelings of comfort or solace. I come here when I need comfort or a place to go to think or find understanding, which is odd because I come here most when the place is empty.
I assume everyone has or needs a place like this. Well, I have a few places like this.
Like the beach for example. Or more specifically, the beach at Point Lookout. I have seen this place in every phase of my life. I have been here in my earliest memory. I have walked here in the winter time and in the spring, in the fall and, of course, I have been here when the sands are filled with bodies on blankets, laying out to let the sun toast the skin.

And so it goes, luckily number 13.
I hope that you don’t mind me cutting like this but for now, I have some thoughts that are both important and time-sensitive.
There will be no glances backwards in this entry. No, instead, I am keeping it here, between us.
It’s just you and me.
For now.

I am about to take you to a view from a different time and as I mention this, it is timely that I write this to you now in the early days of December.
I say this because I am reminded of a time when I was living on a farm at the age of 17.
See me? I’m the one over there.
I have short hair now. I am cleaned up but still rather thin. I am fresh from the toxic world with only a few months into this idea of what it means to “stay clean” and be out of trouble.
I am not sure of my surroundings. Of course, since my surroundings were somewhat of a therapeutic community, I had to go along to get along.

Before going forward, I want to say here and now, To Hell With Doubt!
Here’s why:
The one thing I know without any mercy or hesitation is that doubt is contagious. This is easy to catch too. It’s easy because doubt is plentiful; it’s everywhere you look and everywhere you turn.
It’s on every corner. It’s in the hallways outside the classrooms at school. Doubt is in the boardrooms at work and woven into the social structures with laces of fear and insecurity.

There are so many different versions of me, which took place at different times. Of course, there is the younger version of me. There is the scared version and the anxious version. There is the angry version of me and the unhealthy side too.
Not to mention, there is a gentle side and an empathetic side. There is the part of me which has healed and another part of me which has forgiven my trespasses as well as a part that has forgiven those who’ve trespassed against me.

There were days when I was at the top of the crest, riding the waves of luck or good fortune and, of course, there were days when I crushed and tumbled inwards like a wave that crashes into rocks.
There were times when life was calm and other times when life was tumultuous like an angry sea in the center of a miserable storm – yet, in the thick of the storm, there was this part of me who was a witness, staring at the aftermath and looking at the life that was right in front of me.