There will always be someone out there who loves to put people down. I have met them. I have seen them in action. I have heard them turn the machines and work the gossip mills and the rumor factories. I have been put through the ringer more times than I can count. I have encountered bullies. I’ve had times when I stood up for myself and there were times when I simply walked away. However, the one attachment I recognize most is my level of importance and my association of value with bullies and what they say.

It’s okay to tell on yourself. It’s okay to make the choice to switch or change directions. In fact, at any given moment, you can change your mind. You can improve. You can choose to refrain or choose to advance. At any point; the choice is yours. By the way, I say this for a reason.

There are places I would like to be, like somewhere off the coast of Italy or maybe Fiji. I think I’d like Fiji or wait, maybe there’s a place I’d like to be off the Gulf of Mexico. That would be nice too. There are places from my past that I would like to see again, such as a little town right outside of El Paso. The air was dry and the sky was blue. The desert was like something out of a picture book. Time moved slow. My Mother was there, my Father was there and my brother too.

What I am about to reveal is designed to be helpful to those who have faced a certain uncertainty in which, they had no vision nor could they conceive their life in any other way. Therefore, this is written to those who have faced in their own way or in their own right, the idea of a permanent means to solve a temporary problem.

There is so much more beneath the surface. And sometimes, we barely scratch it. There is more to us all than meets the eye. There is more to us, such as the unspoken or the uncovered, the undiagnosed, or the unaddressed parts of our life, which we’d prefer to keep hidden Ah, but the mind is such an incredible place.
We remember far more than we think. This is the storage unit where pasts behind the eyes of each and every one of us. 
There is more to us all. There is more to our fears and there is more to the ideas of our loneliness than simply being alone.  In fact, lonesomeness is not always synonymous with the lack of company. As a matter of fact some of the loneliest places I have ever been are places where I was absorbed by a crowd.
But no one talks about things like this. No one really speaks openly or honestly. No one dares to be truthful about themselves because why? Is it too raw? Is it too real?

I was very young. I suppose I was about the age when I wore one-piece pajamas with little feet on the bottom. There was a fire on the neighbor’s front lawn. This was something that I didn’t understand. I was too young to know how fires started. I was old enough to know what fire is. I knew that fire was dangerous and that someone could be burned or hurt.

However, this fire was different. This fire was set by someone. More importantly, this fire was in the shape of a small, almost waist high cross that was made out of wood. It was planted in the front yard of my next door neighbor, doused with gasoline and then set on fire.

I was just thinking. You know, just thinking about the way you see life. I was thinking about the way I see things. I was thinking about the so-called wealthy or the fortunate. I was thinking about privileged and how with all of their advantages, they get sick too.
Cancer never asks about the size of anyone’s bank account. Heart disease doesn’t care if you come from the Westside or the East. Either way, chemistry is still chemistry. Covid killed both the wealthy and the poor. Skin color is skin color, race is race, and religion is religion. Meanwhile, no matter which God we pray to or even if we pray at all, health is still health and science is still science. 

There is the idea that no one gets it. Nobody understands. In some cases, there’s the idea that nobody even cares because no matter what’s happening in our head, life keeps moving.
All the pressures and all the tensions; all the crap that floods our thinking and yet, meanwhile, the rest of the world is still moving, which means we still have to show up. We still have to co-exist. We have to interact with co-workers and the supervisors that say idiotic or insensitive things. 

There are times when life seems like some crazy competition. There’s always someone looking to get something. Someone always has an angle or an agenda. And then there’s us, just trying to get by.