My intention with this is simple. I want to normalize how common we are. Although we’re all different in our own way, life happens to everybody.
I think now is a good time for a moment of truth.
I think it would be best to say that since our thoughts are the direction of our mind, it is safe to say that there are times when we need to step away from ourselves. There are times when we need to step away from everything; but at the same time, there’s nowhere to go because everywhere you go, there you are.

Let’s be mindful of something.
Life shows up whether we’re ready or not.
Got that?

I used to listen when people would tell me about myself.
I used to buy into this too. After a while, I started to wonder why?
Why am I allowing myself to submit to the predictions and the judgments of other people?

I never questioned any of this. I just listened and accepted.
I never thought to myself, “Hey, maybe they’re wrong” or “Maybe this is more about them than it is about me.”
Instead, I would buy into the idea that maybe they were right.

They had to be right, right?
Why else would they tell me these things?
Or better yet, why else would I listen?

I have news for you.
Moments will happen that come without warning. Sometimes life has a way of throwing us off. Sometimes people betray us. Sometimes we say mean things. We can be hurtful at times. We can grow and we can fall. We can only take so much or so it seems and just when we thought that we couldn’t take anymore, life comes along and hits us with something else.
We can heal and we can suffer.
We can stand and we can regain our composure.
Or we can submit to the world and allow ourselves to be washed away in the undertow of life.
But why?

Ever hear a song that brings you back to a time when you were much younger?
The world was a different place then. I was different and so were you, of course.

I’m not sure what I knew or what I thought. Then again, I’m not sure if I was aware of anything. At the time, I suppose I never focused on anything more than what I should wear or how I should look.
I suppose I thought we would be young forever. Or is this a common thing? Wasn’t it common to think we could survive forever on simple foods and our crazy friends?
I suppose I never thought much about the future or setting up a retirement fund. I never thought about a career or what I wanted my life to look like when I was older. Besides, thoughts like this were for older people and I never wanted to be older.

In answer to the question, I will admit that this is a tough one for me to tackle. However, in answer to the question, I believe it is necessary to tell the world what I was thinking and that somehow, I was confused by an internal narrative that misled me to believe that something about me was off or defective.

For some reason, I believed in the labels I had been given. I believed in words like learning disability. I believed in words that coincided with me being a bum, a crook, a junkie or uneducated.
This is what I thought and this is what I believed people would see when looking at me.

I will make this one quick and yes, indeed, I think this might sound a bit sappy. But sappy or not, I will report this to you out of love and solidarity.
Over the years I have been fortunate to create new friendships. Some of these friendships are actually old connections from back in the days of crazy nights and memorable mischiefs, which took place in a town called East Meadow.
However, our paths have either crossed again or maybe it’s safe to say that our friendship was reborn in our later years.

The following entry is an old journal entry. This is a rant of mine from back when I was working with an opiate overdose recovery team. I was angry at the time and a bit all-over-the-place. But this is an answer to some of the questions I got.
Why did I choose to get involved with the fight?
Read on –

A rant written at 3:00am

I love it when I see them on their first day. 
They are the young ones, the newbies. They’re fresh in the world and just starting out in the working world.
I love the look in their eyes; partly intimidated, partly unsure of what to expect and partly nervous, partly hopeful, partly wondering what the people they work with will look like or talk like. They’re green to the world, brand new.

This is an interesting place to be. This was me once
and this was you once too.

It is the first sunrise of a new year. The morning is unusually warm here in New York but the sky is pretty and the hour is quiet. I write this to you in a deep stage of thought. But more, I offer this with an honest version of myself. To be truly introspective, my goal is to be as honest as possible.
To begin with, I view this day as a moment of reflection. I view this as a memory of something which took place in my childhood – but ah, childhood does not last forever. Neither will our parents and neither will our yearly rituals.

There is a story from my past which I am not too sure how the details go. However, for this entry I will do my best to be as true to the story as I can be.
The story takes place in a typical suburban neighborhood on Long Island where a young man looked to gain his reputation as an all-out gangster.
For this entry, I think we are going to call him Kenny. Just to be clear, this was not his name and to be even more clear, names, places and tiny details of this story will be altered to protect the less-than innocent.