Somewhere Deep Inside

I am in there somewhere still. 

I have had a muthafuckin' bitch of a shitty year, to put it mildly. Do not take that statement lightly, I have had a down year to rival all the detestable down years I've seemed to have since being a misguided teenager. Life hasn't been easy. 

Despite this, until last year I always held a silent optimism that my world and precarious life would turn out. No matter what happened to me, I saw the good in people and still held an enormous amount of love for my friends. Looking back now, perhaps that was to a fault, but I saw the good in people until I got got by trusting the wrong ones. 

Perhaps it was a case of misplaced affection (or several), but I truly wanted anyone I was even remotely close to succeed, and would constantly have good things to say about people to push them in that direction. I was never one for badmouthing people, and could not understand those who spoke poorly about their "friends."

I have made some mistakes along the way, as we all have, but I would never intentionally hurt anyone and I care so much about my people, no matter how big or small my circle of trust will ever become. 

I am well-aware I live a rather twisted type of charmed life, I fully recognize that I became lucky by proxy of a wealthy father passing away and leaving my caring mother enough money to allow her to travel endlessly and myself enough to chase my ideals of a good work-life balance (otherwise known as "anything but teaching"). I strive to never be that person that doesn't realize how lucky they are, I know I am a fortunate son in some ways, not so much when dad was still around but in the years since he passed I have had everything I need and most of what I have wanted. 

But no amount of money could prepare me (and our family) for this year. 

Bang, my sister died, in a completely unexpected and devastating fashion she died. It tore what was left of our (now) little family from it's roots and nothing was ever the same again. 

Pow, a friend who I had known for years did everything short of trying to bury me alive by completely separating from me in an incredibly vulnerable time of my life. Destroying the business idea we were involved in after I had sunk countless hours into creating a brand and marketing plan from the ground up. My world began to spin. 

Boom, in my lowest state I reached out to a girl who I dearly, dearly loved but was very, very bad for me. We started "dating" again and she defaulted back to her 20 year old self, showing zero support for me and basically using me for her own traumatized support dog purposes. She would never stoop so low to read anything I write but if she ever does, I sincerely hope you find the help you need. Hurt people undoubtably hurt people and in this case, it was just two hurt people bleeding on each other, no way to heal while they are both about to bleed out. Our little reconciliation lasted about two terrible months. 

Crack (the attempted death blow), I spent most of my adult life hanging out in pubs, and got involved with some pretty shitty people. One of them, broke up with her boyfriend (who I later learned she was serially cheating on, with me and multiple others), and then when I went to comfort her, she asked me to take a trip to Cuba with her. At first I didn't want to go but then as I had more drinks, the idea of sitting on a Caribbean beach crushing rum with a cute girl started to sound pretty good. After about 4 hours of her asking, I agreed. I bought the tickets that night and she confirmed through text message the next morning. 

When the 24 hour period to cancel my tickets, she must have reconciled with her poor boyfriend and ghosted me. I went on the trip anyways, having a blast. 

That night I went to comfort her I also gave her a women's hockey jersey I had laying around. There wasn't much connection to it, and I thought it was a nice gesture to cheer her up. 

When I returned home from Cuba, I had no intention of ever contacting the girl again, but I wanted my damn Jersey back. So I texted her roommate. This fuckin guy started giving me a hard time and saying that I booked a trip without her knowledge or consent and just expected her to go. WHAT THE FUCK!!

So we argued a bit and he eventually left the jersey outside without telling me anything and went to work. Then he told my ex girlfriend at his work (we all used to work together), that I had shown explicit pictures and videos of her. This is a long and convoluted story that I am ultimately in the wrong about, but she did ask me to send emails of the same pictures to another friend in order to have him paint her. The roommate only saw a small clip of the video as he grabbed my phone from my hand while scrolling through the pictures farther. 

They then spread horrible rumors that I did some even worse things (I can't even mention these without feeling sick). 

I lost it on three people, the friend who disowned me after Myranda's death and these two complete jackal muppets, for trying to ruin my life. I asked them to gather the whole bar to come to my house and I would kill them all. I also quoted DMX lyrics and did not consider them to take anything I was saying that serious, it was mostly trash talk. I would have liked  to fight them at that point, excluding the girl. (Anyone that truly knows me, knows it would be impossible for me to kill anyone, no matter how mad I was). 

This is when they ruined my and my families life by calling the police and showing them these texts. Doubling down on the deceit and lies in their witness statements, they straw-manned their case against me in the most evil way possible. 

This is where I eventually called a high-priced lawyer to sort everything out. As it stands, I am being tried for Uttering threats x3, and face a maximum prison sentence of around 20 years. 

I have struggled with my mental game ever since, I was already reeling with my sister's passing, and now these people were trying to bury me further. 

I no longer really trust anyone (besides Henry, who is innocent to all this and doesn't deserve his father's punishment, no matter how trivial). 

I often consider ending my life. The spark for continuing on has diminished to a point that the flame is flickering with such a slight bend and has the distinct smell of a campfire after pouring out the final beer of a night all over it. Again, Henry does not deserve that and is the sole reason I stay away from the trigger. 

I also do not want to give these people the satisfaction of ending me. To me this is completely evil. There are a whole slew of former friends that do not know the real story and side with them, thinking I asked this girl to go on a vacation and then threatened her and her friends when she said no. I find so much hate in my heart for everyone involved that knows what actually happened, but do not blame people if they do not know the true story. 

If you have any compassion in your heart, and you read this and know me, please share it. The story needs to be told. I cant work until it is settled without leaving my son, that is not an option. I need the real story to get out. 

These people (and their fake witnesses) are trying to destroy my life. 

I will survive, I will trundle forward despite losing the majority of my friends and a piece of my sanity. I have learned much from this and do not deserve to be treated this way. 

There is still that good human deep inside myself that I am not going to let a bunch of regulars at a shitty neighbourhood pub extinguish. 

I will beat these allegations against my character, my conscience and my mental acuity. 

Karma of knowing the real story will eat them from the inside eventually, but I need the world to know as well, so I can stop being persecuted for what amounts to a girl that belongs to the streets, and doesn't want her boyfriend finding out she cheats on him constantly, and is willing to completely ruin someone else on the off chance of that happening.  

I will get better and prove everyone who doubts me in the slightest wrong. 

Thanks for reading. Please pass this along to anyone that needs to read it, as it it is truly a matter of my life. 

I am not a Stone

 I am not a stone.

quite the opposite

the daily occurrences of triviality

affect me in ways

I wish I could control more.

I am hoping 

to harden soon. 

GOOD

 CAN'T KILL ME

RUST

Strike through

Live through this. 

As wildfires continue to rage and the rest of us continue to close off our senses, the seasons blur away from the mean, and we mourn the losses without considering the source. This world is a shit-show ride and its easy to get caught up in the backdraft of it all. 

Nobody reads this writing anymore, good. One can get caught up in self indulgence when you think there is an audience. True art is not for them, it's an expression. True art is the dying breath of a man who doesn't care anymore for the masses. Art isn't in the details, it's in the ether. It explodes outwards and covers us (perceived or indifferent) in blood and guts. 

Breathe through it. 

Feeling like shit is such an exercise in frustration. Exercising is such a maintenance grind. Living is a grind, life is a crap-shoot. It can get away at any moment and seem a billion miles away from reality. It is (in reality) a trillion miles away from anyone else. If you think any different you are in it for the wrong reasons. 

Without art we are hopeless, with it we are somewhat purposeful. Fuck it, we are all just floating away into that same damn ether. Might as well create something on the way to drowning in it. 

Experience is god. It is the stories we tell, without them we are just going through the motions until we die an unlived life. Get out of your comfort zone, get out of your house, get out of your head. Travelling humans are cool humans, they have none of the trappings of a sedentary life wherever they are from. They generally are not worried about bills, their friend or family issues, or what they are doing a month from now. They are this way because they are truly living in the moment, not acting or telling people they are while they waste their life playing video games or re-watching "Friends" for the millionth time. 

 

 

 

Chemicals

 One day,

we'll stop floating in chemicals

at a loss for the pedestals

since we've always been living

in fear

 

Tomorrow,

we'll start acting on intentions

those familiar engines

that have always been keeping 

us near

 

Yesterday,

we wrapped all the levity 

gave it all for the misery

and left all your endings

in another's unlucky

veneer

 

We'll climb up

and leave the world 

behind

We'll blow up

and finally leave eachother 

this time...

Goodbye

Is this it?

Life IS worth living, until it isn't. People ARE amazing, until they aren't. 

Facing your own mortality is scary business. But it's true... you will die. 

Life can hold so many wondrous and even more terrible things. I love so much about this life, and I abhor so much about what happens during it. 

Music is one of those magical experiences that humans create. I have never been closer to GOD than I have when I am listening to good music. The power that instrument, lyrics and/or a voice can hold, when put together in the right way, is truly indistinguishable from ecstasy or from our ideals of HEAVEN. If you find a song or an album that makes you cry, grin, or gives you goosebumps and that warm feeling everywhere... you've discovered something purely mystical and as close to the good side of the spectral human experience as it gets. 

 

 

I remember hearing "The Dark Side of the Moon" for the first time, or "Kid A." These types of songs transport into another realm of existence. It can be a connection point as well between us, music brings us together. Sharing music with my son and seeing him enjoy some of the same tunes I do is an awesome experience. Some of the better memories with my own dad involve this type of thing. 

Music accentuates our life story. Picture a movie without a soundtrack (if you even can), audio gives us the cues in life that things aren't quite as bad as they sometimes seem. Or it exclaims a celebration. Or it lets you know it's cool to get some rage out and scream away the pain. Or it gives you a hug and tells you it's alright to cry for a bit. In any mood, in any situation music is right there holding us and guiding us along. Music is the seasoning that makes life tolerable. Without it, life can become a batch of unseasoned and tasteless meat and potatoes, they will only keep you going forward amidst the grey dull and boring backdrop of our post-industrial reality; with music we see the full allowance of colour and variety that makes it worth the forward progress (and life tastes better). 

 

True love. This will sound hokey, don't care. When you find someone you are borderline obsessed with, and they are borderline obsessed back and you can both fall into that saccharine, hormonal sweet spot of love... man, that is such a crazy feeling. I had it once, for about 5 years I had this wonderful amazing love in my life, then I fucked it all up. We both did, but I can't lay any blame, we were young and moronically (annoyingly) into each-other in a way that just isn't sustainable. We burned bright and burned out. We grew up, became cynical and probably both started taking various pills to cope with life. I only wish we could have met when we both had money and we could have experienced so much more together. Instead we were college kids with nothing to our names but ambition, ideas and rose-coloured glasses. 

I thought I found that another time, but she turned out to be a bit of the opposite. Life can really mess with you if you are blindly in love with a girl who has little to no ties with reality. So many factors can ruin a person towards you, towards life, towards love. The incredibly hard technique is recognizing the good people. Or the ones who haven't been traumatized enough yet. I fell out of that particular category years ago myself. But at least I was able to experience true love for those 5 short years. Thank you.

My son. My beautiful smart moralistic and loving boy. Do not ever change your spirit, you are pure good when so many are the opposite. 

You needed to be mentioned here Henry, but I will write a post next to fully outline just how much you mean to me, and how much you changed my life forever. I love you like I've never loved anything, or realized that amount of love was possible. Much different than the love mentioned above, this is an ever-lasting, in-extinguishable, bonded and forged love that will never fade. You are my reason for existing.  

Nutshell Musing

I’ll start at the beginning. 

My Dad did not like me. We can’t even begin to describe any sort of love when like wasn’t on the table. He did not like my mom, and he did not like his children, besides maybe one. Even then he treated her like shit as well. He was a bad human who showed a glimmer of good human once every few years, just enough to think he was not a complete asshole. He was an asshole. He was likely UN-diagnosed with mental issues such as bipolar disorder, depression, and some variety of narcissistic personality disorder.

I begin with him because I am still recovering from the years of abuse that he laid upon our family. This is not a “woe is me” type of essay, it is an apology. One domino fell into another until I did some regrettable things that I have to take 100% accountability for. Having regret for your actions and taking accountability are not mutually exclusive events in your life, often they present as two ingredients in the same sandwich. This is what the following writing will entail.

Because my father never liked me, I lived the better part of 30 years oscillating between wondering why, hating myself as much as he appeared to, and making my whole life about trying to gain some sort of affection from a man that was incapable of affection.

At different times in my life, I have tried to drink those memories away, tried to fuck them away, tried to numb myself in any type of fashion available to me to forget, and finally tried to have anyone I met who didn’t show me affection eventually turn around and love me. Spoiler: that does not happen.

So, I struggled my whole life (until now), looking for a way for the world to love me. And I looked for that in the wrong people. The people who were rude, mean and generally terrible people became my mission. My whole reason for existing became to win the worst types of people over. People like my father, people that only cared about themselves and were generally incapable of love, were the ones that I was drawn to.

I was continually shown by these types of people that they disliked me and were willing to show massive disrespect to me at every turn. I of course would lap that shit up, as it became even more enticing to me the worse I was treated. I did this in my romantic relationships, I did this with my friendships, I did this with anyone I had met. I thought (until recently) that I was just showing loyalty and eventually they would see that I was a good person worthy of their affection and praise. When that never came, my self-worth which was tied to this directly, would plummet. And I would lash out against myself for not winning over the affections of bad humans. At times I would internalize, and at times I would have moments of clarity to disrespect shown towards me and lash out. But at the end of the day, it was me I was the issue. You can’t blame a snake for biting you, that is their nature, but you can blame yourself for getting too close to snakes in the first place, and I continually did.

This is not a plea for a returned reputation, that is far behind me. The problem with the types of people that I strive(d) to impress, was that they were often master manipulators. Narcissists with all the charming qualities that accompany them. So, the more I had moments of lashing out because of disrespect, the more they would try to control the situation in their favour and rip me to shreds in order to not have others catch on to the games they are playing.

I am not claiming to be the greatest person. I have many flaws and I have made so many mistakes. But at the end of the day, I have a huge heart, and I would do anything for someone who loved me, I have just been searching for that love in the exact opposite place I should be.

Well, that ends now. From now on I will turn towards the genuine and be incredibly careful when giving any piece of me away to anyone. I will let those know who are important, exactly what they mean to me, and how beautiful I think they are. I also have to make a promise to myself that I will be extra careful and judgmental, as I have already made the mistake of letting snakes in and the inevitable result is a world of pain and snakebite woes.

This is the catalyst for change in my life.

Thank you to all those who are genuine and especially thank you to the snakes for taking this as far as it would go, to show me that there is no succeeding in winning over the type of person my father was.

I still love, and I still care about people immensely. The only thing that has changed is an extra-sensory perception for those who do not love back, never did, and never will.