We're mostly water

A man can either change with the times, or roll over and let the times change him. I'll take the former. 

Funny thing when you change your life (and your lifestyle) the things that you desire in almost every aspect of your life change as well. 

I no longer desire relationships that hurt me, no longer seek company just to hate myself for allowing disrespect to happen every time I see them. 

No longer am I alright with friends that despise me when they around each other, and then reciprocate love when they aren't around each other. 

I love my friends, and that is something that I believe deep in my soul. I am loyal even when I shouldn't be and before the changes in my life this loyalty was often misplaced for people that were palpable silent killers. People who were kind to my face and then murderous when they slunk into the shadows. 

Drinking buddies aren't real. That is all I had, was a series of old friends I made while drinking, drank with, and did stupid shit with because of drinking. 

This rings true (and probably 1000x more intense) in a romantic or sexual relationship. It's been said a million times, but you have to love yourself before anyone else can love you. I chased a bunch of drunk and disorderly women that were only interested in status, what others thought of them, and optics of a relationship. This is in stark contrast to what anyone should be looking for in a relationship: mutual respect, communication, seeking and supporting each-others goals and their own while being unhindered by a relationship. The relationship should make you feel successful before you actually are, during the process of becoming successful, and should make your entire definition of success change anyways. 

Until now only one relationship I've had has made me feel this way, and I was a young and stupid boy who fucked it all up with ego, hubris and self-hate. We were both young, it wasn't all my fault: I'd say it was about 75% my fault in that relationship. But I look back and wish I did things differently. I've learned from it and now hopefully, if I find someone who makes me as happy as she did, I will be able to show that love, reciprocate that love and be in love above all else. 

Finally: if you aren't feeling valued in life remember the parable of the value of a water bottle: 

A bottle of water in a supermarket is roughly .50 cents. 

A bottle of water in a convenience store is $2.50

A bottle of water in a movie theatre is $4.00

A bottle of water on a plane is $6.00 

If you don't think you are being valued correctly, change your f'n location. 

Man on fire

 When you are on fire there are two types of people that will come running towards you: those with water and those with gasoline. The trick is figuring out what they have before they reach you. The ones with gas are far more common and unless they can gain something from putting the fire out, they will douse you with the more flammable liquid and take out the competition for whatever game they are playing internally. All too often, they'll be telling you its water until they are close enough to drench you with gas. 

We have to develop our own internal extinguisher. Then it doesn't matter what they have in their bucket, you'll never let them close enough to find out. 

Too often we start the fires ourselves and don't know the difference between the two, pouring gas all over every mistake in an effort to quickly put out fires while making them 100x worse. We make countless mistakes and look to firefighting guides without taking stock of what set the fire in the first place. 

 I suppose writing this to myself is an attempt to fix my internal extinguisher. It was as broken as it gets until about a year ago. I was broken and sought the company of gas holders. I suppose when you love the smell of gas you really don't care if water is better for you. I'm just now learning to love water more. 

Respect in the wrong circles

Respect to me is mutual in any relationship. In order to receive respect you must be respectful of others. 

Being respected is a funny thing sometimes. Often if you are nice and kind (respectful) to the wrong people, you can be disrespected in return. Everyone is trying to get ahead in life, and people have varying degrees of morality in their ways to achieve success. 

I think sometimes I might be blind to a person's moral integrity. That is something to work on, using the great "moral sieve" and weeding out the nefarious among us. After certain life-altering events, a person can gain a new perspective on life and I no longer feel the need to give people around me chances until they are close enough to dole out some real damage. 

Live and learn, c'est la vie and all that... at least now I know. It's just lonely sometimes when you have to leave the majority of your former close friends behind, as they have burned you irreparably. 

Chances and forgiveness do not come easy in this new and improved mindset and way of living, but self-actualization and personal progress have never been more abundant when you subtract the disrespect from others.

About a Girl

 I fell in love with

her Hope Sandoval impression

while she smoked cigarettes in the 

folding lawn chair 

in the corner of my garage. 

 

She could always make me smile, 

and she could always 

rip my heart away from my body in silence, 

with a Cheshire Cat grin 

and her fingers crossed behind her back. 

 

I want you inside me, 

she said. 

And I was too stupid to reply. 

I pushed the door open 

for her to slither onto my bed 

and take my soul away 

on any particular night of the week. 

 

This was a pattern 

and until yesterday, 

I was always more than happy 

to feed her sick delusions. 

I was a sucker for big brown eyes and plump lips, 

not too mention 

the rest of her, 

which didn’t show the miles put on by a reckless driver. 

 

She was lucky to dodge 

the wear and tear 

many women of her experience

tend to show. 

 

She couldn’t have children, 

if she could 

there would be 

a few regrets

biting the ankles 

of the ghosts who were

dumb enough to ignore the red flags 

and focus on the eyes, 

and lips, 

and the rest of her

 

Rebirth of a Man

 

As far as I am concerned I have died, but for the approximately three people that care about me at this point in my life, I haven't completely perished. I never wanted to off myself, I just hated the guy that warranted disrespect from people close to me, the kid that thought everyone was against him, the asshole that thought the world owed him something. I hated that sucker and wanted to kill him, so I did.

There are parts of me that survived but the shitty drunk party boy is gone. The poisoned, pleasure seeking and lustful guy that I spent my young adult life feeding substances to is dead. Thank fuck.

No longer bound by internal and primal urges, the mentality of living becomes exponentially better. In a sense you can learn from your past mistakes, keep any good attributes and take the bad attributes out back and line them up like an execution and murder them in cold blood. 

  Allow me to reintroduce myself.  

That part of me no longer exists. The part of me that survived is a better man in every way. Keep the change and fuck off if you don't like it. I'm better now.

 

Good Riddance.