Never Again-That Night twisted

For a while he took me away from the god I feared I followed.
And I followed him. Because for me he was the lack of all that bothered. He never bothered to care about what a person had to go through to survive. He never bothered to care about what a person did with their time. He really didn't much bother whether or not the bills got paid. He only ever bothered to have a good time and those good times he shared with me, well, we both never bothered to stop wanting to share 'em.
Longevity my friend is best seen in the geesse, One dumbass up front screamin "This way...", while the rest merely ride his coat tails until he's too tired to lead anymore. It's a Self-serving way of seeing things but we are all lazy and seems to me it's those too lazy to bother caring, always seem to have made it to the finish line.
Twisted thoguh it may be, I like this "too lazy to fail" kind of man. He is inventive and genious, cruel when he has to be and does what has to be done regardless of the consequences. It is his duty to care for the survival and existance of a great many and so he survives. Who is this man? He is HuMan.
Being human we are all twisted, cruel and self-serving.

Our tv show, the one we used to watch all the time, is playing in the background and yet I can only barely hear it. I'm scraping the inside of my nails and the scuff scuff tck sound is grating, annoying, painful. I can't stand it when he gets like this. I want to tell you that I need him, that I care. On nights like tonight, the grating scrape of nail on nail is soothing. It's better than his crying and much better than silence.I heard him crying over the phone, he was whimpering like some wounded puppy. I told him she was trouble, I told him to leave her alone, but like a fly to honey so too a man to a vindictive ex wife. It's not really her though, He tolerates her to see his daughter. I keep telling him nothing in this world is worth that kind of pain. He shouldn't risk letting that woman kill him just for a moment with that little girl. What use is he to his daughter if he is dead?And he dobuts she'd kill him. But she's gotten him so close before. I'm surprised he survived this long. God knows I've pulled his ass out of hot water too many times already.I remember when it started too. She had a hatred for me, thought I was the reason he left her. No, no! Couldn't be her manipulating self-centered neediness...But I digress, He walked in the room and wouldn't leave my mind for months like the addiction I was picking up, every day I wanted another hit of his drug, another deep breath of what was his fresh air to the stale cigarette smoke of what my life had become.He asked me if I knew what darkness was. I told him I lived with it inside my very soul.He said it was nice to be home. It was nice... It was nice? I knew what pain was, what deep sorrow and lonliness was, I knew what it was like to not only have darkness with oneself, but to feel it inside, as part of my very soul. I knew maddness, pain, deep oblivion... He was no such comprehension. I let him claim to be, it made me laugh like a parent at their child when they jump off the roof believing they can fly. But his self image was a lie. He was no super-man, he was no devil, no evil no hell. He was merely human, flawed, scared, self-loathing human, just like me.When I met him I though he was devioius, strong, unfeeling. I hated it, but it intrigued me. since then I've discovered he is just like every other weak-willed self-masturbratory, self-loathing, societal-paricite out there. I no longer look at him in awwe and wonder and I no longer feel he is my god.For a while he took me away from the god I feared I followed. Being human we are all twisted, cruel and self-serving. I have crushed hearts, broken homes, ended lives and lived on to be indifferent about it. I thought he could be the embodyment of something different but similar enough, the next step up in my twelve step program out of Hell. I felt I could idolize him, emulate him. Be strong like him and ompassionate like him. He was weaker then me. The Bastard, he's never even killed, he lies worse than I do, and he fears. Damnable traits. I hate the idea of the society's fortitude, based solely in softness. I'll admitt my presence and part in the race but only on condition; you must understand I hate being associated with anything so weak.So I distance myself from every lover that comes along, every man who I ever thought was worthy, who showed me he wasn't. One truely was so perfectly dark and cruel, he's dead now. Another made me believe he was until I saw it, his weakness in his eyes when he looked at me. Those soft blues and his slurred words, I Love You they said and he was helpless in my presence. I was left to defend him as he wallowed in self-pity.Never again.

Never Again-That Night survived

I'm surprised he survived this long.
. Not for three weeks. I hadn't remembered it not for three weeks. The first was three weeks ago and for three weeks I hadn't kept the appointment. It was strange and strangely wonderful. I could see myself being there, being in that life the first week. He was darker than I usually aproach but what did I care. I recognized the vibe. We read each other from across the room. And from that first smile to keeping my mouth shut in front of power to the security guard ofering me in to the weaving apple and the comic books. Hell all the way to a swingset and halloween lights... it was like we read each other. And it's the kind of thing I usually gravitated towards. But that's because it reminded me of him. Him, I got to see for two days and left again. Him who realized I call because I'm stranded. Him who watched me leave saying it was a bad idea, and it was, he spent time letting me relax from a long, long time of not seeing him. Two days. Two weeks ago. If today is the first. It's still thanksgiving. Math doesn't line up. Of course over a month ago. And besides I worked those days. seven weeks ago I was crying and it was a lovely game of pool so weeks ago then I was reading books and looking for work when I got the right message at the right time. My full time job was looking for jobs. And I don't have a phone that does that. Politeness prevailed. The freedom to a few days ago compared with five years of pent up aggression felt less than a week ago. I was right to save myself messages. I'd have liked to have read them.. But the appointment was set for the first. And that was three weeks ago. I'd made it a month ago and hereI'm found wondering where I'de been. Thinking this is the first. I haven't felt the date for six weeks and wasn't feeling it now. I'm six to five weeks. past the realization that I'd missed an appointment. My whole world was rocked, my whole schedule was off and I hadn't told everyone thank you.. For what it means, thank you. I have no reason to fear when I'm with him again, and finally. Thank you for being the excuse, Romeo. Thank you for Accepting the excuse Shy, and thank you for needing no excuse Toto. Those who are family will always first and I'm finally safe to say I found my family. But I've been on the road. I live on good graces and I only tollerate anger when I care to. Some say I care too much. I know this. I just like Playing with their minds.. I haven't been home for more than two days, not for three weeks. That means home truely is where the heart is. Even without a roof. Which, by the way Peaace Offering, I should come to the back yard some time. What if I parked by blown Valve in the corn for the winter? That is if nobody's home. Thank you for checking. And for shooting. You truely make me feel relaxed too.. I haven't felt lost, hespite not being home, not for three weeks.. Despite not being reminded of the first.. Not for three weeks.
God knows I've pulled his ass out of hot water too many times already.

Never Again-That Night dont doubt

He was sitting on the couch hegging her tight, they were watching their favourite tv show, just relaxing and falling asleep together. Suddenly he picked his head up and she was gone. The spot where she was, was still warm. He got up to look for her and stubbed his toe in the dark. Couldn't find her. Fumbling into the kitchen, he almost shocked himself on the light-switch that needed repair. All the same, he remembered it was sparking at the last second. Besides in the dark, he thought he saw her at the sink. Coming up behind her he wrapped his arms tight at her waist and affectionately swayed with her wispering in her ear about how he loved her and was afraid she'd left him. She spun in his arms and said something about just getting a glass of water. She was gone in the instant he closed his eyes to hug her tight. Looking around in the dark he couldnt see her but went back towards the living room, the hallway, the bedrooms. No sign of her. Had to be the bathroom. But when he opened the door to the bathroom to se eif she was there he was blinded temporarily by the light. She wasn't there. Panic struck him, turning too fast to find her, he knocked into the door-jamb. It was a small cut above his eye but it didn't matter to him. He went running from bedroom to bedroom calling out to her. Frantic. Then he felt a breeze coming from the stair-well. He couldn't see in the dark if the door was open or not, but what if she was already out the door? He started running at the door and landed face-plant into the door at the bottom of the staris. I let him stay that way until morning. I hated that he chased me around the house like I was her. She left him a year ago for a reason and I swear he imagines I'm her. It's not appropriate to do any of those things to a nine year old. His mind is fixated on her though, he chases these mirages into traffic some times. And he doubts she'd kill him.

Never Again-That Night world of pain

Have you ever been shot with a blunt object just behind the ear? In that soft spot there, there's a certain one square inch which blinds you, paralyzes you, renders you helpless and all you can hear is the silent ring of rain, all you can feel is the pulsating vibration throughout your body of pain, and strangely all you can see is a world of pain. I remember the first 200 mph shot to that spot only as a ddream. Because remembering it any more vividly was too much to handle. The onlt thing was just as, if not more painful was loosing a loved one. Men; I've found, get that intense connection when sex is involved. Women, when other kinds of bonding are involved. I remember spending nights on end on the phone with him discussing eerything from what was on tv to how it upset him that his keepers didn't understand him. I didn't understand him. But over time and hours spent listening to him, I felt I began to. I could predict his reactions, predict what he was going to say. I fell in love with him because I understood him. Loosing him was a world of pain that rivaled a shot to the soft spot behind the ear. One of those things can only be described, only understood if experienced.
Listening to him cry I understood his pain. I felt his pain. I wanted to sooth it. He was crying and I understood his desire to die and end the suffering. "Don't despair sweetie. Don't wish that..." I reasoned "because if you aren't here at all imagine what she'll have to go through and she won't have you to get her through any of it. Imagine her world without your love... You don't want to do that to her do you?" He kept crying. He was enduring the pain though.I keep telling him nothing in this world is worth that kind of pain.

Never Again-That Night toleration

"I don't even want to see your face!" He was screaming into the phone. The noise in the background made it hard for me to concentrate on my homework. It was some stupid calculus problem. I switched to nuclear chemestry because it was an easier subject to follow. Made more sense on some level to me. How some chemicals combined was a mystery to most but I knew there was a pattern from catalyst to catalyst. I just felt it in my gut, and that helped me hone in on a range for the right answer. Doing the work just got the exact answer. "But she's my daughter and you've no right to keep her from me... I'll take you to court if I have to!" The screaming persisted. He knew if he took her to court, he'd loose. Part of the seperation agreement - he had no right to his daughter. Poor Jami caught in the middle of this mess. I almost felt bad for him as he slammed the phone down. Throwing things was his normal expression of anger. No wonder she left him. I almost felt bad for him though. The closest thing he'd ever experienced to love he saw in little Jami's eyes.
It was a soft winter morning and the fresh snow begged to be played with. I could hear his voice in her room saying not to cry the pain would go away. And a day of rump sliding in the snow would make it feel better. She knew better than to cry where people could see. Too many questions led to longer nights in Daddy's arms. He couldn't stand the thought of loosing her and it made him want to love her even more.
"We're going sledding Jami!" I said to her as she came from her room. She took my hand and wouldn't let go. Out the door we went and from hill to hill we laughed and played. Snow-ball fights and snow men, hot cocoa and igloo building. We sat in the little igloo we built and she asked me if I could always stay with her. Having me around made her feel happier she said. "I'm just like Momma," I told her "He's always going to be Daddy but he's never going to think Momma is perfect and maybe I can change the way he acts for a little while, but it'll never go away." She looked up at me with those sad eyes and grabbed my hand tighter. I could see the beginning of a cry. "Cry here where no one can see you if you want to but keep it up and somehow they always know." I pointed to her forehead and told her: "Instead cry here, and the only person that knows will be you. Sometimes you have to hide it and sometimes you have to scream it from the rooftops. Unless you know for sure which is which you should reaally hide it. Daddy will always love you. Even if it hurts how he shows it."
We got back into the house and I was promising to make cookies only if she helped me. Her smile was ear to ear for the moment. He was on the phone again, "I love that little girl and she loves me, More than you do you bitch..." She had obviously pressed one of his buttons as only she could. His voice was quivering with the beginning of a cry. "If that's how it has to be then fine..." He said masking his emotion as much as he could.
It's not really her though, He tolerates her to see his daughter.

Never Again-That Night fly to honey

Have you ever thought about that phrase: Like a fly to honey. It's an interesting one. Who do you know has put a glob of honey down somewhere and watched to see how quickly the flies come or if lots of them come or anything of the like. I can't say I've done it with flies but butterflies are sort of the same right?
I remember sitting in the back yard watching the bees and the butterflies compete over who got the rights to each honey suckle flower on the bush in the back yard. Dad would storm in and out of the house doing some thing or another mumbling about how to avoid doing something else. There I sat listening instead to the quiet flutter and the gentle buzz of all those tiny wings.
He sat down beside me with a lawn chair and a beer. Cracked it open and persisted fuming. I started to tell him how neat it was all the bees and the butterflies. He kept swatting them away I kept trying to show him how to catch them. Finally he gave up trying to explain to me that they would hurt if they stung and that I should stick to trying to catch the more difficult butterflies. He instead showed me an easier way, if I had the patience. He poured out some of his beer onto the inside of a frisbee and laid it out by the bush. We waited and watched. He told me I didn't have to be quiet I just had to leave it alone and watch it from time to time.
It took a long time before the frisbee was covered with bees and butterflies, but for the most part after that the bees had the bush and the butterflies were much easier to catch.
Dad kept drinking though, and mostly talking to himself. I heard him ask no one in particular what to do about her and all those chores she always asked of him. I told him she was trouble, I told him to leave her alone. But like a fly to honey so too a man to a vindictive ex wife.

intermission - empty bed

It was morning again. I stiill missed him. The spot where we slept was cold again where he should be. It looked so wrong being empty. There was nothing there. I could hear the keys in the door, time to get to work. Whistling and the smell of coffee got me to stir. I just didn't want to leave the warm spot. Staring at nothing.

Light breakfast. A sip of water. The smell of his coffee and a cigarette hanging in the air. I was groggy if I didn't go for my mmorning run. It was like I couldn't even smell the fresh air anymore.

His hands were on me like usual and it was one room to the next. Trying to figure out how to get out. Every day seemed like an exercise in wrong turns. The whole time giving up total control to the man who watched me from the door.

I missed my teddy bear. But all I could do was wait until it was all over and time for him to go again. This was my sad existence in a box. I thought. Mostly because I didn't know that one day I'd have to pay for my empty bed.

Never Again-That Night puppies cry

There was a puppy who liked to go out and play. On this particular day the air was cool and full of new scents. The puppy, we'll call her Ellie, found a railroad tie in her yard, old and damp from the rain. It looked like nothing fun, but Ellie knew it was in her yard and being hers it was her job to inspect it thoroughly. It had holes all over it where the wood had fallen away.

She stared at a leaf lodged in one of the holes wondering how this particular leaf had fallen so as to fold up and lodge itself there. It wasn't long before Ellie had her question answered. Out of the hole popped a tiny mouse. It grabbed the leaf and started pulling it into the hole bit by bit. Ellie thought this was so fun and quickly ran to get her blanket of stars to cover the hole and give the mouse something pretty to look at. The mouse the next day however, had chewed holes in the blanket to make pictures with the stars. Tiny little spots of light shone into the hole making the prettiest swirl of dots on the floor of the hole.

Ellie thought this was so fun so she quickly ran to get her least favourite toy, an apple core. Day after day this was what Ellie did when she went outside to play. Apple cores and other bits of scrap and she watched the mouse build a secret world there in the hole. The whole time wondering if the mouse would ever come out to say hello and thank you. But the mouse was always so busy, she never seemed to have the time to talk.

When the flowers grew and the wood was dry, the mouse came out with baby mice ready, thought Ellie, to show them the friend she had made who had given them so much food and such pretty stars to look at. But Ellie was dissappointed when she herd the mouse say: "This is our wood, we live in it. These are our stars, I put them the way they are. And this is our apple core, it shows up here every day just for us." Ellie tried to corect the mouse but when she put her paw out to shake hands and introduce herself the mouse bit her and ran back into the hole.

Ellie, realizing she just must have been startled and tried the next day to catch the mouse and set her straight. But no matter what she said to the mice, they always ran away and never once said thank you. At this Ellie got so mad that she decided to take away the stars. She covered them up as best she could because by now the blanket had so many holes and was so weather worn that she couldn't rightly bring it into the house.

And then Ellie dicided not to give the mice anything else. And day after day the mice showed up looking for the stars. But there were no stars to be seen, Ellie was covering them so it was just always dark in their hole. Thet got thinner and thinner looking for apple cores that would not show up. Too scared of Ellie to go outside and look for other food. But Ellie wanted them to say hello and thank her for all she had done for them, otherwise she wasn't moving from that spot. After all, this yard was her world and she was nice enough to let them live there.

But when one day the mice she had spent so much time watching and caring for no longer showed up looking for the apple core Ellie got sad. She started looking everywhere for the mice but never saw them again. To this day she lays down licking her wound, covering the stars and crying into the dark hole, hoping the mice return to say hello and thank her. To this day you can hear her whimper in the wind of a rainy night.

"What's wrong with that dog?" It was the man from the agency pointing to the old bitch we had found on Easter.
"Lady Easter?" Came the woman's voice from the kitchen window, her eyes following his gaze.
"Hasn't moved from that spot all morning. Some guard dog huh?"
"Don't really know," she said "s'been like that since round the time she came in with a thorn in her paw. S'been lickin' it open and laying there since. Won't let the damn thing heal. S'like she just don't want to leave that damn wood alone. We were going to have it removed when we figured out there were mice in it, but since she's so attached to it we haven't the heart. 'Sides, I think she scared 'em all away. So no harm in lettin her have it now."

He was in the bedroom, avoiding the man from the agency. Listening to her talk to some other guy made him a little crazy anyway. He usually dissappeared to make some "business call" when there were people around anyway. Don't know who he called, but I could guess. I knew that sound well. I heard him crying over the phone, he was whimpering like some wounded puppy.

Never Again-That Night his crying

I wish I could tell you how I feel about clowns. You know... how some people find them scary, some erotic, some just feel like a clown is a clown. I'll admit I have mixed feelings. There's even a professional clown in the family. She didn't do it long. Something about the family needing another income on top of his. It was a long time until I personally met another clown. It was when I was taking a break from traveling carnivals, took a trip through college, that I met the guy. He was able to laugh and smile the most infectious smile at the drop of a hat. Quite the father figure type to everyone he met.
He used to hug me and cry about how everyone saw that side of him. How no one knew who he really was. Sobbing for hours he'd soak my shoulders with fears that no one knew or cared that it was all an act and he needed people to know how unhappy he was beneath the painted on smile and the big nose.
It was his shoes that got to me. Gingerly taking them out of a box he'd treat them as the soul of his happy self. Gingerly he'd handle them. I thought he was afraid of them. He paid utmost care and attention to them, as if they were glass, the only doorway he had to happiness, and the very thing that trapped him in a world of pain. He wanted to break them, feared them, was afraid to hurt them. Yes those shoes housed his other soul. As soon as he put them on, with their squeek-squeak-honk as only over-sized clown shoes can do. He went through the most sudden and strange transformation. From melancholy faucet of depression, tears and anger to bubbly wistful and laugh-factory.
It was a cold and moon less night. the shoes were in their box. He asked me to dance. We chased each other around town. I remember the wind blown jacket and wondered at something he said "you can't spell slaughter without laughter..." It didn't scare me at the time. But he did scare me, from time to time. Progressive his crying fits got more violent. I could hear him build himself into a rage. I knew when he was upset.
When the crying stopped I used to think how nice it was that he finally started getting over it. I was wrong. When there wasn't much else left to break in the house, I thought maybe he'd gotten it out of his system. I was wrong. When those shoes squeaked I knew I didn't have anything to fear until they came off. They squeaked as he paced and danced like Bo Jangles. They honked as he jumped and did hand-stands walking on the ceiling. Buand when the came off he'd cry or rage. But one night they came off and it was quiet. Silence, I learned, is the scariest thing of all. I thought He might be sneaking up in me with a knife or something. I was wrong.
I learned I was the weak one. I should have let him cry night after night. But when we started fighting, when hands were for something other than soothing, I withdrew. I decided I couldn't help him any more. I should have taken all he had to let go of. It's better than his crying and much better than silence.

Never Again-That Night soothing

I was one of the Leads in the school play, the lines were simple enough. I knew them just fine, somehow stage fright never got me upset until all of the sudden it would take my tongue away from me. I remember the frightening feeling well up after I stepped on the stage and tried to speak but my memory went blank. The more I searched for what had to be said the less I could find what I was looking for.
I was mostly distracted though. I was staring into the chairs and the bleachers. Faces, lots of faces. No-where. I could find my parents no-where. I couldn't concentrate; What were my lines? Where were they? Was no one going to help me? I already look like a fool... And then I accepted the silence. It was mine.
The words came out, all-be-it late and full of ad-lib typos. But I did my thing as effortlessly as possible. It was like some other me took over, a me that was at home with failure. When I got off the stage, into the wings, I tried to get to a quiet dark corner. To collapse and to cry. It was never that easy for me though. He grabbed me by the wrist and pushed me against a wall and was breathing heavy into my mouth saying something about how much he wanted me.
I tried to think of the easiest, simplest way to get past this and get to my quiet corner. Reasoning with him that I needed to study my lines wasn't enough. I could have kissed him, I could have kneed him in the groin. Neither seemed like the right thing to do, but no matter how I struggled, he wouldn't let me go. I was his first. He was mine. We wouldn't get to that point until years later.
When I got away from him, I found a set of wooden stairs in the dark back corner of the the stage. It was for another show and they were just too inconvenient to move all the time, but too necessary to get rid of. I used to sit on them all the time to concentrate on memorizing my lines. This time I thought I sat on them to cry. But no such luck, too many people passing too and fro. I had to be quiet. After all, there was a show going on.
I closed my eyes to think of the show, the people. What had happened, to figure out why I just couldn't think up there. I saw the faces in the audience, dark and featureless. Welling tears and I bit my lip. I thought of the lines I'd forgotten, perfect without thinking. A quivering hand and pain at my heart, I tucked my hands in each other in my lap. I thought about how I'd just been shoved against the wall. I started wringing my fingers and rocking a little. I remembered how I suddenly came to peace when I realized I had failed completely.
The shakes and the vulnerable feeling, my stooped posture, quivering lip, and even the pain in my heart went away. I was a failure. But I couldn't let it show. I couldn't let any of it show. I looked at my hands. Small as always. But my nails were dirty underneath. I started scraping them clean. It was the only thing I could think of to do to cope with this feeling. On nights like tonight, the grating scrape of nail on nail is soothing.

Never Again-That Night want to care

We were waiting for the bus. standing by the side of the road quietly is something an impatient ADD kid like him can't do all too well. It was a constant exercise in creativity for me. The game was something like ""get the rock" crossed with "how far can you throw." And the goal was to hit the other side of the street. Then go get it. once it turned into dodge the traffic. We stopped playing it then. I remember he wanted to run out into the street, swore he was fast enough. I dared him to do it and his better judgment won over. I was the only one it seemed, that knew he had better judgment and called on him to use it.

Once, in the barn in the back yard, there were rats and it was dark. I don't know how I knew but when he got lost inside and couldn't find his way out, there I was like some savior out of the sky. The next time we were in there I "fell" out of a two story window and was forbidden from ever going near that place again. What bugged me other than the fact that they forbade me was this: What if he got lost again. What if he needed me. I really believed I was the only one who knew things, the only one could understand, the only one could help sometimes.

Most people realize as they grow up that they aren't really as special as they once believed. I never had that because I always had the truth of him to fall back on. Without me pushing him to do better, he never got better, never even tried. Without me understanding what he meant when he talked, no one would even think he could communicate anything cohesive. Without me knowing how he thought, he'd still be lost a dozen places. No one would take care of him, or pay attention to him until I showed him how better to do.

Like all people I needed to feel needed. We all revert to nervous habits when we feel less needed, less desirable in life. But I think I would have turned out all-right, probably better if not for him. I should care about his well-being, about him. He is, after all, my kin. I want to tell you that I need him, that I care.

Never Again-That Night cant stand

He has a way of making you believe he's some all-mighty. I guess because in his mind he is. But it's akin to leaving the light on in the basement because the switch is at the bottom of the stairs. Lesser of both evils is really all.
I remember being in my knees staring at the carpet. I think I was trying to count the blue threads vs the green threads. Thinking about someone I'd met that day, trying to stay out of the way to prevent the fighting.
Ethel I think was her name and she was in a wheel-chair. Normally I follow the don't be rude, it's none of your business card. But she was reaching for something dropped and obviously having a hard time. Very old. I picked it up and handed it to her and instead of saying thank you she said hi.
"I remember being your age," she was saying, "...Where those kind's of things just couldn't grow and it was in that field I lost the fingers off my right hand..." She told me about growing up on a cotton farm durring the depression of the 30's. "Most folk didn't like to admit to needing help those days. Not like now." And I was thinking about that arrogant, self-centered, entitlement prick I was living with. My head was down, force of habit. Kind of a speak only when spoken too thing from my childhood and I noticed her leg move. A foot stretch beneath the blanket. She saw me cock my head in silent inquisitiveness. "....but that's just the trouble with kids these days." She concluded, coming to a brief silence. "You know why I'm in this chair?"
"Because you can't walk or need to recover from something." Confidence was something I could force out on cue.
"His name was Ira." She began, "and it was ten years ago this May. They work but they haven't held me in ten years. It started out as a joke between two old buzzards who seemed to have nothing left. He'd drink because he was old and retired and so he could and I would tend house, clean up after him. Deal with his temper and drunken messes. I kept telling him I couldn't stand his being like that. One night I took a deep breath, walked into the kitchen and sat down by the table. 'What if I can't stand anymore' I asked him. And the old buzzard didn't believe me. I told him that I would not stand again until he got sober and stayed sober."
He said: "Bet my life on it you won't go through with it."
"It took him a few days to understand me. I went hungry until he started feeding me, sobriety had to come with the responsibilities. Took him a month to get me a wheel-chair and get me around the house. Ripest I've ever smelled in my own house. Or out of it for that matter. I refused to stand and I refused cook and cleanign went out the window. But he loved me and eventually he started caring for me as if I couldn't get up. Sitting down gave him a look into what I'd been doing for him all the years he wasn't sober. One day he told me not to get up, not to ever lift a finger again because he knew he owed me and if I did, it would feel like I was telling him my turn was up and he didn't want to drink again.
"'It's tempting...' he's say... and I know I cant stand. I won't stand it because I love him..."
The little old woman in the wheel-chair Smiled up at me and was slowly pushed along by a sweet seeming little old man. I couldn't believe this was what was lurking beneath a drunk and bad man.
Picking my fingernails, listening to the drunk in the other room, counting the green fibers, I've noticed there are three or four to ever one or two.
"You don't even care what happens to them!"
"I don't care?! I don't Care?! Who do you think goes to wor..."


He's right for now. For now she needs him. I want to tell you that I need him, that I care. But honestly; I cant stand it when he gets like this.

Never Again-That Night scuff scuff tck

Picking my nails helps me think. Helps me forget. Helps me focus on anything else.

Suddenly I hear whispering. Hushed voices and the sound of crickets chirping. Silence is usually my best friend. Not necessarily the case this time. I get up off the floor, temporarily giving my nails a reprieve. The bullfrog I was watching out the window doesn't seem to notice but I pause just a moment to watch and see if he grabs the cricket crawling in front of him.
I cant watch long enough. There's the voices again. "You shouldn't be..." and after mumbling "she's not...and I don't..." Muffled through a door I can't hear it and it's none of my business. I get my brother a glass of milk from the fridge and run into him. Face to face with my enemy and my fears.

I can't hear his voice I've turned it off and tuned him out. The face says anger though. Another fight and I can still feel the last one on my cheek. I growl in his face that I don't have the patience for this tonight. Pushing past him to leave I storm out towards te stairs. He charges after me and before I get to the stairs he grabs my arm spinning me around. More yelling I honestly can't hear, but it's right in my face.

Interrupting him. Growling something about shit to do in the morning and someone has to take care of the people in this house I practically spat it in his face. His arm reeled up. Again.
It was too much for me to handle. Turning down the stairs I left the room. It wasn't time to deal with this, the best way to get away from anger is to walk away from it. Passing the door I look just a second longer to watch the bullfrog take a quick step forward and gulp down the cricket. Figures that would be the last moment of the poor critter's life. I'm scraping the inside of my nails and the scuff scuff tck sound is grating, annoying, painful.

Never Again-That Night

You remember your parents being too busy to watch the kids? I do. Rather than pay attention to the hours of tv droning on in front of me I listened to what was going on. It was mostly household chores and talking to random people I didn't know. They put on M.A.S.H but it could have been barney for all I knew or cared. I listened to the conversations and the arguing and realized what a split looked like before she even knew it was a divorce.
With my ears I'd see her crying, I smelled the fear in the air when he got home, I smelled even more of it mixed with blood and pain in the late night hours. I knew what this was.
And silent and still I'd sit where I was told to, watching out for what was going on around us. I couldn't see anything going on unless it was close enough to need to get out of the way of. To move at all was a different fear all together.
"Lish can you wait a minute!" I could still hear the words. Glad that I appear to be doing anything else and not involved. I was involved. There was nothing I could do to run away from it. I was trapped with my worst fear. And I still believed I had a way out.
I pick. I's my Nervous habit. Scraping my nails, picking my teeth, picking apart the words I hear around me. Since learning to Not listen to everything around me. The probem is I do hear it all and the worst sound of all is silence.
Springing to my feet I run over to scoop up my older brother, making him cry with a pinch. "What you guys upset him for?" I yelled as I piled him into a corner telling him under my breath to just shut up and let me handle it. It was the first time I had ever interrupted a fight. And it was exactly when I was needed to. There was no beating that night. Our tv show, the one we used to watch all the time, is playing in the background and yet I can only barely hear it.

"That Night" Written 2-18-2007

Our tv show, the one we used to watch all the time, is playing in the background and yet I can only barely hear it. I'm scraping the inside of my nails and the scuff scuff tck sound is grating, annoying, painful. I can't stand it when he gets like this. I want to tell you that I need him, that I care. On nights like tonight, the grating scrape of nail on nail is soothing. It's better than his crying and much better than silence.
I heard him crying over the phone, he was whimpering like some wounded puppy. I told him she was trouble, I told him to leave her alone, but like a fly to honey so too a man to a vindictive ex wife. It's not really her though, He tolerates her to see his daughter. I keep telling him nothing in this world is worth that kind of pain. He shouldn't risk letting that woman kill him just for a moment with that little girl. What use is he to his daughter if he is dead?
And he dobuts she'd kill him. But she's gotten him so close before. I'm surprised he survived this long. God knows I've pulled his ass out of hot water too many times already.
I remember when it started too. She had a hatred for me, thought I was the reason he left her. No, no! Couldn't be her manipulating self-centered neediness...
But I digress, He walked in the room and wouldn't leave my mind for months like the addiction I was picking up, every day I wanted another hit of his drug, another deep breath of what was his fresh air to the stale cigarette smoke of what my life had become.
He asked me if I knew what darkness was. I told him I lived with it inside my very soul.
He said it was nice to be home. It was nice... It was nice? I knew what pain was, what deep sorrow and lonliness was, I knew what it was like to not only have darkness with oneself, but to feel it inside, as part of my very soul. I knew maddness, pain, deep oblivion... He was no such comprehension. I let him claim to be, it made me laugh like a parent at their child when they jump off the roof believing they can fly. But his self image was a lie. He was no super-man, he was no devil, no evil no hell. He was merely human, flawed, scared, self-loathing human, just like me.
When I met him I though he was devioius, strong, unfeeling. I hated it, but it intrigued me. since then I've discovered he is just like every other weak-willed self-masturbratory, self-loathing, societal-paricite out there. I no longer look at him in awwe and wonder and I no longer feel he is my god.
For a while he took me away from the god I feared I followed. Being human we are all twisted, cruel and self-serving. I have crushed hearts, broken homes, ended lives and lived on to be indifferent about it. I thought he could be the embodyment of something different but similar enough, the next step up in my twelve step program out of Hell. I felt I could idolize him, emulate him. Be strong like him and ompassionate like him. He was weaker then me. The Bastard, he's never even killed, he lies worse than I do, and he fears. Damnable traits. I hate the idea of the society's fortitude, based solely in softness. I'll admitt my presence and part in the race but only on condition; you must understand I hate being associated with anything so weak.
So I distance myself from every lover that comes along, every man who I ever thought was worthy, who showed me he wasn't. One truely was so perfectly dark and cruel, he's dead now. Another made me believe he was until I saw it, his weakness in his eyes when he looked at me. Those soft blues and his slurred words, I Love You they said and he was helpless in my presence. I was left to defend him as he wallowed in self-pity.
Never again.

art of loving

I know there's a tune in there somewhere.

I know I've been here before
and I don't know what to do again.
I'm scared to be touched.
You're way too close to me
and inside I'm all choked up.

I can't say no anymore.
Not to you. I can't refuse.
Won't you make this
all go away.
Won't you go away.

I don't want to be your stupid hangup
and I don't want to be here.
Won't the pain go away?
Won't you stop when I complain?
Someone save me.

Why when I cry do you act
like you care?
Why when I fight do you act
like I'm the one who's wrong?
I know I'm crazy.

But you knew who I was
and you had faith in me.
Why can't I walk away?
Why do you act so cold?
Why can't I walk away?

Loaded Questions 11

. What do you think about when you are alone? I found myself alone again last night and it hit me that I was alone for once. I spend so much time getting things done that I forget how alone I actually am most the time. Between work and getting rides back and forth to whatever errands I need to run; doctors appts and maintaining the friendships that are important to me... I forget to remind myself that I'm the only one in my own head. I have privacy up there.
. I was sitting alone in the dark, staring at the panorama I've seen for years now and I realized I'm more alone than I seem to be. I spend time with lots of people but no one underrstands. Most of the time I feel like I'm having conversations with myself. I start a conversation with one person, two days later have an revelation and with someone else re-visit the topic or elaborate it or develop it, two days later come to a conclusion on the topic with someone else and the conversation evolves into a subject matter that at the time seems related but at the onset of the conversation would have made no sense. Think of my intellectual life as that last sentence: long, convoluted, complex, run-on, even a bit painful.
. I thought to myself as I sat in the dark about conversations with myself. How I'm the only one with real opportunity anymore to follow the conversations I have. I do kind of miss having a companion who was always there a second mind to add sanity to a world that honestly is currently making me question my present reality. I thought about the friends I've had in the past who have enjoyed my company enoguh to hear fully some of those conversations I have had with myself; in the fragments that they happen, group by group, night by night. I closed my eyes to the picture I've seen a thousand times and could still see it as I sat there in the dark. I thought of those friends, some dead, some gone, most too far gone. I felt phantom arms around me and I began to cry. It hurt to not actually feel those arms. I didn't want to be alone and in the moment savored every second of the lonliness.
. I don't want to go through the pain of caring about someone then hurting them accidentally or just by being myself, by not being the person they want to believe I am. I'm tired of being someone's prize. Being chased. Being on some pedistal somewhere. I want to be someone's best friend. I miss having that best friend to call and tell about something stupid that just happened, having that friend whose arms I can wrap around me when I'm weak and I need to cry. Who smiles at me when I'm feeling confident and strong. A friend who doesn't do/get things for me because I'm different. Who I don't have to worry about leaving home alone like a puppy who isn't paper trained because they don't know what to do without me. A friend who has their own life who can converge their life with mine on occation and who is perfectly happy living seperate lives. A friend.
. I don't have a true friend. So I fill my free time, keep busy so I don't have to come to the painful realization so often that I'm alone. When I have those moments; quiet ones, sitting alone in the dark, thinking about conversations with myself. I always have the same conversation. How I just want a friend. If I had that friend, a constant... I'm sick of that conversation. I started talking to the inanimate object that's been there for me through so much now. You're my loyal friend, you never complain when I get quiet and you isten when I need to talk. You never judge me and you are there for me when I need you at the drop of a hat. I only wish I could meet your needs too. Imagining friends now, and even in those relationships I'm the inadequate failure. I must be crazy. Either that or just really desperate for a true friend, which would at least explain my most recent mistakes.
. I was glad to be alone though. For once a chance to breathe, without fear or consequence, to relax and feel somber. To be away from all the people who want to be my friend and don't make the cut. I'm tired of people who just want to sleep with me.

Loaded Questions 09

. I'm probably the dangerous outgoing curious and risky type. Example: If all I had to survive anywhere was a knife, I dobut I'd last too long. Sure I'd hunt and kill and make shelter and fire that's all well and good. My problem would come with the other things I'd do/eat. Mmm these berries look good.... I'd probably run into some serious trouble before long. But hey, the outback sounds like a perfect place to test the theory. There are however some people whose idea of roughing it is room service. I can't stand the image I get of that perspective. You mean the years you've spent caring for your children keeping a home all without room service has been downright primitive? Has been unacceptable? Unrewarding? Moreover you expect to be compensated for the inconvenience? Would you like a massage with that?
. Speaking of massage I have a friend just got through school and training to be a masseuse. She's a lovely person, looking for work if anyone's interested in an hour or two of her time. I tend to think, or at least be told I give a decent massage. I have been paid for it though I've had no formal training. I wouldn't mind learning the muscle structures and nerve structures that those learned masseuses know but I'm not sure I'd pay for it. It's a lot of anatomy, physiology, and believe it or not history form what I can gather. And the knowledge base is phenominal. Silly me, all I know how to do is find a tense muscle that's deeper, rub till the person either starts or stops making noise and kneed to soften the muscle layer just below the skin just to relax a person. But ya know what I'd really like to learn in this field. I find the muscle anatomy of the foot to be intriguing. So many twists and turns, so tiny, yet so very sensitive.
. When I was a kid, a person I never respected and never will tried learning foot massage, the official version. ah childhood... What do you get when you cross cheese with heavy whipping cream... back then I never could eat yougurt not to mention any other dairy product either. I never got enough calcium in my diet; still don't. Now yougurt's a staple part of my diet as it's one of the few dairy products my stomach doesn't complain about trying to handle. I really only like yoplait's strawberry especially the fluffy, fatty stuff. When you stirr it up it tastes like flavoured whip cream. :)
. Pardon the sudden silly mood but hehe... I said cream. *snigker*

Loaded Questions 07

. Everyone has favourites. Favourite foods, favourite pets, favourite ways of spelling certain words. Ways that are still correct when spelled that way...
But I think when it comes to favourite odd-ball creature I have in this world it would be the octopus. The darn thing can get into and out of anything as long as there is the possibility of a small gap. They are clever problem solvers and while I hate to admit it, the calamari I had ages ago was actually pretty tasty. Since aquiring a respect for the creatures (and discovering a seafood allergy) I haven't eaten these magnificent critters. Now, I for one, am a fan of the Pug. I like critters that some people find to be ugly. Even I think octopi are ugly if you look at their anatomy. But overall I think they are adorable. Put together perfectly to serve their purpose and lacking any encumbering features that are unnecessary.

. Which brings me to the point I think I'm trying to make about myself. I am a bit of a utilitarian. Not in the political sense. I think people should have the freedom to achieve the ability to have excess. But I personaly like to have a use for everything and put everything to use and if some item in my life (or brain for that matter) is not serving a purpose of hasn't in a recent while; I loose it. It's kind of cute how certain memories I haven't used to tell tale with lately, either it was over told or just getting boring to me, how those memories just dissappear. It is the seldom someone who has been in my life for any extended or constant period of time. But on occation I reminesce with an old friend and they will say something that usually starts with: "remember that time..." and anymore it makes me sad to admit but anymore I look at them with a funny look saying "rings a bell, refresh my memory." But when I do remember and that light bulb goes off. I love the feeling it gives when the brightest smile creeps across my face in realization that this experience with this person that I adored I get to relive as if the first time because I'd completely forgotten until it came rushing back.

. But I ramble on uselessly. I do wish though, that, memory-wise I had better recall. And I wish I had a better sense of humor. I'd like to be able to make people laugh. It's funny because I have the ability to ramble on and on and on like two of my favourite comics: Robin Williams and Lewis Black, but I don't have their ability to inspire laughter. Maybe I'm just looking at things too closely. After all taking a step back is what made Carlin his millions right?

Loaded Questions 06

. What is failure? For some, it is what drives you. For others the fear that motivates. For me it is another reason to say I'm sorry. I have a lot of people to appologize to. A lot of explaining to do. But sorry. That's a different word. It is an admission of guilt. I am guilty of being a sorry individual. I AM sorry. But what I need to do, ya know; healing... getting past it, moving on, starting over, what I need to do is appologize to several people for my failings. Starting with myself. I thought I could measure up, put myself to the test. I wasn't ready and therefore set myself up for the initial failure. I failed to say I wasn't ready or to do something about the fact that I knew it. Forgiveness is another matter for another day. Today is about admission. I couldn't have done better but at least I tried despite the odds.

. When I was a kid I could never write thank you notes because I wanted people to feel stupid for giving to an obvious failure. That and I was lazy. Seriously though, I never felt good enough, never felt that anyone was proud of me. Least of all my parent. Having a mentally challenged brother will give the reasonable excuse. Pick your own, whichever you like better. Ready? ... Either he was always so far below be that all the compliments I got I felt were against an obviously inferiour comparative. Or ... Caring for him made me so much the adult at an early age that failure was inevitable considering a child was competing against college grads.

. Suprise! It was both. But somewhere I stopped trying to compete. Maybe because I didn't get the lead in the school play, or the other kids didn't like me or the adults refused to have real conversations with me... But I tried to be a kid for once and it failed. I didn't know how to be a kid. How to have fun or whatever else kids feel. When my mom said she was proud of me I saw a lack of sincerity in her eyes and I wasn't suprised. When she insisted on humiliating me, I saw a spark in her eyes that I knew made her feel alive. I haven't looked in her eyes since.

. What bothers me the most however, is my mother's insistance on not letting the family know who I am and what is actually going on in my life. I am a stranger to them. A fact I plan to change shortly. Provided my Grandfather can stay alive long enough for me to figure out who I am and how to introduce myself to them. After all what they hear of me, they think they know who I am. I want them to actually know. More than that though I want them to accept me for the person I am. It would be healing, comforting, progressive for me to know that I have family who cares, knows me and cares still. I hope they accept me. They probably won't ignore what they have known so far. But none of it has been more than half truths and concealed realisms. Most of all I want to appologize for not coming out with it sooner or being honest and open with them all along. I did feel ashamed afraid and as if I had no right to. I have recently realized the error in that and I don't want to shock, but I want to be honest and forward and hopefully loved anyway.

. I appologize for not realizing the truth, for not being forthright about it, for not believing it myself and for hiding it because someone implied I should.

Loaded Questions 05

. All people come with side effects I believe. I have one friend whose side effect is the people around him become short on cash. One friend whose side effect is drama. One friend whose side effect is laughter. He's a teacher! I think, considering I'm the one who has lived my life and been with me long enough to see the long term side effects, the side effect I come with is heart ache. I have a nasty habit of somehow causing people to fall in love with me. I say nasty because I don't want people to fall in love with me and I don't like hurting people ever. When someone says they are hurting because I can't spend time with them. It breaks my heart. Though I can tell you from experience, what they told me the first time I had a broken heart, it does get easier to deal with over time. I wish my side effect were laughter though. Unfortunately I don't have a humorour personality and disposition.

. Neither do city folk I believe. But you gotta be tough and hard to live in close proximity to so many other people. Otherwise you get lost in the overall feeling of me first. Think about it. With so much competition for one's own best intrest around you, either you learn to be just as strong about your own intrest or you get crushed trying to help everyone else who all wants whatever is in their own self intrest. If I had to describe city folk as a general whole in my hick mind, I'd say they are self-reliant, self-serving and they are strong. But like I said, I think you gotta be to live like that. You've got to be strong to know crime and poverty is right around the corner. To know that there are jobs here but there is a lot more competition for those jobs. To know that education is not what it should be... then again where in America is it?

. I remember Being younger and full of hope. Some time right around before the first heart break. I knew little of the world. My favourite ice cream was plain and my favourite soup was chicken noodle and my favourite book was black beauty. And oh things have changed. I love grahm cracker ice cream now with swirls of marshmallow in it. I love french onion soup. I read books like they are going out of style. As a matter of fact it is my intention to read a bunch of
books which have gone out of style. Like Moby Dick, Huck Finn, ... Speaking of Huck Finn... .

. Did you hear they are releasing an edited version without the n word in it. Call me strange to be among today's 'youth' and be uncomfortable with the word, but I am. Reading it, hearing it. I cringe not because it offends me, but because I know it offends someone and I hate to see people feel hurt. I disagree with editing a clasic to be politically correct, and while the standard on the n-word is changing with today's youth's revolutions, I still (shy to admit that I) might actually buy the edition so that I can read it without cringing two hundred and nineteen, or so times.

. But that's one of the very things that pisses me off. The man wrote, was an amazing writer. In today's day and age he may have used a different term himself. But it is part of the integrity and authenticity of the story he told. Part of the reality he so vividly portrayed. His words should not have to be re-written, revised, edited or otherwise censored to pander to the public. Here; solution, ready?: offer an editable downloadable digital version that one can go through it like MS Word does and automatically replace any word with another of your choosing. Hell I had friends do that in their mind when we were in High School together. When they were reading a really boring book they would replace the word the with chicken to make it more bearable. Let today's lazy public do it with an expensive application. I'm still a fan of the power of the mind.

Loaded Questions 04

. There is so much in this world that is marketed. And the strongest sales strategy, it seems, is promising that this product will make a person feel good. I wonder though, why there isn't a greater market for good feelings. Sure it's impossible to quantify and ration out according to price just such. And there's the other issue of what makes one person feel good might have exactly the opposite effect on another. but in the brain there is a pleaseure center. And discerning what stimulates that for each person shouldn't be so far from the capabilities of today's technology. I look forward to the day we have a brain scan system that can read, interpret and stimulate different parts of the brain. Think Matrix, plug in and it teaches you calculus, or it allows you to have the worlds best dream ever, or you wake up to be told your career, the one which you will enjoy and be good at is... Yeah I'd love to invent and market that machine. In the mean time I do my best to be that machine. Talk to me about what makes you smile, what makes you happy, what your favourite happy memories are. ... I guess I should be a psychiatrist.
. But when that machine is invented, I mean when we have the brain mapped completely and we understand how to communicate directly with it, what will happen to psychological medicine? What will happen to the sex industry, what will happen to schools and what will happen to the concept and existence of Darwinism? What would the whole world look like? And we humans as a whole are so afraid of change. How hard will it be to use such for good without protests quelling the good such a thing can do? After all so many people already believe the world is trying to control their mind. What will they think when the brian can be plugged into and taught something? Hell even given memories that stimulate pleasure centers that are associated with one thing or another. I personally would be afraid that one would be plugged in to have basic programming that includes trust in government or, a certain religion is good, or always believe this one person is telling the truth or some other nonsence like that. I'd rather stick to firing the pleasure chemicals while sending electrical pulses that teach the brain what the y quadrant means.
. But life here in the real world, at least so far, is comprised of one long, fragmented memory. At least for some, like myself, being in the moment is so fleeting. It is impossible to stop and decide in those crucial moments. I act on instinct. I can at least take comfort in knowing that my instinct is to be helpful, protective, nurturing. When I feel threatened I've found, my flight instinct kicks in. I've been wrong in my life and rather than hurt someone with my wrongness, I'd run. I couldn't go to war in the middle east. I don't understand their culture, and while I've learned a little bit, such as it is beyond custom it is way of life to give to charity, I still don't know that mine is right or more right, or so right that it justifies killing. Them feeling justified to kill justifies capital punnishment, sure. But hiding behind the innocents makes me as a person hesitate. I couldn't be a troop. I do, however, respect, love and admire our troops. Standing up for what is right.
. I digress. Memories. There are good ones and there are bad ones. Have you ever imagined that scenario where you are lying on your death-bed, life flashing before your eyes. What would my experience of that be? Lots of good? Lots of bad? I know it wouldn't be in order. Would I die smiling? I'd like to die smiling. We all have unpleasant moments of our lives, there is no avoiding that. It's how we allow ourselves to feel about those times, our perspective that makes all the difference I think. And have you ever been in a situation where it wasn't good, it wasn't bad, it was just dull? having a good life or good memory of life I believe is about taking those moments and doing something to make it good. Not just good though, memorably good. I still remember this one time I was at the gas station. I smiled for the hell of smiling. Then I dances, then some random stranger expressed the fact that it brightened his day. I felt good for brightening some one's day. All for the hell of it.
. Right now though. I feel I need more to smile about. I think we all need more to smile about. SO I think it's time to remember what friendship is about. Sitting on the school bus next to some kid and starting a conversation just to pass the time. Come the end of the year that kid is your best friend and you are theirs. Time to sit and have a conversation just to pass the time. It's bound to lead to some smiles once you realize you have to sit next to them and have another conversation again tonight and tomorrow and the next day.

Loaded Questions 03 part 1

. Water. Water I think is the most overlooked, most precious, tastiest, best thing in the world and it suprises me how few of us consume it by drinking it. We cook food in it. add it to soft-drink syrups, carbonate it and use it to pawer turbines. But how many of us drink it? I do. Usually in the form of tea. But catch me parched, nothing else will do.

. Speaking of parched, I've noticed lately that I seem to be in a friendship drought. I don't really spend time out and about. It would be nice to get to know the people I am aquainted with a bit better; to spend time shooting the breeze and laughing together. But in a way aren't we all a bit deprived in that sense. How many of us... seriously... how many of us spend time every day or even a few days a week laughing with buddies? Call me crazy but I think of my idea of marriage and that's what it should be; every day laughing together to wind down from a hard day of whatever. There. For those of you who keep asking me... that's what love and marriage is in my mind and if you can't keep me laughing sorry buster don't even try.

. Actually don't try at all. Nothing turns me away faster than someone working on making me fall in love rather than workin on being my best bud. Sure. I'd love to join you, but I really need to go yank my own tooth out with a pair of pliers. By the way can I borrow yours? My 'Best Friend' Broke my hand me down heirloom leatherman and I'd like to castrate him with it if I could find the damn thing. It getting broken and lost made me cry.

Loaded Questions 02

I actually thought about this in a way last night. I know everyone has a bit of criminal in them. I think it's rooted in the basic human desire to rebel. At least the basic American desire to. And I think it's almost predictable when a person is a child, in what way this could manifest itself. That is if one really looks at what personality is forming in that child in grade school. I knew several kids had a desire to see what would happen if they pulled the fire alarm, but the few that didn't have the impulse control back then to not pull the damn thing have ended up being drug addicts or have manifested some other form of impusle control disorders.

Whether or not impulse control should be a crime however, is another topic of discussion entirely. I, however had an intense intrest in both creation, manipulation and money. Chemestry was my dark secrets intrest. It only made sense I was caught up in the allure of chemistry and what certain more interesting chemicals do to the brain in the right concentrations and combinations. It's potential to manipulate others seemed far to intersting to me to be left alone. I had to learn for myself how ever I could. The only book I had available on the subject was the real world though. And when reality itself was far too abundant in my life I did my best to remove my burden. It wasn't about the money and manipulation anymore. While I did enjoy trading for favors of various kinds, mine was purely a desire to let go of the interest which was consuming me. I saw a glimpse of where I could be going and of the two paths I saw I liked neither. I haven't watched America's most wanted since the realization. Come to think of it.

I sat there in the driver seat incapable of going anywhere. Already dead inside and out and strung out as a crack whore poorly used and badly broken. I could not think I could not move. In a flash of coherence my only thought was of a need which to a competent mind would seem stupid and unappetizing. I'd have done anything for it. I'd have sacrificed my life gladly hust to feel good for a moment. And life is full of those moments, where sacrifise is too small a price to pay. It is what drives us to the next milestone, again and again. And at the moment moving my arm to my face was a feat equal to building the pyramids. Lighting something which burned me. I did not notice nor care about the burn. I was unconcious and when I woke I wondered where it had gone. I chastised myself in my brief coherence for my appearance. Saggy and empty inside.

Flash to dreams of winning a gold medal for prowess in a long trained for, difficult and self disciplined exercise of concentration and patience. I believe that fortitude itself should be an olympic sport, but every man is capable of greatness only if he can nurture his own fortitude. In us the desire to achieve the highest marks or at least to have recognition as being one of the foremose competitors is both strong and motivating as well as daunting and scary. Success hinges on the ability at an early age to discern what society has labeled as productive obsessions and the fortitude to assert one's will against the temptations we all feel.

I think of the crack-whore in us all who is victim of temptation; and I think of the Einestein in us all whose obsession with and extreme focus on finding an answer, almost autistic in nature, is victim of temptation as well. How can certain foci be labeled good? For us... For society... just good. Others, obsessions they are called; lead some to jail, the poor house, and early grave... There is a solution in using the temptations as motivation to learn patience and temperance. Oh what a fine line it would be to balance between witholding one's freedoms and providing the proverbial cartrot at the end of the stick. I think that's where consent and desire come into the legal system. Pursuit of happiness and the nonsense that is imposed upon that pursuit.
Oh but I digress.

We were all, at one point, the innocent child with our hand in the cookie jar. Our favourite, gooey and warm, rasins soft and chewy. Being told to wait 'til after dinner while the voice in our head whines that they won't still be gooey and soft and warm after dinner. We are all tempted. We rationalize. And for everything; good, bad or ugly. We rationalize at least for our own morbid self sastisfaction, that we are not bad. That someone loves and supports us because we are not bad.

I too have made mistakes. I am not perfect. I am me. And despite what others say to be hurtful; I am not bad.

Loaded Questions

I have often dreamt of having a den. A little nook in the wall room that I can relax in. It was Book shelves lines with old books chock full of knowledge arranged in conversational manner. And a big comfy chair paddd more like an overgrown pillow in recliner form and the floor has a fur rug on it and the furniture draped with animal hide. When I'm feeling lonely upset or depressed I imagine my room with it's wooked walls and its earth tones, dimmly lit. There's a fireplace and on the shelves between the different book genres there are little glass cases with the oddest little creatures perfectly preserved ready to be studied as if suspended in a moment in their life. There are skulls of critters like skunks and lynx and there are butterfly boxes with large moths and poisonous spiders. And there in the middle of the floor a table with a sinue woven lamp. Next to the lamp a small book on a dead culture or religion as well as a small trinket box made of old newspaper or elephant dung paper compressed into wood panels. It is a music box that plays Fur Elise. in it a small key. A skeleton key that opens some hidden door in the room. The door leads to another excitement. I sit in the chair, wrapped in the skin of a deer, reading about chinese astronomy and I am happy.
I love knowledge, but mine is limited. I have an insatiable desire to learn and sadly, while there is promise of easy access to new knowledge, truely useful and refined knowledge is still hidden between the pages of a book you must pick up and turn page by page to glean from a gem of thoguht, original and new to me.
I am able to look around the room I imagine as being mine one day and see all the creatures suspended in death, and as I look about that room I consider these things as being my best friends in the world. I wish I could tell you about nutty the squirrel sitting there as if holding some scrap of food. or Poe the crow with a shiny chain dangling from his beak, some small charm with latin and egyptian history written all over it. But while I would name these posessions, my personification of their personalities; real from life when they were pets, or imagined, the names I would call them would be far more simple and far more human. Perhaps Steve and Chuck. Manny and Bo. I am almost certain Charlie would be the name of the octopus. Almost always a male name, regardless of sex. But the pet skunk I plan to keep one day, she (or he) will be named flower. (Thanks Bambi)
Love. I think... Is something I consider a threat. Not only to my own imagined creation of the future I pursue to have. But also, it seems historically to my own personal motivations. Every couple years I fall in love. And it is not until I clense my life of the overwhelming desire to nurture another that I seem to be able once again to resume the passion I have for pursuing a better place in this world for myself. I, like all women, desire stability, serenity, the comfort of knowing I am and will be ok. I feel it least when another assumes that burden for me. I know I am strong. Stronger than any suitor I've yet met. And while in moments of darkness and weakness I have leaned on another for support I felt at the time that I had needed; I have discovered in the end, time and again, that no one man or woman (at least not that I've met of befrended yet) can give to me the satisfying feeling of knowing I can rely upon myself, that I am strong and that I can give myself this place in the world that I dream to have.
In the meantime I sleep comfortably, im my mind I am snuggled deep and warm in the pillows of books, wrapped in the skins of animals hunted by my hand for food. And the cardboard box I currently call home, is not soggy with last weeks slush running through the nearby gutter. When I close my eyes, I am warm and dry, in my den, the mansion in my mind where no one can find me and n slumber I can die restfully until the next morning comes around.

Hitch-hiker

It was an average night, but I found myself wondering about the dim lights reflecting off the pavement. I'd noticed them before. many times. Sometimes blaring and shiny, sometimes dull and hazy, this time it was just dim. I looked up. no moon to speak of. Waxing, waning. I always think that when I look for the moon. Hands shoved deep in my pockets I walk to stay warm. This highway seems awful lonesome for this time of night.

Slacker

As I sat there, staring out the car window into the trees and the dirty dark nothing of the falling night and the slow steady snowfall, speck by speck the world is turned from mud brown and pavement black to white. Pure, unadulterated, porcelain white. I wait, watching the snow fall. Waiting for the clock to change one more minute. Then one more minute. Then one more. Closer to the time I can tell myself I have to. I have to move. Remember the falling snow. It's beautiful. I need to remember it. Porcelain white. Pure. Clean. I have to go.
Shit brown has hints of yellow in it. I know. I scrub shit off of the toilets. Speck by nasty speck, turning mud brown to porcelain white. Sometimes you have to scrape at it with your fingernails. Think of the snow falling gracefully outside. In time. In time I will be done. In time it turnes the dark world so white that it is too bright to look at. But not tonight, the night is still dark.
It is frustruating to carry another's weight on my shoulders. I told myself I refused to work for another without getting paid for it. Tonight, again, like every other night, I do another's work for them without remuneration. I really need to go to the boss about this. I scrub more shit. I mop more floors. I scrape ketchup and mustard, shit yellow, off tables until the rag I use is blood red. Touches of dust turns it brownish gray. The smell of chemicals. I glance at my co-workers. He's working. He's working. He's confused, but that one's ok, he's new. And she... is no-where to be found. I'll ask later and she'll tell me she had to go get someone an extention cord. Or take care of some ten minute job she's already spent a half-hour on, or she's dawdling somehow. She's an expert at it. Looking busy, accomplishing nothing. I'm bitter now. Scrubbing. Brown to porcelain. Chemical burns. Bitter.
I have to remember the snowfall. And hurry through the work that she should be doing. If we want to get out of here before the roads are too dangerous to travel. The snowfall. Even that beauty she turns to a bitterness and a threat. And she looks busy. Her bad judgement could have killed a co-worker the other night. Slid to a ditch. I didn't get us out fast enough. I couldn't do the work, both mine and hers, fast enough. Rather than necessary work she deems "useless work" (the shit that wastes time) to be the only proper course of action. And we end up running behind. It pisses off the supervisor too. But he isn't mad at her. I get blamed. Third night in a row I got blamed. For what? Picking up her slack?

Rape feels like your bliss

Trying to write lyrics, I've been fucking around a lot lately with different songs trying to find just the right tune to rework the lyrics to. At the time, writing this, I was listening to 4 different songs:
Apocalyptica: I Don't Care. James Blunt: Goodbye My Llover. Tim McGraw & Faith Hill:Like We Never Loved At All. Johnny Cash: Hurt


Don't you know
How hard it is,
To hold my head up high?
My face hides it all;
Inside I cry.
A burning at my soul.
And on my knees I crawl.
I want you to understand
How hurt I really am.

And you scream at me.
About your needs.
I'm the one who's cruel?
Who's spitting blood from you?
And tell me I don't feel
Like you have felt before.
Everyday. Everyday.
The pain comes back.
Everyday.
When we kiss,
The pain comes back
I make a fist, it doesn't pass.
The love I felt before this
Replaced by your rage.

You get away with it
Calling me a whore
You're a piece of shit
The only one I opened up for
Or did you forget?
I forgave you.
To speak to you again
After the road's bend
And why should I have thought
You even cared at all?
I said no
You said ok,
But who ever listens
When I say no
It happens.
No more.
I'm done
Goodbye.
I'll have no more.
No more lies. No more fights.
No more telling myself you'll change.
You've changed.

You've changed me.
One last thing please tell,
How hard is it
To pretend you haven't
Put me through hell
Or don't you see it?
Do I hide it well?

I've felt pain
I've felt shame
I've felt immortal bliss
I'm not just some joke to laugh off to your friends.
I was the only thing was real to you.
Told me I was the only one there for you.
Any more lies to sleep with me,
I'll show you what real pain is.
I'm done being manipulated.
I'm done being a shoulder to cry on.
To make me a back to lye on.
Stop saying you love me.
You don't.
You use me.
And god help me,
You get away with it one more time,
God help me.
See you don't understand
Because I truely loved you.
You were the only one I couldn't say no to.
Here's my no.
Ever again, you'll see me in court.
You piece of shit.
Goodbye.

Koi in the water.

It is warm. Warm and safe and so very still. I've been trying to still my mind. Yet despite the cluttered room full of thought and apprehension I see when I close my eyes, I feel still. My mind feels calm, I know that there is a window in the room of apprehension. I walk to it, Over boxes of ill-will and brokenness, I lean to look out the window and below it is a pool of water. A pond with mud and silt. It is perfectly round and there are ripples gliding trhough the water from the center. The water is cloudy, cloudy, cloudy and dim. And I smile. I smile because I know I will wait. I will wait and watch the water and it will become still. It will settle. It will become clear. I don't know why I even watch the water. Whatever is in the pond I wait to see, I do not care to see. I am just smiling to know that the water will become clear.
Leaning over the clutter, my back aches. It is an odd position. I do not need to see the water. I already know it will become clear. The ripples are soothing. I know the pond is empty, But I do hope there is one day a koi in the pool. It would please me. Such serene beings.

one dollar and fourty-two cents

It's funny how simple it is for you to make me cry. I'm thinking about the beginning. And I'm fearing we're at the end. And I never imagined my future, years from now, without you somewhere near me. Without your laughter and without that smile of yours that so few get to see. What ever happened to the love that we stared? What's left of this life we lead without each other standing by?
I feel like I'm in a blank sky hurling towards a ground that has a bottomless abyss and it just so happens that hole in the ground I'm supposed to hit is right below me. I'm just going to keep falling. The pain was supposed to come. The fear was supposed to end. I'm stuck in a what should I do moment. Should I aim for the ground and let this aweful nightmare come to a close, scar my heart and wound me for the rest of my life, if there is to be one. Or should I delay the inevitable end and wallow in the decent knowing only darkness and an uncertainty about what will happen next. Waiting. Falling. Waiting.
I cry so often over the loss of a best friend, telling myself if he were around, alive that I could tell him one thing or another, that I wouldn't let any hard feelings get in the way of telling him that I love him and sharing with him that friendship and connection that we shared. If only he weren't dead.
You are a friend to me, we understand so much of each other, much like the love that I've lost. I don't want to not share that blissful connection, that joy of friendship, that understanding. You make me cry when you say you don't want to have anything to do with me because it sucks for you. It sucks that you can't have me completely. You want that joy to be constant. Nothing in this world is constant. The only solace I can offer is "hey! At least I'm not dead! At least I'm alive to talk to." But rather than taking that joy in life whenever and wherever it is offered, you shun it completely because you can't handle not having what you want the way you want it.
And I'm lost. I can't fix this. I can't make things what you want them to be. I can't help needing to take things too slow. I want my friend. But if you won't have it. I'm sorry I can't give you more. It's like you want all ten bucks or nothing when all I have to give is one dollar and fourty-two cents.

I want the Awful nightmares to Stop!

It was supposed to be a normal night at the bar. You know the kind; out with friends, trying to get up the guff to sing some kooky tune on the Karaoke machine while your friends laugh and sing along. That's what it was supposed to be. But when we all walked in, the place was barren. Quiet, too quiet. The bartender seemed almost as if she was waiting for us. Staring at the door as if she was counting down the seconds til the doors swung open. She didn't say a word, just stared at us a moment or two. Kind of like an uncomfortable pause. We all turned our heads to look at each other, Spar had a look of apprehension in his eyes, Eric seemed to be saying 'well we're already here, let's have a drink' Kim just had that look like she wanted to smile but had forgotten how. I was thinking about leaving, then without a word, the barkeep turned and started pouring us drinks. The jukebox started up without warning and started playing a familiar tune. We started towards the bar and pulled up stools as if we were asking each other if it was ok to stay.
"I thought you said it was Karaoke night?" Kim seemed to be asking no one in particular. Spar took his drink and started downing it. I guess he figued while the drinks were free, he'd get his money's worth. Eric and I stared at each other trying to figure what small talk would get the ball rolling without letting the bar tender know we were really nervous about being there.
She was tall and had short hair, the bar tender. Handed Eric and I each a drink and said "You can call me Z. Rough night out there huh?" about a second later the crack of lightning made us all jump damn near out of our seats and the sound of pouring rain drown out the noise of the jukebox. I could hear the pounding in my chest clear as a concert in my cerebellum.
After three rounds were were starting to open up to the dance-floor, after all we had it all to ourselves. Spar and I were enacting (rather poorly) a scene from dirty dancing. Eric and Kim seemed to both know the jitterbug or some type of fifties dance and they were having a blast. Z, she was staring at us still. It was making me terribly uncomfortable the whole night.
So I figured I'd stumble off to the bathroom to figure out what exactly was going on. I splashed some water in my face and took a deep breath. I was going to tell the guys it was long past time to leave and find somewhere else to go. This obviously wasn't the place we thought it would be. I was in there only about thirty seconds and when I came out the room was packed with people. I was alone. I couldn't find a single familiar face.
"Hey Z! You know where my people went?" I shouted over the rousing croud as I made my way to the bar. There was a heavy-set man serving drinks instead. He gave me the meanest look I'd ever seen and said "You gonna pay for those drinks or what?" I dug into mu pockets and pulled out thirty-seven dollars and fourty cents. Showing him my open hand, he snatched it from me and said "you owe me another fourty-two."
The back of my head laughed at me as I smiled at him saying "the answer to life the universe and everything!" He wasn't amused. So I wiped the smile off my face and asked him if he could point me in the direction of my friends. He just kept staring daggers at me. "Ok, maybe Z can, where'd she go?"
"Z hasn't been here in over thirty years, she's dead." He said as if this was a fact that everyone knew. His tone said 'I'm not amused.' I said "but she was just here, so were my friends. Let me go find them." I turned to look at the door, the rain had stopped. The Karaoke machine was cranking as a trio of severely drunk women tried to sing a dixie-chix song as if tone deaf. I looked at the pool table, the dart-board, the other room with it's really old arcade games. Tables in the corner with call-girls tempting business men. I couldn't find them anywhere. I felt lost, scared, drunk and alone.
Just then shots rang out. The whole room full of people stopped. the only sound was the crappy synthetic sound of the Karaoke machine pluggin along in what now seemed to be an uncomfortable rhythm. Everyone seemed to be asking whether they should run towards the noise to see what happened, or away. Then another shot and the light above the pooltable shattered. A stampede ensued, everyone heading for the door. Except for me. Pushing against everyone to make my way towards the back door by the dumpsters. When I got out there the bar keep, the heavy-set man, standing over Spar with a pistol in his hand. Spar was lying there sprawled out like a cheap date on prom night. The toughest guy I knew, dead. I screamed.
Just then I felt arms around me, dragging me into a room I didn't know existed. And I could hear the rain start again. Spar and Eric and Kim all tied up in wooden chairs, I smiled to see Spar alive, I squealed against the arms around my ribs, pushing the air out of my lungs, forcing me into a chair. ANd after a long wait in darkness, trying to talk to each other and figure out what was going on through gags, a door swung open and a tall figure silloetted in the light from outside was standing in the door. It was Z and I was scared. I tried to bite through my gag to tell everyone she was supposed to be dead.
The night seemed to never end. The nightmare seemed so real. When I woke the next morning, I'd bitten a hole in my pillow and there on my phone a message from Spar "Where were you? thought we were all going to the bar last night?! We missed you!" Was all it said.

So Cold

verse

When I was young, I used think about the days we had together.
The way you used to make me feel so alive. I could not be afraid.
Time was so brief, And I never could believe
Standing by your side, your hands in mine,
That now you're gone.
They don't feel the same.
We used to be together,
Your lips when I kiss them now
Used to be so free.
Are so cold.
With the tide and the mood
Your hands, like my world.
And the moon and the breeze
Closed tight and so cold
And lying there next to you...
Like this crazy feeling
Your hands on me.
Of your hands on me.

chorus

Lips to mine.
You'd say to me: what about now?
And in the lonely night, I wait.
In the lonely night I pray.
Kiss my hands, your lips like ice.
It all falls away.
I miss you.
But still I kiss this stone, your stone.
Like ice.
so cold.

verse

When will it come time to meet the angels and the maker?
Opening that first box of macaroni dinner
because I can't cook.
What about the rice at the wedding we never had?
Standing by your side, your hand in mine,
And when they call.
And who is to blame.
You’d take me by the hand.
Devil’s is a smile so warm.
And kiss me gently.
Time stood still.
With the tide and the mood
Your hands, like my world.
And the moon and the breeze
Closed tight and so cold
And lying there next to you...
Like this crazy feeling
Your hands on me.
Of your hands on me.

chorus

Lips to mine.
You'd say to me: what about now?
And in the lonely night, I wait.
In the lonely night I pray.
Kiss my hands, your lips like ice.
It all falls away.
I miss you.
But still I kiss this stone, your stone
Like ice.
So cold.

bridge

The silent sound of the phone hitting the floor,
I run to the door.
Screaming at the wind never helped.
Because you're really gone.

chorus

Lips to mine.
You'd say to me: what about now?
And in the lonely night, I wait.
In the lonely night I pray.
Kiss my hands,
your lips like ice.
It all falls away.
I miss you.
But still I kiss this stone, your stone
Like ice.
So cold.

So cold. So cold. so cold.

Hidden, (written a long long time ago... )

Hidden in a drawer, I try to throw you from the room.
When the time comes to breathe in your poison
I shall breathe sparce breaths ~ deeply.
I shall call to a stranger from across the room,
To help me die, to use his destructive nature.
To keep from me your joys.
Having you in my hands, small thing you are
Your cause and purpose I despise
Yet I revear you! I want you. I own you.
Sweet one from across the room, tell me your lie,
Give me your hand in gentle, abrassive touch.
Teach me how it is you do what I cant.
And tickle with gentle burning my senses.
As I gasp.
I watch you dance, never letting my poison,
My own end, from your sight as you...
Flicker from my view, dancing, and gone.
I too am gone and lost in your embrace
Your poison spreads all to slow as I breathe,
Gasping, gentle lips feel forward for air that is not there.
I strain to breathe.
Slow breath, sparse breath.
Until your poison is gone, I sit here dying.
In my tiny room where I've been left again.
I am free again from death,
I will try again tomorrow.
To not take my medication.
To die from the asthma.

Angel

You ever find it hard
To believe in an angel.
Someone from above,
that sits on your shoulder and sings.
She sings of laughter,
of light and of love.
And when the night comes,
she dies.
Like sweet bells ringing silver,
In the darkness without you,
she dies.
Is it so hard for you,
To believe in and angel.
Who rises with the sunrise.
New with the new day.

Where would you go;
To scream into the rain,
To find harmony,
To kill the pain.
Where would you go?
If no one were there,
To watch you fall,
To pick you up,
To cast your worry aside.
Where would you go?
To find an angel.
Like me.

brain-storming

What I'd like to explain here is not what happened or why. I believe there are more important things to discuss here and in an attempt to remain brief I truely hope you will be both interpretive and understanding. For example, it is extremely important to me to point out to you that I had once in a life that seems now foreign to me, defended the concept of carpe diem. Seize the day, live for the now, tomorrow may never come... all contrite and misleading. I have learned, in the past year, since the incident in question, that having no plan for the future is exactly the same as having no future at all. And I have more than vowed to change my ways, I have taken many steps to correct my own errors in judgement, and wrongful mindset. What I want to be understood here is what happened, happened. And whatever one's interpretation of that may be; it was a mistake and a deeply regrettable one at that. What matters now is that where I was in my life was not and is not where I am going with my life. While where I am now is neither, it is not where I was and it is on the way to becoming the role model I wanted to have when my life had taken its turn for the worse. Who I was, over a year ago now, was a despicable person deserving no mercy. I have no idea when, but I'm striving to put together within the next few years, the pieces that make up the life I want to lead.

drafting

Who am I?
I am the kind of person who gives what I have to help others, even if it is the last of what is mine. I am kind, gentle, stern when I have to be. I have principals and a sense of honour. I am the kind of person who sets my mind to something and gets fixated until I accomplish. Unfortunately I sometimes have fixated on that overwhelming feeling that accompanies a failure.I am now also the kind of person who, when I realize I have a shortcoming, I take steps to overcome it. I used to meditate when I was a child as part of martial arts classes. I've a new mantra I share with myself daily now: Try, fail, try again, fail better. I will never stop doing better now, despite what failures rock my enitre microcosim.
What am I?
I am a reformed criminal. It's difficult living in the shadow of such a recent mistake. I already know where I went wrong and am already determined to change my life for the better.I am frustruated because having a record now excludes me from many of the things I had wanted to do with my life for the next several long years. It has become even more difficult, worse in a recession, to find a basic and menial job with which to finance basic needs and a desire to return to academia. I am misguided, but was moreso. I used to think life was difficult, I have found it can always get more difficult and often will for no reason. Every day I remind myself how lucky I am to have the support I have needed to pick myself up, change for the better and make strides towards the improvement of my situation.I am now a productive member of society holding down two jobs. One as a referee or judge at a local sports facility, it is honing my sense of reason and allowing me to view my own life with a bit more productive scrutiny. The other one a result of recent volunteer work I have been dedicated to. I have a third; seasonal job, beginning shortly which can provide me with productive work through May or April. A fourth job of a similar nature I believe I have lined up but I'm not one to count my chickens.I am a volunteer for several causes, some big, some small, all dear to me. When I had started to run with a more questionable crowd it was under the pretense that I was following the only work I could find. While I was able to make an honest living, enough to pay my bills, problems arose with the company I would keep. Now I volunteer to set up what can be described as pop-up businesses and thereby help to provide gainful employment, even if temporarily, for those in need.
When?
The turning point, I believe, came when I was in jail. I looked around at the kind of people I was now and forever going to be cast into the same classification with. I realized there are some poeple in this world who are far from the version of civilized I had once felt I'd known. I had role-models in think-tanks who I wanted to be just like someday. I'd briefly forgotten the lessons they taught me when they died and the catty squabbling over a meaningless remote control to the tv, reminded me that I musn't give up on becoming a better person.There are however, some people for whom (I can imagine) a swift and prolonged removal from society would do both a bit of good. I dare say I am not that kind of case.There was a time however, that I would think on the roof and meals associated with incarceration. I do believe I was wavering into bad society at that time.I no longer take for granted the utter satisfaction of work, self-worth, and earning for myself a stable enough living to provide food shelter and save for furthering my education.
Where am I?
I am however caught at another juncture in my life. I do have health issues which have been with me since childhood as well as new ones which had been brought to my attention approximately five years ago. With regards to my asthma, I never think about it anymore, unless I go twelve hours without my medication. It is like the billboard says, a fish out of water. But while in college there was the discovery of some cervical growth. The word cancer was wispered at best. It was deemed benign and I have had no problems. However with a thinner and thereby more vulnerable cervix and a new-found plan to spend the next five to fifteen years getting my life on track I decided to take precautions and had an IUD put in. The pain associated with monthly hormonal and muscular changes has increased to crippling levels and in conjunction with my doctors, we are striving to come to a solution that is congruous.I have not, nor will I give up on making strides towards the person and the life I want to be and have. I have met with obstacles in the past year. It has been difficult to say no to once valued friends and exclude from my life persons I had valued, but I have not wavered in my dedication to personal and situational improvement.
How?
It has been with great difficulty that I have made changes to who I speak with, where I turn to, and what I believe in. Nothing woth doing seems ever to be easy. But I am doing better and with purpose and reason.I don't have a clear view of the what exactly the future will hold for me. but unlike i'd lived in the past, with carpe diem always at my ear, I at least have an idea and a goal set by which to guide myself into the great unknown with confidence, fortitude and perserverence.What I want to be understood here is what happened, happened. And whatever one's interpretation of that may be; it was a mistake and a deeply regrettable one at that. What matters now is that where I was in my life was not and is not where I am going with my life. While where I am now is neither, it is not where I was and it is on the way to becoming the role model I wanted to have when my life had taken its turn for the worse.

To whom it may concern:

Your Honour,
My life as a criminal is over, as a productive and respectable member of society life for me has only just begun as it is clear, at least to me, that this path of growth and self improvement is one I will continue down.
I set out to write to you about how the past year of my life has been a complete turn around for me and I have found that there aren't words poignant enough to express the deep regret I feel about what happened and my actions. I look back and see a completely different person, except for the part of me that was at times both passionate and altruistic.

What happened, happened. And whatever one's interpretation of that may be; it was a mistake and a deeply regrettable one at that. What matters now is that where I was in my life was not and is not where I want to be with my life. While where I am now is also neither, it is not where I was and is on the way to becoming the role model I wanted to have when my life had taken its turn for the worse.
This is merely my plea to you to be both understanding and merciful. As for what happened: a memory, an experience, (a bad one at that) and a stepping stone. I remember hearing an old saying about how a person is born with two bags, one full of luck and another bag labeled experience and it is empty and how the trick to life is to fill the latter before the former runs out. But unfortunately another old adage also rings true: how good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. My point is that I was both young and inexperienced and this experience has taught me many valuable lessons I will pull from to guide myself more successfully through the rest of my life. I feel confident in saying that I am ashamed looking back and hopeful postulating about the future. As with all stepping stones, I think a fair amount of shame goes into every person's life as a means by which to strive for better. So please, allow this young life a mistake. Illegal activities may be a part of the world we live in but I now see the sadness in that sorry fact and I assure you, such dubiousness will not again have a place in my life.
The consequences of my actions are already deeply rooted and shall weigh heavy on me for the rest of my life. I have no excuses, just remorse. Remorse and a wish that such a youthful stupidity as a first offense were not so devastating for someone already trying so very hard to make a decent and honest start to life. Job prospects, already drying up due to a slumping economy, have dried up entirely in light of the felony I now have on my record. Paying off my college education has been tough, though I haven't missed a payment yet.
What seems to matter now is what has been gained and what can be gleaned from this whole ordeal. Where I was at that point in my life was not a good place, was not where I ever want to be again. I lived a life I would not want to be endured by weak or strong minds as 'the only option.' Living on the road, following work, I thought was a good path. There were "interesting people" and "lively experiences" not to mention the "good pay" one got for the long arduous hours and sleepless night wondering when the next time you'd be able to shower would be or when you'd next be woken up to fix hydraulic equipment to meet safety regulations since the inspector would be coming for a surprise visit in the morning. I was stupid to have glorified that life in my head. It was a grueling menial life full of endless days of arduous physical, psychological and emotional turmoil.
I remember one night, working crowds of people for the profits I never saw, feeling giddy about the smallest things. It was truly a joy to me to make others happy simply by having them play a game and encouraging them to try until they succeeded. I never realized it then but it was my own lack of happiness I was replacing with theirs, my own lack of accomplishment I was seeking empathy for. People, more specifically, making them happy, was my true addiction. And when the inevitable realization of failure set in, I didn't know what to do. I have since found a better thing in life. I should have picked myself up and tried again. I recently heard an anonymous quote that I'm sure will stick with me: "Try, fail, try again, fail better." and to me this means one should not worry about failures or pending disasters, but should instead do one's best to use knowledge and experience to avoid making future failures repetitively disastrous.
Where I actually wanted to be; a far off dream, seemed hopeless. It was a place where a warm bed, a solid roof, and a decent meal, are givens. A life where I can work with my mind and my hands, having knowledge and skill that is of value. I want to be able to afford the liberty to help those in need. I have a passion for both the homeless and for birds. I have lived with and had what I called friends among both and want to see myself one day providing sanctuary for them. Hopeless now seems such a strong term.
A roof and a real job; despite my dreams of providing sanctuary, seemed unattainable. Especially amid a recession. A year later I nervously laugh at my own short-coming of having been so near-sighted. I have two jobs now. A third and possibly fourth to start shortly. And the people I work with at the current two jobs love me as I'm sure they will at the soon to begin other two. I intend to stick with these jobs and with them fund a return to academia. I'm correcting a mistake I made my first round of education and selecting very carefully a career to educate myself before taking classes.
I'm currently paying off my bachelor's degree and am proud to mention that even as my payments have risen the past three years, I haven't missed a single wretchedly painful payment yet. While this past year has been the most expensive in terms of those payments it has also been the least painful because of my own dedication to a better life and a better way of living it. I've become determined to lead a more productive, conscientious life-style. I've been determined to find and hold steady jobs and to lead a more productive life. I have seen results from this change in personal goal foci and look forward to continuing to better myself.
Not only am I successfully paying my bills, I've a place I can call a home of my own. A roof, though shared with co-workers of mine that is consistent, earned and most importantly stable. Also I've found the time to volunteer to various causes. From little benefits, like Dodgeball for Zach and Relay for Life to hands-on, skill-oriented work with putting together a local seasonal attraction; something I've done with other companies as a paid partner before. I told you perhaps, of my volunteer work with a local haunted house. My work with them has earned me a paid position with the company which will be (of course) running through late September and all of October. It is my hope and theirs that I can be around to continue to have a greater hand in the success of running the event.
Where I am in my life, I admit is not anywhere near where I want to be; however I now have a plan. Where I am is nowhere near where I was. But I am farther from that dismal past with each day. I've taken many positive steps towards a stable life and have become a productive member of society. I have surrounded myself with positive influences and have involved myself with causes that give me purpose and hope. I'm doing my best to share that feeling of hope and feel now as though I am an integral part of something greater and very positive.
I suppose this is as good a time as any to plead with you.
Yes, I was stupid. As many of us do, I made an awful mistake. The remorse I feel weighs heavy on my every action. Impedes the most basic of needs such as getting hired to a regular job and climbing the so-called corporate ladder. Yet I have found other answers to my problems through supportive friends and co-workers and others, all of whom I can only justly describe as family. But jail at this juncture, now that I've done so much to make amends and fix my erroneous way? After I have found gainful employment such that I can work to pay off any fines deserved. I have spent time working for free that others may glean gainful employment from those hours I've spent. Knowing that it was following the only work I could find at the time which sent me on the road and into the den of so many persons with questionable values. Anything more than probation, hefty fines, even house arrest after I've gone so far from the terrible place I was in my life towards the reform I have already set myself to, would be ... as I can only think to explain it here ~ a bad end.