Where to begin?

Where to begin?

For not only the purpose of this blog, but the purpose of this writing and a question I struggle to answer every single day. Where do I begin? It's legitimate, because I have grown and learned without teaching of a mentor. My teachers have been my experiences, sadly. My parents forgot or never knew that a child needs to be cared for more than knowing what not to do or to simply be told "school is important, so you won't have to end up like me." I needed to know from someone who knew about how to go about the beginnings of things, other than to "roll with the punches" and "never give up." HOW DO I DO THINGS? HOW?!

I think that part of starting things is defined by the many, many ways you can go about it. Science and even religion tells us that by nature beginnings are frantic and delicate. That things may be in an order of chaos but there is a fragile harmony in that and should a slight variation happen than things would be different than they are, or could be. If you haven't noticed after reading the preceding entries, I have no self esteem, no courage for my own sake and live in perpetual fear of things I have no control over and many things that I do. You may have placed together that I am trying, and just barely being successful at NOT failing, which to me is grin inducing progress.

But I want more, I know I can do more, but where do I begin? How do I GO? I am so afraid at not being good enough to myself, and to others that I would rather not try. There is irony in that the people in my life believe in me, and most would love me the same rise or fall. These same people want to help me, but I am so afraid. I keep making excuses to procrastinate everything, literally everything. From washing dishes to writing a script to drawing. My inner dialog of fear driven desperation tells me all I need is time to sort my thoughts and time to be bored. I know I do, doesn't everyone at least want time to gaher themselves and have time to find themselves?

Like most things for me, I need to make time to change things. I need to find a way to motivate myself for the sake of myself to start doing what i believe with every bit of energy of my being what I was created to do. Created to be, because what I am is good enough. It is as I believe everyone is, absolutely unique and irreplaceable. I have to begin with myself. I know that now. I have to begin by being who I am, accepting it and embracing it and the possibilities of being that person. As I wrote that last sentence I felt guilty. Guilty for giving myself praise or attention away from others. What is wrong with being happy with who you are? I don't know that answer...

To begin at the beginning of what I want to do, which is the start point of every decision I make, which is myself. A broken car will get you nowhere, and a broken being is just as helpless.

Puppy I called Hope

Today is like most Sundays. I wake up grudgingly, wanting not to face my reality. Wanting to live among my kaleidoscope dreaming and be at peace within my imagination. My legs swing over the edge of my mattress and away from nurturing sheets and plant sadly on the small bits of laundry I have yet to do. Another chore. Another neglected duty. It seems like I would rather mope about the things I need to do than do them. This is also the case for the things I want to do.

I have a full case of paintballs near my gearbag, as well as an open invitation to play with former pro players and do so for free. I have a caddy full of brushes and paints and a number of canvases and wooden planks to create images with. I have a large binder full of sketches and written ideas and dialog and character concepts and a computer I bought for the purpose of writing and editing. Everything is there but me. I am someplace else, hiding away amidst the rubble of the life I've lives and the skins I've shed. Hiding away because this is yet another change and the most painfully recognized change of my life. I am finally being me, finally becoming myself and that fear comes out a womb of anger and sadness and resentment that I had to discover this person, at such a late age. That I had to be locked up in a spiritual sarcophagus because ME wasn't needed by people, that I wasn't important. I was tricked into this admonishment. As tearful as I am that I am a disenspirited body while my fragile real me is hiding from the world I was in and partially created, I am happy that I am at least healing enough to have the courage to bring myself about, and thankful that I have had the help in getting here.

A cup of coffee warms away the fogs of war in my mind and body. For as routine feeling as this Sunday morning has been, it has a new tagalong. A new sensation with it; a wonderful stray emotion that thought it would try me out. An emotion that should never be homeless, but maybe this emotion was mine and ran away because I neglected it, and like a loyal companion came back when tail wagging, loving as ever and not only forgiving but accepting. The wagging tail of Hope.

It has a strange way of making things seem achievable. Hope has a way of making you smile when things seem desolate. Hope is the little puppy that never ages, that never dies, and never stops loving you. So today on my unkept patio I was inspired to do something, and this blog was the first thing. I had to write about this, because it wasn't expected, and it was so pleasant to wake to Hope at my bedside rather than will it and wish it to return to me after half the day has gone, just to get me through the rest of the day.

I have all these tools and blessings, these gifts and they sit alone in overgrown foliage, dusted with neglect and dirty but like all blessing still pristine if given the proper cleaning and use. The only thing missing from these tools doing their job is the mechanic to bring about their potential, and that is me. The real me. These tools are mine, custom made for my talents and waiting for me.

Now maybe Hope can help Me get the courage and trust to return from hiding and be the glorious, complete person I was born to be. To be the best person I can, and with Hope and these tools that I've never lost but need to hone, to be guiltlessly happy.

Breakfast nooks

The best thing of working the job I have is the amount of time I have to be able to daydream. I can spend hours of my day set adrift on memories or captivated by my imagination, but I can do nothing but jot down sloppy hasty notes and sketches.

I always window shop my life. I dream about how things would be if they were exactly how I had always envisioned them, how I would be and how my life would be down to the daily routine I had. Some details have changed throughout the years, but a few principle players have always been in tis story aside from myself and my romanticism; children and a wife.

Each day I imagine, in my perfect life, before any other finicky detail, I start my day by waking my sleeping wife with a kiss, and open my door to see my two kids (or three? this detail changes a lot) running down the hardwood floors, slipping with their little white-socked pajama feet at a full sprint to me. I wrap my arms around all of them and smile, telling them what i just told their mother,

Good morning, I love you so much!


The rest of the life I always thought I'd have involves running through my extensive country property with my dog, following that with a short swim. I'd go inside to the smell of breakfast and crayons as my wife busily gets our kids homework and supplies into their Dora the Explora and Yu-Gi-Oh backpacks. I walk to the sunlit breakfast nook with a steaming cup of coffee and watch adoringly at this daily routine that I'm sure so many people take for granted. My wife would catch my eyes and give that smile that means "I'm glad you love this as much as I do, but for the love of god I'd be even more glad if you'd help me find their shoes" and pull her tangled morning hair, beautiful hair away from her eyes as she reaches down to kiss them all before shooing them to where I sat to do the same.

Then she and I would kiss and make love in the shower, sharing an understanding, a passionate symbiosis between and premeditated longing that we both knew exclusively would occur as soon as we went about our professional lives. Would she have a job, would she not? In my ideal life that decision would be one she made out of choice not necessity. I'd work and make more than enough to support my family. It's true that when daydreaming or dreaming you associate the faces of people you've met or more frequently, know, to the roles of characters in your dreams. My wife has obviously had many faces, as I've grown and my relationships and fantasies have changed, but her energy has always been constant. The love that radiates from her.

My job would be that of a Renaissance Man, doing all the things I have passion for and working tirelessly at becoming adept and recognized in all. From painting, to writing novels and scripts, to directing and producing films to taking photographs and working with preservation. The idea of money has never come up, only comfort. A nice stone and wood house in the mountains laced around with trees, built into the architecture of the landscape and within a short bike ride to a lake. My ideal life is successful by the joy of the people I share it with and the joy of doing the things I was gifted with, not of how many things I had or how absurdly wealthy I was. In my life I'd be wealthy and successful by most standards, but my pride would be in my family, friends, and the work I did, not the monetary compensation for my creativity.

And I close this daydream by clocking out my time sheet, and trying to stay composed at least until I can get onto the highway. I could have had my dream earlier, but I wasn't taught so many things, and taught so many things wrong. I didn't even have an idea of who I was and that I even mattered until very recently. I can still make it happen, and I will. That thought while I drive home helps drive away those helplessly sad tears.

She should wait on the steps...not even mine.

A day I'll never forget. Rarely-no, never- do I come home, or have come home to see a brown paper bag and a small cooler sitting by my doorstep, full of small baggies of healthy snacks, and other good foods. She knew when I would be home, and I knew she was going to go drinking tonight. I also knew that as touched as I was at the love she filled that bag and cooler with, as much love as I had for this untouchable woman, I had to find the emotional strength to tell her goodbye.

Since last night my stomach has ached. All day keeping company with a headache I carry in my neck that has been my bothersome buddy for almost a month. My therapist told me that my body is trying to tell me something.

I know. It's telling me the same thing my heart has been since I met her. That she is not mine, and to leave her be no matter how painful it is.


Why do you do it? Why don't you set boundaries?


Because I'm a fool. Because I love her.


So after therapy, after I came home and choked my heart back into my chest, and willed my tears from falling I laid on my creaky sofa to lose myself in a book or a movie. The AC hummed and cooled me. I looked awful tonight, I have for sometime now, but I'd be a liar if I said I looked as bad as I felt. I felt, and still feel ill. Love sick, guilty, and ashamed that I couldn't say no. Ashamed that I let my desires take control of my morality and judgement. I still haven't shaved, though I did shower. Even that was taxing. I wanted so bad to cry where it would be concealed, but I couldn't. I had nothing left, not even sorrow, and the Zoloft induced plateau made even these feelings of remorse and deep sadness remarkable.

So when she knocked on my door, every muscle I have tensed and told me to keep the door closed. I don't remember getting off the couch or unlocking the deadbolt or opening the door or letting her in. All I remember is holding as close as I could, breathing her in as I kissed her.

Why are you here? We can't keep doing this.


I can't stand being away from you...


You are drunk, oh my god how did you get away?


It's a long story.


We kissed, and she made my skin dissolve behind her caressing fingertips while they moved across my arms and shoulders. Why can't I say no to her, as much as I want? As much as I know the best thing for both of us is for her to work on her family, to repair the broken bonds of trust, love, and intimacy? I knew why I felt so jealous of what I hate wanting to bid farewell. It was her.

But she is not mine, and I owe it to her and her family I hurt by our affair. To her husband whom I've never met and who wants me dead, and of whom I've only heard great things about from everyone that met him. To myself, for allowing myself to get hurt KNOWING I would.

I want love. I want to give myself to a woman and have it returned. Loved in spite of love, in spite of how perfectly flawed we are as humans and loved so passionately that forever is nothing more than a verbal placeholder for an expression so powerful there is no word for it. I want to share my life and be understood, be appreciated, trusted and desired. I had all of those things before, but it wasn't "right" in my heart.

So as I told her she should go, she was angry, and embarrassed. She drove away and I think that may be the last time I see her in the arrangement we had with each other. But not before she pulled my hand and asked me to stay with her. As I said, I can't cry despite how badly I want to. I'm going to miss her so much and want with all of my heart for her and her family to mend beyond the first loving bonds. And I want that for me, too. Time will tell, I'm just a fool with no self esteem. I am working to fix those both, but for now I have to sleep away (try) this short lived summer love.

Wrong side of the glass

Is my dynasty within myself to be preoccupied with unhappy pursuits, meaningless occupation, while I dream? Is my sonnet the affliction of lost motivation to my burning desires? Am I so happy with my restless agony, so content to be lost in the corn maze of frustration and hopelessness that the opportunity and real availability to live a fulfilled life is better off imagined? Am I really so afraid of success that the thought of blunder and heaven forbid, failure, are THE horses powering my chariot?

I live my entire life as I have always lived it. I live in the safest, most comfortable habitat I know. In my imagination adrift on thoughts that change as the clouds dissipate. I'm the clone, the cyborg human programmed to "do" and shackled to the responsibility I have taken upon myself of being sub-par, and mediocre to avoid commendation. I'm the brain in a jar. The bird in a cage left open by the owner.

"Free if you want to be. Spread your wings and fly."

The wings are weak from being held to the back. The first flight takes the most courage, is the most tiresome, and takes the longest to both prepare for and recover from. The danger of falling, the anticipation of soaring. I read that a baby bird will die if the mother helps free it from it's egg. The trial of breaking the shell, torpid from growing and being born, strengthens the baby bird. It's this initial struggle that prepares it mentally, and physically for the demands of survival. If the mother peeled away the shell for the baby, the struggle would be gone, and the reality of a birds existence would prove fatal. In our world, as humans, we all have the absolute luxury of being top tier predators and having a socially interactive upbringing and maturation. We can somehow still survive, but I wonder if that makes us weaker. I wonder if struggle is empowering to people strong enough to develop a hard callous.

I know for certain I am getting stronger during this time of malaise. It's a rebirth from the ashes of who I was, the broken mirror of what I saw in myself that was really the image of what people wanted me to be, or thought I was. It was not true. I am not here to fulfill voids, I am not here to play an entire cast in one play. I have spent too much time inward, watching and wanting. It's high time I decide astutely what side of the glass I want to be on from this point on. God give me the strength to become who I am, because I don't know.

Headlights on vacant highways

It's always so peaceful early in the morning on a weekday. Between 3am and 5am, the city sleeps. I can drive and peacefully zone out to music without worrying so much about paying attention to the cars around me and their pilots. I can walk into a gas station to see the clerk cleaning the coffee pots for the coming morning rush or mopping a sheen back into the floor. The stray fox or raccoon watches me while I walk by from the nearest edge of shadow, usually near a gutter or barrier they love to strafe, turning their heads towards other cars making their eyes translucent green or yellow.

I have always been a star person. The day is alive, but alive with business. During the day, people seem so preoccupied with the miriade of distances, priorities and "tasks" they roam about on autopilot. I know that someone could clock my day down to the minute for the most part, from the time I wake till the time I get home. Daytime should be joyous, should be waking to the world, but it's become waking to business as usual. It's become far more frightening than welcoming and serene. When people are awake they can be selfish, they can connive and become sinister, but at night in the comfort of their bed and serenity of their dreams even the most malicious are at peace and for the rest of us, leaving us in peace. People are so sad and boring during sunlight.

I watch other night people, and it's more interesting. It could be because nights aren't so saturated with chaos that I notice more, but that's how it seems; night people ARE different, far more interesting. Ask anyone in the afternoon what they are doing and most likely they will say,

"I'm catching a bite to eat before I head back to work. Don't think I'm going to get another chance I have a ton of work to finish. Love to stay and chat but..."

Ask a night person, and you could never be prepared for the answers. It's not to say night people are weird, but to most people looking in it could easily look that way. Dark wide eyes and light skin. Jackets even in the peak of summer. Dirty vans to $2000 stilettos. The lipstick is more red than flesh, and the hair more free than gelled into conformity. Almost always they are alone, having left their friends to slumber locked inside a room, free to dream and be what they desire till the phone alarm screeches them to routine. They buy 3.2 beer to keep their buzzed heads buzzed. Some buy condoms with a smile for their lover drunk and singing in the car. Some buy blunt wraps and cigarettes, others gum and nachos. Night people are almost always smiling. Maybe it's because they are fucked up, maybe it's because everyone else is asleep and they have a few more hours to enjoy the world as we love it.

I'm not saying I don't like the sun, or enjoy my time in the day. The night is the same feeling I get when I realize my hangover is finally going away and I can think again, and the day is the drunk feeling right before I lose control and blackout.

Distance to me

Every day for the last few months, spare a few days, I get a text or a phone call from a woman that I love saying how much she loves me. How much I mean to her, how hot I am, how incredible the sex and passion is, how she wants to come see me for a few minutes just to kiss my aching lips and smell my chest.

Every day.

Every day she does my heart breaks more and more because she is someone I would love to be with, and someone I can't. Because she is married.

Every day I yell at myself over my impulsive soul, and my heart that can't beat without the spark of love to ignite it. I choke away tears under tinted safety goggles and the shade of my hardhats brim, praying one doesn't free from my eyelashes and claim a streak down my rusty cheek. "So it is Joe, so has it been and so shall it be" I tell myself. "You aren't good enough for a great woman, the ones you meet are crazy, they must be, and thus so fated your romance." I pull on my worn, cracked leather gloves and pour water from my bottle onto my face to both cool the fury of the sun and hide the tears that I no longer care to restrain.

Every day I check my emails and texts and call log. Every day I hope that one of the resumes I turned in will perk someone's interest in me, or a friend has a story to share or an invite to grab a beer or Pho. Every day, spare a few, I have none but the ones from this forbidden love. This love that feels as pure no MORE pure than anything I have felt before. It's understanding, non-judgmental, nurturing, and tragic. I type things sweet to reply, and each time I choke because with each passing second this horribly beautiful bond grows stronger.

Every day I hate myself for not saying no to her, and ever day I am glad I didn't. I won't run from the nuclear repercussions that erupt even now. But I stay for her, because I need this as much as she does. In the sickest way I want, more than anything, for her and her husband to find the passion her and I have and live a long, happy life together. In the sickest way, I want to be that stolen memory in sin of two separated lovers who had found each other when it was too late. In the sickest way I want her to reach across her skin at night in between a dream the way I do, thinking not of what we have done but countless ways and things we could have. In the sickest way I want her to stop breathing when she thinks of me the way she did when I would kiss her lower lip.

Every day I want to take my mind from her so I can heal myself and forgive myself for committing treason on my morality. I want to find and nurture the truest love with a woman and entwine it into my eternity, two souls bound together by their spiritual thread for time and space and love. Every day I drive home to an empty condo and wish with all I have that I cold open my door to something I can have, and see that woman I may or may not have met yet smile at me with the light of the galaxy in her eyes and ignite every nerve in my body when she gets up from her show, or book and just hugs me.

Every day the guys who wear hats similar to mine, and who have hid their tears under their shades call me a fool. Every passing day I believe them more.

Dark trance

I am sickening successful at being an underachiever.

Moi. The amazingly adept self saboteur.

Why do I feel such shame when i am lauded, complimented or even worse for me by far, put into a situation where I have to say the aforementioned about myself? Why can I come across nearly cocky when I joke but feel no connection to the words I joke out of myself, whereas I feel stabbing truth in my self deprecating jabs? It is so easy for me to hate who I am or who I think I am or who I think others think I am that i see every mistake, every indiscretion as one I sought out and after; for destiny's sake.

I can't seem to love myself. I don't feel worth it but I want it so bad from other people and still, when I get it, I feel unworthy of it. I try so hard to get what I am ashamed to hear or receive, the very things I refuse to believe.

And I recently so convincingly martyrized such a strong personal belief. A sacrament I had for my emotional well being, that I formed and molded from years of processing and instances of experiencing the dregs of it's inception. This is another topic, and funny I wrote what I now type earlier. This is the first blog or any sort of writing other than professional or scholarly papers I have put ANY sort of editing into.  I don't count drunken deletes as edits. Still, I have so much to say I know already this is going to have shitty format and structure, and I neeeed to say this all so much I don't care.

I always thought I was born to protect. I BELIEVED. Fucking BELIEVED with all of my heart, with every-fucking thing I have, with all that I am that my purpose was to sacrifice. To protect and fight for others that may not be able to do so, or those that can but need the added arms. I liked to think my mind is dark because of this. I liked to think it had to be, it must be to hide all of the ugliness I held inside me. All of the pain and distorted versions and visions of myself and the the world I was taught to see.

From a lot of painful and tearful introspection. From months of honest analysis of myself, my true emotions and true desires have I found that my mind is not dark. Not entirely, but so beautifully so. My mind is like nightfall on the 4th of July. Colors of every hue visible and those undiscovered and of every shape and dimension exploding into conception and existence with sagacious grandeur from each corner of each mental landscape. The flashes make an almost ambient glow upon what I thought was a desolate battleground of defiled experience, exposed for what I was afraid of with such magnificent light. Exposed is a wealth of depth and richness and beauty all around my emotional vista.

It's only dark when I close my eyes, bar away my heart, and seal off my soul to protect myself for the sake of protecting others and even my own demons. That which has no access cannot be harmed. That which has been hidden and neglected cannot be healed and loved. That which has been suppressed and starved cannot bloom until it takes root.

What I heard

It was 8 o'clock when I woke up from my nap. Pm. I fell to sleep with the intention of doing something tonight, but not until I took a short, half hour pity nap. I woke to the alarm on my phone and the credits to movie I slept to.

It's Saturday, and I haven't got a single call today, or text from anyone. I went and sat on my patio, my dirty and barren patio. A patio so sad and unkept anyone walking by would think the place was abandoned, and the small green plastic table and old wood fold-up chair were left behind. I smoked a cigarette that I had earlier promised to god I would never smoke again. I broke that promise as hard I wanted not to, as earnest as I had promised it. Did I break it out of self pity or because I just didn't give a shit about my personal outcome anymore? Both. No doubt about it.

Halfway through my fag I heard several younger women scream. my head turned to the noise with surprise because I didn't expect a scream here, in this complex, from so many women. That scream was followed by jubilant laughter, laughter melodic with the original multitude of original vocal owners. What I heard in the middle of it was jumbled voices near hysterics saying something over the other voices doing the same. As suddenly as I had turned my head my heart squeezed it's way into my throat, and my eyes began to sting with infant tears.

Where did my life go? When did I stop having friends to surprise and laugh with? When did I start spending all of my free time alone, busily distracting myself from my pain and sadness, acting out mental plays with myself to pretend all is well, all is normal and the show must go on. Am I really that undesirable to be around? Are the limited social interactions I have with people nothing more than reminiscent adrenaline shots to memories we shared, or are they sympathetic outreaches for duties sake?

I can't swallow.

I know what my immediate reality is, and it is desolate. Dusty and windy, and hot. Not a soul in sight, just my weather torn jacket collar hiked high to my cheek bones and the rim of my hat down in my eyes.

I miss my life. I really do. I am so confused and lost right now I don''t know what to do. To reach out would be to seem needy to me. My co-dependancy is so bad that seeking out friendship and companionship makes me ashamed. But why am I so bad that other people don't want to reach out to me to see me? Is my distancing airborne? Am I so far removed from how I was that the friends I had don't recognize me or feel helpless or did they never care much for me to begin with?

This cigarette is disgusting. They always have been but true to my nature I can't stop poisoning myself even through the best intentions of doing so. The laugher has subsided, but the loving chatter remains, and I'm sure as the night ages and liquer vanishes from their glass boundaries it will get louder still. The creation of memories, maybe embarrassing regrets, but always future stories to call upon in the next coming together.

It will be dark soon, and I still have a half bottle of good scotch. Maybe I'll stay out here and write some more. Maybe the darkness will shade the streaks of my tears. Maybe their laughter will ease my mind, or become a player in my own introverted adaptation.