Table for one

For so long I have dined at a table for two, seemingly out of necessity. We feel the need to be paired because possibly that is what family, society or even the world possibly suggests. I have grown tired of attempting to fit that mold for now because, I do not feel as if I have ever fit comfortably within it. I am a mess.

Love is such a diverse emotion; it has the capability to lift us above anything we have ever known before and also has the potential to strike us down to a depth we may never wish to feel again. We have a powerful capacity to comprehend such a spectrum of feelings that it is a wonder we ever find ourselves to settle upon a single one. I have yet to find solace upon anything and the moment that I believe I might have found a stable footing, it has crumbled below me. The weight of that caving may be rested upon the shoulders of infidelity, deceit, dishonesty and even a lack of effort on my own part. If we are created in an image to love then why is it sometimes so difficult for some of us to accept it when love arrives?

When you have reached out so many times, you examine the results of when you have connected as well as when you have not and what that backlash feels like. Either way, if you have failed in that endeavor so many times can the idea of halting that reach actually be shunned?

At first I thought 'yes'. We have an obligation to love as our lungs are obligated to resperate; it is natural therefore it must be. When the towel hits the mat, it is our duty to rise again. I have since learned that naively getting back up off of the mat, equipped with the knowledge of only what put you down in the first place may not be the best course of action. Sometimes that towel must stay down and the day you live to fight for again must not be tomorrow but yet in the distant future. Within this metaphor, within that logic is where my heart currently resides. The time has come to retreat and cease attempt because there is something inherently wrong with my approach that consistently gets me knocked out.

Time is an invaluable commodity and I plan to spend some of it alone. I take the short term loss in hopes of yielding a long term gain. The actions I have taken have led me to where I am; a place I am depressed. Those same actions will not send me to where I wish to be and I am taking time to acknowledge that.

I will sit at a proverbial table for one. The view across from me is an empty chair and I am so disturbed by it yet I will not shun it. I will not seek to fill that empty chair as immediately as I will seek to understand what fills the chair that I occupy. I am far less than the charismatic, passionate and boisterous personality that I embody. Trust that I may very well be just a lackluster, apprehensive and confused individual that is not comfortable in his own skin.

I do, however, recognize not what it will take to fix this but that this disconnect exists between what I am and what people perceive. Recognition is the first step in addressing and internal issues are most adequately addressed at a table for one. I will sit here until I am content. I will commit to holding an unfamiliar blanket of solitude until I can embrace it and wrap myself in it without discomfort. Somehow, hopefully in the very near future it will bring me warmth. Until then, I will sit at this table for one until I am ready to ask for the bill and confidently pay it myself.

Haunted

I am haunted by a ghost.

It is the apparition of a relationship that I somehow cannot let go of. I seek a release, not of any hold the person has on me but of the redefining nature that she represented to me. My heart left a door open for someone, with hopes that it would become a catalyst to great things but once inside it has become a torment that I naively allowed to redefine aspects of what a relationship should be. The problem is, those new definitions were predicated on falsehood; nothing within what I admired were actually ever real.

We seek and we want something genuine to love in our hearts. Whether you believe that Christ was a fierce mystic of a mortal or the only son of God, I believe he was great at categorizing sin in terms of the human heart. When sold out to Pontius Pilate, he recognized the sin of the man who sold him to Pilate was greater than the sin of Pilate who effectively sentenced him to death. In other words, it is the malintent that is recognized as greater in sin of treacherously delivering a man, than it is the man who proverbially swings the sword. He had it right. Metaphorically, if we allow someone to believe in something and then act against them, it is worse than the pain of the truth he must deal with next.

The conflict I have is that I was allowed to believe in something that did not exist. Once it was gone, the lingering effects crept in slowly and deliberately, corrupting my well. I am affected in absolute form in a poisoning sense. I am the discarded whetstone to her now sharpened blade; my use no longer beneficial. My descent from the clouds has begun yet I have so far to fall. I recognize this now.

The deepest blow is that while I descend, I had the fortune of another heart touching mine. It was one of purity and a genuine nature however based on my ghostly preconceived notions I was not able to connect. I imagine that as one drowns, right before the all of oxygen is burned, that there is a tremendous fight that is both recognized and then let go of and that must be similar to what I feel now and that pains me.

So begins my task of reconciling the collateral damage that I am solely responsible for.

This is a spirit that painfully lingers and since it has no business here, I need to force it to the light of the other side. I am cognizant of it's presence and realize that it is more than a spirit, it is a possessive demon that must leave. I will purify my house with the sanctity of honesty. I will embrace the faith that is represented by my perseverance to love again. I will arm myself with the holy water that is my good intention and the cross that is my commitment to learn from my mistakes. I will burn this demon to the ground and replace the emptiness that I have allowed to fill me.

I will be whole again because I believe that I can be.

Origin, pondered.

In a previous post, I suggested that my difficulty with accepting divine intervention would be a future topic. Tonight I would like to expand upon that.

Before you read further, I need to establish two ground rules.

First understand that I am not looking for your retort or spiritual input on this post. I always welcome a conversation about faith but social media is not a forum that yields a productive one. Second, this is me expressing my beliefs not me asking for your spiritual support or guidance so please remember that. Remember, if you would ever like to discuss any of this (I say discuss because I do not "debate" it anymore) then you know where to find me. I am capable of contributing to one of the most opposing, yet productive, conversations that you will ever have about faith and I welcome your invite.

There are two schools of thought. Either you believe that an omnipotent being chose for us to exist or our life exists as a side affect of a cosmological anomaly that occurred almost 14 billion years ago. The former makes up a diverse theological mix many of which believe that divine intervention either previously occurred or that it still occurs today. That is the concept I am zeroing in on tonight.

In the secure bubble of our own worlds, there is evidence of miracles. We fight incurable diseases against insurmountable odds, we are able to appreciate the small miracles of financial woes subsiding, children remind us that we are created in His image and we can feel love from other people that reminds us of our own humanity. What happens when we wander outside of that bubble?

To us, the greatest injustice is when someone is wronged by the government or when someone falls victim to a medical condition or freak accident. We cannot be empathetic to truly awful circumstances like incurable and widespread disease, family members starving to death and brutal dictators that cause unspeakable actions, to name a few. There is little evidence of divine intervention in areas in those areas of the world. For every mother that claims her prayers were answered because of a miracle of modern medicine, there are ten more elsewhere that bury their children because either they were murdered or died of a some type of disease that may have even been curable. Is this a matter of where divinity intervened?

In the wide scope of events, can one of these mothers say their prayers were answered because their child lived and the other mother's prayers were not answered because their child died? Theology loves to dive in and take specific credit for when situations turn out well but when outcomes are dark, theology will back off quickly with a generalization; this god answered those prayers because of this reason but this situation did not turn out well so we must not be meant to understand. That idea is the precipice of my juxtaposition and I take firm perch there. For those of us that believe in divine intervention, that point will cut those of us that believe in divine intervention like a knife because it is the one that has no answer; it takes faith to continue to believe it.

That question and that lack of resounding answer "why", is why I cannot ever have faith that some type of being intervenes today. I recognize beauty and make a deliberate effort to appreciate it every day. To me, there is something glorious behind all of it. I do not believe it steps forward today and intervenes in the affairs of men but I do believe there is a divine presence. Perhaps that just adds integrity to my belief that I have more control of my own affairs and therefore motivates be the better person to serve that being. I do not know but I will not spend my life serving a concept I cannot reconcile. I may very well end up in a "good" lifestyle that mirrors that effort but I believe that I align myself with most "good" people and that practice may be all the faith I ever need.

A Better Place

Two years ago, I was living in the basement of my own home and preparing to separate from my wife and start the divorce process. My head was filled with more concerns, fears and emotions that I knew what to do with. Autumn was beginning and being the person that searches for metaphors in everything in life, I recognized the dying of life around me only fit into the parallel that was my marriage. I was angry, alone, bitter and wounded. I was a victim.

I began to recognize that I added aspects to my personality that I had created to suit other people's needs. Shame on me for creating them in compensatory fashion in the first place but at least I ultimately recognized the need for their purging. I found myself last year and recently I made the mistake of underestimating the beauty of knowing what I am.

Earlier this year I was in a relationship that, at the time, I thought it impossible to go any better. Unfortunately the rubber of my perception met the road of reality and it cause an abrupt u-turn in the direction we were headed. It was then that I made the afore mentioned mistake. I defaulted to thinking what it was I could have possibly thought that I did wrong. My knee-jerk reaction was to put myself through re-invention mode because that's what I had always done and it always seemed to work. Something internal was awry and I could not figure it out until last week.

I realized I was making drastic changes like being more reserved at work, I did not touch alcohol for almost three weeks and tried to do some soul searching to find what changes I needed to make. This was the first time that I attempted my old habit of trying to reinvent myself solely for the purpose of change after the grueling task of reconciling (or "iReconciling" for those of you that followed that blog last year). I had the revelation that previously I would reinvent myself because what I was originally representing simply was not me. I was fake. Think of the old table that has layers upon layers of paint. It can fit the scheme of any room with a simple coat of paint. What I had done last year was strip away ever layer on that old table and simply added a stain to allow the natural beauty of the wood to shine. Now, I accept the fact that both this table will not fit every room and that it never has to.

This week I took off of work and was able to enjoy myself and things I love. I went to a football game with one of my best friends, reconnected with several old friends that I have not seen in months or even years, I read, I wrote, I laughed heartily and flirted deliberately. Hell, I even had a few drinks and was able simply enjoy what it feels like in my own skin.

As my son played soccer today, I cheered him on along with ex-wife, her boyfriend and Knox's older brother. Not one moment was any of it awkward. I was able to see her laugh and be happy with someone else and it felt good. I was able to tease the now young man I once called a step-son and it filled my heart.

All of the emptiness I felt has been replaced with love. All of the callous skin on my heart was exfoliated by appreciating what I have around me. All of the bitterness I held on to has been cast away with accepting the truth. I finally feel whole again. There is no disdain for anything or anyone in my rear view mirror. They will only receive a smile and an acknowledgment that the only thing they did was help shape me into the man I am proud to be today.

An evaluation of value

When I think of the word value, two ideas come to mind. The first may be referencing your moral compass that influences your decision making and behavior. The second thought that may come to mind is to understand the worth of something; monetary or otherwise. Today, I will be focusing on the latter.

Individually, we assign our own value to everything in life; people, relationships, material items as well as intangibles like emotions or experiences. The aspect of "value" that I am zeroing in on is the worth we assign to relationships. Holding a value with something suggests that there is a potential exchange for something else. In other words, we are well aware of the value of the relationship with our significant other but what comes in to question is how we express our knowledge of that value, or lack there of. 

In any relationship, a friendship or an intimate one, we individually bring our strengths and our weaknesses to the table. Accurately representing who we are to the other person is the most efficient way to realizing how the two of you will relate. Unfortunately, it is not that easy though, is it? I have identified two problems that may arise, making it difficult.

The first is regarding how we deceive ourselves. We feel the need to emphasize our strengths and disguise our weaknesses. Perhaps this is a projection of what we want to be. I assure you, the other person will ultimately know exactly what you are, it is only a matter of time. There is no logical argument to be made in utilizing a disguise or exaggeration of what you are. Your honestly will only insure that the outcome of that relationship- good or bad- will happen efficiently. Since we are mortal beings with a limited amount of time we are literally incentivized to be honest. 

The second is more tricky because it involves us deceiving the other person. For that, I cannot speak to the motive but I can identify the action. Some of us have a difficult time consistently showing the other person how we actually value them. This is a more difficult type of honestly because it involves communicating to that person what we truly feel about them. If we hold that other person in high regard; show them. Give them the attention they require, understand and embrace what makes them tick and most importantly never let them assume how you are feeling about them; open your mouth and tell them. If we no longer hold that person in the regard that we once did, it is our duty to disclose this and do so swiftly. Worse even, some of us will continue through the motions of that relationship and act as if nothing has ever changed between the two of you. That type of action is an unidentifiable mixture of so many cardinal sins because it requires the cowardice act of not speaking your thoughts and it requires the deceit of allowing that person to continue on naively.

There are people in this life that have an incredibly difficult time with evaluating the worth of what they have around them. Someone who cannot assess the value of something right in front of them is someone who will never be able to show appreciation for it. This problem is curable for anyone but is best addressed in solitude. Put plainly, I cannot tell you how long that will take but I can tell you they have to realize that on their own.

We owe it to ourselves to find someone who not only recognizes but also appreciates our value. Humans are capable of showing unquantifiable amounts of love so there is no reason to settle. As bad as it may hurt, people that cannot give that appreciation must be left behind until they can address that issue. It is a cold hard truth but walk away from that person. They may have never learned to see the value in you but perhaps they will learn how to better recognize value in general once you are gone.

Forces at work and choices to make

Some believe that we are here for a reason and are meant to repeat this life until we understand that reason. Some believe that behind everything that goes on in the world, there is a divine plan at work that we are not meant to fully comprehend. Some believe in a type of energy; what you put out will eventually come back to you. I have yet to accept any of these doctrines because they all require some degree of divine intervention. My difficultly with accepting that concept is perhaps a future topic but generally speaking, you need to understand that conflict within me exists in order to make sense of my thoughts here.

There are times that I feel as if I am in touch with the idea that I have a purpose. In those moments, I am not sure what that purpose is but it feels like one that is great in scope. I have survived two horrific car crashes without a scrape, I held onto my sanity through some adverse conditions in my adolescence and somehow the stars seem to align for me, yielding glimpses of what it feels like to be whole. It would seem that surely those circumstances must have been divinely coerced. Sometimes I am able to close my eyes and feel the sun on the darkest day and I am at peace. How could I not find divinity in the beauty of the world around me?

Then suddenly, when it feels as if my footing could not be more sound, everything crumbles below me and I end up alone and left with the task of sorting through a calamity. When I am at the lowest point of these valleys, I hurt. I recognize the good that I put in the world and how my heart can love while being completely void of fear and then I feel that it is all for naught because it has gained me nothing. Even when seemingly doing everything correct, the walls still seem to fall. When I get home at night, I remove a mask. It is one of a boisterous personality that is strapped in place with confidence and charisma. I now realize there is a hairline fracture in it from overuse with the last three years. Time may heal all wounds but we are still forced to bear the scars. How could anything divine be woven into something that hurts tremendously?

Through this existential rigmarole, I suddenly see that I am not okay. I have no anchor to guarantee my position and this storm has been assaulting my shore relentlessly for weeks. Should a new relationship play the role of anchor within this metaphor? Maybe my son? A god, perhaps? My ability to commit to any one person or cause has been postponed until further notice. My calendar is blocked, as I have scheduled a casting call to find that out this year. For a moment, I feel as if I am right back where I started almost two years ago. Alone, brokenhearted and needing to reconcile something internally that is wrong. As soon as that thought enters my head, the concept does not stick with me. Why? Something feels vastly different this time.

While I do not have anything to hold myself upright, I do have better sight to the world around me. Several things have corrected my vision over the past few years; honesty in my relationships, a genuine level of effort in loving those around me and the reconciliation of priorities that my son lovingly and inadvertently resets for me every day. I will find enough solace in that to stand and move on. Perhaps I will even discover the purpose I was meant for within the design or I will carve out my own path based on my choices; whichever ends up more suitable to the truth.

My Seventh Sober Night

As many in my generation, I experimented with various substances. I made several bad decisions as a younger man in the name of curiosity. I have always considered myself a strong minded person and that no physically negating experiment or substance would ever become a habit. Perhaps it was that confidence that led me to those bad decisions, who knows. Any of those "practices", if you will, ended well over a decade ago and I have never looked back on trying them again because there is no purpose.

I do however, enjoy to drink. I am naturally a loud, boisterous person with an obvious spark for life. Imbibing with friends only makes me do all of those things on a more extreme scale. I have never seen anything wrong with that as I have always done so in what I would generally classify as moderation with a few indulgences here and there that would result in some awful decisions.

The realization that I had recently was not that I had a problem but that I had a fascination with depression. As a young teenager I faced an extraordinary amount of psychological adversity and it resulted in a very pissed of high school student. I fought with my parents with whom I said and did things to that-regardless of my great relationship with them now- will always regret. I adopted an atheist world view at the age of thirteen and loved to rile up students with the idea that God did not exist which was against the grain, to say the least, in the deep South. I was just plain angry.

Either way, in a moment of anger or in a bout of depression I discovered an outlet of poetry. Something creative within me would be sparked by these severe emotions and as opposed to punching a wall or destroying something, I would pick up a pen and paper and create something. After I turned twenty-one I would use alcohol especially when I was upset because it felt natural to be inspired by alcohol and it would lead to what I thought was some of my best writing. The end game was that once I wrote something I was well on my way to recovery. I mistakenly learned that alcohol sped up this process and now I have come to understand that it only inhibits it.

The lesson learned is that nothing I have done has ever led me to what I would call a comfortable financial position nor has it led me to a long term relationship that brings happiness, at least that I have been able to sustain. Therefore, perhaps I am not doing it right. I went through the Winter of 2012 and almost all of 2013 on a crutch good Scotch and cheap beer. I was not cutting my hair, I was not shaving; I was literally just as much of a mess on the outside as I was on the inside.

Last Saturday, I sat with two of my best friends in my parents back yard drinking, smoking cigars and laughing about old war stories of our early twenties. The drive home to Michigan the next day brought a revelation to me that I have never entertained; sobriety. With sobriety came the clarity that I am a thirty-five year old divorced father who is single, has a great career yet lives just above a check-to-check budget. This is as embarrassing to admit it as it is well overdue for a change. What got me here, will not get me there.

Tonight I will go to bed sober for the seventh night in a row since then. I did not have my son this weekend so I had every opportunity to bury myself in late nights and rough mornings. Every time I would want to wander to refrigerator, I recognized it and did something else. I would read, I would write, watch TV, play a video game, go to the gym or go for a run. The sad part is, I could not tell you last time I could string together seven consecutive nights without even the two-beer-baseball-game-on-the-couch routine. Tonight, I can.

This is not me swearing off alcohol forever but avoiding it when I know it will only kick the can down the road. I have debt of emotion that I want to liquidate now so I will face it with sober regard. Put plainly, I will not drink until I am in a better place because I can get there quicker without it. I finally realize and accept that.

Ironically the most sobering experience I have had to date was one that was just that; a sobering experience.

On The Road

As technology advances, our lives get a little bit more efficient and a little bit easier. As great as that may be there is something to be said about stripping things down and pushing through something that is not so easy in order to gain a sense of accomplishment.

When it comes to transportation we have so many options to efficiently travel long distances but to me, taking a road trip is exactly the practice that can bring you so many rewards. Anyone can wait in an airport terminal, ride along in a train or take some type of boat or ferry somewhere. Taking the wheel and braving multiple hours of waging a war of attrition upon hundreds of miles brings can be appreciated for different reasons.

Within just the physical aspect of it, you are sitting in the same position as dotted lines tick by below you as you collect mile markers in your back pocket; it's hypnotizing to say the least. When it is you versus the road, you gain a perspective on much of your life. You realize the comfort bubble of where you live is a small one but plays in integral role in the grand scheme of life around you. Some can gain the understanding that perhaps the smaller problems we have do not warrant as much worry as we give them.

On a mental note, the amount of time you have for your mind to ponder is incredible. If you want to mull over a solution to a problem or appreciate the thousands of things you overlook on a daily basis, you suddenly have plenty of time to do that.

Also, road trips are escapism at its greatest. If you are stressed out by some life decisions, your relationships, your career, certain friends or family then hitting the road might be the remedy for what ails you. Getting out and getting away for a brief stint could be the "reset" that you need.

For me, these are all great thoughts and valid points. Ultimately I take something much more simplistic from a lengthy road trip; a reminder. There are times in life where no matter how hard you stomp on the gas pedal and no matter how much of your effort could equate to horsepower, you have to accept that your wheels are just going to spin. The road trip that I took recently to South Carolina reminded me that with just a small amount of focus and will power that I can make progress.

I was reminded that sometimes people, events and circumstances can serve as unnecessary rest stops in your life. I learned that if sometimes no matter how bad you want to stop and yield your time and effort towards something, that you will be paying the larger price of less time elsewhere. You will delay your arrival time to the goal you are driving towards.  I understand that my time is limited and it would serve me best to apply myself to where I am appreciated, what exactly makes me happy and- most importantly- what I am passionate about.

These points are simple to understand but sometimes difficult to implement, believe me, I can testify to that. We are imperfect beings and will be inefficient sometimes on that metaphorical highway of life. If you are spending time somewhere or waiting on something then make sure that it is worth the effort you are making. If you deem that it is, be convicted to it and allow it to fill you up. If it is not, put that baby back in drive and get back out there; you will get there eventually.

Unlatched

All we have is our perception. We have only insight into our own feelings, thoughts and the 'why' behind our own actions. I know what I feel and with the best of my ability I attempt to understand the environment around me; the circumstances I face, the decisions I make and and how I interact with the people around me.

Unfortunately sometimes, that perception is not accurate and it collides with the cold hard reality of what is actually going on around us. I am beginning to believe that this is the only true adversity we ever face in life; the reconciliation of what we assumed and the actuality of what is.

This year started off with a wonderful relationship that blind sided me. Like the fan who caught the home run ball, he sits there running his fingers over the stitches and where the ball was scuffed up from contact with the bat. Out of all the tens of thousands of fans in the stands, he had this one in a million chance to catch this ball and it is his alone to show and for all to envy. Sometimes, that home run ball is hit by the away team and against your own wishes, it beckons to be thrown back on the field.

My perception was that I truly captured something special and the reality is that what I thought was wrong. The healing process begins for me, yet again.

Reflecting back- when my marriage turned to separation almost two years ago I was determined to learn something from it. I was successful; I extracted some truths about myself that pained me to accept but I found that process necessary. I have learned so much about what our perception of the end a relationship should be versus the reality of what it needs to be. Learn to leave the regret behind and leverage the experience in an honest fashion to learn something from it and do not make that same mistake again.

My lesson in this? No matter how intense the emotions are, how perfectly the puzzle pieces seem to fit, how strong the butterflies flutter and how many great things come from the time spent together you cannot be greedy. Patience and moderation yield an organic level of consistency. Excess and haste yield an unnatural and unsustainable pace. Embrace turns to suffocation and desires spoil to indulgence.

We are emotional beings; sometimes we move towards pleasure and other times we move from pain. The pace in which we do so sets the tone for everything in our life. Marcus Mumford said it best with his lyric "And I will love with urgency but not with haste." and I knew that to be a truth. I allowed the pleasure of my feelings to serve as a catalyst to the pace at which I was pursuant to.

Easily there are things for me to learn here. I'll pick up the pieces, acknowledge the ones that are a part of me that I am not happy with, accept them and learn from them. I also take with me the fact that one of my faults was that I loved too much. You see, every other time I did it wrong. I allowed some lack of effort on my part to ruin everything. This time, I did it right. The effort was dominantly present. I will learn from this but I will walk away with a genuine smile on my face because of the manner in which I walked into it.

Existentialism discovered

I stand at the edge of the ocean, water massaging my toes and and my mind is heavy with the semi-hypnotizing rolling of the waves. My son is nearby, screaming with innocent laughter as he plays in the knee-deep water. Waves crash towards him as he shrieks with excitement and he turns to run away. The waves lose momentum and he chases them back into the body of water from which they stretched. I can watch him repeat this for an eternity but as the sun sets, it serves as a reminder to the limited nature of the time we have. I take in the moment as deep and as deliberate as I can to memorize everything; the way the beach looks, the feeling of the warm sun, the sound of the waves, the smell of sun-drenched skin and the taste of the salt in the air.

Somewhere in that time- in between the recognition of how memorable the moment was and my act of becoming aware of exactly what my senses were witnessing, a revelation in the form of a metaphor came to me that emphatically sealed the memory within me forever.

You see, this was the extended weekend that I spent with my son and my parents on a perfect beach in Florida. Three generations of us spent some of our finite amount of time on Earth together, on a beach that has been in existence for what would seem like an eternity to the level of comprehension of time that we possess.

The metaphor that surfaced to me on the beach that day now completes me; The steps we took on that beach, much like the steps we take in life, will disappear back into the Earth just like the dust from our bodies once we are gone. Our legacy, however, does not diminish. The impact that we have on those around us and the ability we have to put good into the world, all suddenly left a realization at my feet that day- What will I put in this world before I am gone?

By default, our parents serve as the models we choose our actions by. A child is the combination of two people's DNA and representative of those two people's love for one another. Science teaches us that stronger genes survive to be passed on as weaker ones die off and disappear. In other words, our parents gave birth to us in a fashion better than themselves- literally. They also help us innovate our own outcome which should, by their design and efforts, better than what theirs was. Now, when your first child comes along, that is when obligation is born to you. Plainly put; our children obligate us to do what our parents taught us to innovate. How well we did in that duty, empowers them to better set their own bar.

Not once did the idea of sin, atonement, an afterlife, scriptures or the beginning of our existence come to me. I simply understood the potential of my impact on everyone around me- my son, my family and the ones I love- and allow that to motivate my actions. I will live this life more deliberately and love more passionately than the ones that came before me, therefore inspiring the ones that will come after me.

This is my belief. That is my purpose. I have found all of the faith I will ever need. This is the mantra that defines me.

my first 27 hours

I was born just after 2am on February 19th, 1979 in a house somewhere Birmingham, Michigan. The address I am unaware of and the name of the woman that gave me life is unknown as well. Curiously, I was not checked into Beaumont hospital until approximately 5am on the 20th; 27 hours later.

My parents lived in Michigan but were originally from England and my father took a job back in London which ultimately separated them. They have not spoke since then yet sometime shortly after his departure, she witnessed her first signs of my life. To this very day, my father has no idea that I even exist. I do not possess the words to describe what that means to me.

In the past five years I have sought, my adoption agency has found and my biological mother is now aware that I am looking for her. She admitted that the telephone conversation she had with my adoption agency was the first where she spoke of me since she dropped me off for adoption when I was less than a week old. I envy her profound ability to keep a secret.

She returned to England shortly after my birth. I am her only child so her parents, now in their 80s, have no idea that they are actually grandparents. She has yet to tell the man she has lived with for the past twenty-five-plus years that she is a mother, as she has carried no other children.

I have read the report and know I share a physical likeness to her. Some aspect of me will always be empty without meeting her yet somehow I am supposed to accept the fact that 35 years ago, the woman who held me, cared for me and nursed me decided after 27 hours together to give me away? Do not speak to me of selfless decisions. She stared at a child who has the same pale complexion, dark auburn hair and same dark blue eyes that she has and then gave me away? I apologize but there is more than an explanation due. 

I know the date I was adopted, the date my son was born and the birth dates of my immediate family members; these dates remind me of something great. Those dates matter to me but as I grow older, my birthday only reminds me of a conflict and I have begun to hate it.

In terms of meeting her one day, she is the one that must go back in the past and open old wounds. She will have to answer to the charges of larceny for decades for fatherhood and grand-parenting as well as the now almost 3 decades of concealing me to the man she trusts.

In the wake of all of that, I remain hopeful. In a certain light, I need her. I wish her the humility that I have learned from her not being there, I wish her the strength that I have developed from facing the adversity of being adopted and I wish her the same fearlessness displayed by the grandson she is not yet aware exists.

Here is to her one day soon making that voyage; I will be here waiting.

a purpose

When I was an adolescent, I was incredibly angry. I purposely fought back against my parents, I denied the existence of a god and wrote a darker brand of poetry than I typically do today. I wrote a poem entitled 'Conflict of Self Interest'. It spoke to how I felt there was something inherently wrong with me, something awry. I felt for one reason or another that I would search for my own happiness all my life and never be able to quite find it.

Thankfully I have learned many things since then. I have grown to appreciate my parents for the wonderful people they are. For now, I have accepted the fact there is a divine architect behind all of what we see yet I contemplate his level of intervention. I enjoy writing poetry that sometimes tears at a heart yet sometimes elevates the next. However, I still recognize that internal conflict but have now grown to appreciate it because it defines me. I believe it to be the one great gift I was given.

I have always been open minded but have never dealt well with conformity. Some may accept something in its most raw form and then whittle it down while understanding it. I am the opposite. I will poke, prod, question, doubt, set ablaze and then completely tear down something to a finer material before digesting it.

Somewhere within that style of acceptance, I draw comparisons to what I already know. Thus was born my love for metaphors.
Somewhere in the blueprints for that process is the prerequisite to appreciate beauty. Thus was born my source for inspiration.
Somewhere in the fold of a thought is an imperfection to find and recognize. Thus was born my admiration for uniqueness.

Mixing all of this together endows me with an ability to capture a thought. I can hunt down a moment in time, encapsulate it in words, pin it down on a paper canvass with systematically placed verbiage and then stand back and appreciate it with poetic diction in its purest form.

My last blog became an outlet to burn a demon. It allowed me to vent anger, frustration and depression. I am not sure what this blog will become by my guess is that, much like my last one, this will evolve into what I need it to be. I hope you will join me.