Things I am learning as I grow up, so I can find the love I deserve and live the life I want (Part 4)

When she is happy a quarter-moon will rise on her.  That moon can light up the darkest night sky.  Everything is brighter when she smiles.  When the moon rises you can see it touching in her pale blue bombardier eyes.  I had never seen eyes that pale shade of blue until I met her.  He had read about them, but never really seen them though.  Her face is beautiful anyway, but those faded eyes make it exotic.  She is smiling now.  Standing here on the beach looking back at him as he makes some comment about getting ready for her race.  140.6 can’t possibly easy and he is doing everything he can do to distract her from thinking about going the ultimate distance  she is doing one more time.  No matter how many times she has done the distance.  One more time still will not be easy and he knows how nervous she can get. 

He is staring into her smiling pale blue eyes and she pulls her wavy her shoulder length hair behind her head into a gold brown pony tail.  It makes him giggle a little bit looking at her on this beach.  If his former co-workers could see him know, with the women he loves.  She is the exact replicant of what he always said he wanted.   She has blonde hair, blue eyes, and an ass that tastes like French vanilla ice cream, isn’t’ that what Christian Slater had said in True Romance?  He had always had a soft spot for blondes, and she was not an exception. 

He squatted down almost touching the sand.  He reached out and grabbed her left ankle and pulled towards him.  He spent a moment admiring her red tattoo of the dot-m logo.  That tattoo that so few people actually earned.  His legs were free of this symbol.  That would come to an end, his race was coming, and his tower was closer. 

Feeling her leg he looked up at her and met those pale eyes.  She read the question in his before he ever asked.  Yes, she had shaved her legs before coming to the beach at 5 a.m.  He didn’t even shower before doing a race, and she had showered and primped beforehand.    He just laughed.  They were such different creatures. 

He felt her ankle and calf for a moment.  He did love her legs.  They were perfect.  The best pair of legs he had ever seen.  Those legs were the perfect blend between firm and smooth.  If they wanted a model to Aphrodite’s leg after mire mortal, then they would use her legs.  From toe to hip, the only blemishes on them where the dessert rose tattoo on her right hip and the ironman (Dot-M) tattoo on the left ankle.  Soft and smooth to the touch, and tanned a perfect golden brown.  He strapped the timing chip firmly around her left ankle and then stood up. 

She would be pulling her shorty wet suite up over her six-pack and C cups at any time.  He was always so impressed by her body.  He knew that being a triathlon coach and a nutritionist played a large role in her magical body.  It also was militant dedication and being active and healthy which drove her to try to look as perfect as she could.  He would have to go soon.  Soon she would be chasing number six. 

He pulled her close to him and hugged her tightly.  He loved this woman with all of his heart.  It had been hard for him to trust at first, he been hurt before.  He had tried to push here away but she wouldn’t go.  She was written into his KA for whatever reason.  He would worry about her every minute she was out on the course.  This was the third one they had done with him supporting her. 

He pulled back and looked into her eyes and wondered how he had gotten so lucky.  How on earth was there a woman this perfect for him?  Her looks weren’t what made her beautiful.  They were amazing, but she was the most giving women he had ever met.  She was funny and she could be keep up with his smartassery.  Most of all she liked him.  She liked, no that is not right, loved his stories.  All of his stories even the dark ones that were heart tearing and torching.  It also didn’t hurt that at heart she was a fucking nerd.  She loved the big four: Dark Tower Series, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Song of Ice and Fire.  She may be more into those things than he was.  They spoke of holy mythologies at length and how they impacted his mythos.

She approved of his truck driver mouth.  She said fuck almost as much as he did.  It did not matter whether it was day to day operations or being intimate.  The word was really never far from their tongues.  He really liked that.  He didn’t have to ever feel bad about using the full English language.

She was everything he had always wanted.  She was healthy.  She was a triathlete.  She was smart.  She was funny.  She had a dirty mouth.  She was pretty.  She was tone.  She has a dirty mind that matched his.  She love sci-fi.  She loved fiction.  She loved to sleep in.  She loved to talk late into the night.  She was everything he ever wanted. 

She is Arlene Piper and doesn’t exist.  She is a figment of my imagination.  She was born from Laura Carr the 1986 Playmate who used to date RATT’s lead guitarist and everything I have ever wanted in a woman.  She is built of the things on a checklist to find the perfect women to spend my life with.

I take you through this journey to say a few things.  First the list of above I have to let go of because it I think it is putting tunnel vision on.  Second, if those are the expectations for one part of my ideal life, what do you think the other expectation of the perfect life would be?  Pretty unachievable, right, so say “Si” and some say “No”.

I am not saying not to dream big.  I would never say such a thing.  I don’t believe there is a limit to be put on your dreams other than the universe itself being the only limiting factor.  What I am saying is we have to stop going through life with such lofty expectations. 

I can’t basically feel like I don’t have a good life because I am not a perfect person, with my perfect women.  I have wasted too much time haven’t I?  I said it a few weeks ago in Sugar and Cyanide 1, I am really sick of complaining about what is a beautiful life.  I look at yesterday’s entry and I have so much love around me, why would I not want to live this life?  I have so many good friends that love and support me.  Then I have the little ones, whom I hold so dear.  I have a good job.  I am very talented writer.  Even more so when I don’t do a rush job and take my time to do really good work. 

Am I still really fat?  Yes I am.  Am I working on it from my mind, to my heart, and from my heart to my soul.  Mostly am re-inventing all of me.  Not just one part, but all parts because all parts must be considered.  So let’s go back to the question am I still really fat, and the answer yes I am.  Even with that being said, am I better than I was a year ago.  Am I better now that I have the Buddy System?  Yes, yes I am.  To I still fall down.  Do I still get depressed, yes, I do, but I recover faster.  I have good days, I have bad days, but each new day I believe will be my best day.  So, I say we have to let go of unreal expectations.  Focus on where we are right now and enjoy our life today.  All we can ever do is live in the current moment.  So every day I am getting just a little bit better than before.    So I am embracing the life I have now.  Realizing the love in my life and not putting any blinders on to keep me from going where I want to go. 

Things I am learning as I grow up, so I can find the love I deserve and live the life I want (Part 3)

Things I am learning as I grow up, so I can find the love I deserve and live the life I want (Part 3)   

I see Sue sitting across from me.  She is talking to me and repeating the same message over and again “Learn to accept the love t you already have in your life.  Do not put blinders on and don’t limit the scope so much.  You are building a false reality and becoming the victim in your own sob story!”  I can hear her saying it to me.  I can feel the weight of her words.  They are heavy.  The truth of the matter is though she is right.  I have to expand my vision.  I have to see the love around me.  I can no longer just focus on the love that I am not getting from someone who could not offer it. 

I told you the story about the Truth about Suzie.  I told you how I have searched high and low for acceptance from someone else.  I told you one part of the story.  Do you know how many Suzie’s there have been in my life?  More than I can possibly count on both hands.  I could do the list.  However, I don’t think that would help anything.  For most of the 10 years that I have been seeing Sue there has been someone who was not giving me the love I need.  Honestly, I don’t think I have ever said a truer statement in my life.  The love I was not getting came from one place and one place only.  That love never came from me. 

The whole miserable time I sat there with my glass half empty I whined about not having love.  I was starved for it.  At this moment in time I realize that the love I needed from the inside.  So we are getting off track of what I wanted to talk about. 

I am a lucky man.  That is a fact.  I might be 460 pounds, I don’t know, I refuse to weigh.  I might have shit knees that want to give out from the weight they bare.  I might have more cracks on my feet than the moon has craters, but that matter little.  I might be 38 and single and honestly never had a long term real relationship.  I have no children.  I don’t even have my own puppy, I borrow my roommates.  With all that said I am a lucky man.  I am graced with love all around me. 

I don’t always appreciate the love that I am surrounded by.  As a matter of fact I often times forget all about it.  I am not going to sit here and say that everyone loves Billy b.  That would definitely not be a true statement.  What I will say is to know Billy b, I mean to really know him, to peel back the fat, and know him.  I would most of those people that have taken that ride, do in fact love me.  Bold, I know.  However, I think I speak truth. 

I have never stopped and embraced the support that is all around me.  Look at what I have done as misguided soul?  I have built a successful career.  I have started to embrace my Gods given gifts.  I have completed over twenty endurance events.  I did all of this while I didn’t love myself or embrace the love around me.  What do you think we will accomplish now that I realize that I need to take all this in?  I think the sky is the limit, don’t you?

It starts with taking the blinders off.  It starts with appreciating all the lives that I touch.  I am a good Uncle to my nieces and nephews.  I am the fun crazy Uncle in California.  I love those kids so much.  A lot of the reasons I want to get healthy is so I can go run and play with them and enjoy spending time with them.  That type of love I get from the little ones means more to me than you can possibly imagine.  I have a little not I read every day on my desk about the positives in my life and guess what they are part of the things I am thankful for being a live for.  This type of positive energy and thinking could take me far. 

The gift of friendship is one that I have always taken for granted.  I am blessed with the most amazing people around me.  Good, strong people who would do anything for me.  I have the best support group anyone could ask for.  I won’t try to list them all here or even any of them.  The point is they know who they are.  They know they are in my life. They are the ones who come in and read this blog every day.  They are the ones that see in me what I never could.  The man I so desperately want to be. 

My family is like anyone’s family full of ups and downs and strikes and gutters.  We are a family.  To sit here and say we are perfect would be a lie.  To say we live life and wade through the velvet sea is more accurate.  My family loves me.  I know that.  I appreciate that.  I know in my heart they truly want me to be the best Billy b that I can be. 

When I get low, and I will get low I have to open my eyes and see the love I have around me.  I have to start embracing it.  Accepting it and nurturing it because after all there is nothing more powerful than the power of love. 

I am ready to open my mind and my heart to the universe.  I am ready to accept love.  I am ready to appreciate what I have, so that I can build to what I want, and that is a life worth living. 

Things I am learning as I grow up, so I can find the love I deserve and live the life I want (Part 2)

Things I am learning as I grow up, so I can find the love I deserve and live the life I want (Part 2)   

A couple of concepts that seem to continually come up in my road to becoming the man I was born to be are faith and belief.  Have we are not talking about faith or belief in any deity. I am talking about two pretty simple concepts first faith that your life is out there, and second that you deserve it. 

I am an anxious person.  I always have been.  I can’t even remember when I had my first panic attack.  Therefore I have been the glass is half empty kind of person most of my life.  I tend to see the world, fate, Karma, and even to some extend KA as my enemy and not my friend.  However, I think along the way I have realized that I can’t see it that way.  I can’t keep on thinking that my time and efforts are in vain.  If you project negativity, then negativity is what you will get.  You reap what you sow.  Negative and fearful thoughts only make us anxious. Anxiety makes us think we can’t possibly get to where we need to go.  We aren’t moving fast enough.  It is never going too happened for us.  However, my time line isn’t yours.  Yours isn’t your neighbors, and theirs is some else’s entirely.  You will never ever get to live the life you want if you don’t stop this negative spiral.  I still get down.  I get low, so fucking low, but you know what I recover, and I recover fast.         

So, I think it is time to have a little faith in KA.  We have to remember to trust in divine timing.  Understand that you are exactly where you need to be today.  We are here in this time and place for a reason.  Just like I know we have endured our ups and downs for a reason.  I create my own reality.  So, I am going to be happy.  I am going to accept that I am here and now because I need to be here and now.  When you are thinking negatively you are basically manifesting the bad shit you don’t want to deal with.  We must think positively.  We have to expect that light will follow the dark.  We have to have faith that the universe which is both infinite and ancient knows exactly what it is doing and it is putting us where we need to be. 

Most of my life I have been a punk.  I am a spoiled brat.  That is truth.  I was given pretty much everything I have ever wanted.  I didn’t appreciate what I had.  I lashed out.  I harassed with words. I terrorized with words.  I made a lot of mistakes between there and now.  Guess what I have a lot more mistakes to make.  That is life.  I see that now.  I sit here now and realize that making mistakes is part of life and part of growing up.  I can’t hold being a punk and a brat ruin the rest of my life.  I can’t keep punishing myself for mistakes I made in the past.  I have to believe that I deserve living a wonderful life. 

I think this is the biggest issue I face.  I don’t do it intentionally.  My subconscious is working overtime and a lot of the time it can work against me. I think it is because I am not programing correctly.  I think it is because I am still doing time for crimes that I committed a long time ago.  I don’t understand the concept of forgiveness.   I thought I did. I thought I was ready to forgive others and most importantly myself.  Some say Si, others say no.  Only time will tell.  However, I have to believe.  I have to really believe that I am walking the path. I have to believe I can get back down to my ideal weight.  I have to believe, I can have a life in which I go the distances I want to go.  I have to believe that my life in attainable.  If I don’t then I won’t. 

I deserve this life.  I really do.  Just like I am exactly where I need to be, I also believe that my sun is on the horizon.  I am moving towards.  That I am getting there.  I do believe that I deserve to get better.  I do believe I deserve to meet the women of my dreams. I do believe I deserve to be happy.  I deserve to be healthy.  I do believe this. 

I will continue to focus everyday on the good in my life.  I will have faith that the time is coming.  I will believe that I am worthy of a great life.  I am good enough, and strong enough to have it.  I know each day I get a little closer to it.  Therefore I choose to stop sabotaging myself. I choose to push forward.  I choose to have faith and believe that my Tower is Closer.   

Things I am learning as I grow up,So I can find the love I deserve and live the life I want (Part 1)

I've known this person who there entire life has done nothing but try to fall in love.  They looked high and low for acceptance.  They searched for it, seeking it, always seeking.  They looked everywhere because they knew if it was possible to be loved by someone else then perhaps their life actually meant something.  That they actually matted. In their search they had "relationships" here and there, but never with some one they truly cared about or truly wanted.  However they continued to search.

The more they searched for the acceptance in someone else the further they got away form it.  So, more and more they hid from the world.  He slowly but steadily built a wall around himself.  Not letting anyone in.  The hermit lost all hope that love would ever come.  Thus he deemed himself unworthy.  So the cycle began.  He would hide more and more.  No love.  Hide a little further.  Still no love was found.  So he hid some more.

The pattern is something lots us know all to well.  I actually have a name for it.  I call it "The Truth about Suzie".  See this person was crazy about Suzie.  When I say crazy, I actually do mean crazy.  She was the object of his affection.  However, that isn’t what we are here to discuss today.  Allow us to table objects of his affection for another day.

Suzie you see was everything that he thought he needed to be a full person.  She was this gorgeous, hip, and cool Korean girl.  She had shoulder length black hair, with these purple highlights.  He loved those purple highlights.  For some reason they always reminded him of a line from that song “Drops of Jupiter”.  I mean it fit.  In his mind now that she was back in the atmosphere with drops of Jupiter in her hair, literally translated in his mind to black hair with purple highlights in it.  Suzie was smart.  She was a runner.  She did yoga.  She was basically in his mind everything he had ever wanted in a woman.  Most importantly she was in a relationship and completely unavailable to him.

So he knew in his mind, that if he could pull Suzie.  If he could get her then nothing else would matter.  Not his past that was spotted with more terror than he cared to remember.  Not his present where he felt like a boy trapped working for a horrible heartless machine that sucked the life out of him every day.    Because he would have his future and that is all that mattered.  Was his future with her?

However, in the middle of all this obsessing over this Suzie, he took a step back and realized something.  This wasn’t about Suzie at all.  It was about him and his need for external acceptance.  Looking so hard for someone anyone he wanted to tell him it was all ok.  He needed to be ok.  It was fine that he was heavy.  That it was ok that he had been a bully and terrorist with words.  That he mind fucked whom ever he could.  All of this wouldn’t matter because he had some beautiful, amazing women to love him.

Suzie was a mirage.  However the real truth about Suzie is he wasn't looking for anything other love and acceptance for himself.  He wanted acceptance of who he was and what he wanted to be.  He thought it could come from the outside.  It can’t, this can only come from the inside.

When he figured this out do you know what he did?  Do you think he started working on himself?  Do you think he was trying to find that acceptance of himself that he so desperately needed?
The answer is no, he spent another 13 years searching in others what he never thought was in himself.  All the while he grew more and more distant.  He became more and more of a hermit.  Hiding more and more form the world.  Fore very good step forward, he took ten backwards.

The fucked up thing was the world had accepted him.  People accepted him.  Do I dare even say people loved him?  Yes, I would say that as well.  He even found something more beautiful and precious than he ever imagined.  However, nothing changed in the moment either.

He still didn't wake up everyday and love himself.  See because this acceptance, and happiness can never come from the outside.  The issue was he didn’t believe.  He still didn’t believe.   He started a blog.  He wrote beautifully at times and crappy at other times.  He made videos. He preached.  He vented.  He laughed.  He loved.  342 posts and over 14,500 page views later, he has hope.

He see’s his tower off in the distance.  He knows how to get there.  It will take a lot of hard work.  Most of it is work in his mind and on his mind.  Working every day with the image of the life he wants fixated at the front of it.  He sees the man he wants to be.  It is far from the man who he is.  He sees it all very well.

Finally he knows that if he is every going to have the life he wants and love he wants in that life he has to do the first step and that is “Love yourself first”!
 It all starts and ends with love.  Loving the person who you are.  You may never understand that person.  You certainly won’t be able to understand all the things you want to about them.  However, you can accept them.  You accept the good and the bad.  You look at the highs and lows.  You take them all and what do you have.  You have both Sugar and Cyanide.

Mostly you have to have a positive self-image of yourself.  You have to believe in what you want and how you will accomplish it.  You have to love yourself enough to do that.  You have to work on that image everyday.  It has to become a burning passion and force that takes your life from start to finish.  You start realize that you are hero of your story.

You have to make sure you treat yourself right.  You have to talk good to yourself.  That is right, I just said you had to sweet talk yourself.  You have to tell yourself constantly that you are just exactly who you need to be.  You like yourself.  Your special, and you are capable of turning the everyday into the amazing.

Finally you have to understand what you are allowing yourself to do and not do.  Funny for me, I have weeks where I eat great, but guess what I don’t work out.  Then the next weeks I will work out all week and guess what eat fast food.  Why do I do that?  Why do I limit myself?  I actually know why I do it.  I know and understand.  Its called being in the rabbit hole, but I accept why I do it.  I challenge myself to do it better.

I think I am a pretty unique soul.  I think I am really creative.  I have a great gift for writing.  I am super funny.  I am an asset to the people around me.  Guess, what, I think that is me starting to like myself.  Dare I say love myself?  It has to start there.  It has to.  Love yourself.  Accept yourself.  We are going to do this!

For Patty

 

 

“I'll say come on, come on, come on, come on and take it!
Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby.
Oh, oh, break it!
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah,
Oh, oh, have a!
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby,
You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good.”

-          "Piece Of My Heart", Janis Joplin

 

“But it's been
14 years of silence
It's been
14 years of pain
It's been
14 years that are gone forever
And I'll never have again”

-          "14 Year", Guns N’ Roses

 

I choked last night.  I did.  Cindy Sullivan looked at me and said Bill speech and I choked.  The black dread had taken me into its darkness and my emotions were running rampant.  Not because I was lost in my own misery but because this is hard.  I am almost a little surprised at how hard all of this is.  So now, I seek redemption in the once place that I know I can find it and that is on the page. 

I know what I it is like when an organization loses its leader.  I know it all too well.  I watched an old regime topple almost a year ago to this day, actually 8 days from now, but who counts.  I know I don’t.  However, what I don’t know and what I am having so much trouble wrapping my mind around is what do you do when your organization loses not its leader but its heart and soul. 

I have watched the world move on from here.  On my perch in my safe haven somewhere in between sales and finance and I watch, knowing that I am both on the inside and out.  I have seen a person leave how had absolute faith in me, he always supported me, and even I was in the middle of the black darkness of my own mind.  Another left that made me wants to be a better person.  Still another that made me never want to disappoint him.  So many have come and gone, which is the way of things, especially in this valley.  However, now I see the heart and soul move on, and my heats hurts because of it.    

What can I say about Patty?  She has a wonderful smile.  A great attitude and is always a pleasure to be around.  She was a great boss.  I never worked for her, but as another manager in the organization I could see that.  Whether it was taking care of Manaz when she was having an episode, or if it was not allowing pushing work over to Megan.  Her people came first and I know they love her even more than the rest of us. 

Patty did a little bit of everything around here.  She was Callidus finance.  She has touched everyone in this company one way or another.  She set us up to go on the duck boats.  She planned events for us.  I don’t know the list goes on.  How do you recall everything that your heart and soul does for you?  I don’t really have the words.  This will never be able to say what I want it to say.  What I need it to say. 

I will say this as I stand at a cross-roads on my very own career I can say I jealous.  I am jealous of not only Patty because she is going to one of the coolest companies in the world in my humble opinion.  However, I am not only jealous but I am also happy.  So happy, it is a battle to keep the tears from falling down my face.  I know that this is a great move for Patty.  Not only a great company but also a great, great commute for her.  Fifteen minutes there ain’t nothing wrong with that. 

Fourteen years is a long time.  I know I was with her here for less than half of her time.  However, like I said she was the heart, and soul of the team I was on.  So, I say thank you Patty.  I will miss you.  The smile that always made me feel good even when I was at my worst.  Our team didn’t get a little worse today, it got a lot worse.  Your new company got better, so much better!  They are the lucky ones now to get see and be with you every day. 

Thank you for all the memories!  Good Luck and long days and pleasant nights!!!!!

Billy b

 

 

It floods away tomorrows - part 1

It floods away tomorrows…

(1)

The bottle was out of his hand before he could stop himself. He watched sailing across the living room towards that fire place. The bottle instantly disintegrated against the wall leaving the fire place bleeding with red wine. He heard himself say "easiest hundred bucks I ever fucking spent!" The chunks of glass reigned all over the dog’s pillow and the tile of the fire place.

He started towards the shards of the bottle so he could admire his handy work.   Movement out the corner of his eyes freezes him in place.  The dog is on the move, and trying to get to the mess to investigate. Even in a blind and maddening rage he wasn't out of sorts enough to risk the puppy’s paws. After all he wasn't a totally monster.  Was he? In a voice the dog rarely heard he commanded her to sit and she froze in place and sat. He spun on her and ordered her to her room and took a step towards that direction.   Squatting to the floor almost touching, with her tail between her legs, and ears flattened she turned and slunk towards the hallway. He screamed again get in your room now and the dog ran into the guest bathroom.  He never understood how this had become her room.  He wouldn’t figure that out now.  However, every time he asked if she wanted to go to her room she ran into the guest bathroom and sat down and looked at him.  It had become almost a joke to him to ask her to go to her room so he could giggle at her running to the bathroom.  It always made him smile.  Today it did not.  There was no joy in the world right now, and the emptiness he felt right now, made him wonder if there ever would be again.  He slide the door shut and it ricocheted off the door frame and cracked the door back over.  He never had realized his own strength.  Not as a kid.  Not now.  He saw puppy’s ears drop back behind her head and look over her shoulder at him as she cowered in the corner near the tub. His heart wanted to break.  He wanted to drop to his knees and huge her and tell her he was sorry.  He wanted to wrap his fingers in her fur and cry the tears that had never come.  However as quickly as that came, it went again.  Once again he felt nothing. He felt nothing for her or the rest of world at this moment.  Looking over his shoulder he made sure that she couldn't get out and get into his mess.  With that he marched back into the living room.

With each step towards his handy work fists clinched a little tighter, until he felt what little of his nails start to dig into his palms. He felt a tightness running up his left arm.  His chest felt empty.  His head started to throb.  This was something he had felt so many other times.  His breath was jagged and rough.  Madness was settling in and the black was moving from the back of his mind to the front.  Settling wasn’t really the right word though, no there was a blitzkrieg in his mind and nothing would stop the black.  It was like trying to stem the tide of the ole uncle momentum during a college football game.  Once it started you couldn’t stop it.  Instead of the playing field being fully of forty thousand screaming college student, it was his mind screaming, running, and racing in a million different directions.       

He turned and faced the fire place with its new coat of Nth Degree. How well the wine covered his wall and fire place. The red wine reached its blood splattered pattern way of the Sagrada Familia's tallest tower. The splash radius was really quite breath taking actually. It was like a blood red bird had spread its wings across width of the wall.  He turned his head looking at his new bloody bird and was annoyed that he had cracked the glass on the picture frame.   

He walked to the screen door and tossed it open. He once again was amazed by his own strength as is slammed off the door frame.  He stepped back into the back yard and into the foul stench of shit that always met him now when he stepped back there. He looked up at the fly trap and murmured "Fucking Dog!"  He knew it wasn’t the dogs fault.  He knew a lot of things.  However, sometimes in anger he blamed others.  This was one of those times. 

He stood in front of his storage chest. He pulled up the top and looked at all the chairs he had in there. It was full. So many folding chairs. However that was before he had decided to go hermit and actually needed them for company. He wasn't interested in chairs though, or the memories they brought up. He was after what was hidden in the other side. That which was hidden under the removable shelf?

He dug the shelf and it content out and placed it on top of his worthless chairs; he reached in and picked up what appeared to be a tool box. It had been at one point, before the world had changed.  Back when he actually rode his road bike. Now unlike the decoration his bike had become, he used this box.  He stored stuff in it. He popped it open and picked a bag. He held it up to the sun light and smiled that had been a great weekend with his old buddy.  He smelled the bag.  He had always loved the smell. 

He tossed the bag that appeared to have some dried leaves, a few twigs and some grains in the back of the tool box and instead pulled out the box that was under it. His old friend the camel smiled at him as he pulled it out. He flipped the top open and put the cigarette in his mouth. He dropped the pack back in and then rummaged for a lighter.  Finding one he took fire to the end of his smoke and breathed in deeply.

He sat the tool box now on top of the chairs.  He took another long hard pull off the death stick in his mouth.  Then bent over a final time and pulled out what he'd really been wanting, the bottle of Kentucky Bourbon and one of his oldest and dearest friends Jimmy Beam. It was an old friend who had been stopping over more and more since the turn of the year.   Was this bottle 8 or 9?  He didn't know. He'd lost count. He pulled the top off it and took a long hard pull. It was tasted; well it tasted like the sweet nectar of the old gods and the new.  Sure it burned a little on the way in on the first pull, but by the last he was usually feeling as right as rain.

He didn't know why he hid it. It's not as if he'd ever had a real problem with booze. Sure he freely admitted to anyone who would listen that if he hadn't left Indiana and the Midwest when he did his liver would have failed long ago. However that was binge drinking and his misspent youth.  That was looking for the ultimate ride.  It was never ending search for a ride on the wheel of fortune or a twirl in the whirl wind.  That wasn’t this.  This was something much darker and more sinister.  This wasn’t about looking for the thrill.  This was about trying to find the bottom of the never ending pit that he so affectionately called the rabbit hole. 

He took a pulled thick smoke down into his lungs. Then another long deep pull off the Beam. He'd love to say he hid it because he roommate would judge. Perhaps because he was ashamed he was drinking.  That El Beav would reprimand him and tell him he wasn’t holding his end of the bargain.  However neither instance was the true.  He hides it because just like he'd been hiding the wrappers from his cheeseburgers under the hat in his car.  Or the pizza boxes in the neighbor’s trash cans.  He hid it because he still believed he could hide the truth from the world.  Like his massive frame didn’t tell the entire story.  After all aren’t we are not talking about a man who actually owned up to what he was doing?  Wasn’t this all part of the long suicide note he'd been weaving for the last twenty years?

The decision to purge came quickly…

“Sometimes you've got to let everything go - purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything . . . whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.”  Tina Tuner
 

 The decision to purge came quickly…

 

I made the decision last week really.  When working on the kitchen with RG.  I knew it was only a matter of time before I had to go and toss out all the remnants of a life that I was unhappy with.  However, as unhappy as I might have been, I am not one to ever eliminate anything without great thought and consideration. 

I know myself and I talk about how easy it is to eliminate things from my life.  To take them out and set them aside and move on as if they never existed.  I wonder what anyone who truly knows me would think about that statement.  If anyone who was looking into my eyes and said it was easy for me to just pick up and move on would think.  I wonder if my eyes would say I am lying even when my voice and mind say I am not.

Nothing is every easy for me to move on from. Nothing at all, is easy to walk away from.  No matter how hard or aloof I try to be.  I have said it before and I will say it again in the words of the great Kurt Cobain “I wish I was like you, easily assumed”!  However, I am not.  And no matter how much I try not to feel I do.  Even at a level such as cleaning out my kitchen cabinets.  I still rue and lament tossing out my very first can opener.  Yes it was rusted.  Yes, it was gross, but it was my first. 

The boy who bought had some much hope in 1999 while he was living on Stokes Avenue.  Even when the neighbor girls would run by him as he was coming home singing gordo, gordo to him.  Even though he cheated his way through high school Spanish he still knew the word for fat.  It mattered not; he was going to change his life.  He was going to have the life he dreamed of, he was 22 and the world was his.  That was for a can opener, to this day he rarely used.  So how would he react when he got into more sentimental items?

However, I knew in my heart many things like the can opener needed to go.  Not just because they were collecting rust, but because they were things I was holding onto to help me become the person I want to be.  I was hoping beyond hope that someday my holding would come to fruition.  That I would keep these things as an I told you so.  Fuck you world, I was worth it, it just took me longer to bloom.    

There was the first T-shirt I bought in San Francisco in the summer of 1999.  It was a tidied and it was Star Wars.  I loved that fucking shirt and I wore the shit out of it.  I remember one Sunday at a park in SF I was wearing and some hot chick was like “Oh my god, that fat guy has on a tidied Stars Wars shirt! What a loser!”  It didn’t matter because it was my shirt and I was a Star Wars nerd and any chicken who couldn’t appreciate that especially in San Francisco wasn’t worth my time.  I held it against my nose and smelled it.  I looked at it one last time and I tossed it into the pile.  So that it too could be some vague memory of a life once lived. 

I could sit here and tell you a hundred stories just like that one.  The aqua blue short sleeve button down had a tale.  As did the Navy Blue PWC fleece, I mean how excited I was when that thing showed up in Bloomington.  I got out; I really had gotten out of Indiana with a big time job!  I was so pumped.  However, that was just another thing that had to go.  15 storage boxes of stories about thing I had grown out of.  I would guess through the weekend I purged about $5000 worth of clothing if not more. 

All with the inevitable question of why?  Why toss out stuff that might fit again one day. Why not hold onto it.  Why not keep the dream alive.  That dream of the previous life.  

The truth is even now I am not 100% sure why I needed to purge it all, I just know that I did.  I need to clean up and make space.  Not because I have failed to believe that I can lose weight.  That I can get my ship right and continue on my path.  Not because as I told my roommate how depressed I have been because I just don’t feel like I have come far enough yet.  No, this was depression or lack of faith.  If anything I am fighting the demon depression head on, and I continue to recover faster and faster from its strong grip.  Faith, my faith or believe I will have an amazing life has never faltered.  I know I am on the path.  Things on the path and through the rabbit hole aren’t always what they seem. 

The truth is the need to purge was because I realize now I don’t want to go back to just being thin or being able to fit back into my old clothes.  I don’t want to sit here and hang onto anything.  No, I want to create a new life.  A life that is far less than ordinary.  I want to race, I want to run, I want to fly.  That life isn’t in boxes in the garage. It isn’t in old appliances.  It isn’t hidden away.  No, it out there in between me and my tower, and that old broken life had to be purged.  It had to be thrown out.  There is no going back.  You can never go back.  You can’t change what is.  You can only change now and what will be.   You have to put every ounce of your energy into the here and now, and into this time, and this place.  The old alliances are dead.  They are gone.  There is nothing to go back to.  You can’t fix this, only I can, and only I will. 

I purged old toys, and games that reminded me of another time and place.  I tossed out the first race t-shirt I ever got from W2W in 2005.  I tossed out all my W2W T’s because the truth is I just don’t wear cotton T-shirts and the truth is I don’t want to fit back into something, I want to earn and grow into my new life.  With new adventures, not the old ones, that are the memories that make me, me.  I can’t stop now.  I have come too far.  I kept only those things that can aide me in my fight.  I have not stopped the dream of being who I was born to be.  So, yes, I purged.  I purged because a change is on the horizon. 

So, there we are… Perhaps neither of understand any more than the other what the purge was really all about.  However, I can say this you never really stop loving or caring about something.  You just learn to live without it.  So, sometimes purging is the only solution we have.  Sometimes it is the only way to re-start and start over. 

Sugar and Cyanide: Part I – Where I am … and where I need to go…

“I'm not gonna waste this

this opportunity's mine

I'm sick of complaining

About a beautiful life”

Tonight, Seether

 

Sugar and Cyanide:  Part I – Where I am … and where I need to go…

 

They have to feel it.  Those people who are actually forced to be around me by the proximity of which they live and or work.  I feel the radiation leaving my body.  I am a like a glowing beacon in the dark.  Pulse off with negative energy.  Whenever everything and I do mean everything feels wrong. It radiates and burns like a fever.  Your lost in a dark place an no matter what you do or what you say or you confide in, nothing every seem like it will be the way it was meant to be.  It doesn’t really seem dark, dark isn’t right.  It is not dark.  It is hazy.  Like there is a shadow lurking behind you and no matter how fast you turn, when you do it is gone. 

I have no idea why I have shadows in my mind.  Living wraiths that dance around my mind and fuck with any hopes of balance and stabilization.  So here we are.  Another Friday with shadows stretching over and covering my mind.  Casting a distinct haze onto everything I look at.  All I can really say about it is that it feels wrong.  It feels broken. 

Then again what else do you expect from me?  I wonder?  Really what do you expect?  I sometimes feel like the expectation is for me to wallow in my misery.  Do I continue to play the victim in a broken life? 

My head hurts.  My neck hurts.  Everything hurts.  It is just one of those days I guess.  The worst is the exhaustion.  It is pure and unadulterated exhaustion that makes it hard for you to not hang your head but to be up.  Friday’s aren’t supposed to be like this.   Hell Monday’s aren’t supposed to be like this.  However, we all have days and moments like this, don’t we?

The words that continue to come to mind are needy, victim, baby, and whiner.  Then again isn’t that just part of what makes me, me, right? 

This conversation all centers on my favorite and least favorite topic of all, me. What can I say; I do love to talk about myself. How I was, what I was doing, how was I taking care of myself, etc? However, in the midst of all this sorrow and decay I have a powerful thought.  A pure and powerful thought and realization that I have and keep having that I am of two equal but opposite forces that are essentially what makes me the mixture that I am one part Sugar and one part Cyanide. Seether, one of my favorite bands says it best in there song “Tonight”.

I don’t know why but the song resonates with me. Like the topic of the song, I too am I am really tired of wasting what is essentially a beautiful life. I don’t what it was in the middle of my tired, angry, hateful mind draws me to this conclusion.  For the first time in a long time my mind was quiet and the good in me (Sugar) was at peace with the anger, rage, and hate (Cyanide). The two polar opposites make me what I am.  It is the good of me and the bad of me.  Now sitting here staring at Mount Diablo, I feel some peace and hope come to me.  It is the first time I can remember ever being at peace in this office building, first of all.  Second it is the first time I can remember achieving peace outside of the swimming pool or during a binge.

I am both Sugar and Cyanide. I have wasted a lot of a beautiful life. However, I have also lived. Looking back at pictures and times of my lives in the rabbit hole I can see that. Looking at my wall of meddles and race bibs it is not just a testament to all the endurance events I have done but all the life I have lived.  Looking at the personal side of my life in the last year, I know I have had some great times. Even when I am in the fog of the black dread in my mind I have to remember who I am and what I am. Big and fat, crazy or sane, Ka-mai (Destiny’s Fool) or saint, it matters not, what does matter is I understand now none of it really matters because I am a person of substance. Living life, real life isn’t measured in how much money you have, how many women you have slept with, or how long or short your relationships have been, because none of that matters. What matters is quality of time you spend with those whom you love and making the best out of those small moments. It is those moments when the rest of the world doesn’t matter. It will be these things that remain.  That makes you who you are.   

That time, that space, that moment, that love will always remain. So this is part one of a three blog set called Sugar and Cyanide. It’s about understanding the importance in the moments. Part two with Sugar, and Part three will be Cyanide as both are huge elements to the man who I am. Each needs to be looked at and discussed and accepted. Now we all know it is time to move on from this time and this place. It is time to for me to become the man I was born to be and live the life I want.  I will be a life that is both free and without fear and doesn’t know limitations.  Like everything else we will take both the Sugar and Cyanide and come to a total understanding of who I am and why I do the things I do.  Mostly we will continue to move, grow and live. 

Dominoes

Have you ever seen a stack dominos fall?  When they fall they fall fast.  Soon as the first one goes it is only a matter of time until the last one is down.   It is fast like greased lightning.  Things that get built and take time to build inevitably and eventually topple.  It could be dominos, a game of Jegna, or even a house of cards.  It really doesn’t matter once the collapse starts you just sit back and watch the wheels come off.  Ashes, ashes we all fall down.   Cracks in a foundation can only be concealed for so long.  Sooner or later we all fall down, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

You can’t stop the world from changing.  No more than you can stop the sun from setting.  The wind from blowing thru trees or stop water from being wet, or the sky being blue, that is just what happens.  Life is made up of moments.  However, those moments sooner or later have to fade.  Sooner or later the first domino will fall, ashes, ashes, we all fall down. 

Much like you don’t have the ability to stop the world from changing, you can’t possibly stop time from passing.  You can’t wish for a date to come and go, just because you think somehow being on the other side of it will make things easier.  You can’t bury your head in the sand and act like life isn’t happening just because you want the clock to move faster.  Sooner or later the right piece will be pulled out and your tower leading to the sky will fall, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

The wheel of KA continues to turn.  It pushes you and pulls you in directions you never wanted to go in.  To places you thought were long forgot.  You realize the world that you have built for yourself it flimsy and weak.  That a mire blow of the wind can knock you over and you realize it is none of the stuff you found I the rabbit hole that make you realize your world is weak.  Rather it’s the fact you have not grown and nurtured your world.  You lost sight of the things that make you smile.  That makes you laugh.  You limited your scope to what he or she thought.  So your foundation is not sturdy.  It is cracked.  KA, as KA always does show you what you need to see.  It shows you that if you don’t reinforce your desires, believes, and view of self you can be swept away and fall like a house of cards.  Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.    

Where does that leave us?  What are we left with?  Do sit here and fear the world spinning, spinning free?  Do we sit here and hope that time will pass us by?  We tried that once.  It was called becoming 470 lbs.  Guess, what, life finds a way.  It always finds a way.  I think we go back to our roots.  We stop looking exploring the rabbit hole, and we start climbing out.  Whatever is in the rabbit hole is in the rabbit hole.  We are a jerk, we are a monster, and we can be evil.  That is all part of the human condition.  We are beautifully flawed.  As I told Sue last time I saw her and again today, there is evil in me, and it doesn’t sleep.  She agreed, but she also said, I am not a victim of it.  We all have it.  It is in each and every one of us.  So even though there is evil, there is also good.  Lots of good, and over time the good has started to dwarf the bad.  The good does.  My heart is not pure, but my heart is good.  So, as I sit here and watch the world crumble around me and I watch time march on.  I sit here with hope.  Knowing my time and place is coming.  That there is nothing left to learn in the rabbit hole.  That is time to climb out.  I can’t be scared to get to the top and get back out of the hole.  Because no matter what, sooner or later, I will fall again, because ashes, ashes, we all fall down, just like that first domino and the last we all fall down.   Ashes, ashes we all fall down.

However, we fall down so we can learn to get back up, and dominos aren’t that lucky. 

Let's Laugh....

 

“I believe in the power of laughter and tears as an
antidote to hatred and terror”
― Charles Chaplin

I don’t sleep as good as I used too. I sleep the best between to the hours of 2 and 10.  That doesn’t really do much good when you have to be in work in fucking Pleasanton at 9, or really by 8:15 otherwise no charges will be available and you have to put the Rube on charger watch.  Not exactly what he was hired for.  Oh well.  So, I was laying there trying to fall asleep so I could be up on time today.  Getting up on time didn’t happen today.  I ate some bad snack yesterday and every time I think about it, I get a little sick and toss my cookies.  Nature box has been cancelled; I don’t think the hold up to the heat in the office when the AC is shut off.  Plus, I am just over them anyway.  The only thing I really liked was the coffee kettle corn.  That shit was good!  Anyway… That is off topic.  The topic of today isn’t my fucked up work schedule.  Or that NB is out.  No no… it is that I was lying in bed looking at the following picture and I felt it. 

However, more than feeling it, I believed it.  However, I thought it could be taken one step farther and really happiness is good and I can make people happy, I do. However, my real talent isn’t just happiness. No, it is more like this…  “If you have the power to make someone laugh you should, because we all need more laughter!” 

I have always believed that laughter had a magical healing power and not just because Jack said it in the original Batman movie in 1989.  So as I laid there I thought, really other than writing laughter is my other true gift. I am fearless when it comes to laughing at me.  Nothing is to taboo or off topic.  My weight, height, feet, my emotional neediness whatever is all part of the routine. 

I remember over a year ago someone called me the comic relief.  I think I was secretly offended
at the time.  However, in bed last night I realized what a great compliment that really is.  Not everyone has the ability to go from serious to jackass in a blink of an eye. I don’t know how I do it. However, I do.  It is a gift.  Even now as I sit here with the right side of my belly trying to burst and I can’t help myself but try to make the people who support me laugh. 

I see now that being called comic relief was actually a blessing not a curse.  Because it is true,
I am funny. I have a gift for being funny.  I have a gift for being comic relief.  The world could use a lot more laughter, and laughter makes people happy and that is what we all need. 

So laugh more and be happy!  It will fight the pain we deal with.  It will help add a little light to the darkness!!!!