Regrets, Pits, and Learning to Become Someone's Trashman

Who am I suppose to be? Why can’t I ever be satisfied or content with the now? I love grace and mercy, but I hate feeling like a victim and that nothing will ever be good. I’ve messed up and gone too far and will never be perceived anything more than I am now? My life defined at 28 and its definition is a royal ‘f’n’ mess. Pain causer should be my occupation. The ‘Punisher’ comes to mind.

Self-pity has no cure it seems and yet I want no one to know, but say it anyway. Negative attention is still attention I guess even if it does make you feel shameful. I want to be a good man, a Christian man. I want to live life abundantly and never be worried about comfort. I want to enjoy a cold beer with friends and stop at 2 and not worry about what everyone is thinking. I want to be everything to everyone; whatever they need me to be. A chameleon comes to mind. I want a woman who leaves no doubt in my mind. No doubt that from the moment God created the Heavens and the Earth he picked this woman for me. To complete my journey and vice versa for hers; I want to feel happy, truly, unabashedly happy. A ‘Fairy Tale’ is only a substitute for the pathetic.

I have a ton of negative experiences with drinking, partying, girls, but I have a ton of fun experiences as well. Stories that roll off the tongue and make people laugh. Stories that when I think back on, make me smile; how am I suppose to approach these memories? Am I supposed to be ashamed of only the ones I regret or be regretful of all them because I was in darkness then? I am still trying to figure that out. Whatever feeling you have whether it is sadness or happiness it is tripled under the influence and enough to make me you feel good even when it’s bad.

Is God telling me to forget my past even the sins that make me smile or is he saying that who you were then and who you are now are two completely different people. You can’t feel shame for a different person can you? I think in trying to like everything so I could be a friend to everyone I lost whoever I was or who I was suppose to even be. God is love, Jesus is salvation, Satan is evil, Carth is dead. I’m not living and the opposite of life is death. I’m alive in the biological sense, but nothing is in my tank. I suck on whatever I can to get through the day, books, movies, writing, day dreaming; I’m a hero and someone everyone is proud to know in my made up world; women, beer, drugs, gossip, sex, are just vices to get through the next the week. Vampires sucking blood come to mind.

We are all unhappy so we infect everyone who may look happy because that’s a threat and an insult. It shows us how we are failures and the wrong turns we’ve made have been bad, but we’ll keep telling everyone we’d do it the same way until we almost believe it ourselves. If we can’t be happy then no one can, so we infect them the best we can and if that doesn’t work, then infect someone else to gang up on the happy ones. The living dead come to mind. You know the ones who are happily married and can pass back ground checks and have no fatal illnesses, whose kids aren’t on drugs or having sex; what ever we see missing in our lives ticks us off when we see others who seem to have it.

The truth is no one has it all figured out and we all have problems and can never truly completely relate, but that same ability in our spirits that steers us off the road is also the same spirit capable of steering right back onto the track.

We can’t look for hang ups in other people to make ourselves feel better because all we are doing is being miserable in someone else’s perceived misery. Here you add the two negatives, not multiply. There is no positive. You’re just sinking down farther. There is no bottom in a bottomless pit. Instead of pulling people down with us we need to find how to relate with everyone and how we can pull ourselves out of our own self made chaos. Because if we out then we are apt to help others get out; and we all need help. There’s a starting point. God, I need help. I can’t do this on my own. I’m tired of feeling this way. Please take away my baggage and throw it completely away. Help me to help others; to be their trash man.

Spider Salads and Dreams

Each day brings some kind of gloom in my life. I pray so hard that my teeth are sore from gritting. My stomach can’t handle being awake and my mind can’t handle thoughts. I’m wishing for some kind of time machine. Some way to reverse this pitiful thing called my life. But I wonder, if you could correct such misfortunes would this be life or some kind of dream where everything is at your control. Unfortunately, the spontaneity of life that makes it so much fun, the first time your hand touches the hand of a girl you like, the way your stomach feels when you go down a steep roller coaster, the way if feels when life is just plain good, is also what makes life so difficult or unbearable at times. When you made a mistake you never foresaw happening and prayed that you’d do anything to take it back, but it was done; getting caught cheating on a test, girlfriend dumping you over months of stubbornly refusing to change, losing the respect of people you care about in a matter of moments. Life is so unpredictable and yet we try to approach each day in a predictable manner.

We as people bore easy. We have too many options and yet we can never find the time to do anything. We watch old re-runs of Friends or CSI instead of doing something truly productive and rewarding with our time. We like to talk about what we ‘use to be’ or what we ‘are going to do in the future’. But many of us never complete what we set out to do. Many of us start, but few cross the finish the line. Along the way we run into distractions such as school, job, love, family, hobbies, etc. Some of us run into more positive detours like realizing we already have our dreams and don’t need to be chasing things we don’t need or really even want.

And that’s what it boils down to. What do we want out of our life? It’s the question or mystery that connects every person in the world and yet separates us in our own unique way. But why is it in a world where everything seems to be at your fingertips are more people finding it hard to find ‘what they want to do in their life’. Why is this simple question so incredibly complicated? For me, it’s the fear of making the wrong decision or the fear of failing and having to start over. The irony of my fear is that it keeps me idle or paralyzed from ever truly taking a step toward my purpose. It’s worse than being in a cave full of incredibly large, hairy spiders. I know in that situation I would be running, scrapping, clawing my way out of that cave with every bit of my might. So why doesn’t my fear of failure or making a wrong decision fuel me the way an arachnid filled cave would? Maybe I’d be paralyzed with fear in the cave too. I’d like to think not, but maybe rather than trying to change my situation and get out of the cave, my fear of one wrong step here or complete failure would result in a spider salad. Maybe my worst fears come true.

There is one thing I do know out of all this, if I stay in the cave then I have no shot of bettering my situation. Much like life because if I stay idle in my life than there is no shot of bettering it, whether it be job, love, family, dreams, etc. Get out of the cave. You may take a few wrong steps, but that only shows you what the right path is and just because you may not get out the first time, doesn’t mean you quit looking for the light. Find the light, find your path, and discover what you use to only be dreaming of.

You Can't Hang Yourself If You Ain't Got Enough Rope

Have you ever thought of death and the first feeling that comes to mind is relief?  I've been having a few of those moments lately.  I can't help it.  I just find it tough lately to deal with the comings and goings of my pathetic excuse for existence.  I'm not dealing well.  I thought things were getting better, but lately the pains in my stomach and head are back.  Maybe I'm not praying right or something.  I made the noose too long so my body hit the floor.  The next time I can't get the knot right till I give up and call a suicide hotline.  They put me on hold.  I sort of smiled and had to giggle a bit.  It just shows how many people I assume are right there with me.  I'm trying, I really am.  I want to wake up in the mornings and be happy.  I want to look forward to the day, to the week, to the year.  I don't want this pain and loneliness.  I'm really worn out from it.  So that's why the thoughts have been more frequent.  Fear is at an all time high in my psyche.  I know this sounds like a guy wallowing in self-pity and maybe it is, but I swear I'd give anything not to feel this way.  I could sit in a room full of people, friends, family, and I could be the center of attention and I'd still feel alone and distant.  It's like I'm watching from a distance.  Maybe I messed up somewhere along the way or took a wrong turn or something.  I guess you can't backtrack and have a do-over.  There are no Deloreans or Marty McFlys to take you back in time.  I hope that I can hold on long enough to see what this pain was all for one day.  It'd be nice to know that it was preparing me or teaching me or anything useful what so ever.  I'd really like to feel and 'be' happy and content.  It'll be a battle between the rope and my hope and I worry the latter has taken to many hits to get back in the mix. 

Want to Feel Positive About the Future, but Why?

I’m losing my ambition once again and being content.  That is a warning usually that something bad or at least something I perceive to be bad is about to happen.  Every time I start to feel the least bit loose like I can let my guard down, something seems to happen to shoot fear straight down to my soul.  I’m tired and I want to move on.  I want to enter the next phase of my life full throttle, but I need to be patient and not lazy.  My prayers often go from emotional to mundane and flow freely back and forth.  I want to fill the fire in my stomach to live for God and to be a beacon of hope and compassion for all those who seem to be at the end of their rope and have lost faith in anything good happening.  

I’m not quite as scared on this Sunday night as I have been recently.  I can’t control what’s out of my hands and staying positive and constant in prayer and study in the WORD have kept my heart at peace.  I want to go to church again and I want to worship, but I still feel shame about me and about how I look.  I need to lose some weight, but it’s been harder with ironically enough more free time to stay constant with exercise like I did when I had very little free time.  Overcoming my own vanity seems to be more difficult of problem that i didn't know quite existed. Vanity leads to shame quite frequently it seems.

I refused to rededicate my life before because I knew I’d be a hypocrite.  That is the same reason I didn’t take communion whenever I was at church the few times I went during college and afterwards.  I didn’t feel my heart was in the right place to do so and that it would be far more sinful to partake in my current state of mind.  I sometimes crave that drunken feeling and I don’t even know why.  I guess because it erases all your inhibitions and fears.  You just don’t care about anything and will talk to the prettiest girl you can find.  Doesn't even matter if you make a fool of yourself until the next morning.

Don’t get me wrong either.  I like where I’m at and for the first time I actually think I might be entering something good and decent in my life.  I don’t want to mess this up, but I’d be lying to myself if I said everything was great and perfect because I still have moments where I want to swing that noose around the tower and tighten up and just let go.  Sweet release is how it feels in my mind sometimes.  I just feel like I’m holding out for something that’s never going to happen and I’m just wasting my time by not doing the inevitable.  When I get away from those moments and feel relief and grace I think those are the times I need to provide comfort to other people going through their own torments.  I have a buddy who’s Mom is sick and the Doctors can’t seem to maker her better and another friend who hates his job and just seems depressed about where he is in his life at this juncture.  I know tons of people go through similar struggles and some even more severe, but that doesn’t make their anxieties any less real and I don’t seem to be offering any real comfort to them.  I guess I don’t know how I would even go about doing that.  

I always want to be the hero, but instead I always seem to end up being silent and afraid of offending.  I don’t want my friends to feel pain any more than I want to, but it seems like my own outlook on life just doesn’t bring me much to be happy about; no matter how much I try to act like it does. I guess just prayer and patience to hear the right answer is all I can do.  I just hope I haven't let the answer pass me by.