My Trust Remains Unbroken
Over Myself But Not You
Know My Secrets Hidden
Deep Within This Lung
The Scream Yells Acute
Symphonic Melody Sunk
For Air Beneath The Layer
Of Skin That Wraps Blanket
Over
Game, Isn't It?
Guilty Tongue Betrays Me My Trust Remains Unbroken Over Myself But Not You Know My Secrets Hidden Deep Within This Lung The Scream Yells Acute Symphonic Melody Sunk For Air Beneath The Layer Of Skin That Wraps Blanket Over Game, Isn't It?
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We often look for change in misguided places, as we walk through the shadows looking for any sign of bright light paving the way, showing us a sign that we have arrived at our destination. We stumble and fall and learn to pick ourselves up in order to keep walking, even if it means to keep facing those shadows covering our path. We seek for nourishment to appease our aches within us, wondering if we will ever truly be satisfied. So we stand between the before and after, holding together our very existence in the hands of whoever we believe in. And once we start walking down the path we wait to see what comes our way and when we see that is not yet here, we keep walking, searching, following our old souls brick by brick, step by step. Can victory really be attainable, or is it false hope that decides its very own finality when we reach the end of the road? Do we still hope, as we keep walking, that even though nothing seems to go our way, that that which we seek is awaiting us somewhere near the end? Humankind is a distinctive yet fragile animal, its empathy towards others alike is tested as it walks through the untraveled road. When we run into someone blocking our path do we choose to yield or do we choose to eliminate? Can we empathize with the ones blocking our view of what lies ahead? Or do we choose to avoid surrender and begin to cast them aside? Old habits never die, they just remain in our lives like wandering ghosts at a factory house. They follow us, they haunt us, they lead us, unknowingly towards what we seek. We might think we are done with them, but in reality, they are never done with us. So as a habitual creature of the night we continue to repeat, to live, to die, to search, to want, to crave, to find. We hurt, we lie, we cheat, we force, we break, we build. We survive. By any. Means. Necessary. The Big Empty. That's how I felt when the hammer came down upon me two years ago on a very dark, very cold July night. I had enter a probationary period where I had limited options. Where my choices of where to go and what to do were also limited. I was lucky to still have my job. That became the only thing keeping things glued together. I remember thinking, this will forever change my life. I was right. Broken. Is how I felt that night. Memory was shaky, for I had inhaled what could pass for a liquor store. I had overdone it and had run out of luck. My guardian angel just watched from above, shaking his head waiting to see if finally I learned my lesson. Disappointment is all I felt as I continued to stare at the pale wall in front of me. The floor was cold and all I could think was how I would never touch alcohol in my life again. But it wasn't much of what had happened that night that made me realize I needed to change. It was more of this sort of collection of things that had happened throughout the previous year up until that night that really opened my eyes. I was drowning my sorrows and burying the anger, without really paying attention to the consequences. It took me these two years to realize what a fool I was and how this lesson was a hard one to learn. But I finally stepped over that last hurdle and passed the test. On this day I feel free again and I no longer feel the need to remain so silent. I spent those two years in fear. Wondering how to avoid making the simplest of mistakes, because that is all that would've taken for the system to throw me back into a hole where there would be no escape from. Today I can stop being afraid, being paranoid. Today I exit the probationary period of my life and welcome back the world with open arms. Two years of hiding has been enough. Today I break the chains that bind. "There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you've had enough." I gave it my best shot, I gave my everything to beat this thing. I thought that if I kept pushing myself that I'd get past it. That I'd grow stronger and finally get through it. Beat it. Own it. I was wrong. It all became too much in the end. I'm the kind of person that can be patient, that can pick up the weight and carry it through the mud. I can be that person, but I can also get to the point where the weight gets to be too much. The stress gets to me. Invades my mind past the breaking point. I see that now, for I have run into scenarios where I've tried to keep my cool and realized that I'm beat. There is no other way around it. I just can't take it all anymore. I can feel myself starting to shake. The dam getting ready to break. And I can't allow myself to go through that again. I can't allow myself to break. I can be so damn stubborn sometimes, but right now, after going over everything that I've learned, everything that I've accomplished, I can see clearly now that the defining line between giving up and letting go has arrived right in front of me. I enjoyed learning new things, accepting the responsibility that came with new power. But the cross has become too much to bear. I will accept that I can own up this moment with no shame and no regret. I gained experience, became more aware of the situation around me and my coworkers. I have seen things about the workplace, learned things about others, that I do not look at this promotion as wasted time. I see this as an opportunity that presented itself, and I took it. I learned from it. And I can look at it now, years later, and be able to walk away from it with my chest up high and my will unbroken. I can let go and not feel guilty. I can let go and not feel like I've failed. I can let go and feel free. This doesn't make me weaker. This is only part of discovering myself. Testing my limits. Learning my strength, and understanding when I need to back off. When it's time to take a step back. And now I see that being a manager is not who I am. The moment came quicker than I thought. I'd imagine it would take much longer--that it would drag on and on, but instead, I find myself six days shy from the anniversary that will define the rest of my life. This year marks a very special date on the calendar for me. The eight of July will be the second year my sobriety comes full circle once again. The moment I had decided to quit drinking forever, that moment felt like the start of the toughest road I would travel on. All I could imagine was the drinks, the liquid being poured, the parties, the laughs, the jokes, and of course, the feeling of letting loose. So I quit. I stopped drinking all together. No specific drink, just anything that contained the smallest drop of alcohol. I wanted nothing to do with it. Nothing. And the sole mention of the word would instigate anger burning inside me, the thought of repeating the mistake would become tied to the word, I would put those two together to convince myself it would be the easy way. If I hated it, I wouldn't need it. I wouldn't crave it. The devil in the bottle. The temptation. That familiar taste I had come to love. Creeping out, staring at me with those eyes. I remember the first time I drank, how wasted I became. I remember the first time I blacked out. The first time I got in trouble. The first time it became tolerable. Then how it became used to my palate, and how I became used to its taste. My partner in crime, my escape route, my heavy listener, my conversation opener. I remember how it made me feel invincible, I remember how it made me feel approachable. I also realize that a lot of things that I don't remember are because of it. I made myself the promise of the century two years ago. I promised myself that I would never enter a situation like the one I was in that day ever again. That I would never allow myself to fall that low. That I would never again convince myself that I was more than human, incapable of impossible odds. That I would give it up, put the bottle down, and say my goodbyes to it. So I did. Not one drop. And now the date comes back to me once again. Full circle. And memories flood me and I start remembering. But what it's important I remember is not what I forgot that night, but what new memories I create this coming night. When I celebrate my freedom from the bottle. When I celebrate that I don't need it. That I can look at it and laugh. I never needed it to begin with, I just chose it and it became part of who I was. To the point that it was all that I was. I'm good. I'm good now. Hell, I'm better. And I don't need to run from it anymore. I don't need to laugh at it. I don't need to curse it. I can choose to embrace it once again, but here's the thing. I don't need it. I never did. And I never will. Well, I most certainly did not expect to hear from you all of a sudden. Well, actually, let me rephrase. I most certainly did not expect your name to come up. Those words to be mouthed by someone other than me. Specially when I haven't really had an opportunity nor the need to mouth those words for a long while. But as always, I overthink things, so I figured, there must be a reason why this person decided to inform me about you. Perhaps it was a warning. Perhaps it was a show of care from this person, a need to express that they care about my well-being. But what do I know, I know nothing. Maybe they wanted to see how I'd react. Or you told them to ask me about you. I don't know. Like I said, I overthink things. I am starting to realize perhaps this town is just too small. I thought at first it would be an improvement from where I used to live, but perhaps I was wrong or over-exaggerated the thought when I felt moving here would provide me with a much larger area to explore and get lost in. Again, what do I know. I overthink things quite a lot. Perhaps it was just a casual conversation starter. Perhaps this person does not realize that I much rather not hear about you. Not because I hate you. Not because I wish you wrong. No. I don't feel hate towards you. I forgave you long ago. Whatever you might have heard about me and my thoughts about you, probably was an exaggeration, a miscommunication, or perhaps even just my anger talking. But thing is, I much rather not hear about you, listen to rumors or small talk about you because frankly, I believe our splitting up was meant to be from the very beginning. It was a lesson to be taught, a lesson to be learned. Not hearing from you only adds to the lesson, adds to the fact that I've moved on. A chapter closed. Why other people insist on bringing you up is beyond me. But then again, I always felt like my work environment was a bit like high school. Some photographs can't seem to just burn away. Dust in the WindI used to care. About a lot of things. Mostly, the important things. Heck, even the unimportant more simplistic but easy-to-miss things in a normal particular day. Then, one day, I simply stopped. I could no longer care for it all. It slipped right from under me, out into the world spewing all those serpents from my mind that had kept all the doubt and the stress that came with the responsibility of caring for so much for so long in my life. It all began at work, a place I used to look at as an escape from the real world bull that came with my sudden change of lifestyle. I had written off my friends and had chosen to take my life in a much healthier way, let's call it, playing it safe. Well, playing it safe included coating myself in a protective layer of pure pretend, something I did just to fit in, to "meld with the crowd" and to "assimilate" to the everyday regular guy that one ran into on the street. Well, I guess there came a time when the stress just got me. When this mask I had decided to put on slowly started to tear itself apart. My mind could no longer hide the broken circuitry for it had come apart at the seams. So much of who I was felt forced, faked, that had now become like a complete stranger. So I broke, I couldn't take it. I let all the cares in the world slip away, and I was no longer the same person at work. I figured that throughout all the time, more specifically, since I had gotten the promotion offered to me about a year ago, I had been working extra hard, pushing myself, and even doing things that perhaps were not even my responsibility, but as a hard-worker that I've always been, I felt like picking up some slack was nothing more than just "doing my job." Perhaps I got blinded to the fact that for some people, me working equaled me doing too much. Was I making others look bad? Was I supposed to not do that? After all, the promotion came with more power and responsibility that I figured the more I worked...well, makes sense, right? I just looked at it as doing my job, like I said. That was one drop of stress. The second came when all hell broke loose at work. People were quitting and getting fired left and right. Our numbers were thinning out and I was just as amazed, if not more, as any other higher-up on the field. However, see, what the problem here was, not that this was all happening suddenly and of-kilter, but the fact that everyone else didn't seem to care or at least show that they cared. It was almost as if it was expected or perhaps even something usual in a day's work. This bothered me. Quite a lot as it kept on happening. You would think that keeping staff around would be easy, but as it turns out, most of the ones gone didn't value a job as important or simply had "better" things to do. I'll never understand it, nor do I want to. See, the third drop happened to come unto me like a snake in the grass. It had been hiding there for a while and had clenched its teeth onto my leg and was slowly sucking my blood dry as time went on. I figured, eh, I got promoted, so okay, it'll take time until it all becomes official. I guess I just didn't think it would take this long. And believe me, I can have a lot of patience for a lot of things, but it had seemed to me that my patience had hit its limit. It now felt wrong to work hard. To care. And so I stopped--I had to, before the stress run me down like a fever, like the poison the snake had sneaked in me through my veins was somehow dormant until this very moment. When it finally made me open my eyes and realize that I was going nowhere and real fast. It was the moment of truth that I had been waiting for a while; I had come to hit a wall in which I had to make a decision. Should I try to dig my way around it, or just stay there facing it, waiting for it to come down on its own? All I had in front of me was a spoon. And by God, was I dead-set on using it. So I chose to dig around it. Thing is, the more I dug, the more I uncovered about myself and where I was. What I was. At first I wasn't sure, but then I realized, I was just a face in the crowd. Expressionless, wide-eyed, simple, yet unrecognizable face lost in the sea of blue shirts and black vests. I didn't feel like I mattered. Like I was making a difference. I didn't feel like I deserved the promotion, let alone needed it. I felt. Nothing. Know when to walk away. There comes a time in your life when you get to make an incredibly hard choice of whether or not you can walk away from a situation that presents itself in front of you. This situation pins you against a wall, making you look deep inside you, and when you do, you imagine the consequences. If you have a really vivid imagination like I do, then the consequences alone can take you on a road that can either be painful to watch, or confusing to see. My back was against the wall the other day, I felt...helpless. I felt like it had been a while since I had felt this way, and not only was the feeling welcoming, but it was also a bit...strange. Like I needed to feel this way but it wasn't necessarily bad. Why wasn't helplessness a bad feeling? It should be, but it didn't feel like it. I guess I had gotten used to my life changing around and finally getting on track, that all of sudden, when I was presented with the situation, I didn't know what to do, and that was okay. My choices presented themselves; I could either choose to destroy a relationship, or choose to walk away from it. If I had chosen to stay, and decided to break that relationship, get in the middle of it, that would've meant the consequences of those actions would cause a ripple effect to that person I was about to get involved with. I had detached myself from other people for so long that I thought that this choice was the right one. Only because I would've gained something from it. But this choice wasn't the right one. This choice involved selfishness. If I followed this path, it would've meant that I was only thinking of myself, and not the other person. That alone would've made me what I've feared of becoming for so long: a real nasty piece of work. Someone who only cares about himself, someone who will do anything to gain what he wants with no remorse, no recognition of the consequences this path lays before him and unto others. So I chose the second path. My second choice was to walk away. Years ago I made a similar mistake, but it wasn't because I was so detached from people, or because I was selfish, back then I did it because I didn't care and I didn't know better. I was young and stupid, but now, now I can see so much more. Now I knew exactly when and how to walk away from the situation. I imagined the consequences, I saw what path this choice would create for the other person as well as for me. I couldn't bear that image in my head, it was poison, it felt wrong, and I understood what I needed to do. So I walked away. I realized that whatever hurt, whatever pain I could cause would not even begin to materialize into that person's life the very moment that I walked away. Pain is unavoidable, but suffering, suffering is optional. So as I detached myself from this individual, and whatever feelings were about to be discovered, I realized that I wasn't completely broken. I wasn't completely detached from others, from people. I realized that a small percentage of who I used to be was coming back. Those feelings I've hid for so long where still there, they just needed to be revisited, and re-discovered in a much different way. Some say that you learn from your mistakes, but what most don't realize, is that you repeat your mistakes, over and over again, but only because each time you revisit an old mistake in a similar fashion, you are learning more about how to avoid it, or prevent it. I ruined a marriage once upon a time, by getting involved, instead of walking away. The other day, I could have relived that mistake--except I didn't. I know better. I chose to walk away. Learn to walk away. Know when to walk away. And I promise you, you won't regret it, and you'll look in the mirror and be glad that you didn't turn into a real nasty piece of work. Because once you cross that line, there will be no one else that hates you more than yourself. And crawling out of that hole can be extremely hard. And painful. Sometimes you just HAVE to feel amazing. Ever have those days where you feel overwhelmed? You seem to be giving it your best shot, but somehow the problems are one step ahead of ya and you end up accumulating the stress. You reach out for help and you somehow manage to spread it around, a little here a little there, a helping hand here and one there. I have come to realize that in order to get through the day, sometimes you just have to keep telling yourself you can do it. That you feel amazing and no matter how much stress piles upon you, you'll come out the other end okay. I like to paint t-shirts; it's a hobby of mine that I like to do from now and then. It takes a lot of time because I use sharpies and I like to color the whole shirt. I hate leaving any bit of white space, unless it's needed, so I like to go all out. I have a Spider-Man shirt that I made, one that is inspired from the original costume Peter first wore. If you've taken the time to read over the "Hero" portion of this website under the category Masks, you already know why Spider-Man is important to me. But in order to get to my point, I will add that I keep this Spidey shirt hanging on the door of my open closet, now the reason why I do this is because I like to glance at it from time to time. I glance at it specially at moments where I am stressed out, or feel defeated; mentally and physically. It's my little reminder that you got to remain strong. No matter the situation, you got to keep fighting. So I look at it and remind myself, you got to feel amazing. That's who you are. That's who you can be and should be. |
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