This current period in my life is the culmination of over a decade of confusion, sloth, apprehension, fear, self-doubt, self-hatred, guilt, weakness, ignorance and failure. Just after my 28th birthday, i traveled to the greatest city on Earth, New York, to spend a week with an incredible women, the likes of which i had never encountered before. The trip was the straw that broke the camels back… the final twist of the knife life had been inserting into my guts for most of my life. I’m not going elaborate on the details of the trip to NYC here. No, this is about what happened after my flight landed at Hartsfield International Airport the evening of November 3th, 2006.
Just a few hours before, on the flight, i wished so hard that the flight would crash and kill me that i couldn’t breathe. I wanted die on that plane so that i wouldn’t have to face my insipid, useless life. I had seen and BEEN so many greater things in NYC, that i simply could not bear the thought of returning to the trainwreck that is my life. Debt. All but one of my friends had abandoned me. I had lost, thrown away or had taken from me all of the love i had ever felt for anyone. I have a dead-end job. No education. No future. No hope. I had only lost things for the last 10 years. Never gained anything. And, on the drive from Atlanta along Interstate 75, i snapped. I just… fucking… snapped. I finally realized that i HAD to live… or die. This in-between Gehenna of barely clinging to existence, this half-life, had to end. I had been living my life basically the same way every day that i have lived in this little town. It ended that night. I screamed. I cried. I begged. I demanded. I cursed. I promised. I promised myself that i would change, that i would be good enough, one day, for myself. I would change myself until I loved myself… since not a single other human being on this planet would love me the way i was. I would live life for me. I would change. I would improve until i was where i think i should be in life. The me that i could be would become the me that is. I would change until i was good enough for me… and until i was good enough for someone else. I would never stop. Stopping would mean death. Like a shark that must continuously swim lest it drowns, i must continue to push, to grow, to improve… and the day i stopped would be the day i die. Hopefully, due to being worn out and not rusted out.
I threw away all fear, all self consciousness. I started the process of throwing away everything that had held me back my entire life. The confusion, the sloth, the apprehension, the fear, the self-doubt, the self-hatred, the guilt, the weakness, the ignorance. I would no longer let failure, or the fear of it, control me. I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t. Caring about all of the little trivial bullshit distractions in life is what got me to this wretched place. I made a choice that night. I made the choice to live. To hope. To dream again. To try. To be me… but not just me… but the best me that i am physically and mentally capable of being.
Even now, the few people left in my life question me… they call me “zealot”, “fanatic” and pull away even farther. But i’m not living this life for them. For the first time, I’m living it for me. The next few pages are a record of my continuing journey to escape this black place, this horrible prison of a person that i am, to the freedom of the unlocked potential that i have always suspected lies within me.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul
In the fell clutch of circumstances
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of change
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the year
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Invictus by William Ernest Henley
Follow the links to the next page–> In response to Kelly
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January 11th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
“We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.”” M. Scott Peck quotes (American psychiatrist and Author, 1936-2005)
January 11th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Indeed… the fear of failure has held me back for far too long. I’d much rather reach for the top, fail, learn something in the process and try again with my new knowledge than never even try.
January 11th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
“What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
May 26th, 2007 at 10:02 am
just dropped in to see how you are doing…good luck in finding your ‘life’…many people do love you…and will always be here for you…whenever you want