Just do it

There never will be a good time or a right time to start. There is only now. Fear has to fall away. You'll be branded self-obsessed. You won't have enough dialogue. You'll change tenses and jump back and forth from one period to the next and back again. Who cares? There must be some reason you stay awake at night listening to the birds chirping floating in your open bedroom window. There must be some reason you can't sleep and your thoughts conjour words while you lay with your eyes closed, head on the pillow and mind sailing through time and space as puzzle pieces reconfigure and draw portraits of your life and experience on the darkened backs of your eyelids. You were the only one there inside your brain all those years. You were the only one thinking those thoughts. No one else saw exactly what you say, felt what you felt. But when it all comes down to it, you are the everyman. Do you have what it takes to pull no punches? Can you let it all hang out? Expose every detail, every fear, every noble, tragic, comic, horrific, spine-tingling moment? I bet you do. I've put my money on you from the start. You get in that race boy.

I was born in Beckley, WV in 1972. I was welcomed into the world by two loving parents and two older sisters. I was born 17 days late. I was predicted to have arrived into the world on May 10, 1972. I finally acquiesced to birth and life on May 27 at noon. I weighed over 10 lbs. My heart was beating too fast when I was born. There was a lot of fear that I wouldn't make it. I was a "blue baby." The doctors saved me. After a week my mother I was discharged from the hospital and taken home. My first home was a two-story house on Dexter Avenue in a middle-class neighborhood in Beckley. I only lived in that house for a year before my parents bought their first home, a brand new house on King Street in a beautiful neighborhood in the center of town. The neighborhood did not have a name but it was known by claiming one of the main streets in the borough, Woodlawn Avenue. It was an interesting mix of homes of people, that neighborhood. There were families such as my own and older folks too. There were small bungalows and sprawling mansions. Two West Virginia governors had homes there, a United States congressman, and several state legislators, local mayors, minors, bankers, architects, salesmen, doctors, attorneys. All my memories of childhood are linked to that house and that neighborhood. I don't remember the Dexter Avenue house. The only memories I have of it were developed from photos and home movies my parents shot while my family lived there. I grew up on King Street. That house on that street was the stage for the first act of the play of my life.

The bitter taste

It's like exorcising some sort of demon. That's kind of what it's like. I can't believe that nearly a year later I'm still getting over this chick. If you just saw me as a distraction, if I was just an affair, if you just needed some attention and lovin'...why couldn't you just tell me that? Why couldn't you just be straight up about it? Why bring love and talk of the future into it? Lord knows I'm just getting my due. Reaping exactly what I've sown in the past what with the way I played fast and loose with girls' hearts. I'd like to think I was a lot younger when I broke those hearts but there have been a few wounds I've inflicted in adulthood. Christ I've made an ass of myself with you. Like how I said I wouldn't go back and erase you. I wouldn't delete your memory from my mind even if I could. Yeah. Right. I'll tell ya what. I totally wish I could now. I wish I'd never met you. I don't think anyone handles rejection very well. I know I don't. I got played good. Knew you weren't ever gonna leave him. When you told me you were going to relationship counseling with him I knew it. But my dumb ass kept fucking you...kept up the fantasy that someday you'd be mine. Then there was the constant dangling carrot of the summertime...when you would leave him and we could be together. What a goddamn fool I was! Hahahahaha! You like being the "one that got away" don't you? It suits you somehow. True to my nature I pull no punches...on you, on anyone, least of all myself. Each day your memory grows dimmer. You don't haunt me like you did before. I still feel scant traces of the pain you gave me though. I still finger the wound and touch the scar you left. After my initial anger I really tried to be the bigger man, tried to be mature. But immaturity feels so much more comforting to me. I told you I wished you the best. I said all kinds of sweet things that I thought a wise and healthy person should say. Truth is...in moments like this...I wish you all the pain. My evilness rises to the challenge and I want to see you suffer. I want to see someone fuck you over like you fucked me over. I wonder if that boyfriend of yours makes you suffer. I wonder if it was worth it. And while I'm damning you don't think I'm not damning myself. I was the idiot that fell for your charms. You said I seduced you but it was you who pursued me. Remember? It was you who came knocking on my door. And I welcomed you into my home and my heart. I should get my head checked what with the way I let you play me. One day you'll know you lost. And by then it will be too late. This door is closed. Go knock on another.

Running

Some days you just want to crawl out of your own skin. I've done a lot of crazy shit but no where near as much as I've thought about. Thank God there isn't a thought police or I'd be screwed. No doubt. I'm sitting here in my little apartment in my hometown. It's morning (for me which means it's about 1pm.) The insomnia has been kicking in again recently. I try my best to get to sleep around 1am but the act of getting into bed and the act of falling asleep seldom line up the way I'd like. Drifted off sometime around 4 or 5am while listening to the birds call from tree to tree from the open window in my bedroom where the curtains were pulled back just enough to let a cool springtime breeze float in and over my bed and naked body on top of the covers.

It's days like today...feelings like today...that bring back old dreams of just wanting to walk....to just walk away....just keep walking...never stopping...and then running. Running running running. Just like Forrest Gump after that crazy bitch Jenny left him alone in his beautiful home in Greenbow, Alabama. I did used to run. A lot. And I used to think of ol. Forrest when I ran. It started out innocently enough. I had recently separated from my wife and taken an apartment in downtown Santa Fe, NM. I had begun dating a beautiful and crazy young woman. She was 25 and I was 29. The sex was phenomenal. We partied together too. She was a drunk like me, a dope smoker and a pill head. We'd party like rock stars all weekend but then come Sunday morning she would wake up and go to church. I ended up going with her and I ended up enjoying it.

One day I was out walking around my neighborhood and listening to music through headphones. My mind was full to overflowing with all kinds of thoughts and I started walking faster and faster until I found myself running. I ran and ran and ran. By the time I got back home I had run about 2.5 miles. It was exhilarating. The very next day I went to a local shop and bought a pair of running shoes. For the next 9 months I ran every day. I ran while it snowed. I ran while it rained. I ran during torrential summer monsoon downpours. I ran with the sun kissing my naked skin and the wind colling the glistening beads of sweat that formed on my body in motion. I cried while I ran. I smiled while I ran. I started trail running. I ran through forests, over rocks and boulders, dodging tree roots and pebbles, up mountainsides and down into lush valleys. I ran through the center of Santa Fe. I was a passenger. Weight fell off of me in scores of pounds. IN the heat of it I weighed 145 lbs. That's how much I ran. And I forgot to mention this but this was the biggest thing of all. I stopped drinking. At a friend's wedding reception in late December I took one sip from a glass of champagne and set it down. I turned to my girlfriend and said, "I'm through drinking. I don't want to do it anymore." She laughed and smiled knowing I would be drinking again the next night but I didn't. I didn't drink. I ran. I ran trails above 10,000 feet in elevation. Out-of-towners would be struggling to breathe just walking the hiking trails and in a blur I'd come flying by, skipping over rocks and cutting around steep corners between trees. I must have looked a lunatic with my eyes burning bright and stained with tears. I developed abdominal muscles that rippled when I ran. My calves and thighs exploded with thick muscles.

I could only run for so long. One day in September I was on a motorcycle ride with a friend and we stopped at a tavern in the silver mining town of Madrid, NM. Once inside I ordered a shot of whiskey and a beer chaser. My running days would soon end. And my drinking days would begin again.

God is my source

Don't really know where this is going but that seems appropriate seeing as how I don't know where I am going, what I'm really doing or anything else for that matter. Ever since my dad died I've just been kind of drifting along. The "consulting" gig at Hennessy's quickly turned into a 6 day a week line cooking job. No real shock there but I'm just not interested in doing that anymore. As I write this my phone is buzzing with a call from my mother. I'll call her back but right now I just need to write. Writing tends to be good therapy for me. Thoughts knock around in my noggin' for days and nights on end and eventually have to be expelled through the written word. As far as how I've been feeling lately I would say that I've been depressed...but really it's all relative. Someone who doesn't have a history of clinical depression would surely consider themselves depressed but for me it's a low level depression. On a scale of 1-10 I'd say I'm in a level 2-3 depression right now. Which is pretty extraordinary considering my history of mental illness and the fact that my dad just died. Everything is still up in the air as far as my life goes. Maybe this is how I want it. I don't know. Maybe I don't want to commit to anything. I definitely don't want to commit to the job at Hennessy's. I was offered the chef position and turned it down. She hired someone else who will start next week. I told her I would stay on line cooking 3-4 nights a week but she keeps pushing to try to get more out of me. As far as I'm concerned for an hourly wage you get a line cook, a fucking kick ass line cook but a line cook nonetheless. Truth is the scene there doesn't do it for me. The restaurant owner is not very pleasant to be around. I don't like having to deal with her. We have a friendly relationship but I keep her at arm's length and that is the main reason I declined the opportunity of the chef position. It would have been nice in a way to have some sort of concrete thing going in my life but I weighed the pros and cons and decided that my freedom and peace of mind were more valuable than a paycheck. I'll probably be a little bummed come 3 weeks from now when my paychecks no longer reflect the consulting salary but oh well. I know God is my source. God wants me to be happy and healthy and will take care of me no matter what. The West Virginia gig is still a big question mark. I'm perturbed that I've been throwing myself at this dude for the sous chef job and he hasn't snatched me up. Not to toot my horn too loudly but I consider myself a good "get." This other guy needs to shit or get off the pot. If I were in the chef's position I would tell him just that. "Look, either you want this job or not because I have an amazing candidate who is very interested in the position." I guess I have to look at it from the other sous chef's point of view but I wouldn't put the chef in that position. I'd give him an answer either way. Oh well, everything is as it's supposed to be. I don't want to run off and leave my mom. I'm worried about her. I want to be there for her but the vast majority of responsibility of action rests on her shoulders. She needs to summon the courage to grieve and realize that my dad is not coming back and that she needs to learn how to live her life without him instead of wallowing in self-pity. I know this probably sounds really harsh but there is a huge tendency in her for co-dependence. In many ways I am afraid that my helping her will only postpone the inevitable. That she's eventually going to have to woman up and learn to live her life on her own two feet. I say these things here but when she calls I come running. When I really feel like I need to get on with my own life. The past year has been a blur. Ever since my dad was diagnosed I thought of little else but him and my mom. Countless hospital trips, emergency room visits, chemotherapy, radiation, watching my dad fade away. I'm not gonna lie it's a lot for a person to go through and now that he's gone I want to start living my life again and start finding my way again. But several times a day I get phone calls from my mother crying and I can't move on...I get pulled back into it all. There is no easy answer to any of this. Only time will heal these wounds and right each of our ships. That's it for now. I'll stop here and pick up the phone and call my mother.

Half the story

Life is fucking crazy man. All these memories come shuttling back into your mind at moments that catch you unaware. Moments ago I was in my bedroom folding laundry next to my big bed with the windows open and blue sky like a portrait hanging on the old, blurred glass. In a wink of nothing I was 20 years younger and standing in my bedroom in an apartment here in this same city. It was my first real apartment away from home where I paid rent and everything. I was living with two girls who were students at the university. The room was very similar to this one, high ceilings, large windows that opened up nearly from floor to the ceiling. Propellers of a ceiling fan whirring above the bed. I had a writing desk at that time, some huge artist's-type drafting table made of hardwood. In the mornings I used to wake and rub my eyes and come out of my beer and marijuana-induced coma that at the time passed for sleep. I wore shorts, no shirt. My long hair fell down past my shoulders and I was thin then. I'd drink some water, brush my teeth. Then I'd load the hookah with sticky green buds of marijuana and begin my day by inhaling and exhaling long columns of smoke. The witchy vapor would swirl in the sunlight streaming in the picture window. It would catch motes of dust in the haze and drift with the breeze floating in through the open window. I'd settle down at my desk and write for an hour or so...until the feeling left me. By this time it would be lunch so I'd skateboard down to the corner gas station and buy a couple of 22oz. beers (malt liquor usually) double deuces of green hornet. Carrying my precious cargo back to my pad in brown paper bags I'd settle into an afternoon of sipping beer and hitting the hookah before heading out on my motorcycle to my job where I worked as a cook at a local restaurant on the shore of the massive man-made lake in the suburb where I grew up.

Today I'm in another apartment, the same high ceiling, the same fan whirring above the bed, the same sun painting the antique glass of the bedroom windows in the hundred-year-old house. The stoner boy was thousands of lifetimes ago, thousands upon thousands. His life had yet to even begin. The future stretched out like an empty canvas, a blank sheet of paper in his journal where life had yet to write its story. Decades later some of the story has been written. He carries more weight in the world, both figuratively and literally. The long locks of chestnut brown hair have been shorn. A bright crown of silver spikes now crowns his head in a tell-tale testament to the years that have passed. The parents he once tried to push out of his heart he now holds close. There'll be no beer for lunch, no hits of weed to calm his nerves. There will only be life, reality in its pure, tragic, comic and unblemished rawness. The sun sends rays shining through the glass and a cool Spring breeze blows and drifts in through the open window. Half the story may be told, but half the story remains unwritten.