Where the Time Went IV (the message)

Make no mistake: you are not alone, you have not been abandoned, you have not been forsaken, you have not been left to die. It's up to you what you want your future to be.

Chris

Until you figure that out, you cannot affect anyone else's in a meaningful and lasting way. You don't even have to love yourself to at least see the future. Your futures. You are old, just like me. Aged beyond your years too early, just like me. Scarred beyond belief, just like me.

Chris

Our responses to it have been diametrically opposed in the now, but I was just like you.

Chris

Pain is inevitable, physical and spiritual, inevitable the same. Pain does not have to color every aspect of your life. It is not the boogieman. See it, know it, embrace it, splow it out, and keep it moving. It will be your acquaintance from then, until now, and on until the day you die.

Chris

We've both learned death seals nothing. The scars don't evaporate. Minds don't change. Facts don't change. History does not adjust for you and your happiness. So find your own. Make your own. At some point, you have to stop looking back and look ahead at what's in front of you instead of where you've been, who you were, and what you did for answers.

Chris

Spoiler alert: the answers aren't there. You already know everything that's happened. You already know your potential. You already know you are misfit amongst the trash of humanity and far too intelligent to pretend without wincing and dying a little more on the inside each time you muffle who you are to wallow and rub shoulders with the lost beyond repaired

Chris

The rut dwellers, the routiners, the folks that are happy with status quo because "at least nothing else can be blamed on me for trying"

try

Don't be afraid.

Chris

It is flat out terrifying. You've had your wake up calls and bells like the thunder on the surface of Jupiter and his storm systems large enough to engulf several Earths. You've heard them and you still shut your blinds and tell yourself it's fine... just a Summer squall... it'll pass... just a few inches of water...

Chris

Wake up darlin'

It's not too late.

Chris

You've got to stop burying yourself alive unless you truly need to die. Not "want", need. Must. Have to. Everybody wants to die at some point in their lives. Some of us, myself included, want to die several times over in a single day and/or kill everyone on the face of the Earth to be alone in life and therefore happy, by any means, and complete in an enforced (and extremely costly) peace.

Chris

What you choose to do will echo for decades through not just your life, but several others. If that does not sway you, before you give up on what you clearly do not know with any certainty whatsoever because YOU'VE LITERALLY NEVER DONE IT OR TRIED WITH ANY MORE TENACITY THAN YOU WOULD GOING TO A DRIVE THROUGH AND FINDING IT CLOSED AND GIVING UP ON EATING FOR AN EVENING give it a chance.

Chris

Give it a chance.

Give it a chance.

Give yourself a chance.

Chris

Has it ever occured to you that maybe, just maybe, this time around, you should give yourself a chance and tell the "I know myself well enough and I'm not going to waste my time" version of you to, for once, give the you that has lived and experienced a real relationship a chance to actually go find herself. You change as time passes. Your old rules of thumb don't apply anymore.

Chris

Your first boy is a man. Your second boy is about to enter Kindergarten (time will fly).

Chris

Why delay any longer to get yourself right? Truly right? You are out of time to pussyfoot and pretend you can make it up as you go. You must grow up. You can still be a big kid, but it's time to bring that child, that inner, fuggit I'll do it tomorrow, fuggit I have enough time for one bump, fuggit I don't care today, fuggit I'll just reschedule, fuggit fuggit fuggit I can do everything and anything I want, you into the bigger and much more important picture of what you want to be.

Chris

Stop putting it off. Stop placing that responsibility on what happens to you. Stop giving that power away. Stop having a reason why things don't happen and start building.

Chris

Start keeping schedules. Start keeping goals. Start planning. Stop reacting and start being active in your own life. You can't afford to drift anymore. You cannot just be in your bubble. That bubble burst a long time ago. You are crowd surfing on an empty infield and the band left four years ago, but they still haven't swept the venue and the stadium shut down right after the show.

Chris

Those aren't people's hands, you've been lying on the ground in weeds six feet tall with now indigenous wildlife occassionally coming by while you hum tunes that haven't graced an ear since the place was littered with ticket stubs way back when. Wake up.

Chris

Time is running out. Take control of your future or don't. Keep convincing yourself you're alone or don't. Continue to tell yourself lullabys of the past or see a future for yourself. Continue to howl at ghosts for wounds that have bled out and scarred over or walk into tomorrow scarred and stronger because you can help someone else get through those horrors in a meaningful and lasting way..... or don't.

Chris

Your future is in your hands.

Chris

The knowledge and the power therein encapsulated in your history can and should be paid forward to your sons. Remember that the next time you tell me I don't love them. Prove to them that you truly love them. Don't prove it to me. Prove it to yourself.

Chris

I have nothing to prove to [][][][][][][] or [][][] (and the crazy thing is I've never even met your eldest son and I know in my heart I have nothing to prove for him to know that I love him - you figure that one out, my pirate queen), but you do. Show them; don't talk about it and weep over it when you're restless and drunk. Show them.

Chris

Don't show me... show them.

Prove it to yourself.

Chris

I love you. I don't just live for me. I live for my little sister, for you, for the people you care about, for your family, for my friends, to bury my father and mother and see them underground, for the people that are fighting similar battles and losing wars, for breathing in nature, for recording history, for music, for things that only I can create because I am YES a unique instance of isness amongst the billions on this overcrowded planet, and yeah sometimes just for me to get high and laugh for a day or two or a month because if I'm going to be stuck on earth and never see space travel I may as well dream about it and make up some fireside sci-fi stories to share because that's fun!

Chris

Live and live well. Die and die alone. Die well and live alone? Good luck. Live well and die alone? That's even worse.

Live well and die well. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

That Instant

The floor begins to tremble and you hear the single, high pitched, distant screech of the midnight freight train pierce the walls of your bedroom and you remember how much you loved to go for bike rides at night to feel that sound in your bones.

Where The Time Went III

I do suppose, at a point you have to trust your partner.  No more benders.  No more lost weeks.  No more blackouts.  If that is where the line must be drawn...

...the line should've been drawn a long time ago.  I have to become comfortable with notion that my partner will be homeless outright.  I've been there.  I don't want to do it to someone else.  The truth is I'm not doing it to them.  They are doing it to themselves.

Is there more I could've done?  Sure.  Is there more I could've done without killing myself?  No.  Clarity.  Clarity.  Clarity.  Can't hit he.  Can't hit he can't hit.  He can't hit.  He can't hit.  He.  Clarity.  Clarity.  Clarity.  Vocal cord rehearsals to explain to her that everything has been askew for almost two years because of her addictions.  The motorbike in the backyard still collects rust because of her addictions.  The home mortgage fund is short $4000 over two years because of her addictions.

Rehearsing answers to her inevitable retorts and fits of anger. 

Rehearse.

Rehearse.

Rehearse.

And know it.  Know it like the creases on the back of your hands because they will always be tested.  When your support is the rock at the bottom, don't flinch.  If it means cutting that base out, try to even though you are crying tears of blood behind stony eyes.




///I miss being able to listen to music without submitting to a five hour long rant about songs we've already listened to the last time hammers fell.  Her addiction took even that away from me and she still does not see what it's cost beyond a dollar sign.

Life With Alcoholism

When your friend says "hey, do you want to dress up and go out to (insert bar here) for an hour" after that friend just got done screaming at you 48 hours earlier for not spending your last dollars to buy them a beer at 4 A.M. when they'd spent their entire day drinking and you immediately feel your stomach turn and your eyes gloss over with dread.

If you say no: they'll just go out anyway, be angry with you all night because "we never go anywhere", probably spend far too much money, call you to pick them up, be further upset with you for not trusting them and for "always being tired", and be irritated that "we never spend time together", be angry with you for "judging" wanting to have a good time.

If you say yes: wherever you go they won't want to leave after an hour, pressure you to drink more than you want (if you decide to drink at all), convince you to spend too much money or spend it themselves, try to get you to bring something back to the house for later (but really that night), go out again anyway if you do get home early, make you feel miserable for going cautiously/reluctantly, be upset with you for thinking about how you'll feel tomorrow, be annoyed with you the entire outing for thinking about the chores & things you still need to do at home.