Divided States

Art by Lexie.

We all experience frights fears harms and pains, duh. Some of these sufferances we effectively process, others we don’t, carrying them around like a 200-pound backpack. Although different, I believe we are all much the same. How do we carry our hardship and if helping, what can we do or do not for others stuck in their own little hell? Hence forthcoming, my blog novella is not for the faint of heart, and sans the potty-mouth bowdlerization, just sayin’.

Addict.

Most people never relishing amongst the many joyful pleasures of working time as a junkie, addict, alcoholic, or mental health sufferer wear truth judgment goggles. As an active junkie, addict, or alcoholic, we are physically incapable of telling the truth, even to ourselves. Truth is misaligned with our main mission, to use, we have no choice. Concurrently, when our minds have run amuck and we are splashing around in the kiddie pool with our play pal saboteurs, tossing loaded handguns and other death implements back and forth, we avoid truth like root canals. When our poor mental health controls us more than we control it, much of what fills our heads and flows from our mouths are lies, we have no choice. The diabolical concoction we formulate poisons our thoughts and words to a level it appears not our own doing, and we barely resemble the me-my selves we once were. We think and speak for the purpose and benefit of that which controls us, our shadowed brain or our addictions, not our true selves.

 You might think.

Should we not know better? When we hate the way we are living our lives, because it appears as a hellacious collective circumstance, should we not want change? We might know what to do, or have been offered the resources to exit our darkness. Possibly it appears we know what change of betterment is needed, but are being difficult, refusing to participate. The situation might appear to others that we like it here, in our hell, we are accustomed to our pain and suffering, and we choose our shit life over the alternative. Perhaps you are correct about all of that, and still, there we sit, stationary and not making a single move towards the direction of sunshine.

I have friends unable to sleep or eat or drink. Some of my beloved gal and guy pals are servants to their commanding negative thoughts, addictions, or unsettled physical ailments. Thereupon the emergency room mental health crisis’s, the at-home detoxes, the rehabs, the associated jail time, the overdoses, and the attempted suicides. These processes are routine for some of us, and thereupon oh fuck…there are those who go beyond routine and accomplish the end of their beating heart purposefully.

I lived to learn and know.

We construct our own life. Yes, not that all of us have the freedom, resources, desire, tenacity or willingness to change anything but still, we are the only ones who can, or do. I try to preserve my superpower, aka I attempt to retain hope. We can only save our own lives. I cannot save or change anyone. Only the one stuck in their own crappy straights can save their own life. Only us the stuck ones can do the work, only us the stuck ones can choose to try and avoid the things knocking us off our paths. Perhaps within the cumulation of wanting, focus, tools, willingness, hard work, and supportive help, we will outlive our parents, hopefully.

Once stuck, truthfully only one answer to one question determines our future. Regardless of outside forces, despite what we do or do not do from here, only one question of true significance remains.

Want…not need. Do we really want to change? Yes of course we might need to change, so says somebody else and maybe ourselves, but this issue is irrelevant. Do we want change and do we want change more than wanting anything else? Time exposes the truthful reality if we reach our rock bottom of dead-end unsuccessful choices. Only we ourselves are capable of making the resounding decision to try. To try and be brave. To try and be courageous, facing that which scares us and threatens us. To try and be willing, although we are somewhat convinced the effort might kill us. The power to shift resides with no one else, but it’s hard AF. Maybe we can find hope, maybe just a brief stay of self-execution, maybe, maybe not.

For us enablers, it comes down to choice. Us parents or family members think we are helping our loved ones, but the only real chance our kid has of survival is themselves climbing out of their bottom. By enabling, we keep our kids from their worst point, sometimes ourselves blocking salvation from the ones we desire to save. Yes, maintain unconditional love, but don’t cover the bills of the addict, don’t bail them out, don’t pay for their cellphone. If they are hurt, yes help them, tell them you love them and show it, while maintaining guidelines of three or less needs, and a list of wants. For many of us addicts, we lie and steal and cheat to get a fix but this continuance of using will kill us. The only chance of deciding is to hit the basement floor and the faster we get there without being abandoned, the better. I have told parents that their kid might die tonight or tomorrow regardless of what the parent does or doesn’t do. But, the only real chance the kid has of survival is to face the hard truths of addiction once all support streams are discontinued, sometimes not until the kid reaches 40, if they survive that long.  

            Notwithstanding, please do not let my words get lost, our addictions and mental health conditions are not a simple choice. Hell, many times such moves are no choice at all. If we are not ready, nothing will work. Still, once ready, once choosing, once committing and supposedly willing, our intentions still might not carry us. Once I finally decided to quit drugs, it required five long hard years to actually do it. Much of the challenge we all face is old pain, blame, resentment, perhaps some guilt, and certainly self-doubt. Additionally, a profound and at-times crippling uncertainty of what’s ahead invades us, and the overbearing weighted blanket covers our undetermined future ability to hold it all together, when one more painful thing is sure to rain down atop our here-and-now heads.

Some things.

I struggle with many things, things I want to change, and I believe we all do. Something not working or feeling unfair. Maybe an exit door exists for such struggle but it appears the knob I must first twist is ablaze almost molten-hot, and will surely melt the skin from my bare palm. Excuses are easy, nearby, and free, just grab one, but no oven mitts in sight. Between the seemingly endless hardships and tragedies of life, there are periods of massive joy and sunshine if I open my eyes and heart enough to experience them when they appear. Sometimes, the hits just keep coming and although I may be able to see the sun through the clouds and hear the birds singing overtop my tears, it barely seems worthwhile to get up and try to do anything.

I also realize, generally, to already have what I need to live the life I want. Getting there, I need to keep showing up to my own life’s challenges and just do the work. When mostly put together and better assembled, I can aid others and there are so many more to help. My path or direction was not always clear, and even when presented as so, this shit ain’t easy.

I’ve wandered for decades, looking for the light blindly under the high noon sun.

I am but a speck of dust in the desert.

Millions, arguably billions of poor souls live a life harder than mine, light years beyond my wildest conceivable imagination of pain and challenge. For the child jumping shoeless but joy-filled across their playground of a sewage-strewn gutter within poverty India, and the kiddo’s only toy ever known is a tattered tree branch stick they wave around triumphantly, shouting roleplay theatrical cues as king of the world, I humbly admit not a single motherfucking thing for me to complain about, ever, fucking ever. Alas…easy to say, hard to do.

Any of us, all of us, even while currently employed, possessing arguably full mental capacity, owning keys to a car, and our name residing on an owned house title, we all lose our shit at times. If not able to put others first when they need it more than we do, why the fuck are we left free to roam about, and not otherwise forced or coerced to help within our geographical community territories? If no one helps, no one will get helped. Once I mostly have my own house in order, I try not to shy away from the basic self-evident fact of humanity, aka we cannot do it alone. In no way do I think shit is going to magically work itself out, because at least as presented to me and I am assuming, we might actually be heading in the exact opposite direction these here days.

To make the world better, I start here, I start now, I start with me, and at least, I try to do fucking something. Working to make the world better, my origin is me. The composition of me is the entirety of all I do, all I do not, and all I attempt. The composition of me is the impact and value I create within my children, within the extension of my family, and within the future continuance of me and all of ourselves. The composition of me is the impact and value I create on my street, in my neighborhood, in my town, and in all areas where I journey. The composition of me is the impact and value I create extending to my state, my country, my continent, and my globe. The composition of me is the impact and value I create within my one breed, our one collective human herd. Because without one foot stepping up and one hand reaching out, how else will change arise? It won’t…it won’t, it fucking won’t.

One singular hand in motion is the only thing that affects change and is the only thing that ever will, period.

Many of us need help, all of us really, but not all admit it. If I do not help those who need and want help, who will? If not, when I need and want help myself, who will help me?

Walking away.

Some of us develop into a certifiable hot mess, and such nametag status does not always require decades or years to occur. On the helping side, we might be ready to give up our assist, thinking it best to now walk away. Analyzing, while casting aside assumptions judgments and blame, how down am I really, if I am the messed-up one? How tough might I be as the helper? How badly is the person broken, and how strong is the person helping? The two affect each other greatly. After broken promise followed by broken promise, I can choose to back up with my help and support, being laser-tough on the behavior while not putting them out of my heart, and I try, but such moves are hard AF.

Because despite all intents and attempts, echo-echo…only we the individual can save ourselves despite how much others desire it to go another way. Once asking for help, so much further the distance must be covered before change has a possibility of beginning. Many times although we reach the destination of desiring change, we are not yet ready to do the darn work. For 33 years, one month, and nineteen days so far, I have lived without the artificial high that drugs provided me, although the pain and the void remain, these the bitterest of pills. I taste still the voids I was trying to fill, but have grown accustomed to the flavor, such spice of hurt, the comfort of my shadowed barren expanse. We the active addicts, alcoholics, and mentally unhealthy, our lies perpetual and unknowing, we have no choice.

The fricking problem is the affliction, some say a disease, but certainly the accumulated powerlessness. A force is in control, driving our most every word, our most every action.

What do we do as humans, regarding other humans? We assume, we judge, we blame, and we label.

What do we judge? We judge them, we resent them, we dislike them, we shame them, we call them by our judgments, we assume they should act and believe as we do or they are dirt.

But what do we judge? We judge them as a good or bad person and we label them with our name badge judgments of them.

But what do we judge? We judge what we observe, what we think of them, what we perceive, and what we interpret.

But what do we judge? We judge what we don’t like about their bad or wrong actions compared to our correct, aka idealistic beliefs.

But what do we judge? Hum, what are you getting at? You have asked the same question five times now. We judge what we see them do, we judge their behaviors. There you go, right, we judge their behaviors. Are their behaviors them? Are behaviors factually the heart of the person themselves, thus the behaviors worth judging as the entirety of the person? Well, yes, I guess, but now you have me thinking. Isn’t it said not to accept people for what they say, but rather by what they do? Never have I heard anyone argue the statement of judging someone by what they do, not what they say. So to judge someone by their behavior, is this not correct? How could it be different? Well, maybe the truth of the person is different than their behavior, very different.

Pain buried, carried and hidden.

I have a few close friends, some nieces, sisters, and an ex-wife whose lives’ I would not wish on my harshest adversary. Their souls fell out of their chests and landed in the dirt. These battered hearts have gone through hell on earth. Hah, but no…they stuck their plopped-out parts back in, and live within their horrific hellish pain still, aka they are tough as nails. This pain however may not be observed just by looking closely to describe the precise color hue of their corneas, or found scattered across the tone of their everyday displayed voice once hearing them speak. Their sheer hell is not noticeable during everyday walkaround earth street pain showings, because said persons are breathing, talking, and maybe even smiling ear to ear, once in a while.

To an unsuspicious observer, the human subjects might even display as normal people, worthy of our everyday unknown judgments of them, if the poor pained one does a good enough job covering their scars and calamity-coated hearts. If we do not see or notice their lower person who actually lives in a wheelchair now, if we didn’t pick up on the fact one of their legs is a prosthetic, and if we couldn’t see behind the huge dark sunglasses hiding their oceans of tear-filled eyes, we might think nothing at all is wrong with them.

We assume wildly, barely knowing a single thing about our sisters and brothers, they are fine, we proclaim out loud or silently. Still assuming, and not observing any wear-around trauma, no open wounds, no bloodstains, void of such surface-level or residual leave-behind pains, the dude or dudette seems free to gallop anywhere they please without a care in the world. Frightfully tangible though, on any randomly-selected day, the pain able ready and willing to restrain us like an underwater padlocked straitjacket. Frontward then, freedom is not available, least a while. The trauma returns to own us, but rise we do, every fricking day despite the bondage, even if the rising is just our eyelids.

Heartbeats.

No kiddo should grow up watching a frighteningly-familiar hunched-over and worn-down bag lady wearing dirty clothes, painfully dragging herself through the streets of the kid’s hometown. The kid knows her from blocks away, “That’s her,'' he mumbles to himself out loud. He sees her outline form from afar, and he speeds up, trying to get past fast as possible. Her severely hunched-over stance basically has her face parallel with the sidewalk, so how can she see him anyway? Ain’t gonna happen, he self-sells the notion using his inside-brain voice. Maybe she won’t scream his name as he rushes by, her always demanding he stops and gives up all his money. Maybe she won’t notice him as he turns the corner early, trying to avoid her altogether, but then again, just like he knows her shape from blocks away, she has a Spidey-sense of him too.

There it is…oh fucking bloody hell, he says just overtop of his belabored breath, after she rings out, “ROGER!“. Are you fucking kidding me? There’s no fricking way she could have even seen me. She was going the total opposite direction and staring at her damn feet, he complains to himself. A huge frustrated breath and he spins around, turning his bike straight into approaching downtown traffic, grumbly obeying her command. Well, well…because although she’s been gone from the house and got kicked out of the family 13 years ago, she was still his mom.

I strive to help those who cannot help themselves. My position arose because of the undefinable marrow-deep pain and helplessness I felt, after seeing Patricia Bird drag the entirety of her world around the chaotic streets of Baltimore City for much of her life. Everything my mother owned in the world, all her crap, was shoved into that shitty dilapidated vertical shopping cart on wheels.

The woman who birthed me owned nowhere safe to sit, no roof, no dry blanket in winter, no bed, and, well…nowhere she found love.

Patricia Lacey Swope Bird was absolutely incapable of caring for herself, at least in the way she told me she desired to live. I tried to help my mother the best I could, I really tried, that is, well…once she stopped attacking me, once I processed much of my lifelong fear, and once my running slowed, however slightly.

No kid should face that shit but they do, every fucking day, and much-much worse, but for me, well…I was lucky. I am white. I was not born a heroin baby, my dad was a minister. I was not born a crack baby or worse yet, god-forbid, a meth baby. My mother was once a schoolteacher, then later a waitress for a bit, and worked in a chemical factory for a shorter bit still. My father was not nor never in prison. We owned a station wagon. My mom was not a junkie. We owned a house, and a shitty old boat. My older cousin did not repeatedly rape me and my three sisters. I owned my own bike that was not stolen, it was bought from a store with my own money, aka I was lucky.

 Birdy-birdy what do you see?

We don’t wake up one day and announce at the family breakfast table, “Hey guys, guess what? This is gonna be so much fun, starting today we are embarking on a grand and fantastic adventure, we’re going homeless!”. I was not homeless for any lengthy time so what the hell do I know, but I think I do know this, homelessness, aka houselessness, is not a choice…it happens. Addiction is not a choice…it happens. Poor mental health is not a choice…it happens. This fucked-up shit sometimes happens to otherwise educated people, successful people, financially-solid people, sane people, smart people, happy people, normal people, just like you and just like me, every damn day.

Whatever amount of pain we have felt, however much we have bled, and alone as we may feel in the world, there are millions more who have borne ten times as much. Not judging but just sayin’…myself included, we get absorbed binge-watching our HBO series, and hide behind our bank statements and calendars, not truly seeing the person who bleeds inside as they sit on the city street with their worn-down palm outstretched for help. We don’t offer to take our best friend’s troubled teen away with us for the weekend, so the kid and mom don’t kill each other. We barely notice these things. We are quick to judge and assume. We wouldn’t do anything to possibly embarrass anyone or ruffle feathers because honestly, we’re all too busy to see anything else other than what we want to see, just sayin’.

We all hurt from time to time. Some of us hurt all day and night, for years, or decades, or more. We might hurt so much that we try to hide it because of being so sick and tired of being sick and tired, hearing ourselves complain day after day, after day…after day. A selection of us just wants the world to stop, right now. Maybe we tried, unsuccessfully or successfully, to pull the plug on our own life because it’s just too much dark weight to bear. Many of us, well…we just want someone to listen. We don’t necessarily need them to try and fix it, but just listen. Let me fucking cry my guts out and try to exercise some of these demons trapped inside of me. Sometimes, we can’t even speak…we couldn’t speak if we tried…it hurts too much, and I can’t carry the unbearable load of even opening my mouth. So if you could, please. Please…please…please don’t say a damn word and just hold my hand. Just hold my hand so maybe for a milli-second I can dream and fantasize and imagine I’m not so damn alone in this god-forsaken place.

As humans, first and foremost, we need to feel safe. Second, we need to feel loved. Thirdly, and only after the first two are in play, can we think and learn and walk the earth responsibly. But who is listening? Who is shielding us? Who is helping us truly learn and grow in our own shoes? When and how does that happen for those of us who don’t ask for it or want it, but need it? How do we make the time to comfort a co-worker living in hell? When do we take the four precious minutes out of our otherwise-insignificantly busy goddamn day to buy a homeless person a cup of coffee and ask them what was the most glorious experience of their entire life? Just to remind them that they felt something good once, and if only for a split second, they got to remember it all over again despite their horrible, horrible reality? Who does that?

I try to slow. I try to stop. I try to put the damn phone away. Once in a while but not often enough, I ask a great question and just sit there listening. Listen at least long enough for them to take a breath, pause, and look up to see that someone is hearing them, not interrupting with my own sad tale. It’s a chance for someone to be heard and therefore, loved. I do not do as so often enough and it sucks…it really sucks.

Scratched albums.

My life contains many dear friends, by my measure. Also, I offer myself to the world as assistance however one might want or need me, least I try. Some of my sisters and brothers, aka friend family, we talk, we share. Certainly, they help me, and some go so far as to claim my small slight place in their world helps them too. One such beloved friend shares openly, and recently we connected concerning the hardness of these here days. She offered this note to share and here I do, graciously, sharing now her brave words:

 Too many people believe depression is a choice. That it is a weakness of those who cannot cope as well as the rest.

We tried for four years to get pregnant, had medical infertility help, and had miscarriages. Then we became pregnant without medical assistance and our first child was born on Mother’s Day, just as perfect as they come. I should have gloried over the moon. Alas, the chemical terrorist in my head said no, not so fast. I was held hostage by my own brain, and for five weeks fought an intense battle between my heart and my head. I held my miracle baby within our beautiful little family, enjoyed good health, a secure job, a stable home, and had delighted family and friends all around me willing to help.

This album in my head however had a scratch and was on a constant skip, not allowing me to progress forward past the flaw on my recording. The only thing getting me through was knowing I wasn’t alone, and I had a close family to whom I knew I could tell my darkest thoughts. I knew I would not be judged or made to feel like I should just Snap out of it or Get over it. I too desperately wanted to get past it, that scratch on my album. My husband, my twin sister, along with my mom all built a nest of listening ears, hugs, protection, and these were my safe places to fall. Talking to those who did not try to hurry up and fix me, but who truly wanted to learn how hard it was, those people got me through. Me knowing that they understood, that this was not a choice I was making to be sad, is what got me past that particular flaw in my life album.

I struggle with my mental health every day and am working past the traumas in my life.

A decision of solace.

Personally, I do not believe suicide is selfish, I think it not a cop-out. Is suicide something that occurs to crazy people, those cuckoo birds so out of whack that nothing makes sense anymore? Fuck to the no, not by my measure. We all encounter hardship and levels of depression, forced then to carry our own shit, and I believe our life is ours to live how we choose. I try to keep going, I try not to quit, and I try to love unconditionally those who just couldn’t do it anymore. You may have read this from me before but regardless, I think it is a message worth reviewing. Here is a letter from my beloved niece Lexie, the oldest daughter of my best friend little sister Beth, dated September 11th, 2017, the last letter Lexie ever wrote, and the last words we ever heard from this amazingly talented young woman:

It is with great sadness and also great relief that I am writing this letter to you all today, my friends and my family, whom I care for greatly. I am writing to inform you of my decision to end my own life.

My twenty five years on this Earth have been brimming with happiness, friendship, and love. I have known life in it's greatest moments, when all is well and the world is good. I have also known life for it's darker times, through all the sadness and heartbreak and pain that it has to offer. I have travelled, I have found my home, and my life has been a beautiful anthology of memories for me to cling to in my darkest hours.

It was not in a dark moment that I came to this decision. It was not a decision I made lightly, impulsively, thoughtlessly. This is not a decision of suffering, but of solace. I have thought about suicide for nearly a decade, planned it for the last four years. It is a choice I have made for myself, in my own right, in sound mind and body.

I have thought of ending my life many times, but always found something to look forward to, some better tomorrow to search for. My thoughts were my darkest secret, my best kept confidence. They gave me hope through troubled times, that the pain would one day end.

I made the decision long ago to end my life when I was ready, when my fighting had been done and my life had been lived to the fullest. Only when I found true happiness could I accept my own death, only when I knew it was out there, and it was real.

My life has not always been a happy one. My monsters follow me everywhere, but now they are silenced. It was not by the fault of my friends that I made this choice, the people I love have been there for me through thick and thin, light and dark, happy and sad. My friends have made me stronger, and I do not wish to be mourned.

Miss me, remember me, but do not cry for me. Sadness is my only regret, and hurting those I love is what has kept me from this choice for so long. No person other than myself is responsible or to blame for my final decision. The people close to me were my greatest strengths, my wonderful reasons to live, my friends and family made my life bright and wonderful, and no single person could have changed my plans.

I have felt my end crawling ever closer, death waiting for me just above the horizon of each rising sun. I go to my end peacefully, and content. The thought of meeting my death on my own terms, at my own chosen time, is my own last attempt of peace. I have lived my life for the people around me, I have stayed strong for everyone else. I choose death, and it is a choice I make for myself, and it is a choice I am happy with.

I love you all so much, those people who have been my friends, my family, my motivation and my strength. My own mind has been my prison, and with one last sunset I finally find my freedom. I am so sorry for the pain I have caused. I will watch the sun go down on a beautiful life, I will one last time turn out the light, look to the stars and say goodnight.

Threshold.

I mentor several young adults who need help, but they are not listening to the people they should, well…and they never will, at least during this season of their life. None of us have all the tools we need. Or we may not possess the necessary skills to use them. Who steps up to help us when we really need it? Who…when it's painfully obvious to everyone driving past on the highway we are broken down? Who…as we lack the strength to stow our luggage overhead? Who pulls over? Who unbuckles their airline seatbelt and tells their two other buckled-in row-mates to please get up because a hand needs to be lent?

The times then when we hide our hurt, conceal our needs, and are ashamed, these perhaps the hardest equations to decipher. Those times we are tired of asking for help but do it anyway, the best way we know how, and no one comes. The signs are there, if we slow, if we listen. Something's wrong, but we don't ask. We don't pry. We don't think it is our business. We pretend. We walk away. We don't check-in. We might have a thought but we don’t stop, assuming someone else will lend a hand. We wish someone shows up for the ones in trouble. We pray they accept the hand offered to them even though they do not and may never, ask for it.

I try to speak up, I pry. I meddle because, it is my business…we are all brothers and sisters, aka we are related, all…fucking all. I try not to pretend and most times I do not accept a, "I'm fine" for an answer. They aren't fine and we both know it. Very few of us are fine and if we are, it's fleeting. My friend the brave mother above is right, most people don’t understand depression, not at all. Four days ago I spent a few hours with an old friend who is close to giving up. He speaks of his end freely. So many people do not understand his ailments, so he barely has anyone to talk to. Therefore, duh, he’s not talking much, but rather sits at home alone most days, struggling minute by minute. The last thing we need when depressed is to be alone and sedentary but that’s what we want, and if afforded the opportunity, that’s what we do. The signs were there with Lexie. She was breaking up with her boyfriend and she just returned home from a European vacation visiting the gravesite of Sylvia Plath for goodness sake. Still, I did nothing. I said nothing, aka I miss the chance I lost. I know I could not have saved Lexie once her mind was made, but by my measure, I could have done something.

By technical analysis, my life’s time thus far has involved more hits, more moments of pain, and more years of suffering than periods of sunshine on my face, rainbows ablaze overhead, and bunnies running around at my feet, but boo-fucking-hoo. I learned this life of mine to be a nonstop collection of rises and falls.

The energy, the choice, to face life head-on and leave the pain behind, arrived only from within me…the courage to keep rolling forward, even when my wounds inside and out were still healing.

No one was going to do it for me, not a single nobody. I had to learn to smile between the periods of pain, if even it were a smirk or a contrived grimace of optimism, despite the hurt that burned below. I learned hand-first that the crippling pain does NOT last. It DOES pass, it DOES fade, and it WILL stop, giving me the open field of opportunity to jump, laugh, dance wildly in the street once more, many times more, and sing at the top of my lungs in the sunshine. I lived to learn know and practice not to sit too long, licking my wounds…not wait too long, sad and blue because of the pain and darkness I just survived. I assembled the knowledge to get up, get going, and go nuts in the sunshine.

The most extreme physical expenditure, when my heart rate is 200 beats per minute or more, fades quickly when I slow down even minorly. All of a sudden, extreme pain is lessened. My heart rate would drop from 206BPM, my maximum heart rate ever recorded, down to under 150BPM in less than one minute. Anything under 180 beats per minute for me was sustainable and although challenging, 180 was bearable. And when my body was at 180 or less, I could rest and think, learn and experiment, coming back stronger because of the pain and hard work I was WILLING to go through. It is a similar situation with my emotions and tasks, it gets better, always…always. This pain, whatever I am feeling, it too, shall fade and quite possibly pass.

Only through the hard does something softer come. Only after winter do wildflowers rise up and bloom in the spring.

Many people I know cannot settle with such enduring pain, working hard, and are willing to suffer to reach a better place. Whether physical, emotional, or mental pain, it all hurts like hell. If learning how to face it and even deal with it, at least sometimes when quite frankly, there is no other option, I feel it most always worth it.

You may get hurt, badly. You may cry, for years. You may mourn, for decades, but…but learning to be willing to live through it, we understand that we DO come out of those times of pain in one piece. Only when facing the hard stuff and seeing that we do survive that shit, only then do we learn to truly live. Even when at our worst, when we are more miserable than we have ever been in our life, there will be moments in the day when we forget briefly about our pain, when we get distracted. If aware of it, we see we are still among the living, we are not totally broken, although it feels that way. Over time the learning comes that you can put things, mostly, back together again, but, well…hum.

Hum…well, how do I say but I must…but…but some people do not make it out of their troubles alive. Some are hurt too much by the pain, the trauma, and the worry. Some poor souls let this hard shit control them for the rest of their days instead of facing it, dealing with it, and tenaciously working through it. Not everyone wants to face it. Not everyone is willing to stare it down. Not everyone makes it through that really hard shit in one piece. Not everyone wants to sweat and bleed and cry. Not everyone feels like they can do it alongside all the other stressful shit in their life, so they avoid the attempt. Not everyone feels like they have enough fight left in them, and I have learned at least to me, that this is entirely ok, it is ok…it’s really ok.

I try not to judge others when their pain or their fear consumes them entirely. I cannot control another person. I cannot change or save others. I can help others the best I know how and when it does not work for them anymore, I try to hold onto my unconditional love and support for them, no matter fucking what. When bad shit comes, and it will, how will you face it?

Face it…will you possess the willingness to do whatever it takes to make it through and back to the sunshine? This hurt, this pain, it may come for you, sit down on top of you, leaving a pool of blood behind when it runs off looking back, joking and laughing madly. The understanding may be incomprehensible that something so wrong, so horribly hurtful…evil even…exists in our world.

Bravery…bravery…but then there is your bravery…can you and will you…will you be able to gather yourself and rise up, lifting yourself and letting the salty tears fill your mouth, with your arms wide open, ready for the next glorious blast of beauty that will certainly radiate upon you, filling your heart and making for a life well-lived, if you are willing to bear the pain?

Willing…willing…will you be willing to belabor and carry such hurt? I know you can and I hope you will.

Pain…pain…a pain that will soften and in reality, the only thing left behind will be the memory and maybe a scar. A memory and a scar, not leaving you crippled by the big hole in your heart you felt before. You are alive. You are still standing, you are ok. Will you be willing? Will you be willing to face it? I sure hope so. I hope you have the strength. I hope you find the bravery, the courage, and the guts.

I try to never count on tomorrow giving itself to me freely and consistently.

Hope is my superpower. I try to maintain hope within and for myself, while retaining hope for us all. By my measure, hope is not a wish or prayer, hope is strength and courage to do or maintain, or sometimes to just do-not, do-not, do-not fucking quit. Hoping for us to find and define our truthful intentions. Athirst I am, for you to see, admissibly, the possibility of a hopelessness timeout, that such pause is possible. Within such a break, perchance then in harness within safety and love of a helper, least a while, we can see it and feel it. We can see and feel a willingness to not make our lives worse, maybe once feeling the possibility or a slight faint sparkle of my shared superpower, hope.

Love you all,

~ Bird out.