Am I really that self centered. I want to feel sexual. Is that so wrong ? I am struggling to connect the dots. Love is enough, should be enough. I want to believe that, but right now I am struggling. Can I never have sexual intimacy again ? Do I need to divorce this person to have that again ? I don’t know, maybe. How do I feel about that ?

There are many things to think about. Love, loneliness, pain, change, finances, place, and work. All these things are swirling in my head. It hurts. It leads me to a place where I feel betrayed. I know that I have been a betrayer my self. I don’t want to give in. I want to feel that intimacy again.

I could just masturbate. That’s not enough anymore. I want to be connected to another human being, when I am experiencing sexual intimacy. I want to feel that I am wanted that way. I want to feel the hot flush on your skin. I want you to respond wildly. I want you to stiffen, in release. I want that to, but you don’t. How do I move around, or through     that ?

I don’t know what direction to take. What road to walk, run, or crawl. I feel like exploding in rage, like crying, or nothing at all. I know that I am worth having that type of connection, and I know that I can find it. The days are gone where I don’t think that I deserve that. Now that I am here where has it all gone ? Like a hall of mirrors. I have finally gotten to the mirror where I don’t look like a monster, and yet  I am still not whole.

I know that it is not about me, its about you, but where do I go from here ?

There was a robbery the other day. They took some stuff away. Was it important you ask. I am not quite sure what to say. They left with the trappings of a hollow life. The things that made me feel whole.

There was a robbery long ago that set the stage. People that didn’t even know they were thieves. They had been robbed themselves. I was robbed of a safe secure childhood. Oh, I was safe from physical want. We didn’t have much, but we had. No, the robbery was of my place. I was never sure of that. I was always in fear of my connection to myself, and others.

Where do I fit, what is me?  Where do I start, and you end. You want to hurt me with     words ? I am used to that. Take away my dignity, take away my self respect ? I don’t use it anyway. Make yourself feel better at my expense. I know, you keep saying that you are doing it for my sake, or its only a joke.

The robbery stops now. They can take the picture my Father made of a man with his back to me plowing a field. That just reminds me of the earlier robbery. When they told me I have re parent myself I was so mad. Because I was robbed of good parenting, I now have to do it myself ???

What choice do I have ?  I can’t live without a place anymore. This is my place, you can come in here, and say what you want, but I will tell you to get out. I will show you the door, and shovel the shit out after you.

What did they take,  you ask ? They took my place. I won’t let that happen again.

I yell, and yell, and yell. Soon I can’t yell anymore. I am yelling at you. I perceive a threat from you, and I want to protect myself. So I yell. I want to step back, take a breath, and deliver a measured response. I don’t. I yell.

My head is pounding, my face is ruddy. There are no words coming from my mouth, and still I yell. The sound dying in my throat. I may be right; its your fault. You may be right; its mine. Doe’s it really matter ? It sure seems to, otherwise I wouldn’t be yelling. The situation that we are in has touched something that the little boy is holding onto, and won’t let go of, yet.

I stand here, spent, all my energy gone, just residual anger, and guilt.Why do I feel disrespected ? Don’t you love me ? I know that you do. That’s what makes this harder. We are both islands floating in this ocean. Sometimes the wind blows us into each other, and its magnificent. We hold on tight. Sometimes that wind, we call life, blows us away from each other. Those are the times that I struggle. I am used to that, I am used to allowing people to sail out of my life.

Today I pull out my paddle and start rowing, back to you. There is  writing on the paddle.    ” The twelve steps ” on one side, and on the other ” Love ”

I am shuffling through the leaves, by the river, kicking them up as I go forward. I am also kicking them around in my head. The things that I have been storing for awhile now. My fathers death, saying good bye to my sister and her children. Watching friends go back out, and come back in.

I am reminded of a suitcase full of once crisp papers, full of information. Over time the papers start to fade, and fall apart. The words are hard to see, or read, but the information is still there. It has filtered through, into my heart. It colours all that I do, say, and how I act.

As my heart beats, I do my best to accept the joy, pain, and colour of my life. I walk along the river, looking at the hues, and thinking what beauty. The reds, yellows, greens, rust , grey, and I remember how my palate used to consist of three colours, black, white, and red. No room for failure, or uncertainty. You were either with me, or against me. The red was anger. I had so much in my life. It ate me till there was nothing else.

I am sitting in a barbers chair talking about how I wanted to reach out my hand and stop my fathers faltering breath, after sitting there watching him die for seven days. I have tears running down my face. I have  room for doubt in my mind today, and the anger is leaking out of my eyes.

I watch the crows and ravens off the loading dock at work. There is the garbage garage across the way. I notice that they eat a lot of refuse, things that I normally would not give much value too. I have seen them take a stale crust of bread, and dip it in water to make it palatable.

With this diet you would think that they would be impoverished in looks and health. They have made a living out of turning the detritus of the world into vibrant, squawking, black, beauty.

I see them and I am inspired, Can I look into myself and see what has grown from the emotional, psychological garbage that has permeated my life up to now ? I can bemoan the fact that I didn’t get what I needed to mature into a full, healthy, capable individual, or I can take the dried up crust of the past, and make it into sustenance to grow my future.

I look in the mirror today, and I see vibrancy, beauty, and a light that is so bright that it appears black to me.

I have come to appreciate that black is light, and light is black.

I’m so tired.

I have trodden this road for so many years. The channel carved into my life getting so deep I have no hope of seeing over the edges. I see no respite, only a deeper groove in the future. It is a time of deep melancholy, and dull throbbing pain.

How did I get to this spot ? How did I get to the point where the numbing loneliness has permeated my bones, the tears have tainted my blood. Its been a long time since there has been any true light shining on me. In my memory there has never been any that I can recall. Glimpses, but not sustained luminescence. The glimpses grow less with time, only a fleeting memory.

Soon the last vestiges of hope will slip away, to lie tattered in the channel of despair. Then the thought will come again. the one where the futility of the walk comes into question. Leaving me with the only choice. Make the pain go away.

I remember this. It keeps me safe.

I’ve been away for so long, on a journey through lostness, through vague and undefinable terror, and desperation.

I can’t say exactly when or where I started this walk, but it’s been a long time. I have been buffeted by many fears, compromises, surrenders and sufferings. All in which I have been complicit, only because I was there.

I have no delusions that the stage wasn’t already set before I was born, but it is hard not to take it all to heart, to think that I could have made a difference. What a burden to put on a child.

I have held that child in my arms, looked into his eyes, and told him I love him. He is so grateful. He can blossom today, after a long drought. I feel him growing inside of me, to fill the, devoid of love, husk that was there, awaiting either substance, or to be blown away, coming to rest snagged on a fence, or picked at by crows.

I am finally here at home, awash in love. I watch the life around me, and wonder, why was it so hard to find home ?

I live in a world where I make mistakes.

Always the sky.

I live in state of mind where fear stops me.

Always the sky.

I face challenges that seem overwhelming.

Always the sky.

I look at you, and think what do I have to offer ?

Always the sky

I live where loneliness is just a step backwards.

Always the sky.

I am a person who became a black hole of loneliness, fear, and shame.

Always the sky.

I look up at the sky and I see blue till I become part of that blue.

It takes me, and comforts me. It connects me to the hugeness, and wonder of living. It puts me in perspective. It helps me appreciate you, and the wonders under it. Wherever I walk it is there. Whether it is where I work, in jail. On holidays, or after a funeral. In my recovery I stop and let it seep into me. It fills me, yet makes room for so much more. I don’t know what colour love is, but I look up into the sky and I see it.

Always.

Isn’t there supposed to be someone that tells you that you are okay, while you are growing up ? Shouldn’t there be a book that people have to read that says one thing: tell that kid that they are okay the way they are.

Why do people have to make them selves feel better at the expense of others ? Why do we often need to feel worthwhile by comparing our selves to others, or worthless by comparing our selves to the same people ?

I lived in that stultifying darkness for way to long. Wondering why I didn’t feel the Light. I didn’t even know what the Light was. I had momentary glimpses of what I thought was happiness, but not what I know today as the vast ocean of Love that makes it all worth while. That makes me feel worthwhile !

I am blessed. I have found a spot where I fit. That spot is just the right shape for me. It grows as I expand or shrink. It connects me to myself and others. I feel such empathy for others like myself who have not found that spot. You can see it in their eyes, the longing of their look.

That spot is there for all of us. Sometimes it is a long journey to find that spot. I don’t know whether my Father ever really found his spot. I know that he found something that he was good at, which is not the same. I am a great cook, but that didn’t help me belong. Till I believed that I was like you, I couldn’t connect with you.

How could I believe that. My Father never told me that he loved me, I had to start by telling him that I loved him. He was never really comfortable when I said that, I don’t think that anyone ever told him that he was okay. I was 56 years old when my Mother told me she was proud of me ! This is how she said it: I am proud of you, you know. NO, I didn’t know. How could I know if you never told me before. I am lucky, some people never hear it.

I tell people that I love them, today. I tell them that I am proud of them, and in telling others, I believe it of myself.

I was thinking: I am okay.

I am sitting beside a dresser as I write this. It was made by my Father. A thing of beauty, and functionality. I can reach out my hand and rest it on the warmth of the wood. The solid comfort of substance. Inside the things that dress me, and make me look a certain way. This is how I look, and am judged, by those that see me on a superficial level.

It reminds me of last April, when I sat beside the bed my Father was in, and watched him die. As I sat there I always had my hand on a part of his body. I hope that someone does that for me, when I am at that time in my journey. Touching my Father was an odd connection. He very rarely touched me as I grew up. He must have touched me, but not in an affectionate way, as far as I remember.

I started giving my Father hugs when I got sober from drugs. What a strange thing ! He was like a board, weakly patting me with his hand, as I embraced him, and said I loved him. It got better as time went along, but never really a comfortable act for him to do.

Back to touching my Father on his death bed. We were there for 8 days, and he lost a lot of weight. By the end, when I touched his leg, it was like touching wood. Only his bony structure left. Like touching the wood of the dresser. I looked at him that way, at the end. His drawers had all been emptied. His mind was gone, his ability to walk, talk, and function, a thing of the past. I think that his essence, the love that he was, even if it was unacknowledged by him, is still around.  Maybe it is the sky, when I search it. maybe the confidence that I have today, possibly the crow that sails over my head.

Honestly, I don’t know, but I have a strong feeling that when I reach out and touch the wood of that dresser I am feeling his Love. He didn’t know how to say it, show it, or give it, as far as I could tell. Maybe he just put it into that dresser. I’d like to think so.

I miss him.