At times like these

We sing our cheap despair as our secrets are sold
The spirit is broken, I'm gonna torch you down
The spirit is not broken, I'm gonna raise it up from the ground

            -Wire-Torch it

 

At times like these, I like to think of those who have it worse than me. I try to look around at what I do have and count my blessings-so to speak. I have both of my arms and legs, all ten of my fingers and toes intact, I touch my eyes and they're still in my head. I am alive and healthy enough not to be in the hospital. I have to remind myself of these things from time to time or I will freak out. Despite my ups and downs, pitfalls and setbacks, I have managed to lead a semi-charmed life as it were. I have seen the country for the most part, and I have many stories to tell the grand kids (if I ever get any kids). I am mindful of the fact that I have had a lot of good fortune, despite the bad.

    I simply have one of those minds, which tend to focus on the negative more so than the positive, a glass half-empty kind of mindset-to say the least, although I do feign optimism quite well. It is what kept me out of jail when I was selling LSD in the mid 90's. I trained my mind too anticipate (and plan for) the worse case scenario. That way everything else would seem like nothing. If I imagined the worst thing that could happen to me would be to go to prison and be ass raped, then what ever wasn't that was all good. Going to jail and even losing $500 in a card game, was nothing. If I envisioned a deal going south and me getting shot up, then getting shorted a few dollars was laughable almost. You create your own silver lining in those types of situations. The problem now is I came out to California with such ridiculously high expectations, that the cruel reality is really fucking with me. I had no idea my relationship would fall apart so quickly, or that I would be out of work for so long. I had no clue I would be trying to go to school and learn something at this stage in my life, or that I would be celibate for so long. Many of life's disappointments come from not anticipating such disasters.

    Now I feel like I am floundering about like a fish out of water, trying to find where it is I now belong. One thing you will never be able to say about yours truly, is that I was ever unsure of who I was. I sprang fully formed from my mother's womb, like Sun Wukong or Petey Wheatstraw. Now at 31yrs of age, I find myself in a crisis of conscious. Do I continue marching head first into the flames, do I try to put out the fire, or do I simply walk around it? How do I change horse's mid-stream? I have no idea, but my gut tells me to solider through the flames, my ego (though crushed) says that some part of me is still fire proof. Though my mind says that we are not, and my heart is on the verge of giving up the ghost and throwing in the towel. My feet want to run, but what's new there? My hands…well they want something to hold other than this pen or my dick.