Nothing Against You

I had a fit. If you read my prior entry, you will discern a disturbance in my sense of internal peace. I was given a hard to swallow truth. I took it pretty hard -even for me.

Many of you(if not all of you) know that I have spent the last year unmotivated to find proper employment or to embark upon a career. I was shiftless and made few excuses for my dereliction. My audacity was nearly to the point of glorifying my particular weaknesses. I hate to admit how lowly I have come to realize my depth. I do not have the right to look another man in the eye and claim equality when I have yet to truly try. It is convenient of me to demand equality when I have not earned it. Sure, some have done far less or even require far less to rightfully demand more. That sucks. I still must put in my effort.

If I mean to offer no excuses, then my application of "not excusing" should be absolute and impartial. Instead, I continue to find various loopholes that I have hidden like errant Easter eggs, to give myself an easy out. Regardless of how I feel, I must move. Regardless of what is wrong or corrupt, I must move. At this point, I am reminded of a quote that has become somewhat popular in recent years(I believe the recession had a lot to do with that):

"Being enlightened is no longer enough, you must apply
Being willing is no longer acceptable, you must do."

Some among you may noticed that I have used this before. Indeed. When it no longer has a purposeful invocation, I will cease to beckon & borrow wisdom from it. Until that day comes, I will continue to find new ways to get over myself and my emotional reactions. I admit it is a hard thing to do. I have far to go. I like to channel my anger into getting over myself. Sometimes, the path is fairly short like yesterday's eruption. Other times, the turmoil goes undetected. I can only see what my eyes define and my experience illustrates as having value. For now, "purpose" has a much greater value than most things and that is what I am working toward.

Although the threat of employment is imminent, I was prodded into not being too accepting. Perhaps, I should not take that anything is guaranteed. I will be made to work for every scrap my fingers draw from the pile of scraps. And if I am to place myself into a career field, I need to do a perfunctory assessment of what all of that means for me.

I am too determined to do things my way. That is unhealthy. Not that I cannot acclimate to more structured environments, simply that I go into a different version of the guy everybody knows. I work extremely well within hierarchies. I do not work well in free flowing crap slinging contests. For you or anyone to understand that difference, you would actually need to know me, listen to my intent underneath and behind my words(or just watch as I wilt all over twitter). The world is too efficient at jading the way we see things. Everybody a critic; everybody a cynic.

You're either this or that. I like being between those. That was the source of my conflict. Conditionally claiming both to look good under criticism. My hopefulness. My positivity. My certainty. I used them all as shields to deflect the criticism. Childishly. Anyway, I'm hoping to dump who I was yesterday/today for who I can be tomorrow. I am still cheating. I am still taking advantage of my best attributes. At this point, I have grown desperate and will not mind being faulted for relying on whatever I can.

Perhaps, this drive...this sense of determination is what I have been secretly relying upon. Knowing it exists is enough to skew the results. Especially, if merely being watched can alter an outcome. And that much is certainly true. The "Observation effect" is still valid. Watch me. Change the outcome.

Dumb

Of the countless amazing things I have experienced in my short life, the most incredible was feeling understood. It lasted for such a fragmented moment that I cannot tell if things really went as I remembered or if I just imagined my joy.

I am a tortured soul, not because anybody tortured me but because of how I torture myself in believing and having hope. People aren't built like me for a reason. Black people aren't built like me for a reason. To look in the face of all of these facts and pretend the only thing that matters is what I do? Even on my best day, I know that circumstance trumps all.

I win a lot. More than my fair share, some would say. I also lose more than I win. I lose so much that the bitter taste has become enjoyable and sustaining. I am not for the weak at heart. My thoughts are more potent than the strongest of coffees. My emotions are more intoxicating than the truest of wines. I am that pure and uncut. The unfortunate truth behind that is few people can take a dose of me and not OD. To cut my purity, I get high on others. I try to keep myself distracted. 

People fail to grasp how I work. The techniques I use and, oddly enough, mind numbingly dull conversation is thrilling to them. It almost doesn't matter who I am talking with. People pretend too much for my liking. There is a ton of shit I do not know. I don't pretend I know more than I do. I have been dealing with small minded folk who relish pointing out the facts that they feel, elevate them above you. Cool, you excluded somebody. Great job.

I am so sick of working harder to be a decent human being every day. Why try when there is nothing but trolls around me? Isolated and becoming more distant every day. Seeing the battle of good versus evil and not being involved is tearing me apart. I did try to push people toward an understanding but now, I just watch the stupid shit roll by. My heart is emptying and I don't feel sad about it. I don't feel anything at all. 

All of my excitement and positivity that came from how people remembered the old me. All of the positive words and encouragement I received, feels pointless. I'm sickened by my lot in life. Not because I feel I failed. I feel sick because I see how horribly the world has failed. How resilient the masses are in  doing a minimal to change things. How silly the entire idea of using thought to make things matter. 

See, in the core of how I am, who I am, is the basis of how I interact with others. If I need to change that core, I may never truly care about others again. Who cares, right? What's it matter to any of you? I wouldn't say it does. It could. And that should be the scary thought. A good guy gone evil is one of the scariest things walking the earth.

Now, people may read this and start using half-assed assumptive logic to conclude that I'm just having a hard time or I'm not getting my way or I'm griping about low paying employment. Well, it's nothing of the sort. These are the thoughts of after taste...after I have a conversation with a person. These are the thoughts of shock and awe at the callous disregard I see others exhibit in traffic. Most of all these are the thoughts that respond to excuses, justifications and hypocrisy. 

I'm not enraged but I am discontent. I'm not outwardly, nor inwardly destructive. I cannot change this horrible world. I do not have the spark necessary to convert a city nor a nation of zombies. It just is what it is and I need to better learn to disguise how I really feel because nobody can take it. I'll let the coward come out to play. That seems like who everybody wants anyway. The coward.

It's never just one thing, not just one straw but the straw the breaks the camels back; the ounce that sinks the ship; the difference between not making it another second and lasting for the foreseeable future. And I cannot help but feel as if I hit that point while trying to find something; anything that could work for me. I have failed yet again. One more loss. Another loss. What more can I say?

Not the answer

From a bullied child to a troubled "Master Chef", it appears the theme of today is suicide. Especially since I blocked someone on twitter, who constantly threatened folks(on twitter) with suicide. Personally, I don't give a shit one way or another if you think that me giving a damn about you is going to make me coddle you. I'm not the man for hostage negotiations. Maybe someday I'll receive training but the moment you try to take my emotions hostage, that's the moment I dump everything you thought you knew about me into the river and begin again.

First, suicide is selfish. There is no getting away from that fundamental understanding. Anything after that is either dissecting the causes of suicidal ideation or the sources that inspired the ideation. Sure, there are much softer people in the world who will crumble for an individual that is hellbent on bringing an end to their perceived suffering. I'm sure every ounce of suffering is legitimate but only a mere fraction of that is unavoidable.

I am not in a good mood talking about suicide. My brother and sister have threatened. I've had plenty of friends who have threatened. My last partner, she threatened countless times. I resented them to the core for abusing my faith in them. None of these people are even a tad bit slow. Maybe they wanted some sympathy and didn't know how to communicate; maybe they seriously wanted to end it all either way, I cannot inspire them to live. And after the countless attempts of trying to inspire folks to live, I realized I never could. I realized that I was being toyed with. Because I'm soft. Because I'm soft on people. They think if they claim I'm being too hard on them, I'll leave them alone. The thing is, I'm virtually non-existent. I don't nag people. At best, a gentle reminder in the form of a question.

I have been made into the bully before and it got under my skin. We all know I'm a black man. I've been accused of so many countless things that I was nowhere within a thirty mile radius of when these crimes were committed. Being a bully, no, that certainly isn't one. But that brings me back to this 9 year old kid that hung himself. First, how is a kid bullied to a suicidal extent and the parents fail to notice...and everyone fails to notice. The kid was nine, for bullying from his peers to be enough to push him over the edge, and nothing else share the blame, I am absolutely dumbfounded. Now, I talked to a few women about it and they rapidly arose to blame television. But who controls the remote? Who pays for that television that inspires kids to off themselves before they make it into their preteens? Parents/Guardians.

At this point it should be fairly obvious that I'm not buying the simple "bullies" argument. I'm not arguing that the bullies couldn't inspire such a response but at that age and solely responsible? That's too easy. Letting everybody who failed that child off the hook too easily. Furthermore, they say the kid was teased for being "white". Excuse me? Yeah, get the search party everyone, we're looking for a scapegoat. But folk read "9 year old commits suicide for being bullied because of his white skin" and now we have a stab at reverse racism that will be quoted by self-serving bigots for years to come.

I don't think you can stop somebody who wants to commit suicide. If they really want to, nothing you can do. If they are crying out, that is a sign of other problems. I can hardly find the room to feel sympathy or pity. Have I been suicidal before? Mildly. It was the ideation that forced me to look in the mirror and kill the excuses. That suicidal ideation is addictive. The moment you open the mind to those possibilities, the more it gets addicted to self mutilation. The more it does that, the more you think that you should simply "do it". Except, I hated the idea. I talked myself through to the truth of the matter and resolved my way out of that hell. I am not even slightly convinced that most people can do that. Nor  do I expect them to.

But I was my biggest problem. Nobody else. The moment I accepted responsibility, I mean, we as a people are given excuses and allowed to blame others for how we feel. That is a horrible aspect of humanity. Never is another person responsible for how we feel. Never. That doesn't exist. We may relinquish agency of our emotions but that is still our choice. And though suicide is an excuse in my eyes, I recognize that my depth on the subject matter is not substantial. What I say comes from a place of giving a damn about others. I simply cannot live for them. I can forgive them for choosing suicide. I cannot excuse the choice. I don't need to be right. This is merely my opinion. And the way that it is established within a hierarchy of thoughts, it will take a phenomenal onslaught of education to alter my outlook.

I blame the parents, the friends, the society, the assholes who are supported and cherished. I blame society and the individual. People aren't born suicidal. It isn't just a bad relationship or a lost job that drives people to it.
I got out of my way so that people know I care. Consistently, for anyone remotely troubled. Just because I care. Don't think you can come at me because my views seem calloused. You don't know my pain. How my heart aches when I see somebody has taken their life. Yet, it was fair to assume my words were a summation of my character because I don't see fit to blame the bullies for something that took community cooperation to achieve? Yeah, okay.

Hypocrisy is one hell of a drug. I cannot leave myself to commiserating with people who commit suicide. And who has the nerve to tell me how to be. I deal with things my way and you deal with them your way. You don't like what I'm saying about people doing things I didn't like them doing? Oh, nice to see you uphold the same standards for me as you do for the person you think I'm belittling and yourself. If you cannot see the connection, I'll make it transparently crystal.

I have a thought. You don't like my thought and make a judgment based on it.

My thought was based on an action somebody else took and I made a judgment.

The action somebody else took was a judgment about what others told them.

It's ironic, when you remove the "skin" of the occurrence and look at what happens, that you are no better than either of us. Just a part of the trinity. We can make special exceptions for people who talk about those who kill themselves yet we cannot make the same exception for those who actually kill themselves. Seems just a wee bit biased to me.

Meanwhile, I have not killed anybody. I'm mad at the murderer. You're mad at the person who is mad at the murderer. Still doesn't make sense to me. Should I continue counting the hypocrisy? There's always more. I neither put the blade in their hand nor did I want anybody to kill themselves. That's a personal choice. We're stupid as a nation to think we should protect each other from ourselves(in intentional self afflicted harm...not lack of caution type stuff).

About all of the grown black men who committed suicide, it tears my heart up to see that mess. Nobody was there for them. Nobody could reach them. Imagine the good they could have done for the black community...they were legends purely for making it to fame. And now they're gone forever. Tell me again how suicide isn't selfish and shouldn't be criticized. Cause all I see is over identifying with somebody who ultimately was nothing like you. Even if I do nothing else with my life, I don't see myself giving suicide much attention from myself or others. There's too much beauty in life. And you choose to see it or not. You don't get to blame me because of your negativity.

Pilot Light

Recently I learned that I'm not seeing half as much as I thought. I do see a lot but I'm so focused that I also miss a lot. Having something incredible surprise you with enjoyment has a tendency to make you reassess your ways as to not miss out on anymore.

I went on that date with a young woman. She was a ball of fun. Not that I felt any kind of way about it but she left me with some strong impressions. I have been thinking about her ever since. The first time in a year that I have thought about anybody other than Black Pearl, for longer than ten minutes. I honestly couldn't tell if it was because she was so sweet or if it was because I've become a shut in recluse. After a few days of just thinking about it, I realized that I still don't like what I didn't use to like. She sparked something greater than lust and enjoyment. She inspired me to be interested in her. I haven't forgotten how I've turned down quite a few women this year. And the reminder that some were gifted with some exceptional beauty.

That's not to say she isn't pretty. She is very pretty. And if she had a professional makeup job done, you wouldn't be able to tell she isn't a superstar. I can see a lot of beauty in her face. But most people look average without makeup, so what am I saying? Just that, she isn't lacking on her own merits. Not that I'm quite so deep in like that I want to talk to her all the time or anything. I just want to repay her spending time with me with a gesture of the same. I wouldn't be surprised if more was lit between us but as things are, I simply appreciate the quality of her character. She's dope. She's exceptional. She's great. And still, I'm merely acknowledging her.

I've been through a few women since I wanted to be married. I let go of the idea of "age & marriage" because, well, I'm 31 now. Nearly a decade older than I expected to be when I thought I'd be married. Somewhere inside, I still want to be married but the dream itself, feels crushed. In a moment of bitterness, I considered catching up on all the women I've missed out on. That idea simply doesn't add up in my observation of logic. I've never been greedy but often stingy. I expected that whoever shares with me, would feel similarly. And going on one date with this woman has reminded me that there are really great women out there that feel like I feel. Similar fears, similar goals, similar things to offer. I'm not so weird after all.

Typically, I cast a wide net. Since last year, I've cast no nets. I didn't want to catch anything. After the date, I got up and began to untangle my nets. Before I cast that net, I'll explore whether this woman is worth my investment. Although we joke together and get along fairly effortlessly, we aren't but in the wading pool. We got an ocean deep to explore and I don't truly know if we'll make it off the beach. I guess, I'm back up and off of reflection. It's blitzing forward at a frenetic pace, utilizing all effort to progress by any means. I am back in the flow. Unfortunately, my long rest has depleted my vitality. I need to rebuild it. I just hope I can. Because a shark can't stop swimming......