The Darkness Within Me

     As I ponder all my past days on this earth I realize that I am the person that I have always been. It has not been an easy journey to my present. Hardships, losses and heartbreak have followed me like a ravenous wolf prowling for its’ supper.

     As the water has ebbed and flowed along the riverbank, pulling me along with it, I have had good times and bad as everyone has that has been placed on this rock since the beginning of time. There have been those times when the water flowed slowly and I could look at the surrounding scenery and marvel at what Mother Nature has bestowed upon my wondering eyes. There were also those times that the current was fast and rough, making life difficult just to survive. Those experiences have made me into who I am, who I always was- the man that pulled at the bit trying to gallop into the open. The man that is now.

     Now I find myself caught in a series of rapids that I am not sure that I will be able to navigate. The battles that I have fought before were no more or less difficult but, they did not prepare me for this. I have fought through poverty since I ventured out on my own at seventeen. I have been subject to scandal and being talked about. I have persevered and won. But those battles were on distant shores. The battle I am fighting now is on my own ground, in my own country. I am fighting the land itself it seems. The water is rough and treacherous with no end in sight. My raft is filled to overflowing with emotions and memories, conflicting thoughts, rumors and strife.

     The people that I have been the closest to have always been the ones that I hurt the most. I have pushed them away in one way or another for various reasons. I am most happy, yet most sad, when alone. Loneliness and isolation go hand in hand even though I desire one and hate the other. That has been my bane: conflicting emotions. My father told me when I was a teenager that I was prone to thinking with my heart and my head is where I should be. I took his advice and started thinking without emotion for a large part of my adult years. My heart was kept locked away, except when it came to my children, who had my heart wholly. Because I was fighting my basic make-up, using logic instead of emotion, the conflicts within me have brought me to where I am.

     These rapids, this battlefield, the mountain with sheer cliffs and no hand or foot holds are to be my final epic battle. This battle will be my last. I will either win with major losses or will go out in a blaze of glory with stories being told of the feats of total ignorance that made the loss so great. I will be in the same column as George Custer as he led his cavalry to certain death at the Battle of Little Big Horn. The immense idiocy of that battle will be overshadowed by my own.

     My loved ones, please do not take my inattentiveness, my lack of responses, my indecisions to your requests nor my callousness as not caring. I am fighting on my own and desire no one’s assistance. At this time your need for my attention is merely an interruption to my internal war. You may see the façade of happiness or the mask may come off and you will glimpse the tears of sorrow and regret. But, I need not any help. This is something that I must do on my own even though you may believe that I am in dire circumstances and require reinforcements. The few that will be able to help will not be forthcoming as they are all totally immersed in their own lives as they should. My life is my own and theirs is where they should be.

     I apologize to those that I have misguided down the path of life through advice given from my own experiences. I apologize to those that I have hurt along the way because of my quest for whatever I was after. If I have wronged anyone, at any time, for any reason, it was out of my own stupidity and recklessness. I meant no one any intentional harm. There are a few people that have been in my life that I have described as being hedonistic, or a Dorian Grey. I must take the plank out of my own eye before trying to remove the splinter from another’s. My hedonistic tendencies are so obvious to me now that I must beg forgiveness to those that I have accused.

     Live, love, laugh. Dance as if no one is watching and sing as if no one is listening. Carpe diem! The past is gone, today is forever and tomorrow is just one of yesterday’s dreams. The ‘NOW’ is what is important, not what has been or what will be. Live life to the fullest and enjoy what you have instead of trying to get what you don’t really need. If you love someone, let them know. Don’t use those three little words recklessly. Use “I love you” only when you really mean it. Too many people are too quick to say them just to make someone feel good or to get what they want. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Words should not be wasted nor uttered aimlessly. Theodore Roosevelt said it best, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

     My loved ones: my children, my family, my friends. My life has been devoted to you only as far as my own desires have allowed. At no time would I have not gone to battle for any of you, whether physically or through words. The list is much too long to put down on paper but, I believe, you all know who you are. For those that think they are there but are not, those are the ones that only are there for what they could get. I know the meaning of loving someone without qualification: to love wholeheartedly without asking for anything in return. I have so few that know what that feeling is. There have been so very few people in my life that I can say were special to me, other than my true children. So few that, if those people didn’t know already, I could list them without using up a single line on a sheet of paper.

     I have had a good life all-in-all. I have made mistakes and have regrets. I will continue to make mistakes as I am only human. The regrets are only because I now know that those experiences were out of total disillusionment and the desire to quench my thirst for that particular nectar. Later in life, as you look back and can see the fallacy of all that you have thought was what you wanted, or needed, you will have the same regrets. My only hope is that the good overpowers the bad and that on the Day of Judgment that regret is not foremost for anyone. My regrets have become an anchor that is keeping me from progressing further into the future with an even keel. The sea is rough with high waves crashing over the bow, drenching the deck with the brine of a life wasted as it could have gone in a better direction.

     My children are the good things that have come out of the unions I have enslaved myself with over the decades. I loved not one of my ex-wives but I love my children without question. Each child has brought their own joys and sorrows but each one has been loved more than life itself by their father. That is the legacy I will leave this world with: A father’s love is just as great and strong as a mother’s.

     My life has been a song, sometimes a love song, sometimes a heart-break, sometimes though-provoking and others a head-banger’s heaven. I can always come up with some song that covers the thought, feeling or situation that I am in. If someone wants to know the mood I am in, the emotions I am feeling, all they have to do is listen to what music I am listening to. Music is the release of what the artist is feeling and that projects the emotions of the one listening to it. Some days are diamonds, some days are stone. Air Supply, Styx, Three Dog Night, John Denver, George Jones, Rod Stewart, Poison, even Simple Plan and many others come into the repertoire of music that encompasses the emotions that a single person can feel.

     Maybe is has not become as obvious as I am intending that this is me, my life, in a nutshell. My life is an open book for the most part but, there are those hidden places that no one knows about. There are those dark recesses in my mind that even I dare not venture into often. When I do get the courage, or the fool-hardiness, to enter those dark places I am faced with a monster, a man not of this world. There are things hidden in that abyss of misery and mystery that are as evil as any demon Lucifer could set upon this Earth. The secrets that are held there are dark and not to be taken lightly. I must have control at all times or some of those dark, dirty secrets may surface with abandon; uncontrollable and without guilt or conscience. Even the deepest pit of Tartarus is too good a prison for some of what is hidden there. Hel would be put to the test if she had to guard that place.

     I have ventured into that place in recent days and have discovered that some of the evil may have escaped. I am not sure as I did not venture too far lest I lose myself within the netherworld of mist and mayhem. I have lost control once or twice and cannot recall the events that I was involved in. That is when those little monsters, those loathsome demons, take advantage and let loose with a vengeance that there is no equal to. “If I can’t remember, it didn’t happen.” Thank you, my son, for those words of wisdom. That does not mean that some evil was not loosed upon the earth and wreaked havoc that is lost in a haze of jumbled brain cells. My hope is that those demons, most likely to creep into the world, were not so adamant to create regrets as I fear.

     Does this sound like the ramblings of a man lost? There are disjointed thoughts and cryptic comments. What is being said here? Are these the ramblings of a deranged, suicidal degenerate or just thoughts put down for the world to see? Are these words just following the flow of whatever music is being listened to at the moment or is the river flowing stronger than expected and the current throwing the mind around so violently as to not have a continuous flow? Good questions. Questions without an answer that would suffice to even the most infantile mind. Manic at one moment, depressive the next. Oh, what a beautiful mind. Although filled with a fragmented hodge-podge of wisdom that most would find useless or of less than desirable interest, it is filled with knowledge that has been earned over five decades of living in a chaotic world of unrest, greed, mistrust, disloyalty and deceit. It is knowledge that a person is born to die and there is nothing that can be done to prevent the inevitable demise of all things.

     “Fly, you fools!” Gandalf the Grey made this plea to the band of comrades trying to rid the world of the One Ring while knowing that he would have to battle one of the most evil of monsters. I say to you, “Fly, you fools! Fly before the monster in me is what you will be fighting.”” I would rather hurt myself than to ever make you cry. There is nothing left to say but, Goodbye.” I must protect the ones I love. It is you that is need of help during the coming battle that will be fought in my mind. It is my responsibility as your friend, your confidante, your mentor, to protect you from the evil to come. I love you and refuse to hurt you. If you stay, if you take a stand, be prepared for things that you would not see coming. The demons in my mind, in that hidden place, will pour forth upon the landscape with nothing but destruction as their ultimate goal. Trust will be betrayed. Morals and good judgment will be forgotten. Hedonism, anarchy, sarcasm and cynicism will prevail. The only ones that cannot escape this are my children. I am responsible for them and they have nowhere to hide. But, to everyone else: Fly!

     The ones that are even remotely able to help during this will not be forthcoming. As much as I love them, as much as I depend on them and they on me, they will keep their distance. They are engrossed in their own lives, as it should be. My life is mine and theirs are theirs. I am not the center of the universe in anyone’s world except my own. I will not be able, for a time, to be there for them as I have in the past. There will be times when everyone is ignored, forgotten except as a distant memory. When the war is over my one hope is that all will be as it was before.

     This is not going to be pretty. As stated already trust will be broken, people will probably hate me because of this. Good judgment and morals will be shredded and things may happen that are totally out of character for me. This is like the Vulcan Pon-Far. All logic will disappear and the instinctive, chaotic, pre-evolution part of my being will take over and I really don’t know what all will happen. I really don’t know what evil will come out of my mind. Mid-life crisis? Hardly. Stress induced paranoid schizophrenia with a touch of psychosis and maybe homicidal tendencies. The Greeks and Romans, even the Celts, will look like saints is one of my fears. My biggest fear is that I will be left alone with absolutely no one left because of what may, or may not, happen within my deranged mind.

     Love and sex, friends and lovers, wants and desires, needs and necessities may become intertwined into one big ball of fury with no remorse. May, or may not. I wish I had some concrete answers to even my most basic of questions. I may come out of this unscathed, with all in order and nothing, not even a single hair, out of place. My friends will still be there, still care and come around to sit round the table and talk about everything from what is happening at work to who the latest gossip is about. My fear, as stated previously, is that I will end up alone, sitting here doing nothing but playing solitaire and wishing I had been stronger and less vulnerable to the whims of a weak mind. No one coming by to talk, no one here but my kids. Alone. But, if that happens I will have no one to blame but myself. I will be living in Margaritaville with a new tattoo and a hangover.

     Now that you have had a closer look into the hidden, closed book of my life do you still love me? Am I still your friend? Only you know at this point. I will figure it out.