Don't Forget That I Love You

The carpet was teal and striped with every ugly color the mind could imagine. He looked down between his knees and folded hands to his feet and couldn't bring his eyes back up. He thought of everything they had been through. He thought of the tears and the laughter. He thought of the times he would have never made it through without her. He thought of their wedding in the sun. Their family and friends all gathered and celebrated. He could not wait to be her husband. He thought of their children that shared both of their traits equally, but both sharing their sensitivity and sincerity. He always wanted a home. He had one finally.

But now, it seems lost. He made a mistake and everything is going away into the dark. He made a series of mistakes. He made a habit out of making mistakes. This one was the one mistake.

He wasn't a stranger to failure to say the least. He had been to jail more times than he had voted for a president. He had lost his family and most of his friends. He was at the bottom when he was released from jail and found himself wanting to go back or just go away somewhere that people couldn't be hurt by him anymore.

Then she showed up, this beautiful girl that tended the bar he frequented. He didn't recognize her, so he introduced himself. She was quiet, but confident. He left his number on the bar napkin and walked out, ready to end everything this night. He thought to himself, "What if she calls?" It really didn't matter. He was done being lonely.

He walked to the bridge and stood on the ledge. He had decided not to hurt anyone else for his benefit of going back to jail. This time, he would only hurt himself...for milliseconds. He felt the wind on his face as he stood there alone in the night sky. The snow was falling and he couldn't help but put out his tongue one last time. He couldn't find a tear in him left, so he let go of the suspension cable and felt the wind on his face as he fell to the black water. He closed his eyes, half in fear, and half in solitude and heard the phone ring. Then nothing was heard.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. His eyes opened. The lights were blurry and no one was there, but he knew he was alive. Everything began hurting a half an hour later. It didn't matter...the pain. He made it through the darkness. He was supposed to die, but right now, as he lays here, he doesn't want to be dead. In fact, he very much wants to be alive.

He recovers and leaves the hospital. He has one job. He has to find out who called him. His phone was broken. He believed the call was a sign from God. He search high and low. He called his mother, who hated him. He called his father, who hated him before he was even born. He called his friends. He called his enemies. Nothing.

He left his house distraught that night, resigning himself to jump from an even higher bridge. He stopped in to the bar to get drunk when he saw her again. He sat down and looked at her. She was so beautiful that it made his hands shake. He could live a life with her. She looked back and smiled. She walked over to him. "I tried to call you."

Obviously, he didn't tell her why he didn't answer for almost a year later, but he had finally found happiness. He had love...finally. The kid who had nothing had someone so wonderful he couldn't even look at her without trembling.

They made a home.


***



But then he made the mistake of getting drunk for ten years.

He couldn't remember much except that she was all he had ever had, but the things he never had or lost were too much for him to bear.

She left in the middle of the night without malice. She left with understanding, but she had to leave.

As he looked at that carpet, he realized that he wanted to die again. For the first time in ages, he didn't want to be alive. Maybe he never did, but what he had was something he had never deserved.

He got up and raced to their home...the place where their children's height's are marked into the wall at various stages of growth. The place he would dance with her in the living room on Saturday nights when the kids were sleeping. The place where the first person who had ever loved him wiped his eyes of his tears when his best friend died.

She was crying when he opened the door. He was sober. He wasn't going to drink again. He wasn't going to make these mistakes anymore, because these mistakes put him right back onto the bridge. He wanted her. He wanted his family. He wanted all of the things that he never deserved. He expected the worst from her..for no reason.

She smiled back at him and embraced him. "Welcome home. Don't forget that I love you."


Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

A Blog About Judging For Yourselves.

Whatever makes a good story. That us American media. The intent is to stir up hatred and tension between races of people so the network can report the "news" to the masses, who do not regularly fact check what they hear.

The predominate story right now of an unarmed kid who got shot by the police to death. The story in the media is about racism and hatred for black teenagers. The police officers are automatically being demonized. Without any facts. On the other side, the media is posting thug-like pics from the kids Facebook to get a contrary response.

The problem is, there aren't any facts at all. There is only the police side of the story and nothing else.

But who cares about that stuff? Who cares if the kid was an idiot or the cops corrupt? The problem is that another person has died. It doesn't matter what your opinion is on the story, a kid died. He's not coming back. This was his last ride on this earth.

The media wants to exploit him. The world wants the cop's head on a platter. The police want the rioting to stop and have taken excessive force to stop it. All the while, the media is hoping for more bloodshed to they can lure you in with their lies.

Please be careful America. I don't know the full story and neither do you. But the fact remains that people are dying and racism is very real. The television wants you to hate. They want you to jump to conclusions. They want you to tine in for their next terrible attempt at journalism. My advice is to look it up and be very wary to judge anyone. I believe there is wisdom in that.



Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

Apathy

Things and people cycle in an out of your life at different times for different reasons. You need some people for a time or they need you and for some reason, both of you are there at just the right time to lift the other out of the mud. Sadly, most people go away from you. Most people, without malice take a different path and your time with them is all but forgotten. You live hard and work to keep yourself and your family afloat and forget what that person was to you. Then out of no where, a song comes on or you pass their neighborhood and a crushing feeling in your chest halts your breathing. All of the sudden you miss this person as if they had always been at your side and suddenly died. Sometimes, of course the person never left and was always at your side, then they die. In either case, you swiftly remember how much you took that time for granted.

The world is so awful right now. Maybe it always has been, but technology is empowered to bring calamity into our living rooms. There is so much suffering in the world and it's easy to see a picture of a screaming father holding his dead daughter in his arms with her face removed and charred, and simply grit your teeth and move on. We see so evil much that we forget. I forget that that could be me screaming and holding my daughter as a photographer smells a Time Magazine cover in the making. People are so hardened.

If we could just learn empathy, we could be a great society. We would act when needed and reach out to the hurting and stop judging people. We would remember what people have meant to us and realize that person means the same to someone else. We could finally feel our feelings again.

I really strive to conquer this apathy inside me.


Sing.
Migrate.






Thanks for reading...Z

We Are Children

I was sitting on the porch with the wife and watching the neighborhood move about like they always do. They are predictable, like I am. They park their cars and go inside with dinner sometimes and then silence, until they are randomly standing on their front lawns as if they were SIMS avatars. It sparked my curiosity.

What separates humanity from avatars that just do a routine and randomly or systematically go places and perform certain duties? Mrs. Horowitz is on her porch just standing there still. Mr. Lukoshavitze is walking his yard without reason or perceivable purpose. People moving one predictable place to another, not seeming to notice the actions around them. Am I the only person in my neighborhood that sees this? What is this?

Humanity is sometimes so lifeless. People do things for many reasons, and some make no sense at all. People are a product of habit and upbringing. Many will follow suit just because. It started to bother me watching people drone about like lemmings. Then a stupid scripted video reminded me why people are different than avatars.

This Video

It was stupid, but reminded me that I daily flip my kids all over and laugh so hard with my wife. The difference is the heart behind the actions. I think that we have to be reminded not to let life become some moron behind a remote control forcing us into their routine. We are human. We are a beautiful creation of God, each unique and worthy of the attention of angels.

Consider this Bible verse.

New Living Translation
1 Peter 1:12 They were told that their messages were not for themselves, but for you. And now this Good News has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. It is all so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen.


Even the angels are eagerly watching our lives unfold. How great is that?!? We mean something to someone. We are more than just moving energy. We are children. 





Sing.
Migrate.





Thanks for reading...Z

Humanity

I'm watching the news tonight and they bring up a story about this woman who was hit and ran over by a boat. She is a pretty lady, has a cute little kid, and a very supportive husband that just "wants his wife to be ok." The news channel as filthy as they are flash no less than 10 different photos of this poor woman in the ICU intubated and sedated...mouth agape and eyes open. If I allowed photos of my wife like this, if she woke up, I'd end up in that bed.

It's really gross.

This is a person. This isn't about getting a good shot to shock the audience into captivation. This woman may die and leave her son without a mother, father without wife. Both of these thoughts, if I insert myself into the story instead of him are stomach turning. We shrug off death life it doesn't matter. We hear these terrible stories and keep moving forward as if it's ok as long as the tragedy stays over there and not here. I almost died a couple a few times. The prospect still rattles my thoughts when it crosses into my present.

I was a stupid kid. I was a cliche of a kid like me in some movie that America will always wish a happy ending to. I had nothing. Few people loved me. I was angry and full of anxiety. I treated people badly out of anger or fear or whatever. I remember this night when my mother and brother went out of town. I lived with my brother in an upper flat above my mother's house. I saw an opportunity to self destruct. I invited dozens of people that I didn't care about and whom didn't care about me. I filled the fridge with alcohol and opened up my mother's flat as well. I think I just wanted to be surrounded by people that were there because of me.

People came. A lot of people. They ate my chips and drank my beer and as the night aged and my eyes blurred, I became honest with myself. Only a few of these people would show up to my funeral. Vice Versa. I snuck out without being noticed and sat on the swing in the backyard watching the smoke billow from my mouth and into the night sky and wished it was all over.

I believe this was the end of trying.

It was F*&^ the world from this moment on. I pushed everyone away except Will (The Body),  Joe (Gumby), and Vernon (Andy). I was bent on my own destruction. I would drink and drink and ended most nights only seeing colors and lights. I would wake to filth and dread. I'm not going to go further with the story, because I think you can see the path clear enough.

I was rarely treated like a human being by those outside of my very small blood and non-blood family. I was either fun, or crazy, awful, or an object of fascination like a shocking news story. I tell you this because I think we all have been guilty of seeing someone as something other than human. Maybe not even on purpose, but because hearts get hard. People mess up too much and that's the end of your compassion. Someone cuts you off in traffic and they become and idiot. A police officer gives you a ticket for speeding and they are worthless and abusive of power and tax-payers money. Meanwhile, all of these people go home and continue trying to figure out how to be human.

It's hard to be a human. Life is really hard. We have to learn to live without those we have always lived with when they die or leave. We have to deal with failure and rejection. We are tested endlessly and it seems as if everyone else is walking this road seamlessly and you continue to stumble.

I look at what I have when I am sitting on the couch next to my wife with my children draped all over us and I shiver to think I may have given up my entire future to the "end of trying." I now know what it means to be really loved because of who I am. It's likely I was by many people my whole life, but didn't know it when I had it. It took my wife wading through my faults and eccentricities and vowing to continue to love me. It took my kids looking at me for their protection when they are scared, to realize that I mean something to someone.

I've told this story before, but I was in a different place then. When Will died on Christmas, I had a hard time being around my own family because I didn't want their Christmas to be associated with grief. They were downstairs playing with their new toys and I retreated upstairs to the living room window and leaned my head against it to look at the lights. Christmas has always been my most favorite days. I couldn't see anything in those lights that made me see beauty at all this day. All I saw was my best friend, my chosen brother on a gurney being put into a van while his four children wept and his mother had to be held back from him. It had rained the entire day. My head against the window, my tears began to run down it, racing the rain to the bottom. At that moment I did not believe I could be anything to anyone anymore.

But then my little girl, age 3 1/2 years old approached me and put her little arm around my leg. I looked down, trying to wipe my face and not drop tears on her cheeks. She reached up to me and gave me a little plastic heart from a beaded necklace kit. My 3 year old knew me enough to know my heart wasn't ok. She gave me the prettiest one she could find. From this day on, I knew I was going to be ok. This was not the end of trying. She showed me true humanity.


Sing.
Migrate.




Thanks for reading...Z

Being Remembered

If asked any given day within the last 36 years of my life what my biggest fear was, I would give the same answer every time. Not Existing. It isn't rare or unique or anything special really. I'm not so afraid of death or the act of dying, but the not existing concept lingers in the back of my mind and makes me want to run from each thought of it. This thinking causes one to live every moment in the now, but also motivates their actions to reflect fear.

Today I came across a very disturbing meme on the internet. The unknown quote read, "One day you will die. And you will be forgotten." Although this isn't immediately true as you will have loved ones who will mourn you. But it occurred to me that I have no recollection or knowledge of anyone more than a couple of generations before me. One day, i'll have been dead for 60 years and not a single soul will entertain thoughts of me. I will not grace the stream of memories and vague photographs that make up a memory to anyone left on this planet.

At first, I was instantly saddened and clicked away in defiance of my impending doom. Then, as I continued my night, it occurred to me that fear is crippling to real life. Sadness is also rooted in fear. Sadness is also crippling to a real life. I mourn the dead because I miss them, but maybe more because I cannot truly know without doubt that I will ever see them again. I fear non-existence because I cannot know without doubt that I will live on in another state after this life. I believe both, but I have been wrong more than right in my life it seems to me.

So I decided that this terribly depressing meme actually was a comfort to me. It is mandate to live a better life. If I can resign myself to live without fear, I can truly make change. I can be liberated from myself and be happy if I can just remember that no one is going to remember any of my actions, save the less than 10% of people that are remembered in history, I can calm down finally. Maybe I won't panic and drop my stomach when I realize the next 36 years aren't necessarily going to be quite as exciting as the first. I realize that I am older now than I ever thought I'd be at my age. I should be at peace at 36 years old and enjoying every moment of my days.

It takes faith to let go of your false sense of responsibility for keeping yourself alive. It's not really our job to keep ourselves from dying, nor our job to inspire the future to remember you. We should take care of our health for quality of life reasons and also to keep from becoming a hindrance to our loved ones, but we cannot change a single moment that we will be facing. We will add no years to our lives. We are going to be born and we are going to die. These times, God has appointed for us.




Sing.
Migrate.



 Thanks for reading...Z

Miracles Happen Laura

After thirteen years of marriage, my wife is still reluctant to believe the tails of my travels. I have been many places and have more stories than the average 36 year old. Many just so unbelievable.

But...

What if a person volunteered every time the world asked for one? What if the same person raised his hand very time?

My son is a prime example. He is eleven. He has been on Good Morning America. He has been filmed doing the weather for hundreds in New York to see. He has broken his femur, the largest bone in his body and hardest to break. He is me as a child.

So is it so hard to believe that...

I saved a Chinaman?
May have found a dead football player? (Perhaps)
Been driven home by Tiger Woods?

Could be I am telling the truth. Hard as it may be to prove or believe, I may be the guy that has volunteered for miraculous stories.





Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Graduation Day

At my high school graduation party, I can remember four friends being there. The rest were my mom's friends. I remember only my brothers Will, Joe, Andy, and Jeff. There wasn't anything extravagant...a gazebo and a back yard. I remember I was wearing my Rage Against the Machine shirt I bought for just this event. We played our signature game of Water Twister in which we ended in a tie between me and Will of course. There wasn't a single thing we could defeat each other in. We always tied. It's a wonder that I'm still alive.  

We spent our last year of high school lying on the hood of his car and looking into the sky, trying to figure out how we were going to remain in that moment forever with all of that chaos.

We knew the good and the bad were coming, we just wanted to enjoy right now as it happened. None of us ever lived as if we were ever going to grow old. We planned to die young. None of us wanted to fade away with no one looking. I guess we were the definition of teenage invincibility. In our hearts, we were kings of the world and no one could touch us.

We grew up. Things touched us...easily.

Will died and we scattered. We chose different paths to cope. We all chose to let our guts rot out for a while.

I chose to move forward in my career and my family. I focused and achieved so much, but I feel I lost the ability with one of my brothers to sit in the basement and argue with God. After a while, God didn't seem to be listening to my anger. At some point, I had to move forward and forget everything I have ever known about God. I had to resign that God had a different definition of fair and good than I did. He will always. For that I guess I will always be angry with Him. For me, it isn't fair and no god could see my brother as he was and still allow him to depart from his family. I just don't get it and I never will.

Most of us have moved on never forgetting, but in spite of the loss that lingers in our stomachs, we move towards the light.

We have been through hell and saw the sunlight on the other side. I think of graduation day and remember peeing on that high school sign with Will, so excited to finally be done with school and to finally prove that we were worthy despite their standards.

We celebrated my graduation that day, but all I can remember about my senior year is the two of us lying on a car hood, scared and excited for the future.

I want to change your future so badly. I want to make God's blessings for you reflect His blessings for me, but the past is the past and I am going to have to get used to that.

I still wake up looking to my left for your long lanky body. I still wake up thinking you are still alive.

I won't allow the sadness of your passing to control the fight that remains inside of me. I wont forget your smile, especially your laugh. I won't forget that you loved me more than I loved me. I loved you more than you loved you. I wish you could see what I see.



Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

The Narrative

I've been writing my whole life. I used to have notebooks that I would fill up, then retire. I would stack these notebooks like they were family in a corner, hidden from any attraction that may make a person see them. I placed them in boxes.

I remember the contents of those notebooks, I guess for the most part. I could show them to you, but when I became a Christian, another well meaning but deceived soul convinced me to burn them. To him, they were sin. My old life was a sinful life.

This isn't entirely false. I wasn't a very savory person. I was really good at getting you to like me at first...then creating destruction in your lives.

I burned everything in my back yard with another profoundly hurting new Christian. We burned our entire past as if we were not made up of our experiences. We vowed never to revisit them. I failed even moments after when I felt the hurt of my written thoughts go up in flames.

I started writing again. At first I wrote for me because of my desire for people to know who I really was...then maybe narcissism, I began writing for anyone in the world to read. I thought it was pretty great that a guy in Egypt could be reading my thoughts and maybe could relate.

I got my first commenter a few weeks into writing my thoughts. She was awesome! She said wonderful things and told me that my words were different and cool and impacting. My second soon after. I gained some internet friends and readers and began to get a little momentum.

Then my best friend (who has always been my brother) committed suicide on Christmas in the night. For a week I held it in because my guts were twisted and torn and I hadn't the words to express what was happening to me. I was sure that I was actually dying.

A week after, I had to write something down. I had to tell his story. I didn't want to exploit him, so I left most details out. I just needed my memory of him to become reality to other people. I poured out my torn guts to the world to read. People started reading. A lot of people started reading. People wanted to know what would happen next...if I would fall apart or rise above again.

I liked it. Reading the words of strangers helped me get through the worst years of my life. I kept writing what was inside of me. Eventually people got tired of the truth.

Which is...

You weep and wail and eventually, you get better and rise above.

People in our culture aren't always attracted to moving on. People want drama. People want a broken man spilling his life out onto the internet without restrictions.

People stopped reading. I spoke about other things than my brother and they stopped reading. A few remained interested in my life, but most jumped to the next blog tragedy.

This is America. People want to be entertained. People want drama and action. They want to feel like they are part of the story. When they realize they aren't, they leave the narrative.

You may have noticed I have shifted my focus on this blog from my personal thoughts to short fiction stories. I have done so because of the reasons above. I have realized that people want to read about things that they fear or can relate to. My thoughts are present and apparent in those, but are masked for your own entertainment.

I am simply not that interesting.

All of that being said. I love that people still read my thoughts. I love those that continue to care about me. Thank you! 





Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

In The Night

I was laying on my bed in the night. I listened to my mother talk to her friends in the living room. My mom was never much for having people over. I remember trying to listen to the conversations they were having, but for a 6 or 7 year old, words are difficult. I got bored and started running my fingers over the outlines of the brown sponge painted wall. On my imagination, I could make shapes of faces and pigs and monsters. My mom would sponge paint the house, in my child's memory once a year. She would always make sure the house was new and clean. That was here thing. She cleaned up every day.

This night, I tried to listen and heard only muffled laughter and creaking footboards as they ventured to the restroom. One particular creaking led past the restroom to my room. I listened to it as if got to my door, then stopped. I waited. I thought it must have been my mom. She was listening to see if was still awake. I closed my eyes to pretend in case she came it. She has been known to come in my room in the night and lay her hands on my back and pray for me while I pretended to sleep. She never knew I was almost always awake.

My sleeping bag zipped up over my head moments after I heard the door open. I was held down and the zipper closed me inside of the bag. I couldn't breathe all of the sudden. I struggled, fearing the devil had come to take me. I managed to break the zipper in part and saw his face, grimacing as if he hated the fact that I was alive and wasn't dead. He kept holding me down and covered my face until it was still again and he was gone.

Everything was gone. The distant laughter and the creaking of the floor. Just me and silence remained. I lay there for an eternity it would seem. Then I went to sleep. I would never tell my mother of that story, but would remember it always. It's strange how the mind works. I wasn't afraid to tell her, I just didn't. I guess I couldn't really be sure if what happened was real or a terrible dream.

It was something. And it happened. And it is in my memories.








Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

The Other Side of the Valley (A Series of Anonymous Stories- The Conclusion)

He gave it all he had. He gave it everything. He cannot reach his feet. He gave it everything he's got and it wasn't enough and he can't bare to look. He's doubled over and doubled over. He cannot stand on his feet or even reach his knees. He drops lifeless to the pavement. This was to be his renaissance. This was to be his great awakening. He pictured this moment to be the moment he proved that all of the fight was still to come and he had more left in him to keep fighting.

Instead he cannot lift his chin off of the cement. He is trying and anger and disappointment and hatred, but he cannot move anymore. He is all done. The pain is unbearable. The pain his body feels does not compare to the pain of losing your his last hope. He gave himself to this race. He thought if he could finish this, he could move on and finish anything. There are still miles to go.

But he can not finish. He can just lay on the pavement and weep as he has never wept in his 35 years of life. He could weep like this forever, he thinks. He could give nothing more and the world would still demand more. This is the very moment he willfully and consciously gives up and allows himself to finally accept that his wife has gone. She's gone somewhere that he cannot follow her...at least for now.

He weeps as if he were a baby apart from his mother's arms. He weeps as a man that has nothing. He weeps until his guts wretch and wail with him.

...

Until a hand touches his back. She grabbed his back as she did her son who had passed away long ago. She was a shut-in for so long, but is giving up no longer. Today, she isn't letting anyone fall down. She has failed too many. She cannot carry him. She reaches beneath is chest and struggles to lift him.

Then another hand reaches beneath him. He came looking for a reason to forget that girl who he could never reach. He reached beneath and helps her lift this weary body. They struggled and moan as they try to make this man a man again. He hadn't the strength to assist. He still could not move his arms or legs. The lactic acid had it's way all around. They struggled and fought and shouted to God for help. They weren't giving up.

Then suddenly, without a sound, another hand, and another. A girl who lost her love without knowing she had truly loved him, and a man that forgot that true love doesn't reside in another person, but in God and himself. They all brought a man to his feet and carried him, and themselves, across the finish line. They crossed with grace and tears. They crossed looking to the sky and weeping. They crossed as a family, together in their loss.

It was then that they realized that they were never alone. They were family from the start. God was in them. Despite their pain, there really was something on the other side. On the other side of the valley.




Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

Becoming Sunlight (A Series of Anonymous Stories- Part Four)

Before his hair went grey he married a girl. She was from Wisconsin, we was from Minnesota. They met at an airport on his way to California to see his family. She was working as a stewardess and offered him double shots on his Bloody Mary on the plane awaiting take-off.

He worked at the steel mill and she ran a small day care from her home. Life worked for the two of them. They had developed a team at home...avoiding the things that triggered anger and focusing on the things that produced satisfaction. This was the American dream before cameras could exploit it.

At night they prayed at the bedside with their kids. They ate every meal together and mom and dad listened as the kids told jokes they had learned at school and shared stories they all would laugh at for completely different reasons. Every night, dad would sit on his knees next to their beds and tell them stories about when he was a kid and compare to when they were kids. Obviously their lives were easier.

His son sat directly in front of his casket when he died. He just stared at the face of his father and wondered how he did it so easily. His wife in the back of the room talking to family and friends. He has been sitting on that chair all day looking at the past and present of his father and she never stops talking. She hasn't even asked him if he's ok. It's his father that's dead and she has nothing to say to him now? After all of this talking?

Weeks later, they sway with the waves as he holds the vase that holds his father in tiny particles. He pours them onto the surface of the water off the coast of Normandy, the place his father always spoke about. He looks over to his wife who isn't holding his hand and saw nothing. She isn't there. She is with someone else in her mind. She had left long ago, but had no real offer strong enough to convince her to leave him. She does now and they both know it.

She leaves the day after they get home. She stands face to face with him. She was an idiot, but never a coward. She says, "I don't love you, I love someone else. I'm sorry for your father and I'm sorry I've lied, but I'm leaving." No goodbye. She just opened the door and walked out into the sun and out of his life.

He just stared like he did at his father as she walked away. He knew he couldn't change any of it. They were always going to go. He wanted to stop her. He wanted to ask his dad what to do because his dad always knew what to do. Instead he stood there looking at a shadow until it became sunlight.





Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

My Wife, the Mother

She gets up before the sun to run. She comes home to shower and get the kids to my mother's and off to work everyday to be at work by 7. She comes home after 8+ hours of work to make dinner and rush Aevry off to figure skating, then Caeden off to baseball, then back to pick them both up. By the time I get home at 8PM, she's exhausted, but still has time to be my wife and listen to my ignorant gripes about work.

She is the picture of a mother to me. She is my beautiful wife, whom I appreciate and love. She is the very thing that gives me hope when I'm weary at work. I get to come home to her. She works so hard and sacrifices so much for this family. I could never give her enough credit or reward for who she is and what she does, so I'll write it down and give her this letter of thanks.

Thank you Laura for being the best mom that our kids could have the privilege to hug every morning. Thank you for being the best wife that I could ever deserve. Thank you Laura for working so hard for our family and giving yourself without hesitation to make all of us happy.

We love you more than the sun that rises and thank you for who you are to us every day, rain or shine. You keep us together.





Sing. Migrate.
Thanks for reading...Z

Death Row (A Series of Anonymous Stories- Part Three)

I set the photo of him and his father next to the towel he used for drying his sweat after mowing the lawn. He was very particular about certain things. He had a certain towel he used at a certain time for a certain purpose. He was meticulous about things that belonged to him. I guess that's why I left. His habits were never limited to things.

Some people weren't meant to be married. Maybe they were raised a different way or they just don't get it. Marriage is a promise for life. If you can't keep a secret, a life-long promise is a bit much to expect. I was raised in four different homes that had resulted in broken promises. It's easy. You say what will get you the best results and if later they become inconvenient, you leave without a trace. So I left.

It wasn't because I didn't love him as a friend and fellow human traveling on a similar path at a similar speed. It was simply because I am really bad with promises. So the result is the mess I leave as I pass through. I've hurt so many people. He was just the best of them.

Now he is gone. He's dead forever.

He used to spend hours sitting next to this bouquet of flowers beside the road. It wasn't the typical car accident bouquet. No one had crashed here. He sat there in remembrance of his mother, who dropped dead on the concrete of a heart attack where those flowers lay. She was 56 years old and looked just like him. She was walking to the grocery store.

I left him while he was sitting next to his memorial. I put my hand on his shoulder for a moment and I felt sympathy for him, then I walked away, packed my things,  and left.

I never saw him again.

Beside his body was a pack of cigarettes, some receipts, and a note that said nothing. Just a blank piece of paper.

He was gone and I am the same person I was before. I feel sadness that he is gone and I am here still, but nothing else.

I started placing his things in a circle on my floor to try and figure out our lives. I put postcards we meant to send to family, and letters we never sealed on the floor. I put pictures of our most precious times next to them. I smelled the clippings from our eldest daughter's first haircut, and let myself remember the smell of a child. The smell of my child. The smell of another's child.

I killed him. I know it. He was a simple man. He used simple words, laced with profanities and slang. He worked a simple man's job and laughed at simple jokes like someone falling down a flight of stairs. He watched television shows on the chair and laughed so loud it billowed onto my last nerve. Truth is, he disgusted me at the end. He was so happy all the time and never gave up much of a fight. He drank beer and gave me what I wanted, but never what I wanted from life.

He collected things that were so trivial. Nick-knacks that reminded him that we'd been to New York and to Toronto. Trinkets that reminded him of the smell of the woods in Up North, Michigan. To a stranger, this collection of little things would be out of context and gaudy. For me, I remember the stories behind all of them.

I've created something that will destroy me. I've created a memorial. Just like the one on the side of the road that he insisted on visiting and up-keeping so much. These plastic and ceramic ornaments remind me of who he was and what I did. I feel the remorse of a man on death row ready to die. He has nothing to lose or deny anymore. He has his death and his memories. A guy on death row has placed all of his trinkets in boxes in his mind and removes them to remind himself that the world turns still...without him. I guess that's what I am.

His father called today. He stayed on the phone and just cried, never saying anything before he hung up. He's been doing this for months. I've been sitting in the middle of his keepsakes doing the same thing. Every day I make a mental memo to put this stuff in storage and move forward, but everyday I find myself smelling his shirts and winding up the crank on the music box he got me when we were dating. When things were beautiful and I felt like I was floating on air with him.

I don't understand how one thing goes from one extreme to another in an instant. We were unbreakable, then I yearned for something else. Like I said. I have run out of excuses. I can't blame another person but myself. There is no point in pointing out his faults. I was his killer. The end. I deserve the worst and I'm determined to get it.



Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

Turning the Weak Away (A Series of Anonymous Stories- Part Two)

As I write this, my hands are shaking. I may be nervous, because that's my way. It's my way or the highway. It's my way or no way. It's my way because there isn't any other way.

So many options for so many people, but this is my only one... to sit and wait it out. "The panic won't last forever," I tell myself. I tell myself to remember to breathe as I am squinting so hard from the nerves that I cannot see clearly. I've been laying on this couch for weeks. My children must think I'm crazy and maybe they are right. I can't be that mom on TV that takes their kids to parks and has play dates and home schools. I am too tired. My kids don't need that. They need very little actually.

I guess I should start at the beginning with a short version of my history. I was born of a pastor's wife and a dictator father. I had many siblings, but never really had a close sister or brother. I was smarter than my siblings, but had a free spirit. Just enough spirit to bring a frown to my parent's faces and the shake of their fingers. I was trouble to them...never a child. They never loved me. I was always someone that constantly sinned. My father told me to go to the devil and he never looked at me again. I grew older and lost them both to cancer. When they died, I was the only one there with them. No one else cared anymore. I was the last one left, their most rebellious daughter. I held both of their hands as they slipped away into the night. Neither died painfully and both with the dignity that Fentanyl provides. I was only 20 when they left. My siblings scattered off into the country an spread out far from each other. I stayed here.

I have three kids. Two are sleeping in the room next to me currently sleeping to Matlock in the background on their television. The first child is nowhere or anywhere. I wouldn't really know. She was taken from me right away because I had nothing. I have this framed picture of her when she was born on my mantle and in my purse. Sometimes I still feel her moving in my belly. I remember what it was like to feel her responding to my diet or movement. I love Mexican food. She obviously hated it, so she would thrash around in my belly pissed off at every bite I took.

I have lived single for decades, but I have a really loyal friend that sleeps on the lazyboy chair in the living room. She is a lesbian and I know she is in love with me, but I can't tell her there is no chance. She means too much to me, so we both pace around, wishing for something better. I can't leave the house, I'm too scared of what's out there. She can't leave because she's afraid of what's out there. The world is so cruel and scary and we are comfortable with each other.

I have asked for help with the groceries many times from my church. Twice my pastor has tried to make me pay with my body for the help and I have always declined. Instead I would volunteer for the worst jobs at the church. I'm a proud woman, but not at the expense of two empty bellies.

I have kept my faith. I have stood strong. I did everything I was supposed to do to atone for my sins and yet, my eldest still found it best to go to sleep on a rope. She called me and said "Hey" on my voicemail. I was sleeping. I was always sleeping. She put herself into the sky without real warning. I sat in the front row of her funeral and realized that god wasn't there anymore. Maybe never was. God may not be. If He is, He has turned the weak away.

All of my prayers. All of my tears. Gone. Up into nowhere to no one. I am alone and there is no help coming from anyone.










Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

Day 6 (A Series of Anonymous Stories-Part I)

I met her three years ago at a youth group outreach camp. We would exchange glances and turn away quickly over the next 3 days during lunch in the mess hall. She was the prettiest girl who had ever shown me any attention. I'm not really and attractive guy, so my options weren't exactly overwhelming. She sat down next to me...the exact action I was trying to muster the nerve to do myself. Of course she beat me to it. Everyone always beats me to it, but I'm not complaining. It does save a lot of work and nerve. She sits down and introduces herself as "Robert Mitchell," and shoves out her hand. What do I make of that? I laugh and asked her what her name really is. She says it really is Bobby. She was named after her grandfather who was a "hobo by choice," she said.

I was shy. I kept my head down and would occasionally peak up with just my eyes, not my head, and glance back down as fast as I could. Bobby talked so much that it made it easy to spend time with her over the next three days. She talked and talked about everything from the Muppets to Kimmy Gibbler's strange look. I would play with my hands and listen to at least half of what she had said. She never said anything serious. She loved to talk about trivial things and backed off of any questions about her family or life back home. She would always look away from me while at the same time changing the subject.

On the last day of our camp, I decided to make a move. I loved her like any other 16 year old loves the first girl to give them a moment of attention...except this was real. No one had ever really loved me. I guess that's what drew me to God in the first place. God promises love and nothing more. Except eternal life, but my fear of death puts that topic in the love category.

My mother was a welder at a steel mill and my father a "methamphetamine addicted homeless person living on the outskirts of Guantanamo Bay"...says my mother. Really, I had never heard my father's voice save for this one night he called and I answered the phone. He said, "Oh, hey kid. I mean Hey little buddy, tell me somethin funny." I said "Ficus."This was the funniest word I had ever learned so I said it. My father gave a long pause, then asked to speak to my mother. She shouted for a few minutes, then slammed the phone down. She told me immediately that my father would never call again. Three years later, my mother died in a steel mill explosion. All I could think about after she died was his voice. I didn't even know I was speaking to my father until he was gone forever. I went to live with my aunt Sue across the country in Montana. She introduced me to the youth group at her church and the kids were pretty nice, so I stuck around a while and got pretty involved in God stuff. I started reading a Bible and praying, I mean really praying. I had always kinda prayed, but mostly just said the most intelligent words I knew to express my reverent hope that my life would go really well for me. Now I was just talking to God. Something was happening inside of me and I loved every moment of the journey to know who God was, and even a little more insight into who I was.

We sat there on a tree stump on day 6. I looked her in her brown eyes and held my hands together to keep her from noticing that they were trembling. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and opened my mouth. It was then I became a man. I told her I loved her. I had never told anyone those words since my mother died. I hadn't felt it since my mother died. I told her I loved the terrible stomach ache I got when she was around and that she talked so much and that I didn't have to work very hard to be around her. She smiled at me like the sun smiles on the grass, melting the morning dew. She reached over and grabbed my face and pulled it to hers. She kissed me. She squeezed my hand and stood up in the middle of the woods before God and the rabbits and said, "We  felt safe and secure, watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate." She walked away from me and into a place where real people cannot go. This place where normal, average people can only watch from afar. She wasn't human, she was the idea of something divine. She kissed me, at last on our last day of camp. She would return to school 100 miles from mine, and I would write her letters that would go unanswered.

The next year I came back to camp as a counselor. I came back only for the chance that I may see her. She didn't show. I was broken because of it. I asked around and no one knew who I was talking about. The only really problem facing me was that I had never known her last name. She was just "Bobby," the girl.

Two years later, I was in high school. I hadn't changed much, except for my voice and my height. I had agreed to go to a party with one of my friends from my Bible study because he really liked this girl that was going. He was nervous like me, so I agreed to go with him. We stepped through the doors and my stomach dropped as my eyes met the eyes of this girl that already had my deepest sorrows buried inside of her. She was still so beautiful, but something was off about her eyes. I went right to her. I had dreamed of seeing her again everyday. I had always pretended she was secretly watching my life like I was in some movie or something. I had to be a man again. I went to her and thrust out my hand and said, "Hi, I'm Robert Mitchell." She looked at me with tears...literal tears and embraced me like the wife of a POW would upon reunion with her husband. She would not let go of my neck and said nothing. I felt her sobbing on my shoulder, so I awkwardly rubbed her back. When we let go, things were like they were on day six. We talked about trivial things and looked at each other as if the night would not die: The sun would never come up. She was drinking. I hadn't tasted much alcohol and hated what I had tasted. She kept giving me more and slamming down three to every one I finished. Soon we were both struggling to say complete sentences.

As badly as I wanted to keep this night alive, I could not. My body began to win and sent me into a deep sleep while she was talking and talking and talking.

I woke up and she was gone. There were people laying all over the house, but she was gone. I looked all over for a phone number, but found nothing. I asked everyone in the house if they knew her and no one did. Bobby was an enigma. She haunted every movement my body could muster for the next several months until I gave up. I could not reconcile her hurt to my God. So I turned from God. No loving God could leave me or her like this. No God would separate two people so in love, so I walked away from Him. I would never see her again. I would never forget her.


"We  felt safe and secure, watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate"- Rainier Maria Rilke

Photo by intao http://intao.deviantart.com





Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Clown

I have always had a thing for clowns. They are both idiotically happy and so awfully sad. My mother had a thing for them too, I think for the same reasons. She collected Emmett Kelly figurines that lined a large glass stand in the corner of the living room. I didn't understand why she liked them so much until I realized I had been in childhood ignorance until my late teens. One day I woke up and realized I was a clown. I learned how to hide everything.

A few years later I was in a bad place. I was profoundly lost and had given up. I started to paint things on the walls of my apartment. The largest of the paintings was an Emmett Kelly face. Clowns never smiled the way I saw them. Clowns were always hiding something traumatizing.

When Will died, my other mother (Will's mother), gave me this Emmett Kelly figurine that Will had always wanted from his grandmother's house. It nearly crushed me when I opened it because of what it had always meant to me. It meant things she didn't even know it would. I knew I was changed when Will died and I would never be without that traumatizing event that had happened. I had lost my brother and best friend.  This particular figurine was named Willy. Imagine that. She didn't even know until she looked it up before she gave it to me. He worked on a train yard with his hands, just like my brother.

This was the single most meaningful gift I have ever received.

So I see a clown today making balloons for kids at a restaurant. We were sat at the table right next to her station, so we saw countless bratty kids coming to her for balloon after balloon, then popping them and asking her to make more. She made them over and over as these kids, with their parents blessing, continued to bring broken balloons to her to make new ones and never giving her a penny for her time. She smiled the entire time.

We were cashless. We don't carry cash anymore. We were trying to avoid her making the kids anything because this time we didn't have a tip, so we were careful to mind our own business. She approached us when she had a spare minute and asked our kids if they wanted a ballon. The kids said "No thank you" and we explained we would get some next time. She frowned at us and asked the kids if they wanted a balloon again, which forced us to explain why we didn't. She shook her head at us as if we had no idea what a clown was for. She made Aevry this princess that she told her wasn't even on the list because it took so long. She made all of these kids wait in line until she was finished and handed the most glorious balloon image I had seen. Then she gave Caeden a Tiger's balloon baseball cap. This was a moment that I will remember when I forget that some people still bleed.

Some clowns just want to make people happy. It made me really sad to not have a hundred dollars to give this woman who just gives to others. When I have it, she will get it. I asked for her card in case she isn't there next week.

The story reminds me that people really need love. If a clown in a restaurant could cause me to pen these words, then maybe I could really try harder to be a compass in another's life. People are speading in all different directions and many of them are the wrong direction. Maybe a little love could point them forward.


Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

Breathe

"This is the start
This is your heart
This is the day you were born
This is the sun
These are your lungs
This is the day you were born

And I am always yours

These are the scars
Deep in your heart
This is the place you were born
This is the hole
Where most of your soul
Comes ripping out
From the places you've been torn" - Switchfoot

I work and I run. I work at a place that replaces one person's heart for another's. One person's lungs for another's. I wake up early and step out into the cold air and breathe in deeply because I have my whole day ahead of me. 

Then one foot in front of another, it doesn't matter the task. I may be running miles or going to work. Both can be equally exhausting. Life is lived one foot in front of another. If you look at it from too far away, the task looks too big, like standing in front of a mountain you have to get on the other side of. You have to choke down the fear and give it a few seconds, then go. Just let go and put out your first foot. Remember to breathe, then remember what keeps your heart pushing blood through your miles of vessels and back again. 

Blood travels through your body in about 1 minute. One cell after another, each carries oxygen to your organs so they won't fail...then to your lungs as you step out the door and breathe that deep first breath of the day air. Imagine being the size of a red blood cell. You could take 1,250 of them and lay them down in a line and they would equal 1 centimeter. Now imagine those same cells traveling your 60,000 miles vessels in one minute, allowing you to take a gasp of air when you are weary. Life goes that fast for us too.

Then you get hurt by something. 

Everything was working fine until you were crushed and scarred. You try to get up but you can't. You make so many mistakes and pray for help and nothing happens...no one comes. Breathing becomes labored and your anxiety makes your chest rise shallow. You sit and tap your fingers against things and bounce your knee when you sit. You bite your nails waiting for a verdict on what you've done, but nothing happens...no one comes. You just breathe, then remind yourself to breathe. 

Maybe you have travelled too fast. You turned off and hit the gas and now you are lost really far away. Somewhere you took off your cape and became normal. Somehow conformed to what insane people believe is normal. You follow the rules and eat out of duty. You breath incompletely. You stare blankly. You collect what you have earned and sleep lightly, waiting for something to come...someone. But no one ever does. So you try to remember to breathe until you can't anymore.

Life is not about breathing until you can't anymore. This is insanity. Life isn't supposed to be lived normally. Each person has something different inside of them. Let's call it a super power. The most imaginative and revered people this world has known are those that live life abnormally. They refused to give in to conformity or cultural mores. People like Rosa Parks. People like Albert Einstein. People like Neil Armstrong. Have you any idea how much abnormal courage it takes to sit on a bus with demons or move forward in science knowing something isn't right about you, or exiting the earth's atmosphere in a tin can? 

At some point greatness starts with taking a breath and then a step. God is in control of what comes next and you have to trust that. 

Eat because you're hungry.




Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

The Furnace

I was little. I cared about nuclear war, and Satan, and the things that made my basement make noises when everyone else was asleep. I would lay by the wall register and wait for the heat to turn on. I would listen to the little dings and bangs that would happen moments before I would feel relief from the loudness of silence and fall into my own little comfort, as the heat would wrap itself around my face and warm everything under my blanket on the floor. I had a bed and my own room, but there was something about sleeping on the floor next to that heat register in the same room as my mother that I could not resist. My mom didn't mind, I think we were both lonely.

Loneliness is the thing. It's that terrible feeling so deep in your stomach that sometimes you can't even feel it at all. Sometimes you go about your day just as normal as the last, but feel terrible with dread. You shrug it off and do it again the next day. It creeps in and quietly makes you unhappy and discontent.

The absolute worst is when loneliness makes you think about the most precious and beautiful memories you have ever had and yearn to repeat them. You listen to songs that remind you of when you were happy and you get sad and your stomach starts to hurt, like a child's hurt in a department store when they have lost their mother. You ask something like wanting to go back and just watch it happen. You don't want to change it, you just want to feel it again.

The truth is that those times weren't so great. We tend to forget the reasons we wanted to be grown ups then. We forget the things that made us lonely then. Our lives are better now.

We have to try not to live in the past. Find a heater and lay next to it for a while until it turns off. When it turns off, you remember the cold distance between hot and cold. Then you have to wait in anguish. Loneliness leaves you in anguish.

Instead, find the things that make you warm, like your husband, or wife, or kids, or a place you once were happy and go there. Or buy a space heater and run it until it burns down your house. Either way, there is nothing wrong with comfort, just be comforted in the things that last.



Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

The Signature of God

So what happens when despite your best intentions and devotion to the promise to never "do that", you find yourself on the outside of your own moral map? 

We plan our lives to reflect what is in our hearts. We make promises to ourselves and stand firm in the cement that keeps us devoted to the person you want to be. 

In the Bible, Peter the apostle rebuked the possibility that he could ever deny his best friend and savior, Jesus. Jesus said he would deny Him three times and like clockwork, he did. Jesus was murdered, then buried, and the apostles scattered and returned to their lives, Peter to fishing. Jesus returns and finds Peter back in the boat he sat in when they met and forgives him. Then He uses Peter to start the church. 

That is what you do. You accept grace and forgiveness and move forward. There are lessons to be learned from everything in the Bible. The biggest lesson I learned from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is that looking back at sin is foolish and isn't well liked by God. When you are pulled from the fire, you should not strive to go back. So you move forward and forget, after you confess and rely on God to enrich your life with good things. 

It is the guilt that keeps us looking back. Love drives out guilt. This is the beauty of Christ. The very name of Christ means Messiah/Savior. If we are still guilty, why is He called the Savior? We trust in Jesus as our hope for a really great eternity and the lifting of the burden of death from our hearts. 

My goal in life was to be a picture of integrity. I have always desired to be honest and real and open. I try really hard at these things and fail often. Despite the pain failure causes, my conviction is to never look back at my failures. Again, I struggle with this too, but leaving bad things behind does give quite a liberation in your life. 

I'm not going to write a blog about a new age, artsy, feel-good kind of positivity. My desire is that you and I  would focus on the positive because that is exactly what God has given us. This is what God has called us to. We are not to give up. Instead, we can find His signature everywhere, just like an artist that leaves his signature on a painting. God has left His here. He has left His on you.





Sing.
Migrate.



 Thanks for reading...Z