The Now...

 

The Now & I don't have a good relationship.  Even in my head, I'm rarely in the now.  I'm not even this age, It varies where, when & who I am.  Sometimes I'm a little kid, a younger teen, older teen, 20 something, but none of them are here & now.  I'm in places I've been, wanted to be or that never were.  It's not always great, but it's almost always better than the now.  I'm not always in the past, sometimes my thoughts go forward & that's even worse.  Instead of nostalgia & regret; I get angst, worry & dread.  

I don't think I should've ever been.  Or maybe, I should've been a short run concept.  But life as it is & the Now, never felt like they were meant for me.  I was trying to wear someone else's wardrobe & do their lines.   

A new year is crashing in on us & I don't anticipate good tidings, pleasant surprises or opportunities.  I'm waiting for the shoe to drop.  At this point, it's more apt to rain anvils.  Meatloaf had it right.

It was long ago and it was far away and it was so much better than it is today - Paradise By The Dashboard Lights - 1977.

That's it, take care.  The end is almost here, so wrap it up or set it free.

Cya... 

That's That...

 

The holidays are passing & Christmas 2024 is a memory.  There are a few still happening & the old year is winding down.  I hope things realize that not every year has to be worse than what came before.  It's not some childish competition.  

At the moment we have new year's plans.  They could happen, but there were also previous holiday plans that went askew.   We'll see when we get there.

It's been a dismal holiday week.  Last night was disappointing.  We were the only house in the neighborhood with any lights on & twinkling.  All we had was a really 3 light candle for the window.  Still, it was more than the rest of them.  

Even with all the drama & awfulness, I sometimes still miss the holidays when I was a kid.  At least then, things could be bright, cheerful & distracting.   I could muster a bit of spirit & pretend things might get better.  That, like most the fun things of my past are gone, just lost, abandoned memories some of us still treasure.  Gen X really should just off everyone else & let things end with us.  At least we could have a decent party.

Take care.

Cya...

No Thinking...

 

I do my best not to think about things too much during the holidays.  If not, I can let myself fall into a consuming nostalgia or find myself acting like lyrics from a Talking Heads' song.   Days will go by on their own without me dwelling on it.   Sometimes, it sneaks up on me & I'm there whether I like it or not.

There's really nothing good about the past, not even the good, fun things.  Why?  Because they're the past.  It can't help you.  It can only serve as a measuring stick to the present or your fears for the future.  

If I could go back, would I?   I don't know, because this was the worst carousel.  It was always the same ups & downs, getting right back to where we'd try to leave in the 1st place.   There are myths of sailors sailing off the edge of the world.  It's a myth, but what if they did.  At least they would've found something new, even if it was just dying.  

Life isn't really for the fearful, that only leads to anxiety & regrets.  Unfortunately, that's what I've been most of my life.   For a brief bit I was a fearless little kid & then my world came crashing down.  From then on, I was different, fearful & anxious.  My biggest regret in this life is simply being.  No one asked me to come to this crapfest, they just drug me into this quagmire.   I may not believe in predestination, but I do understand where you start in the game affects your chances.   For me & many life me, the die was cast into a line of seriously damaged people who had little to offer.  The cards they dealt sucked.  The best we could do was bluff.

So no thinking during the holidays.  It will come to no good.  Dance, sing, make merry, but don't think.  Eat, drink & partake, but don't dwell or remember.  Now is the moment, the rest is either gone or may never be.

Take care, happy holidays, no thinking.

Cya...

Try As I May...

 

The best I can be about things at the moment is ambivalent.  I think I'm more honest in the mornings.  I'm not awake enough to put on the charade of the living.  I'm not looking to die, but living doesn't seem to offer much better options.  I'm not looking forward to anything & I haven't in a while.  

If I look forward, I only see things being worse off than they are now.  That's not a pleasant thought.  If I look back, I get depressed over things I've lost & bad decisions I made.   So, I try to stay in the right here & now.  Unfortunately, that's not easy.  We have to make plans months out.  We have to worry about upcoming events.   Then there's things like Youtube dragging me back to my teens.

The now's a hard place to stay.  I'm not saying the now is safe.  But, at least I might be able to do something about the now.  Then things start picking at the now.

I keep seeing people who got me through my childhood & teens getting older.  They're not those people.  In my head Cyndi Lauper looks just like she did when I saw her,  Fun Tour, on October 7, 1984 In Tulsa, OK at Mohawk Park.   It was the same weekend as OKon.  It was a fun, weird weekend with people I haven't seen in decades.

Now I see Cyndi & the reality sets in on me.  Yesterday, I saw the Marty Krofft had passed.   Him & his brother made my childhood a lot easier, happier & brighter.  At least he got to see the 1st Krofft Con.   I hope he heard Tra La La on the way out.  Goodbye Mr Krofft & thanks for all the laughs.

The future is depressing, the past is lost & the now is damned difficult.  Sometimes opting out seems very sensible.  Like the song says, stop the world. Don't worry about me, I'll be able to fake it all in a moment or so after a little more caffeine.

Cya...

Present....

 

Occasionally, I google places from my  past.  It's almost always a mistake.  They say, "Don't meet your heroes," & "Kill your darlings."  I'd like to add  to that, "Don't look back."  

You may not lose your love or turn to salt, but you probably won't like what you see.  Unlike in your memories, time marched on & whatever happened in your absence, happened.  You may find your perspective challenged, your hopes dashed or nostalgia failure.  Sometimes the past reminds of things better left forgotten.

In the mid 90s they made a TV mini  series called, The Langoliers,  based off a 80's Stephen King novella .   It's  about a group that somehow got lost in the past.  Nothing was how it should've been, everything was off.  It was barely a representation of the time with everything drained out it.  Eventually,  these creatures were seem eating at the edges of everything.  Devouring everything in the path.  The past isn't meant to be lived in, only languished.  

When the people escape, they find themselve no longer in the past, but a bit in the future.   Where the past was like a hollow black & white picture.  The  future had yet to take shape & focus.  Slowly they sank back into the present where they were supposed to be & things returned to normal.

The point is, people live in the here & now.  Even if they ever were "good ole days," they gone now.  They're part of a past that can't be reclaimed.  Too  many of us live in a faded past or try to push into a  fuzzy future.  That's not where we live.  We are of the moment, the present.  "Welcome to now."

Cya...

Overcast & Dogs...

 

Made it through another 9/11 without too much of the typical yick.  Come on,  that was nearly 2 decades ago & we're in the middle of a pandemic.  We have other things to worry about.  Funny how Oklahomans moved on from their bombing attack, but 9/11 is treated like it happened yesterday.  

I woke to grey skies, demanding cats & barking dogs.  The canines aren't ours & shouldn't be in the yard.   I  hate people who won't take care of their pets.  They're generally pretty useless & don't deal well with anything in their lives. 

I'm happy there wasn't another Windows update this morning.  Yesterday's was horrible & locked up my system for over 45 minutes.  Other than that, it was a fairly good day.

Take care.

Cya...

Sayings...

There are a lot of sayings people like to throw around.  When you're gay or +, they are specific sayings like, "It gets better."   I hate that.   It sounds like at some random point in a person's future a magic wand will be waved & all be better.  That never happens.  Life only gets better through a person's efforts & often not even through that.

For the past few weeks I've seen a variation of a saying floating around.  It's something about your past & not letting it make you bitter or controlling you.  Even as well intended as that statement is meant to be, it's still BS.  

Only a person who's never endured a really crappy past would say that.  Anyone who has had a horrible past could only let go of it with extreme guidance, assistance & emotional support. Still, there will always be moments of that dark past creeping in on them.   It's their past.  It's the DNA of their self.   That past shaped & molded them for better or worse.  That is how they're "hard-wired".  

I get what they mean with the statement about your past.  You should try to move past it.  But, in truth, you never really do.  You have to find a way to come to terms with as much as possible.  Notice, I didn't say make peace with it.  Many of our pasts are way beyond diplomacy.   That was your life.  It is your base.  It will always affect you & how you approach life.  Don't be ashamed of it.  Try not to hate it.  Just try to let it have its space in your past as you strive to move forward.

Cya...

Tethers Cut...

When we're growing up, we unconsciously tether ourselves to people, places, events, things, etc...  I grew up all over the place due to my parents' issues.  I tied myself to very few people & I'm still not good at that.   I bound myself down in hopes of not drifting away.  I do so with my pets, a few friends, mostly to places that provided solace & escape.

I had my music & movies, but mostly I had the mall, a theater, a skating rink, a swimming pool & an assortment of eateries.  In my late teens I had to leave these places, but it was alright, I knew they were still there.  The pizzarias, hamburger joints, ice cream shops  would all still be there for other kids.  The older teen handout clubs would let them hear new music as they tried not to fade away.  

But, 1 by 1, most of those places have closed, some of the buildings aren't even there anymore.  No more skating rink or drive-in.  The beautiful old theater shuttered.  The fruit stand I bought stuff at as a kids disappeared right along with downtown.  

Little by little we come unfettered.  Things you may not have thought about in years.  Then 1 day, you see they're gone &  bit of you sails off into yesteryear & you're a little less bright.  I guess 1 day we'll be sepia or in grey tones.

Even if you've kept mooring yourself to new places & people, you'll never really forget your 1st ice cream cone, time at the movies, plummeting down the roller coaster.   I'll never buy tickets to the Coleman Theater again,  I won't go to the Tastee-Freez  for another dip cone,  Hell, even Bell's Amusement Park is gone.  All of these are just memories. now.  

My roomie hit this recently with the announcement of Hastings closing down.  It was part of her younger life & now the doors are closing.  No more looking for comics, music or game books.   No more burning hours there.

I guess we just have to try to keep building new ties & moors.  Sometimes, that seems awfully hard to do.   I wish you well with your tethering.  At least, the pool where I swam as a kid is still there.

Cya...

Pages Lost...

My book is getting thinner.   Life keeps ripping chapters out of it.  I have the memories, but  Memorex just isn't the same.  Every so often I hear on the news or read on the net of some person I grew up watching on TV or listening to on the radio has passed & left this world a little dimmer.  I know that's the way of life, but it really sucks.

I occasionally google places I use to live & use the map feature to play voyeur.  I really should stop.  Most of the time, the nostalgia I endure isn't for things still standing, but things long gone or faded past the point of recognition.   The fantastic theatre I went to as a kid no longer plays films, it's just a sporadically used playhouse.  My burger joints, skating rink & even the creek I played in as a child are long gone.  It's like they erased a part of my life.

Why so weird today?  Today was the birthday of person that used to be close to me during my early college years.   We went our seperate ways during our grad school & never really came back together.  I google & facebook people I used to know as well as places.  

Some, I've never found.  Maybe they've changed their names or don't want to be on the net.   Other s are living their new lives wherever they are now.    My motivation for the searches was curiosity not hopes of reunification.  Those boats have long since sailed.  These people & I share memories & there's really nothing more awkward then trying to talk to someone you used to know, when both of you have moved on with your lives.  Reminiscing get's old fast.   

The friend I spoke of earlier, she was born on September 28, 1966.  She was someone, I reconnected with a couple times over the phone during the late 90's & early 2000's.  But, it was obvious, the  calls were just uncomfortable & bordering on unpleasant.  We were strangers with no reason to talk any more.  So, the calls stopped,  I recently found out, she passed.  It was back in 2004.  Almost a decade before I found out.  She lived less than an hour away & I didn't her anything.  I'm not sure what I felt about that, it was just a hollow weirdness.

Since, my 20's, I've known a lot of people who have passed that were in my crowd of people.  Some from HIV, others not.  I guess I should say it brought about a lot of sadness to my life, but not really. It was just strange, like someone altered a picture on the wall & made part of it fade away.   As I get older, some things are harder to feel, like the intense feelings you have as a teen or 20 something.  Maybe that's a good thing.

I losing chapters, places & people in my life.  I know I can't replace them.  I'm not even sure at this point if I can write new 1's.   Maybe...  I'll leave you with a videos of how I feel this day.  You probably know the song.  Listen to the lyrics. 

Cya...

PS:   Happy Birthday Donella, I'm sure you would've rocked your late 40's...

i met a boy

come dancing

Less Trips Perhaps....

This article talks about a new medication aimed at + people on a steady regimen who experience diarrhea for extended periods.  Since I've been on my meds,  I've dealt with a variety of gastrointestinal issues.  If I go more than a few days without a bout of diarrhea or the like, I'm doing damn good.  However, this med is aimed at people who have this issue for than a month at a time.  

Damn!  After a few days of diarrhea I'm depleted & nauseous.  Just the idea of a month long bout sickens me.  The company that's developing this med deals mostly with gastrointestinal diseases/issues.  I guess their the diarrhea experts.  Heavens knows that if your +, you've dealt with the issue.

This is the 1st article I've covered this year.  I'm trying to get back on track with things.  I managed to get through so morning stretches & midday exercise.  I'm aiming at later day exercise as well.  I can't do steps right now.  It's too cold & wet outside.  I have no interest in slipping & hurting myself or catching a cold.

I'm doing my best to let 2013 be it's own thing & leave the issues of 2012 in the past. I'm sure this year will find it's own ways to be irritating, but at least that will be in the here & now & not the past.  I hope all of you had a great New Year & that 2013 will bring you all need.

Cya...

Dwelling Isn't Healing...

Yesterday was "the day" in the USA (9/11).  I said last year that I wouldn't talk about it & I'm sticking to it.  I believe to heal from something you do have to face it.  But to repeatedly go back to the place & let it linger in your life is dwelling & that should be labeled as carcinogenic.  

Coming back again & again to painful points in your life won't help you.  It will only prolong the harm.  Face whatever it is that you need to, make as much amends with it as possible & let it go.  Sure, some things do get easier to face over time, but to revisit something like that day for the sake of memorial or ritual isn't helping anyone.  It just drags you bag down.

Another year, has passed & I didn't post about that day, didn't speak about it nor did I pay attention to any media concerning it.  It happened.  It was horrible.  However, other places have suffered the same or more.  Continually paying homage to death is an insult to life.  Nothing anyone does, no matter how many memorials or tribute shows occur, none of that will change any of it.  Let it go.  Let the dead be in peace.  Let the past be the past.  Get back to living your life.

Cya...

Da Dum...

Today is a day that I am not overly fond of at all.  Today is my birthday.  The reason I dislike this day has nothing to do with my actual age.  I'm not that into arbitrary numbers.

The reason is because I've just never really identified with this day or had it be that identified with me.  Growing up, my birthday was always supplanted by Labor Day weekend activities.  If school was actually in session, it was just beginning & no one would have had time to get into the swing of birthdays at school again.  If someone did acknowledge my birthday as a child, it was in the manner they choose & really had little to do with me.

As I got older things didn't change much in regards to this day.  It was a day of other people's activities & a day when a lot of crap just seemed to go wrong for me.  I may have been born on the first of September, but it certainly was not my day.

I've never been a big fan of holidays, I've gotten better with the other "non-me" ones, but I'm still not a fan of this day.  It's just a reminder that I don't identify with it & maybe I don't relate to the age issue, because I never envision myself as my age & never have.   I've never envisioned myself as the person who is physically in this world at that moment.  I just haven't.

Annoying to bad things happen on or around my birthday.  Tires need replaced, parents go on hiatus, pets pass away, etc...  Even when I try to make the best of the day, it seems to flop.  There isn't anyone around to do anything with, the funds are drastically low or there just isn't anything I want to go do.  I've got enough junk, I don't need or even really want any particular thing.  

I guess the only thing I want, is for this day to go away as fast as possible.  The longer it's here, the worse things are apt to get.   If the days on the calendar had Facebook pages, September the first, would not liked by me.  

Wake when it's the second...

Cya

Now That Bites...

I was listening to my fav internet radio station a couple of days ago & it had reset to the main channel.  I was about to change it when I heard it playing some interesting cover songs.  I have a love-hate relationship with covers.  If you can't bring anything new to the party while still respecting the spirit of the original piece then leave it alone.

After a bit they began to play Slade's Cum On Feel The Noize being covered by Quiet Riot.   I was in college when this song came out of & my then roomie absolutely loved this song.  I pretty much hated it.  He always told me if I gave it a chance I'd like it.  I told him, fat chance.  Turns out he was right.  It played & I almost immediately skipped the song.  I got distracted & the song played & I have to say that I still don't like it, however there is a mighty big but coming.

This crappy, psuedo-metal song of the 80's absolutely kicked the ass of anything I have heard on mainstream radio in years.  This throw-away cover song was better than anything on the Top-40 for the last year.  It was a performance by a singer with a voice that had character & impact.  The song was ragged & rough.  The delivery wasn't over produced.  Most of all, it was never aimed at a bunch of damned tweens.  Compared to the crap on the radio today, Quiet Riot's cover was a freakin' masterpiece. This is all the more reason  for me to despise the tween pop music generation.   They Katy Perries, Kesha & Beibers made me appreciate Quiet Riot, damn them.

Cya

Summer Things...

When I was younger, there were things we did that it seems aren't as popular today. Maybe it was the times or because there wasn't a lot of $ being spent on us kids. But, summer used to seem so full of fun & life, even if it was hot.

As kids, we'd spend our days going outside & playing outdoor games like four-square, tether ball or yard darts.  I wasn't that great at some of them, but it was fun.  When we got hot, we'd turn on the sprinklers & run through them until we cooled down.

On the rare days, when one of the older kids in the neighborhood was in a good mood, we'd head out.   We spend a lot of time swimming in the city pool & local swimming holes.  Sometimes we'd just go to the park & hang out there until it was time to go home.

If the adults got involved, we might actually venture out further & go camping.  This usually consisted of canoeing & tubing.  We'd spent the night in some make-shift get up & have a blast by the river until it was time to go home.

Some of my fondest memories were with my sister driving this old Plymouth.  Half the time we just drove aimlessly while listening to music & letting the air roar through the windows over us.  There was no AC, the car was cool from the wind.  She'd always hit the hills & send us soaring for a while.  Those few seconds of loft we're priceless & wonderful.

Throughout the summer, there'd be festivals, reunions, summer camps, contests at the library & picnics.  There'd be summer concerts in the park & fireworks on the fourth.  Then there'd be the fair. The fair was always a sign that things were winding down for the summer & school would soon start.  

No matter, what we did, the days almost always ended slightly after dark. We'd play hide & seek or chase lightning bugs well past dark.  We'd stay out there until someone called our names for us to come in for the night.  There were some good points to those times, even if it wasn't all roses & sunshine.

So, what was it like for you, way back then, when you were little, on a hot summer day?

Cya

Then & Now

That was then & this is now.  Powerful, sometimes meaningless words.  They've been used to describe every type of situation we can get ourselves into that over time has changed in some fundamental way.  It really doesn't matter if the change was really all that earth shattering, only that it felt that way to us.  They tell us that hindsight is 20/20.  I don't think so.

I've found a blog site & contest, that has pictures of people repeating poses in pictures taken long ago.  It's a fun site, check it out.  Even though some of these people try very hard, the pictures are never the same.  Even if they could fit into the exact same clothes & find the right props & places, it wouldn't be the same.  That moment captured in the original picture is gone, for some, long gone.  Some of the props are lost, some of the places are now history themselves.  But, it is fun to pay homage to the past once in a while.

Back to the hindsight thing.  I used to tell myself if I could go & I would do this & that different.  Finally, I realized that there was very little I could change in my life that would seriously alter the outcome.  Maybe I wouldn't have become + when I did, but I might have at a later date.  Wishes & ought-to-be's can be really self-defeating & hurtful.  Like it or not this is the proverbial world we live in & time for that matter.  We just have to deal with all those cliche cards that have been dealt to us.

I've figured out five things I'd write to my past self if I could send my younger self a letter.  The first one would be to learn to let go.  I am a Virgo & I really hate change & I'm not to big a fan of surprises either.  There are so many times when I should've let go of the proverbial rope & trusted that I would land safely somewhere better.  This was the time in my life when I should've said, " I am a leaf on the wind, watch me soar."  Instead I clung to hells I knew fearing the ones I didn't.

Next, I would've told myself to have some faith.  Faith in myself mostly.  Faith in my judgment & my abilities.  I let too many others tell me I couldn't do things or that things would be too hard on me.  I later learned that I could do those things even if they weren't the easiest things in the world to do. I could've stayed in math when I was younger.  I could've got a slightly harder job to get me through.  There are simply too many I could haves to count.

Try a little harder would've been my next bit of advice,  I skated through life & school.  I never really tried at anything.  I'd never seen anyone in my life try to do anything except con people & take griping to an art form. I could've pushed & been a much better student, artist & yes a person.  I'm not trying put myself down, but I really have no idea what I could've done with my life, because I never really tried.

No is not such a bad word, would be my next nugget of self-directed wisdom.  I used to hate to hear the word "No".  I took it as a rejection, a judgement, a criticism...  All these negative things were invariably pointed my direction.  I hated to say no to people almost as much as I hated hearing it myself.  This got me in a lot of sticky situations.  I finally realized something about the word no, it was powerful & empowering.  It was liberating & sometimes quite kind.  There are times we should be told no & others when that no is actually a not now, but maybe later.

I have come to believe in the idea of bad luck being good & good luck being bad.  My talent for learning was actually not as much a blessing as I had thought it was when I was younger.  Because of it I never pushed myself.  Maybe if learning had been more difficult for me I would've valued it & my accomplishments a bit more.  Some people should not win the lottery, all that $ may seem like a blessing, but for many it will actually turn out to be far more of a burden. Luck or fortune are pretty ambivalent.  You may think you've just hit the jackpot, but you have no idea what's around the bin.  Fortune is largely in one's perspective & willingness to thankful.

The last thing I would tell myself is to hold on to myself & my dreams, but not to be afraid to let them change & grow as I did.  So many of us get stuck in these ideas we create for ourselves when were young, that we can't see that those are no longer our dreams.  That those goals were unrealistic or potentially even harmful.  Our dreams are alive & must grow with us or else they'll just hold us back in a time that no longer exists.  We can't be like the Carl from UP, our dreams must evolve.

That is the advice I would give my younger self if I could.  What would you tell your younger self?

Looking Back

Looking back is seldom a good thing.  Thanks to Google, you can type in an address & viola  there you are.  I've used this application on Google to look at places from my childhood & for the most part it was a rather disappointing trip down memory lane.

I looked at places I'd lived, there were a lot of them, my family moved a lot.  I looked at childhood haunts & old schools. All but a few held unwanted visages I for some reason went looking for via cyberspace.  Most of the places just looked small, so very small & unimportant.  How could these be the places that loomed so large in my memory?  Many were dingy & in need of some serious maintenance or a bulldozer.  That same bulldozer seemed to have found many of the places I went looking for on my venture.

I never cared much for the town I grew up in, but I could always same it was clean & rather attractive. That is no longer the case.  Now it's run down, neglected & nothing like what it had been.  Since I was a child many things had changed.  Walmart came to town & destroyed the downtown businesses.  McDonalds came & soon all the local drive-ins & little cafes fell to the wayside.  The old folks held onto a lot the older businesses, but as they passed so did those businesses.  Good bye to Woolsworth, Montgomery Wards, Belks, Ramsey's, BF Goodrich & all those local shops that made my hometown what it was.  So long to all kids hangouts like the places to park while out doing the drag on Friday night, the skating rink & others too vague to recall.

Now when I use Google to look at my hometown, it's just a cliche of a broken down little town that used to have some character.  Now it's just a statistic.  All that was grand in my memory remains only that, a memory. I may not have liked my hometown & I certainly would never have gone back to it, but it deserved better than this fate.  I'm sure that's what a lot of people think when they finally get around to looking back to that town they'd left in their rear view mirror years ago.  We may have wanted out, we have even cussed the place, but we never really expected it to be so devastated by time.

For those of you that haven't been to your hometown in a long time & have been considering going back or using Google to look at it, STOP.  That's right stop.  Once you go back or look on the net for images of your old town, you will have information you may not really have wanted.  You could wind up wishing you had just been content with the memories you had of your old places.  Instead you may end up stuck with nasty images that belong in some Faulkner novel.

There's no sense in looking back anyway.  Even if it looks exactly the same & the very same people are still there, it isn't the same.  You can't go back to what it was, because that place doesn't exist anymore.  Those people, those relationships, those dreams don't exist anymore.  Time may not be linear, but the way we live our lives is.  We live in a line progressing forward, downstream or however else you want to look at it.  Going backwards isn't an option.  Time to take a cue from a Beatles' song & let it be.

I Hate Waiting...

I hate waiting.  There are things in life you just can't rush; Christmas, Summer Time or how long it takes you to forget a bad first date.  Then there are instances like;  disappearing wait-staff, professors who refuse to grade  papers or some jerk too busy talking on his cell-phone to realize he's just made a line of traffic miss the light.  Those are the moments I hate.

Waiting just makes me feel like I'm slipping backwards and in my experience going backwards is rarely, if ever, a good thing.  I'll try not to talk to much about my past here, little good could come from it.  But my "mother" was an avid believer in the bottle and baby-sitters.  I'm amazed someone didn't turn her into child services much earlier than they did.  I knew when I heard the beginning of her spiel of lies that I'd be stuck somewhere for far to long waiting for the lush to come back and get me.  When was about eight or nine one sitter had this little bridge in her front yard crossing a ditch by the roadside.  I'd sit there, legs dangling off that bridge, listening to cars approach.  I got really good at discerning different types of cars.  I really hated it when another car the same make as my moms would drive near.  As much as I despised her, she was at least the hell I knew.  I knew I'd be stuck waiting at this stranger's house for hours, sometimes days.  To her, I was just a speck of an image that faded out of sight in her rear-view mirror.

Overall my life is better now than it was in the past.  Living in the now is a trick, perhaps even an art. I used to practice the what-if magic like a pro, still do sometimes.  What if I'd had different parents, made better choices or a host of other possibilities.  All that did was depress me and led me to the conclusion that there was very little in my life that I  could've changed that would've drastically improved anything.  That realization sucked!

I believe we are responsible for our actions.  I also believe that we are players on the proverbial stage and that stage was at least initially set by other people.  Our parents for better or worse chart the course of our early lives, often in ways we never even realized until later.  You have to make the best you can of what they decided to do and sometimes that leaves us with little to no good options.

Wishful thinking will only bring you down.  Even if it's not a great present, better to be here than in the past.  The past is irrevocably set, you can't change it, and it got you to where you are now.  At least in the now, you might have some shot of bettering yourself.  If you aren't happy where you are at, then stop and figure out what got you there.  Did your parents set you on this course, did some friend do you wrong or are you the villain in your own story?

Regardless, sometimes letting go & moving on is the best, hardest thing to do. First rule, you can never really change anyone else.  You don't have the right to change them.  If something needs changing, look at yourself and see what you can alter about yourself or your situation.  If there are things or people in your life life that need to go, then send them packing.  Sometimes it really is them and not you to blame for them being difficult.

Remember, in life, your forgiveness is privilege not a their right or your responsibility.  Demand honesty.  It's always better just to have the other shoe drop and just get it over with, instead of waiting in dread.  Never expect anything from people, even if they tell you to, that way if they do what they said you can be pleasantly surprised.  I know that isn't nice, but sometimes people just suck.  Keep in mind you are people too and sometimes you just suck as well.

So don't keep people waiting.  Do be honest. Remember your playing on someone else's stage as well as your own.  Try not to suck too badly.