Determining what you Deserve

Considering what you believe you "Deserve" out of life is self-delusion.

Forgive me for boiling it down to basics, but you get what you earn, not what you deserve. Circumstances and random chance and even luck may affect your fate, may even engineer it, in the end.

But- in the meantime, no matter what chance of birth you had, no matter what foul luck befalls you, no matter who and how rich your daddy was, how crack addled your mother might have been when she begat you- Regardless of all these factors, beyond the stars and fate and god's will= You have but one avenue that will make you deserving of anything better.

And that is how you live your life.

That is the choices you make yourself, the way you guide YOURSELF, after all the other factors out of your control fall to the wayside. You have only your footsteps to follow. And you may have had poor guides in your road. But again, circumstances aside- it is what your wits and your instincts drive you to- It is what your fears keep you from, or save you from. It is your decisions that make you WHO you are, in the end, not your birth, not your environment, not your friends, not your enemies. It is your choices, and where you stand strong, where you bend, where you break, and where you rebuild your self.

It is the eyes you meet, or look away from in that damned mirror.

They can haunt you, or they can fill you with determination. Or both. Or neither.

But it is our actions (and inactions) that determine how we look at ourselves.

No one else's opinion matters. Except for those few individuals in our lives who have Earned our full respect. However impropable it was for them to do so, in our self absorbtion and self hate and fear of someone who is better than ourselves.

And if you can't even value your own opinion- well. stop now. read no more. For more self-study will only damn you further.

Fearing your life is a failure is not a failure. It is sanity.
Judging yourself harshly is not a sin. It is sainthood.
Meeting that judgement, and meeting your own eyes- and nodding in grudging respect-

is the only godhood you will ever experience.

It's never too late to earn your own respect, (back, even).

You are the only one you have to convince.

For - Me. And for the people I've come to fully respect in this life. There are times they were weak, and I despised them for their weakness. And there are times I thought they were weak, and I realized it was my weakness that built my resentment. I can judge them. But my judgements of others don't mean a fucking thing- just like their judgements of me don't mean anything.

Judge yourself. Or don't judge anything at all.

Surrending Desires

I'm just not the most social person when i am sober.

Drinking lets me pretend that this world is somehow better than it truly is.

When I'm clear all that I see I dont really like. I dont find much joy in this existence. There's my kids. But that is pretty much it. Everyone else is pretty much of a letdown most of the time. I am here for my kids. Thats what I do. I wont quit and I wont fail. But i dont get much joy, if any, anymore.

"In simpler dreams I find a simpler worth" I wrote that line twenty years ago, and it means more to me now than it did even back then. But its so hard releasing all the bullshit and living without desires. I AM my desires. I am fucking and fighting and drinking and dying and LIVING. But to have peace I have to surrender all that. And I just don't know if I can.

I have passion in all the wrong things, and in few of the right ones. And I fear I cannot change that. I have always been a lover of women. When I'm not loving them I am dreaming of loving them. And I never stop dreaming. In the end they fail me, and without fail- I fail them too- in the long run. I don't want one woman, at the end of the day. I dont want that happy ending. I want to fall in love with a girl I am standing behind in the checkout line of the supermarket. I want to meet a stranger's eyes with a long passing glance and lose myself in that millisecond's love and lust. I want to feel my heart jump, and remind me that I'm alive when I see a woman I want to make love to.

I don't want a happy ending- and- huh- how about that? Realizing this, why the hell should I expect one?

Gift of Faith

Faith- is something that I've never held in anything other than myself. And most of the time, that faith is in short supply as well.

I told my devout christian mother that I didn't believe in god when I was eight. I have trouble remembering the events of last week at times, but I remember that day, and that conversation clearly as if it were yesterday. She was driving, around the loop, in our beat-the-hell up car. And we passed a religious sign by the side of the road. And I told her, in my usual matter-of-fact sort of way. "Mom, I can't believe in god anymore." It was can't, not don't. And that's an important difference in my analytical mind.

She was used to my sudden outspoken observations. And there was a long pause as she deliberated the right response... "Why do you say that, son?" And I told her.

The concept may have been affected by the church members who treated my single mother of two who smoked and had left her husband-like dirt. My opinion may have been slanted by the way they talked ill of her in front of me and my brother, as if we couldn't understand their holier-than-thou slander because we were only children. It certainly didn't help my opinion of Christians in general, and as a whole, and they've never proved any better in the following thirty years. But mainly, it just didn't make sense. Not even to an eight year old. The hypocrisy and the stupidity were obvious. The contradictions seemed oh so clear to my steel trap mind. The faith, the spirituality, the yearning for a Father to guide me- it just rang hollow, even to a bastard like myself.

And I explained this all to my mother, who believed with all her heart and soul in Jesus and our lord and my only hope for salvation being in accepting HIM.

And she listened to what I had to say, and she rolled it around it in her head, and she said the only thing she could say- because I got my love of truth from her- even if the truths we came around to understanding were two different things=

"I hate to hear you say that son and I hope you change your mind. But-I respect your opinion and I won't make you go to church if that is the way you feel."

She looked hard at me, with those deepest of eyes, and I remember that smile that was sad and at the same time proud.

And my faith is in myself, because she gave me that gift, with her respect and her acceptance of what I had to say. She never doubted my ability to think for myself. She guided, but she never pushed.

I've studied religion with a fervor bordering on obsession since then, but I've never found a reason to have faith for it any more than I did as an eight year old.

I have wanted to prove myself wrong at times, because my respect for my mother's opinion was as such. But, the gods have never moved me with the spirit, as they say.

But whatever faith I possess, I consider a gift from her- for not doubting in me.