Some days I live for tomorrow

It’s been a while since I had the chance to sit down and try to write out my experiences with you, my friends. So many things have happened since my last post, some of them minor, some major, but all have taken up my time and more importantly my emotions and soul. I know of some folks who find the easy way to deal with their emotions is to dump them out as they get them, to analyze them as they come along, to look for help or guidance with them, to share them. I wish at times I could be those people, but I just can’t. As emotions build in me, I let them control me. The stronger they get, the more I feel as that emotion is the only thing I will ever feel again. Situations where they come back to back, over and over, usually end up weeks later with me reeling from the ride, and in most times feeling deep regret for what I have done or could have done. I have no control of them, nor do I even feel the desire to do so.

I can assume it is something due to my condition, or rather how that condition affected the way I grew both mentally and physically. I know that my anger is rooted in this. I have been told repeatedly by my doctors that I must learn that my anger is so deeply ingrained in how I react to situations because of this, that I have to force myself to acknowledge it, and deal with it immediately, lest I learn nothing. Good words and ideas, but actually doing it I usually end up failing miserably at. Such is life though. I also know what the cause of that anger is, what makes it so easy to take hold of me, to feel that I can only deal with situations through it; my fears.

I cannot even begin to imagine life without my children. I don’t think I ever really understood what kind of deep love a parent has for their children, until I became a father. You hear the saying all the time ‘I would gladly kill or lay down my life for my children’, yet it is SO true. They are my life line, my sanity, so many times in this world. But with that deep love, I have found the other side, the blackest fears. Fears that can and do, result in paralyzing me. Fears that make people ask if I am ok, that I look like I am deep pain to them. Fear..

I have found that I cannot watch a television show or a movie if they are dealing with the death of children. I really wanted to see 'The Messengers', but never made it past the young boy in the beginning. It seems so out of touch with reality, but I hear the cries of the actors and in my head I can hear my children screaming the same way and I want to run and hide, but I can’t as they are my children, so I lash out with anger with all of that fear. One night I walked into the room as my wife had on some crime drama and I saw on the screen a young girl being tortured, her crying out ‘Mommy, Mommy!!!’. The blackness of hearing that cry took over me and I left the room and swung our bedroom door shut so hard that I ripped out the handle of the door. In my anger at doing so I punched the area where the handle used to be and slashed two of my fingers to the bone. I ended up at the medical center getting stitches, lying to my wife and the doctor, telling them that when the handle came loose I cut myself. The doctor bought it, but my wife I know to this day knows better.

I have talked to my doctors about these fears before, and they classify them as anxiety attacks. I try to tell them that I have these reactions not daily, but instantly. I have tried to show them this, and they nod and up my medicine or change it at times, and schedule more counseling. I WORK at them, I honestly do, but they are there with me always. As I sit and write this, I had them just typing the paragraph above (took me a few minutes to calm down and write this one). They are part of me, like my anger, like my passions. They are my soul and I cannot cut it up and take pieces out and discard them. I will live with them, and deal with the consequences of them. But I don’t have to like them, nor do I have to like why I am this way, what my condition did to make my life like this, so deep in me that I cannot separate what I should and shouldn’t have been. I had a good childhood, I was loved and taken care of, I had shelter and food and toys and friends. I will not complain about it, I see too many people who have not even the knowledge that tomorrow will come for them as tonight death stalks their streets.

I don’t have to like this though..

I thank you for being my friends. I think of times I was more than I would take from anyone and you loved me all the time through them, never backing down. Thank you..