Everything happens for a fucking reason

I should be doing alot of other things. I have demons to exercise and things to unload.

I have been seeing an article and rendition of the same article making its rounds. Some gilted being who exclaims to the world that nothing happens for a reason. Whereas this writer must have had this said to them and they had the same reaction I did upon hearing it "No fucking way". I get it, I get the hurt and pain has metastasized into anything even resembling some sort of comfort or well being beyond their grief is just literally an impossible thought for these people.

I have a story that's not worse than anyone else's. One writer who had a miscarriage that led her to her jaded understanding of the outcome of grief and pain is someone I would never tell I know her pain. That I can say completely that what she is feeling is something outrageous. Really I wouldn't argue it with anyone who doesn't accept this term that they need to or should. I just see that they aren't ready. As a personal battle thinking the whole universe is fucked is perfectly normal, in my opinion.

The problem I have is the spreading of this idea. Where you are in grief is perhaps a place more damaging to someone else. But that's just my silly naive morals of how people should act. Telling someone that everything happens for a reason can be a cliche thing to say. Its hard to think any good can come from any terrible situation. Death is the most prevalent in this subject, the idea that something you love is no longer here is probably the hardest and somehow the one thing that shows us life in its rawest. Death is insanely relate able, especially after you see it or feel it for yourself. When a place that had something you loved now lays empty. Of course its nice to think they're waiting for you somewhere beyond the stars and pain. But its not something anyone knows. I think it, but its a whole perspective of life and how we leave this plane. What Ive felt dancing between life and death the few times I did. With death no one is wrong in how they react. Whatever you do aside from hurting other human beings or any creature in your care is fine. Fuck up, you're due. Because really killing yourself really doesn't do a whole lot, it seems really useful. In a utilitarian type way. You have these bad feelings as long as you're alive, end that and the feelings end. Win, win right? Well one writer I read is Augusten Burroughs who completely described every way I had tried to kill myself and the dread of the act itself. Because if you're thinking about it and fantasizing about being rid of all this life, I agree with you. Ive been there. Maybe not exactly as every person whose reading these words but believe me the moments where you feel time and light fade away, something goes wrong and you're there forced to either try again or make peace. Its a troubling point in time, I had only never completely accomplished my goal because I didn't want someone I loved to find me. When that wasn't an obstacle anymore it was just a matter of when and how. Liquor, pills, my endless knife collection and belts. Liquor covers some of the many things I did while on the substance that taught me what not to do while grieving. I believed I was bound to kill myself, having been the child of not one suicide but another. Complete the cycle I thought. I went on a journey after that, it hasn't ended yet.

I had several experiences through the haze of my destruction that pointed me in directions I didn't want to go. I should have but I don't regret it. Because the thing about progress is it gives you room to accomplish goals until life kicks you to the ground again. Because it will. Now I cant tell you every reason some tragic event happens to you. Everyone is different, everyone has a way or method or history that is shared with either few or none. But I can tell you it happens for a reason, but you have to be honest with many possibilities and yourself most of all. Like I said I'm a child of two suicides, 21 years apart. The first was my father. I don't know for sure if his death was truly a suicide, I only found out after my mother died that he had tried killing himself with heroin once or twice before. I also only found out after my mother died that my father had impregnated someone else from within his and my mothers group of friends at the time. Being an extreme human being of many sorts I know how I would have reacted to all that info, he was as well. Sometimes its genetic. Go forward 21 years or alittle less and a woman who was far more brilliant than she gave herself credit for is fired from a job, alcohol was the culprit this time. I don't know alot about my mother outside of when she was around me. Sadly with how much she put upon herself in my young life that wasn't a whole heck of alot. I know she had been grieving my fathers death for a long time, then her own parents. Beyond that a ton of friends. She shortly after losing her job put herself in a position that she would have died in the room I'm sitting in now. I had moved out, was living a sped up version of the 20 something decade in my own place. She had been forced to go to the hospital, she had done her liver in. This had started around April 2011 and her time had come August 8th 2011. Ultimately I didn't know if she made August her final month or not. What I found in the fallout of this has tossed me in so many directions that even now I don't know how I made it here. How I stepped out of that hospital and into the rest of my life. I was 25 and parentless. I had very little idea how I was going to do this life anymore, I had very little use for it.

Those months I had with my mother, she wasn't allowed to drink. I don't know if she stopped but she was different. Better in a sense. I still wonder how much she knew, I wonder how much not knowing the extent of her mothers condition played into her mentality at this time. But it was nice. It was nice to talk and hang out. It was hard at the same time. I had prepared myself for many years for her not to be around, I had wished it at points when her and I didn't get along. I'm sure she felt that same at times. But we loved each other, just easily signed people off from our lives.

Since then the hits didn't exactly stop coming. I let them drag me out deeper into the ocean of depression and sadness. I let the grief take me away. Far from who I was. Who I will be. I drifted through it, always in some state of haze. My world just kept going despite what I wanted or what I felt. The world moved on too. Its one thing I ultimately made part of how I cope, the world wont stop for you or anyone. Death doesn't change that. Loss after that became a wave that just passes over me, a few beautiful souls left us in this time. It didn't help the idea that everything happens for a reason. Watching the same cycle in another family where they lose a father or brother and the whole spectrum of grief start for them. That feeling is universal, it crosses languages and probably dimensions. Tears come to my eyes thinking of someone just feeling this, the loss of their parent. I cant speak for every child, but Ive had the love and hate for my birthers. I know some, not all.

So after all this, what fucking reason could there be. How could I come to you and tell you there is absolutely a reason that everything happens? I can, I am. I went on a journey that hasn't ended yet, that journey is a personal crusade to be. Fight through feelings of uselessness and depression. Experience for experience. It started in a moment when I'm walking alone down a street, my mother had just passed and I was making one of my many trips to and from my mothers apartment to figure it all out (where I'm living, what was happening to her dog, etc) and I heard a ringtone from a phone. Now this ringtone is one of them that comes with the phone. Its by no means specific to any person. But this ringtone was the one my mother had on her phone. I remember for years absolutely hating the sound of it. I look around me and see no one about to flip a phone open. I check myself to make sure I didn't have her phone on me ( I still have it, it has a few sound bites of her). When I couldn't find any other reason this was happening I stood for a moment til the ringing stopped. With tears in my eyes I with much confusion kept on my way. My soul searching started that day. The reason everything happens depends on you, but theres a reason. You make the reason true. We all do. But that reason is yours to find. I found many reasons as I coped throughout my life about my father not being around. But its simple when someone is deep into the drug life like he was. As good a man as he was, that world is impossible to navigate without having it rub off on you. His mother had just died and kicked his serious habit into a deathwish. Being one of the toughest people anyone knew and running down the highway to hell make for a bad mix that no one could stop. So identifying things that came from that as reasons why what happened happened wasn't impossible, hard but not impossible. It gave me a proclivity towards harder drugs than weed and mushrooms. Which honestly are mostly harmless. It made me appreciate meeting good fathers later in life. It made my want to be a father that much more important. Other deaths I was audience to had their own ways of having their own reasons. Bringing family together and pushing each other to make that much more effort to love one another. It taught me how to live, one thing I can never knock my mother for is that she did what she wanted. There was no telling that woman how to live, despite how much better it would have been for her. In some eyes this is being overly stubborn, to me its will that's unbreakable.

But this is about getting through grief. My words to people who cannot see a reason out of their grief, are either in too deeply into their grief or bitter about what hand they are dealt. Been in both spots. I went to therapy and completely got turned off by this idea, how ludicrous that theres a reason I was feeling this shit. Got angry when the answer was to "keep busy" and that "time is your most trusted ally"  but theres alot of truth in both of these things. Grief puts a pause button on alot of your mind and feelings. If you're like me it can make you pause more physical things in your universe. Because at the end of it, when you have the belt tightening around your neck and you're one or two more grommets away from stopping your air supply, hearing your throat crunch under the strength of the leather. Or when you've thrown up all the fluids you consumed for the passed three hours after you had just repeated this process the last few days and you're shaking alone in your apartment waiting for anything to take you away from this. These moments when they pass and you've woken up or somehow didn't make it to that grommet laying on the floor with the worst pain you've ever felt in your chest/throat is when I realized that surviving immense pain is reason enough that anything has happened. That I know I can handle this, because we all can. If you're reading this far you've at least had the will to find out what a reason could be and are probably looking for one yourself. My suggestion to you is as follows: stay constantly fucking busy, forget time and live the way who you miss would have wanted. Fuck anyone who says otherwise, if you must be cause to destruction make it only your own and limit it. We can easily fall off a ledge if we don't step away from it for a little while. Find the outlet, we all have something that helps. I write now, it helps. Whenever I don't write I feel like I need to. I was fortunate enough to get something monetarily that gave me a good year of fucking up and something that when I feel like retiring will be waiting for me. Some would say I'm fortunate and some would be appalled at that assumption. If you're looking for a reason take the least I can tell you, you're stronger than you think. I know that you feel this feeling that's so horribly terribly empty and painful that it seems like it will never heal, you are absolutely right about that. It will never heal, its a wound that sometimes will have to bleed to keep from bursting at the seems. I wish I can say you will never be overwhelmed by emotion or hurt about the ones you've lost or anything else that brings you to a point where you cant handle your life anymore, but that would be a lie. Whatever you do to cope don't lose sight of yourself, if you do, find yourself with such conviction that there is nothing but what you need to be or where. Surviving is enough of a reason.

Addressing reality

I want to write something. Say something. Have been silent for so long. Havent listened to myself think. Just thought and acted on it. The one problem I have with this mode of being is that its very condensed. It has no space for time and its ability to take itself up. Fucking miserable really.

Being in my own head now feels foreign. Not emoting through my voice and not through some PC email where I have to keep my ideas and feelings to myself. Its beautiful. I almost want to write poetry. Because fuck why not rhyme if I want to.

Funk doesnt even begin to describe where I am. Tar seems alot more like what Im sinking into. I see the target but havent pulled the trigger. Like I know the shot will be there when I do. It wont. This existence is fleeting. It can mean minutes, hours, years or decades. Id have said seconds but really if you had a few seconds left most likely youre done by the time its over. Unless you knew the time left. Ive been in that room. I can feel time even now slow. Being back in a space waiting for what was forever. Yet not enough time. It didnt resonate quite yet. Its ripple is still affecting whats left of the world that day left behind. My head keeps going back to it. Even I guess when it doesnt mean to or even seem to it is.

I really dont even know what to say. Or really what I want to say. Maybe its all bottled still. Not able to leave where it is being held. Contained. Supressed and buried. Because I dont know what would come out if I opened that cage again. There are no shortcuts, you cant run before you walk. If you do beside the immense bruises you'd have trying to figure out how to slow down you risk permanent damage. Because there must be a base. But I write this because Im afraid. I can be me, I still dont understand why I dont allow that for myself. Im cavalier, my gut has rarely not paid off but has left a scortched earth in its wake. Reality I think needs to be addressed.

I'm with ya

To all those without hope. To those that think about the beyond as a place that is far more tranquil. Or at least where the head you have now can start over. Can be fucked again through life's tender methods to do so. Make you this person longing for an end. I'm with ya, I don't think we have cause but that might just be upbringing talking. We choose our mortality with every passive breathe. We will struggle for it as nature intends but ultimately if it was just a switch many of us would have put it in the off position a long time ago. Long is relative too. 20 years can be your life or just half of it, maybe even a quarter. What I beckon is that experience what you can and give the world, no matter how shitty the view of it, something beautiful for someone else in their oddities to enjoy and take with them.

I don't condone suicide. However I don't damn it either. Do with your life what you please, but attain your full capability. Reach the height and step off there. Because even there I don't think we who think this way can ever be happy. We who can accept deciding our fate, even as not completely in our control as it is. The morning will come despite you, lack of you. World's have lived and died in your time, whether figuratively or actually. You are not the things you own but a reflection of the world you own. The actions and decisions you own. Maybe these have been satisfied, only you can tell you this. Only you can decide or call this off. Nothing should hold you. Even though something might. Something indefinable for me is.

Humbleness

I learned to be apologetic, not humble. Its the way seemingly my family has existed. That they will be accountable for their actions but brashly do whatever the fuck they want. Im only humble when it suits the deal being made before me. Its a tactic, not a facet. Its how I feel about lving in the south here in the USA, many humble people. All colors and creeds. I always feel like Im being put on by them as my gut reaction. In some ways I am, we are, because that humbleness is a facet of the same various blends of personalities I encounter doing said deals. In NY for the most part those blends bend towards greed and goals. In the south its self preservation and inclination. Similar but vastly different in practice. One more ferocious than another. Its a place I need to learn to relax in. But my Brooklyn fences are always up, built in baseball bats with a nice sauce as the mortar.

I talk about humbleness because I need to learn some part of it. As a tactic, but I need to turn my view away from that idea and make it a habit. I guess thats what school aligns your mind to do, be humble and absorb what is being served to you. Many things I learned in school I still keep with me even though I have since found out many parts of history and science was taught wrong or was a bold lie. Mostly history, my sciences teachers might just have been not the best of instructors. I dont know the next step, while I feel strong about stepping forward I also feel strong about stepping back and looking at the whole thing as a big picture. Im doing nothing now as a result of not knowing how to continue on. Nothing worth doing is easy. Those words have been haunting me. What seems easy now compared to what seems hard are both creazy roads with their own sets of outcomes and setbacks. Instincts must be trusted. Because really if you lost everything else but your instincts you could survive fairly well. For a while. But while I have my wit and my head I should use it. Should make it something that works with me instead of parallel. I always feel like I need to understand my own head. Like trying to figure out what went wrong in a car accident. Its all foggy what both parties were thinking or doing when the crash happened. But its clear something went wrong and results are now in effect.

Nothing worth doing is easy. Is doing nothing easy? Are we so numb to keep doing nothing for so long til it breaks us as people? Reappropriate goals and move around ideas til it fits the world we want to be in or passively live in. Im passive because I dont think I care. I dont care if my heart beats one more time or I take another breath. I have longed for both those things to stop many times. Begged for it. Low and behold Im still breathing, heart still beating. I have sensed these patterns before. Have done what I felt and feel was the right decision after I acknowledged these feelings. It has led to me making worse decisions being maybe alittle young to go forth with a good decision. Now Im not the same boy, well maybe I am, alittle more grown up and far less support. Ive kinda of always been an all or nothing type soul. Its much easier for me to choose with a gun to my head than not. But maybe thats all people, Id hope it is. That depression and all its got a hold of isnt stronger than you. However itd be an easy out having someone else decide your fate. You can always blame it on someone else and be partially correct. Better than having your own blood on your hands for eternity. I dont know whats keeps me here, I dont know anymore. Choices need to be made and actions need to be taken. But the first step is the hardest. Every first step is the hardest, you almost have to be cold to yourself. Know that you cause pain, you want the pain. To grow. Growing hurts. I need to start caring again. Start somewhere. From the beginning or from the end.

Rambling Engineering

The world is a place where when you have ideas flowing you must enact them or else you risk loss of your muse entirely. Seize plans and ideas like they were gold they can very well turn into.

I literally jumped off of this to do that a bit myself. Ended up reaching out to people I havent spoken to in a while. Which is good to do.

I feel alittle held up. Stagnant. Still yet constantly in flux. Destructive and unyielding flux.

Im peversely misunderstranding what this period of time is for. What its ultimate purpose will be. Before it was just holding me in place, this stagnation. But I blamed it on everything but myself. Now I blame myself and still nothing. What the fuck, really. Another day begins tomorrow. Another 24 hours of moments.

Breathe in, breathe out. Repeat.

Hackettmans guide to doing Europe like he should have

I would never want to deter someone from the right way to do something. This is why I'm writing this. The hackettman guide to traveling through Europe:

• if you pan to go to large cities and not do small traveling in between these cities in a period less than a whole month then throw the whole backpacking idea out the window. Most large cities have a large population that speaks English. Also every city has pretty much every amenity you can get here in the USA.
• having said that don't bring a giant backpack unless you plan to really hustle that thing to small cities between the big ones and plan to be a vagrant at least a few times. Otherwise you will not need the whole pack and can get away with something that rolls.
• liquid soap. Just bring enough liquid soap for two showers a day ( This I didn't do, I would have taken more showers if I had brought liquid soap)
• the euro rail pass is slightly worth it. Its a discount or rather a prepay for rail tickets. If you look up prices and plan accordingly then you don't need the euro rail shit.
• London is beautiful and england in general is a gorgeous country. But unless you fly there direct don't try to get there from anywhere in Europe. Its entirely too difficult and expensive. I could have flown from Paris to Amsterdam if I hadn't decided to go through London first. By bus and rail first and then bus to ferry after. Great experience but really not worth the money.
• Cinco de mayo in the USA is the Spanish 420 in Madrid at least. Don't know if its every year but when I was there jeez was it lovely.
• Museo de Jambon in Madrid. Friggin delicious and cheap.
• Most hostels strictly adhere to a quiet after dark policy. My drunk ass found that out.
•Don't be afraid of hostels
• An android tablet will get you through most anything. Netflix is not really international, bring movies digitally.
• While in Amsterdam definitely ask the koffee shop people about their product. Most are very helpful.
• weed is not legal in all of holland, its tolerated to a high degree. Smoke where ever just not like an asshole.
• shrooms totally tolerated as well. Don't let anyone tell you different.
•Eat everything. The junk food is still better for you there than it is here.
• Don't fear going alone. Sure its foreign and new. But as long as you're social and keep your wits about you well you should have a great trip. I went with someone, I wish I hadn't. Sure compromise put me on a different route which led me to a city I loved more than I thought but still I invited the person out of concern for myself, by the end of the trip we were barely traveling together. Any person can deal well in these places, unless you go to a known warzone you should be fine.
•Walking fucking shoes. Wrecked a pair of shoes that I wore the whole trip. They were not up to par for my need to wander.
•Wander, by all means wander.
• I would never tell anyone to do something illegal. But I got my swiss army knife through several checked bags through customs and my traveling companion got a leatherman through. Protect yourself and be prepared.

If anyone has questions leave them in the comments. I will be going back one day. For the food and site and ganja. Be well.

An art in itself

I think what I want to write about is loss. Death. Bereavement. Grief. Negativity. Pain. Truth. All of those things have a common place in my head. Because I let them. I realize full well that all of these feelings are avoidable. That with medication and counseling I could be rid of the way I've felt since I can remember feeling. It might be smarter that way. But I guess I lack the intelligence to back down from myself. I am rarely one to back down. I'm not hot headed but I'm also not afraid of anyone, anything.

I'm of the understanding now that without taking risk, gain is unachievable. Go forward without worry of the ground in which you tread. Don't head for trepidation or hope for pain but don't run at the first sight of trouble. Keep forging on as one who will not lose when losing teaches so much. Losing is almost the same as winning, hell it feels that way. Which is terrible. But terrible is reality. Or rather reality is mostly terrible. Not actively though, there are tent poles of terrible and lots of slopes between.

This is what death has done to me. If I really wasn't afraid I wouldn't have a need to create and want to do more. I'd just do it. Something I know nothing about is what I'm afraid of. Something I must not be able to place or want to maybe. Its me that's holding this all up, because even if its something else I don't think I'm actively looking for it. But maybe that's what I'm expressing. That after this whole thing I will feel better because I would have expressed something I felt at one point. Maybe the expense will be all worth it. Maybe this time I can break the lazy spell my mind falls under. Maybe the spell has held long enough. I'm hoping for a lot here. I'm hoping that I can hope. That I'm not just bullshitting myself. Because I see a lot of creatives doing that. They lie to themselves. We tell ourselves little lies all the time, because big realities are abound at all times. So life bears need for a little fantasy. But the goal is the same, express at all costs the self needing to get out. Even bad artist still impress me with the output they seem to have. That's an art in itself.