Unfinished Business II

I define manhood simply: Men should be tough, fair and courageous, never petty. Never looking for a fight but never backing from one either.

It's time for things that have been left undone for almost a decade to be finished. I have the time, and soon the money to finish university and it is something to be seriously considered. I have for far too long put other things ahead of doing the things that are important in my life to me on a personal and intellectual level but if I am seriously going to re enter my feild and or have any further progress in my life academically I think in at least this instance I need to look backwards for a moment and leave the one unfinished thing in my life come back to the forefront. 9 years ago I made a decision to leave Windsor and my education. In many ways there was a bigger battle to fight, but now as it was then I'm still fighting that battle, I fought long and hard for my education, to be someone, to be an intellectual, to be an academic, it's something that needs to be fixed, it's something she has never had any fucking control over, leaving university hanging was always my decision, I need to finish it up and not let it be another albatross around my neck of things I should have finished in my life. I don't quit and I don't fail. This is something that needs to be done and there is no one but me that can affect the outcome. It's time to get it done and be done with one more thing in my life. What ifs constantly play on my mind but the reality is, knowing my character I had only one choice of action in 06, but that decision doesn't need to define me, not then and certainly not now, I need to go back to being that determined person, I need to go back to being angry and willing to endure anything for both my education and my child. I can't blame one for being a distraction on the other and it has become time for me to stop hiding behind the apathy and be proactive. There are many games in my life to be finished and done with. This is the one I can and do control, this is the one I need to finish to be done with it completely. I control that completely.

Whatever my life is now I seriously in the near future start looking both back and forward and start dealing with unfinished things, I never back down from a fight and I never abandon things I start, for the last decade someone has gotten in the way of that even when I have tried to deal with it, I made a choice 9 years ago, good or bad I do not regret it, going to school after college was a choice, going to university was a choice, being a father was a choice, not being a deadbeat dad ever has always been a fucking choice, I could always have walked away and had a simpler life, but somehow the easier way is never my choice, I do it the hard way, some roads promise easy travel but the cost of what I would have to give up is too fucking much. I'm difficult, therefor I go the difficult road, I like a challenge, the one thing my entire life has been is challenging, but I have always fought every adversity alone and came out on top. I don't back down and I don't surrender, the idea is anthema to me, I stand my ground even when the ground underneath me is crumbling. I made my choice 9 years ago to abandon my friends and my academic career to be father and fight a fucking battle that I had already attempted to fight by commuting from Windsor to Niagara, often within the same day. I don't regret anything but I would clearly be a diffrent person today if I didn't spend the first couple of years in the 2000s looking back on something that was broken and ultimately meaningless. I will never ever regret being his father, but being a psychotic gutter sluts partner? Yeah I regret that immensely, you're life has proven your worth and it is utterly meaningless, your actions and mine will prove our true character to our son and when it comes down to it you will be judged, you will be judged and you will be found wanting, It's fucking funny that I have been gone from Windsor for almost a decade and there are still people there that I could hang out with and have a band or do something fucking interesting musically or with some of my other artistic endeavours. It's frustrating that some of the people in my life in Hamilton are fucking pathetic and don't need to be acknowledged period, I'm there for the fucking duration but my soul is not there, without my reason for being in the hammer I'm just an empty hollow shell. I had dreams, I had things to do in my life that I put on hold because there were more important things to do, then there was this big distraction with the toy crap. It's time to go back to doing and being who I am, I will finish the battles I need to finish but there's a lot of me that's been chopped away and it's time to find that person agian, it's time to be me.... Once the battle is done I can be whole again, but for the moment other things need to fill that fucking void, I can't spend all my fucking time in my life brooding over things I can't change and time that has been taken from us both. I don't look back and I have no remorse and no regrets but sometimes it is nice to remember that before all this, I had a life, I had friends I didn't need anyone in my life and I was accomplishing the goals I wanted to be, had I just taken other options in my life I would have been a much more interesting person, then again that's not the way my life turned out but that's on me, it's up to me to fucking change that once again, any time I've had to fight I'd fought, anytime I've had to change I've changed, I just miss the man I used to be, of course the man I am is even stronger after having to deal with what I have and making some hard fucking choices in my life, but my actions are what define me, not who or what I am, but my actions. I have anger, and I have hate and while some of that has been taught to me, more of it has been born of frustration, I'm sick of this lifetime of fighting losing battles with the odds stacked agianst me, yet thru sheer determination I end up winning, maybe it's because I don't know how to fail? When my back is up against the wall it's a self defence mechanism nothing more, nothing less. I do not know how to back down and I have no clue how to surrender or walk away. Not that either would ever be a fucking option. Not in this lifetime.

Sometimes the choices I make in this life suck and I back myself so deep into a hole I just have to wait for the inevitable result, at the moment I'm losing patience with a number of things in my life and the only thing I'm feeling is broken, I often just want to sit around playing stupid fucking video games and pretend that once upon a time I had a life that mattered, that I was doing something of substance, but the sad fact remains, everything in my life has led me to this point and nothing I've done in this life has mattered, save one important decision, past that I'm a hollow shell, something I feel more and more these days. There are little things I do like fixing a movie transformer for a little person from junk parts that make me feel good about things in my life and I'm glad that thru all the cynicism and the anger that the good person I sometimes am inside can still show thru. Far too often the darkness overshadows that, and often people see my kindness as a weakness instead of a strength, I'm sick of being taken advantage of but I'm also not about to back down from doing the odd Boy Scout thing esp. If it puts a smile on someone's face. You can't ever compromise who you are, nor why would you want to. Just because right now I am dealing with a dark patch over the entirety of my life doesn't mean I can't allow myself to let the sunshine on once in a while, the good days, the good experiences, the things I am doing and need to do, those are always going to be the important things. Being a good person and not an anger filled ball of rage all the time, that's what's important. I used to be happy, I used to have fulfillment in my life, I need to go back to that, the person who might cast a black intimidating shadow but at my core fundamentally is a good person, I need to go back to that. Somehow over the last few years because a large chunk of my soul is missing and has been stolen, I've allowed myself to wallow in my darkness and forgotten core pieces of who I am, I need to remember that I am not just defined by the one thing I am, at the core it is what defines me, I am a father, I am a child and youth worker, everything else is a distraction, but some distractions are worth the endeavour, I am an academic, I am a student and teacher of history, I am a musician and a songwriter, maybe some of the hobbies and true interests that I have always fucking had that I still have need to be things I seriously go back to, they need to define me, not this war, not the toy bullshit I am slowly backing away from, it's time to do things that make me happy and fulfilled, it's time to go back to that. It may or not make me whole but it will make me a fuck of a lot less broken. Too often I dwell on the things that make the darkness come to the forefront and I need to get away from that, my life is changing and I am less than a year and a half away from 40 and there are things that can and will need to be done, but there are also things I want to do, dreams unfulfilled, goals long forgotten that time and solitude are making me think might be worthwhile again. It's time to make my world my own agian, it's time to define who I am agian to the world not have the world and the shitty experiences in my life define me instead.

Current Mood: Depressed.
Current Music: Eminem - Survival

Hope lets you do things you would otherwise never be able to do, gives strength when everything is darkest.

When I look into someone’s eyes, into their soul, their innermost being, they can see mine in return—the things I had done, the things I was willing to do, the things I was capable of doing.

A man’s magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man’s character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.
There was a flash, a tingling pain in my head, and then a lingering, dull ache. For some reason that didn't surprise me. You don't gain knowledge without a little pain.

The world might be vicious and treacherous and deadly, but it couldn’t kill laughter. Laughter, like love, has power to survive the worst things life has to offer. And to do it with style.

Ambitions are incompatible with consciences, you know. The two strangle one another straightaway and leave an awful mess behind them.

Sometimes I think that’s where most of us are,” I said. “Fighting off the crazy as best we can. Trying to become something better than we were. It’s that second bit that’s important.

Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.