I live my life free of compromise, and step into the shadows without complaint or regret.
Those that know the facts of my upbringing and how I was raised in the system should not be surprised by the fact that I have no problem with closed doors and being away from the world. It's sad that I am more comfortable in an institution than I am on the outside and while I've never claimed to be ghetto or a thug or hard... When push comes to fucking shove... I can handle it. I've got war stories other men would qualify as nightmares and I can handle it.... It's just what it is. Rough or not, I'm rougher. I don't back down or compromise unless I have to... And I had no problem putting in work so I came home whole... It was always the predicted life for me anyways... I've never denied being a criminal, but I hate the fact I've been convicted and damned for the sins I did not commit instead of the ones that I am responsible for. At this point I am looking at my damaged mental health from everything this past decade and wondering how to recover from it without ending up in a padded room or a grave... But I didn't have a problem being inside... It felt like Home... I guess that's the problem when the system raises you and prepares you for jail... And they never fucking forget... No matter what you become. I know that I've always had a target on my fucking back. My crown ward ship status has haunted me like a concentration camp tattoo my entire life, is it any wonder in the last few decades the only place I have truly been comfortable is when I have been on my own on my own terms whether it be in a home, a prison or a educational faculty? It's too easy for me to allow someone else to have control, routine and the same thing every day have always been strangers to me, except when they haven't been... And I fall lock step right into place... I can be a convict, a criminal, that's fine with me. It's expected. I can spend the rest of my life in the prison of my own fucking mind. It doesn't matter where my body lies, inside or out. I am already dead inside, and I have always been because I wasn't given a chance. Everything's gotta go back to day one. I spent my childhood behind locked doors, I've spent 3 years doing the same to others in one fashion or another in my career, and I've seen enough fucking bars to last a lifetime. Any prison I can be in pales in comparison to the one I have created in my fucking mind...I know there are worse prisons... And those are of others creation by there decisions, but those were there decisions and my prisons are of my own creation. I can handle them, I might not claim to be hard or thug, but rough times create rough people and I have spent my whole fucking life being rough and never backing down, no matter how stupid or stubborn or headstrong that decision is. Big Brother, or more accurately Big Sister has been part of my life since I was fucking eight years old. I'm used to seeing the world from behind a locked door or a cage, it means no difference to me. A lot of the choices I have made have been to prevent my son from enduring the same destructive cycle... But I am no stranger to the world of institutions and their affect in me. It is too easy to fall into a pattern of dependency and think that is all that I am worth. But I did what I had to do and I came back whole. There are some new mental scars but that's par for the course with my life, there is nothing I can't handle. Any prison or consequence the world throws at me pales in comparison to the prison I create in my own head and heart. It's a much worse and much darker place. If I can survive my own mind I can survive anything, and I have. I was in a prison when I worked within the system and getting paid for it, but I have worse demons from those years and the battle I have ended, than anything recent. The only thing that being accustomed to institutionalization has taught me is that one while I may be comfortable within its dark embrace, you cannot fight the fucking system. The house always wins.
I'm used to constantly being in and out of court. I wasn't even yet a teen the first time I had a lawyer and had to deal with judges and courtrooms. I have been traveling to see and fight for my loved ones since day one. A long bus trip for me just means a long nap and/or sightseeing. There is nothing new to being forced to go somewhere else against my fucking will. Or being told what to do. Someone else has always attempted to control me, and I've always rebelled. Just because this time I had good fucking reasons for my choices and I am older and wiser doesn't mean I still didn't rebel and be a solid person. I'm no rat and I looked the other way a lot because that's how things are done. My character doesn't change just because my circumstances do. I'm still me, I'm still solid, and as much as I can be after having every strip stripped off me down to the fucking bone, I'm still whole. I'm pretty sure something got left behind the last year and 6 months, but whatever it was, it wasn't needed or a critical part of me... I know the important things I've lost, and what this has cost me...anything else missing is immaterial.
I'm not afraid of institutions, I've been in enough of them. Never by my own choice, sometimes by my own actions. But while I can deal with it, it sucks that every positive thing I've ever done to help others within those walls has constantly been thrown back at me and used to fuckin attack me at every turn. But of course I'm a crown ward , former ward of the state, I can't do anything right and my actions and motives will always be suspect because I'm a crown ward case. I might as well be an enemy of the fuckin state. I can handle myself on the inside and on the out. Theirs not much left in this fuckin world that scares me, so much has been stripped away... I live my life a quarter mile at a fuckin time because you never know when it's going to be taken away forcefully... Of all the things I value the most, my intelligence, my mind and my freedom rank the highest... Without them I am nothing and while I can and have lost the last one a couple of times, it's the other two I fear the loss of more, and there is the fact my legendary fucking temper is probably the symptom of something more, something ignored for decades...I can no longer ignore it. If my anger is the only thing of value I have fucking left, lock me in a fuckin box and leave me there. I don't want to hurt anyone else with my anger and actions any more. I've lost the will to fight, Hell I've lost the will to defend. I've always thought my blaze of glory would be the way I went out, I was right about the happy family I was never going to have, I called that at 21, I never figured it would be this system of isolation that would assist in destroying that... And now as I stare out from the bottom of a bottle I'm starting to wonder how much like the bastard brother in law I will become... I've always been able to have my pride and morals and ethics, they are still there at my fuckin core... But on the surface they feel like they have been stripped away... And I know how easy it is to lose hope, I've lived with an alcoholic, hell I have been one... All it takes is one bad day to enter into the abyss, I'm no longer looking in, it's stared right into my soul and become a part of me... Every one of my days is a bad day. I've learned to internalize that and use it. The system built me and the system broke me... I'm done with it for the moment but the fuckin shadow looms large, and I will never fully fuckin escape... I only hope to save another that damnation, but I've watched at least another innocent corrupted by it as well. As much as we were as kids, another child of this generation is gone... Out of reach. The system that never. Accepts blame is as responsible as the parent..but good luck getting them to admit that. They create generations of damaged individuals and the perpetuate the cycle with their offspring and prepare every one of them for incarceration or the walls of the mental health system.... There's a reason I was so militantly anti-pharmaceutical for so fucking long... I was turned into a fuckin robot by the system when I was young, it explains my problems with substances, and while I try to do things in moderation, my idea of moderation and tolerances would make a lesser man a black out drunk. But for me it's just another fucking symptom of how I live my life with no limits, no stopping, no backing down. Nothing stops me except me and that will never fucking happen even if you throw me back into a fucking cage..even there I've still got 110% of my fucking mind, and I can pace the floor and wait and brood....one day the book will get published and ill name names but for the moment that manuscript is hidden well within, it gets added to everyday... But I will one day find that moment... And I will have a reckoning day, I have much to answer for in this world, but I am not the only fucking one that does... But of late, that sentiment has fallen on deaf ears. My voice may be gone, my will to fight subdued... But even being 1% of the man I was before, I will leave behind a legacy, I will not back down without leaving something behind, these words here are part of that, and there are so many more that will be written before the dark and black night of my life closes in for good. I have nothing left, but I'm gonna die in my sleep an old fucking man because I have so much left to do. My anger and hate has sustained me for so long, the broken system, the broken man, the strength came from some where and it's still hidden within. I just need to find a new way to deal. They win when I use their tactics of aggression. Anger and hate either ends up internalized and working against me as usual or it leaves me a firecracker, short flames and then expended. I am a stick of dynamite that needs to be something more. The wick of fiery anger needs to be extinguished. If the anger is all that I have left, then I already have fuckin nothing, it's all gone. When I say I'm done with the lawyers, cops, judges and courts, know that I have my fuckin reasons. I can't keep revisiting all this shit. I need to stay sane. I got no time for a nostalgia filter. I'm done battling, I gotta be.
I have faced my dark history and accounted for it more fuckin times than I care to account for... But every time that door opens, I've faced it head on. I have nothing to fear from my rear view window... I've dealt with it all and survived, even if most of the time I've survived alone. But the darkest places are always dealt with alone anyways. Best policy, no innocents harmed and no one else gets hurt, the only pain in the darkness may not be self inflicted but it will be and has been self endured, I'm stronger for it. I'm mean and old and miserable and I've earned every second of my right to be all of that. In my mind I'm still fighting diagnosis of both physical and mental ailments because I refuse to be labelled as such even tho in this moment I know I need the help. I've refused it for so long it's become status quo. It's not easy to admit that I am in weakened state to myself, much less to others.... And I will never fucking be defined by it. I deal with constant pain every day from both my ankle/foot and my fucking emotions, it's a constant in my life. I guess I'm just fucking used to it.
I can look out at the world from bars on the walls because no prison or home in this universe can compare to the fuckin one in my head that I have been trapped in for longer than I'll ever humanly admit to. But that memory palace walls run thick with the blood of blood red anger, black with hate, the glass house has been smashed to bits with stones.... That's where in my mind, the prison I reside, and their is only one inmate. Yours truly. Any hell you can inflict, my mind has already inflicted worse. This world does not scare me, only my lack of a presence in it does. And that will never fuckin happen, I already told you that's the cowards way out. There are a lot of things I've had to fuckin endure and there are plenty that I'm sure I will continue to experience and endure...but I will always be standing and solid, no matter how many bones in my back get broken cutting me down to size.... Nothing is ever going to take be away from this world. Unless it's to take me back to the one I just left. A world of orange and blue, every day is exactly the same, only the menu changes... A place that is far too fuckin easy for a man like me, to call HOME. I am a bad motherfucker and I don't know the meaning or definition of how to back down. All I ever have known is how to fight, putting that aside for what's left to pass as normal in my life is going to take some time. I've never had to fucking pretend to be something I'm not... But I've never had to justify myself to the same people that created me so many fucking times in the never ending battle... It started and finished on Barton. Maybe that's a sign that something more inside my hollowed out soul that it's time to walk away while mentally I still can. I don't have to justify myself anymore, i am old school and i have the same old school views and beliefs i always will, nothing changes that. I came up straight outta Jamesville, straight outta the system that dumped me minutes before I turned Sixteen, you all know exactly where I was on my 20th birthday the night 2pac died, he was right about the rose that came from the concrete. I have all that and my experiences and my educations. No one takes any of that away from me, even if I'm locked in a fucking hole away from the world. I don't have to be hard anymore, there are no more worthy battles to fight. Not ones I can win anyhow. Just more I am destined to lose... So let's stop while I am ahead of the game, before the institutions become such of part of me that I key them win. It already is a defining moment of my life above all others and a part of my character forever. I am an angry and mean individual and that's a part of me I can only control and never fully escape. I can live with that. When I need it, it's there for me, when I don't need it it's still there. But these eyes don't have to pretend shit, you look inside them you know how it's going to end... With a fight... And I still don't know how to lose...or to back down. I don't have to act hard, I already look the fuckin part. So here we are, I'm defeated, I'm broken, I'm back to square one. I always knew it was coming. I have to find peace and balance in my life in the outside world, that's what's important now. If I can find it to some extent behind a locked door, I can find it out here.
The house always wins in the end, anyways. No one here gets out alive, right Jim? All I wanted was a fuckin Pepsi.
Current Mood: Bitter
Current Music:Steve Earle - Copperhead Road
Why are so few of us left active, healthy, and without personality disorders?
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