Bleeding

mikalina wrote:

I really relate to these words... there are plenty days I wear a "fake" smile just to survive.
The truth is I will survive !!!


my favorite part...

i will go to bed a mess.
i will wake up again tomorrow.
i will put on my fake smile.
i will hide.
i will survive.
and i will thrive.

i think a lot of us wear a fake smile sometimes. mine is pretty standard at this point though lol..

and yes, you will survive

What i've learned of love


love is easy.
"love" is tough.

love is strong.
"love" is delicate.

love is white.
"love" is black.

love is peace.
"love" is war.

love is truth.
"love" is lies.

love is honesty.
"love" is deception.

love is giving.
"love" is taking.

love is forever.
"love" is fleeting.

love is tranquility.
"love" is anxiety.

love is yearning.
"love" is indifference.

love is proximity.
"love" is distance.

love is bliss.
"love" is pain.

love is selfless.
"love" is selfish.

love is passive.
"love" is aggressive.

love is unassuming.
"love" is manipulation.

love is pure.
"love" is vague.

love is joy.
"love" is anguish.

love is support.
"love" is abandonment.

love is unconditional.
"love" is equivocal.

love has been all of these to me.

i have felt plenty of "love".
but i have never been loved.

in the simplest sense,
love it trust.

it is surrender.
it is giving someone else,
the power to crush you,
the power to
absolutely destroy you,
but trusting that they won't...

there are five things i know i will do every single day for the rest of my life:

1. wake up

2. inhale

3. exhale

4. make a mistake

5. write something new


i guess all of the above,

are contingent on number one...

he's been down,
for longer than he cares to remember.
he's wanted to go to sleep
and not wake up for months now.
he is long overdue for something,
something good.

he'd been told
that bad things come in threes.
by his last count,
it has been 7 or 8, at least.
all in a row.

he wonders,
"when does it end?"
the deaths,
the illnesses,
the heart ache,
the heart break,
the death of friendships
that were cherished.
the abandonment,
the regret...
the loneliness...
it all takes a toll.

he has prayed a thousand nights,
that he could go to sleep,
and call it a life.
he's bargained with a god
that he knows does not exist.
his once handsome face,
now an atlas of lines and wrinkles.
ashamed, he hides it behind
a graying beard.

he's weathered storms before,
but not this long.
not this bad.
the pain is his companion now.
like a tattoo, it is always there,
and will always remain.

he never thought he would consider,
the fortune of good health,
to be a burden,
or a cross to bear,
but he does.
he feels like he is doing time,
a prisoner in his mind,
even though he is free.

he has hope.
but at the end of the day,
what does hope really get you?
it is like spending all of the money
that you never had.
he knows that life doesn't always go,
the way we plan it,
the way we want it to go.
the way we hope it goes.

he knows life is a gamble.
you can not win every hand.
all you can do is ante up,
and see what happens.
he goes it alone,
into the unknown,
into the eye of the storm.
it is calm for now.
he waits.
he hopes...

people make this mistake often.
they confuse vulnerability
with weakness.

vulnerability is rooted
in honesty.
it is rooted in truth.
it is rooted in trust.
it is being naked
for everyone to see.
it is letting someone see
exactly what it takes
to break you.
it is opening a door
for them to take advantage of you.
it is letting them see the real you.
it is letting them into
your own little world.
where you live.
where you feel safe.
what your interests are.
what your dreams
and desires are.
what your needs are.
what you need emotionally
to make the relationship work.
what your fears are.
what makes you cower
and become weak.

being able to be vulnerable
is a sign of incredible strength.
and to do it repeatedly
makes you even stronger.
those who take advantage
of you are the weak ones.
because it is easy.
it is easy to grab
the low hanging fruit.
it is easy to rip
it from the tree.
it is easy to
chew it up and swallow it,
or even spit it out.
there is little effort in that.
while trusting someone enough
to be vulnerable in front of them
is where the real effort lies.

in my life experience,
people are predatory by nature.
i have had my share
of selfish, of opportunistic,
of ambitious people
who have done their best
to break me and make me feel weak.
i am vulnerable
because it is who i am.
i am a true open book.
i let people in.
some would say i am stupid,
or too trusting, or too naive
because it has resulted
in disaster countless times.
but i can not be
anybody but who i am.
and that is where
my strength lies.
from within.

10/27/13

Matthew "Bruno" Clarke, Jan 1972-Nov 1987- An Unfinished Life

Dear Matt,
it's been a long time.
Twenty six years next month.
yeah, i called you Matt.
i know you hated that name,
but had you lived
you would be 41 now,
and no doubt would have dropped
your nickname Bruno long ago,
just like the rest of us
dropped our nicknames as we aged.

You were 15, we were 12.
you were our idol.
you were the rebel,
you were the kid who screamed
"fuck you!" to the authority figures in our lives.
you were a skater.
you had a mohawk.
you were into bands
like the cure, and
dead kennedys.
you played guitar.
you were athletic.
girls loved you.
you took no shit from cops,
and we all thought that was
the coolest thing ever.

you rode our bus.
you were the leader of our crew.
for some reason,
you were only a year ahead of us in school.
none of us ever bothered to ask why
you were so much older.
did you fail a grade or two?
did you start school late?
did your shitty home life have a bearing on that?
i guess it didn't matter in the scheme of things.
you organized the pickup football games,
the baseball games, and the hockey games
at the church after school.
you were the commissioner of
the Obnoxious Hockey League...
those were the days.
the carefree days when we would get off the bus,
run home, change clothes,
grab our stuff and meet at the church field
for whatever game we were playing that day.
it was not like today, where kids play their xbox
when the get home and do their homework
on electronic tablets.
you were the leader.
you were the peacekeeper.
if two of us got in a fight,
you beat the shit out of both of us.
you would not stand for bullying.
you would not let anyone pick on
or belittle someone else.
bullying was rampant in those days.
i was bullied, and you protected me
several times.
when you spoke, people listened.
you would say,
"meet at the field at 4:30, baseball today."
and we all showed up.
i think we were all scared to no-show on you
because we would have to face you
on the bus the following morning.
you had a great sense of fair play.
i see a lot of myself in how you were.
as i grew up, i took after you in many ways.

i will never forget the very last thing
you ever said to me.
"we are playing football today.
it is starting to get dark early,
so be there as close to 4 as possible.
bring your football, mine is flat..."
you had a deeper voice than all of us.
you had changed, we hadn't yet.
you had the deep voice of a man.
we had the squeaky voices of young boys.
i said "ok, see ya there..."
you exited the bus,
and that was the last time i saw you alive.

i got to the field and you weren't there.
we waited for an hour. then another.
it was strange you not being there.
you were always the first one there,
and the last one to leave.
i know now why that was.
you had a terrible home life,
and you had to be out of the house as much as possible
to avoid it.
we had heard rumors.
we heard about
the arguments,
the abuse,
the beatings.
we saw the bruises.
we saw the cuts.
you said you fell off of your board.
i had seen you skate,
and you were good.
how could you fall so often
when we were not around to witness it??

as we waited for you,
we saw the cops,
we saw the firetruck,
and we saw the ambulance
speed by us headed toward your house.
we thought nothing of it.
we saw your mom leave the church.
she had been there at choir practice.
she was crying.
she drove in the same direction as the
emergency vehicles.
it never registered to us
that something might be wrong at your house.

it got dark.
you never showed.
we kinda could not wait
to give you shit for no-showing us
the next morning.
i went home. it was wednesday
and i had ice hockey practice
on wednesday evenings.
i grabbed my stuff and went to practice.
as far as i knew, nothing was amiss.
i got home about 9:30 that night.
i was carrying my stuff into the house,
and the phone rang.
my dad answered.
your neighbor tina, who was in my grade
called and talked to my dad.
she did not want to talk to me.
i was standing there and i heard my dad say
"oh god, no. when? how? do you know why??"
i knew something was terribly wrong
because my dad was always so calm and laid back.
he said "i'm so sorry tina. i will let him know..."
and he hung up the phone.
i said "what was that all about."
my mom was looking on with concern.
dad said,
"sit down son."
he had never called me son before that moment.
"that was tina from your bus calling.
i don't know how to tell you this,
but Bruno's dead.....
he shot himself this afternoon...
i'm so, so sorry son.."
i was numb. i asked
"did he do it on purpose??"
he said "yes son. he shot himself in the head."
that was the first time i ever saw my dad cry.
the second time i saw my mom cry.
i did not cry right away.
i was in shock.
i could not grasp what you had done.
i could not grasp the finality of it.
i could not grasp that i was never
going to see my idol again...
i was not sad. i was not angry.
i was numb. i could not understand...

the next day at school
was so surreal.
it was somber on the bus.
word had already spread,
and every kid seemed to know
about the night before.
school was quiet.
they had counselors there
to talk to us if we needed it.
i did not talk to them.
i was taught to never show emotion.
pretty ironic that i became the
most emotional person i know...
i remember i was wearing
that orange and white
tampa bay buccaneers jersey
that you used to haze me about.
the lack of your presence in the cafeteria
was palpable.

your funeral was a couple of days later.
i will never forget the way you looked
lying there in your casket.
they had you in this
dress shirt and tie,
with a blue sweater over it.
your mohawk had been combed over
and it was cut into a more normal looking
hairstyle.
they had placed a rosary in your hands.
we knew you.
you would have been angry
about the haircut, but
you would have been irate about the rosary.
they did not know you.
we did. and we were offended by what we saw.
whoever did the makeup
did the best they could,
but it did not look like you one bit.
i will always remember the way you were,
and then the bastardization of it in your casket.

things were never the same after you died.
the games at the church never continued.
we had lost our protector
and had fallen victim to bullies
because you were not there to protect us.
after you died the truth began to trickle out.
we heard real stories of beatings
and abuse. we hated your dad.
i do not think i have ever
had more contempt for a human
before that or since that
than i have for your dad.
your mom's jet black hair
became gray in less than a year.

we lost more than a friend when you died.
we all, every one of us,
lost our collective innocence that day.
and you took it from us.
young people don't die.
old people die.
that is what they do.
up until then,
the worst thing that could happen in our world
was to get grounded for some reason,
or to get an atomic wedgie or something.
but the way you died,
by your own hand,
and without a note or anything,
it fucked all of us up.
we could not get closure.
we could not process it.
we had no idea what was going through
your mind at that time.
you left us nothing.
you left us to pick up the shattered pieces of
our lives.
which we slowly did.

i think about the things i have gotten to do
that you never did.
i went to high school.
i had a sweetheart.
you never got to drive a car.
you never got to drink a beer with us.
you never got to go to school.
you never had sex.
you never grew up.
you are a perpetual 8th grader.
your problems were bad ones.
i know that now.
i held on to a lot of anger and resentment
against you. for years.
to this day,
when my relationships end,
i have to have closure.
i struggle with the breakup, until i get that closure.
it is all because i never got it from you when you died.
open wounds never heal.
they just hurt a little less with time.
i never forgave you for what you did.
but now i see.
now i see that the signs were there.
you gave away your skateboard the week before.
you gave away your prized remote control car.
you said you were getting another one and that
you no longer needed that stuff.
you offered me your hockey stick,
but it was a right handed one.
i shoot lefty.
i might have taken it had i known
what you were about to do...
looking back,
if i knew then what i know now
i would have asked you about your home life.
i regret like hell that i never did back then.

i did learn something from you though.
no less than 40 times in my 38 years
i thought about joining you on the other side.
like honestly considered it.
i had written letters,
i had planned how to do it.
i had looked in my life insurance policy
to see if suicide was covered.
shockingly enough, it is...
but then i remember how i felt.
i remember how we all felt
the day you died, and the years following.
you had an unfinished life.
if i died, mine would be unfinished too.
and i can't have that.
i can not leave all of the people i love
here to pick up the pieces.
i have to power through.
i have the tools in place to do that.
you didn't.
and i am so, so very sorry
that things happened the way they did.
i miss you all the time.
every time i see a skater.
every time i see a kid with a mohawk.
every time i see an older kid looking out for younger ones.
every time i hear the cure,
every time the fall comes,
i think of you.
i think of the times we shared.
i wonder how things might have been different had you lived.
i wonder if you are proud of who i became.
i wonder if you think that i am wasting my life that i have.
am i wasting the years that i have that you never had?
your opinion of me mattered more than anybody else's back then.
i grew up to emulate you.
i never bullied others.
i never took advantage of others.
if i saw injustice i tried to right it.
i developed the integrity and the sense of right and wrong
that you instilled in us.
i stood up for what was right.
i defended those who could not defend themselves.
i acted in a way that you would have wanted me to act.
i did my best, to make sure that your legacy lived on
through me.

i heard your dad died a month ago.
i hope that you never run across him
on the other side.
i hope that that night,
you were able to give yourself the peace that you never had here.
i want you to know that you are not forgotten.
every time we sit around a campfire with a beer
your name comes up.
something like...
"man, bruno would have loved this..."
or
"remember that time when bruno
fell in the dogshit playing football??"
we remember the good times, and speculate
about the times that never happened.
we imagine you being married
with 3 or 4 little hellions just like their dad.
and we laugh.
i think you would have been happy with life
had you lived.

i am 38 now.
that was a long time ago.
and your death has had a more profound
impact on my life than i ever realized.
as i write this, i realized i never mourned
the way i was supposed to.
i tried to bury it, instead of embrace it and let it go.
i am sorry that i never visited your grave.
for the longest time
it felt like us kids were not wanted there.
as we got older,
i think visiting you became less of a priority
because i think we knew you could see us.

we all turned out ok. for the most part.
except for those dumbasses Jason, Jeff,
and Eugene. they went to jail for some stupid things.
we all knew that they had no chance though. even at
12 and 15, we knew that.
the rest of us escaped.
the rest of us got out of
that shithole neighborhood.
i only wish you had made it too.
and that you made it out alive,
instead of making it out dead....

this letter is so much longer than i wanted it to be
when i sat down to write it.
26 years is a lot of time to have things build up,
and it comes out like a flood.
if you were here you would have probably been
mad at me for wasting your time with this long letter...
i guess i just wanted to say that
i love you Matt.
I always have.
i will never forget you.
i forgive you for what you did.
sometimes we have to do whatever it is
that we have to do.
i let go of the anger, and i let go of the pain.
but it is still there.
some days worse than others, but it never completely went away.
maybe one day it will.
i am waiting for that day.

take care, my friend.

Rod

chadwick wrote:

http://youtu.be/IjmBPFPTq-g
for your entertainment... 'krav maga'



i like that you're writing in here these days

yeah man i have heard about that. that is the israeli special forces stuff. i can handle myself ok, but i would get killed by any one of those guys. thanks for posting that. it is a good reminder that there is always someone out there who is a better fighter than you. that uncertainty is what has kept me out of most bar fights in my lifetime. thankfully.

thanks for the encouragement chad. it means a lot to me to hear you say that.

my style is kind of screwed up, but it is just free flow. i never edit anything, and i leave it as i write it, in first draft form. most of my songs are like that too. it is just art. it is not supposed to be perfect or follow any rules. it is just catharsis for me. a form of therapy. my stuff is nowhere near as good as some of the stuff i have seen you post. it took me a long time, like 9 years, to get around to posting here because i was scared. now i figure if all of you people can do it, and be vulnerable and open to other peoples' criticisms, i can be too.