I've been away a while

Looking back, I've always had something to say about something or another, but these past few yrs has been rather interesting to say the least. I've been reflecting on my past, making changes...  You could go so far as to say that I've been away, but I'm finding my way back home.

Sometimes we run away from ourselves in the search of happiness only to find ourselves endlessly searching for something that we'll never find... until we realize that happiness starts within ourselves.  The interesting thing is I've been looking for happiness since I was a teen, coming from a dysfunctional family full of verbal & physical abuse, I knew I didn't want to live this way...  All I wanted was to be happy.

No, I will take the blame for my own short comings, but only because I could have changed things for the better and I didn't because I chose not to....  or maybe because I never learned how to forgive.

It wasn't until recently that I learned how to forgive others and most importantly myself.  With this knowledge comes sympathy and compassion, a understanding of the pain associated with the realization of how I have allowed my past to control the present and finally understanding that we all have the power to change the course of how we choose react to situations.

My past is full of anger, anger at those that have betrayed me.  I chose to remain angry for a long time which undeniably kept me away from the very people I needed in my life.

God gave us free will, not that I'm a big believer in religion, with this free will, we have a choice on how we choose to react to given situations. We have the choice to be angry or to simply walk away leaving the offending person to deal with their own problem.

2010 was a year of observation, 2011 was a year of recognition and 2012...  well I'm not sure what kind of year it will be, but I can say one thing... it will be a yr of choices.  I choose not to be lead in a direction I do not want to go, where it be emotionally or physically.  I've spent way too long believing I was emotionally broken, well I was, but you know with every dawn comes a new day.  How I deal with it will be a choice I will make with more compassion towards myself and others around me.

Its interesting how I find it so difficult to let things go, but I have come to realize that hanging on to things only poisons my soul. With anger, there is no compassion, no understanding and most of all, no forgiveness.

At some point in my life, I came to believe that compassion was a weakness when it really is a strength.

This is my New Year resolution for 2012....  To be more compassionate with myself, to forgive and to grow into a better, stronger man.... to remember that happiness is within.

Prisoner of my own desires

Here is something I wrote back in 1995 when I had faced the reality that my job had taken over my life. The realization that I had found myself chasing the American dream of monitary success only to realize that it was very lonely road I was on.

What is this day

When did it happen

How did I allow it to become me ?

When and how did I become a prisoner of my own desires for the freedom from the everyday mundane grind only to become a prisoner of what I’m trying to escape from ?

I don't know… To feel the pain of ones yearning to be... to love, to be loved

Once life was good, it still is, but at what cost.. 

A cost that cannot be measured by any monetary means

I watch life pass me behind the window that holds me prisoner

Only to wish I was part of the scenery about me

Only to pass it by, again and again…  

I've become a prisoner of my own desires.

Day’s turn into weeks

Weeks turn into months

Months turn into yrs

When does it end

When will I become part of the landscape I seek so desperately to become a part of

I dream of the days that will never be

I spend my days, weeks, months and yrs as a prisoner of my own desires