I'm still here, I'm still with it. I'm listening to music again, still writing, still keeping the journal with me. I've managed to stay on a straighter and more narrow path. Though not quite as refined as I would like it to be, I am slowly gaining control of my mind. Ironically, it starts with the body. Neglecting the body is something I've done for way too long. Sitting in this chair, forgetting to stand, as if it was some conspiracy that keeping my body in tune with the world around me would lead to a better mental state. I stood in the rain today, waiting for my daughter to get off the bus. It felt good, standing there in silence, letting the drops fall off my brows. Watching the ruined street around me gather puddles, the bird carcass on the muddy dirt trail where you'd expect a sidewalk to be. The cars buzzing by, the smell of the exhaust against wet asphalt. Garbage trucks and amalgamations of steel being held together by the indomitable human spirit, refusing to let their only means of transportation die with dignity in a scrapyard somewhere. It felt good to let the ugly world around me almost reach out and touch me for once. I stood in silence on the corner of the street, waiting in the rain.
I have stuck with exercise, as I mentioned earlier. It's not much, I'm not killing myself, I've kept with my 100 pushups a day. I've slacked on the cardio and abs but if I can keep the pushups as my baseline then I think that's a good start in building another habit. I underestimated how much doing something so simple could make a difference on me. It brings me back to remembering how fit I was back in the Army days. I'm not going to go on a 'army guy' tangent for attention here, bear with me there's a point: I used to be extremely active, extremely mobile, I could run a lot. I'd say we averaged 8 miles a week in our regular routine. All that to say, I was still unhappy for long periods of time. I would still have bouts of rage and angst for months. Why was that? I was physically active. I was doing the things that are making me happy now. Why was I unhappy?
The body is tied to the mind, and vice-versa. The mind tells the body to move, the body moves. The mind can make the body do things the body activelly despises. The body can make the mind do things it despises as well. The militry gave me an ego. The military gave me a complex that - because I was strong, I couldn't be wrong...I guess. I developed an ego due to the mentality and the culture surrounding me at the time of my enlistment. See, I've never felt I fit in anywhere as a boy. My family was very seperated and disfuntional. Not that there wasn't love or effort involved, but time heals and erodes all things. But I don't want to harp on that too long, it's a means to an end of this story. My ego developed because I fit in somewhere. I was strong. I got to shoot guns and blow shit up. My ego made my mind weak, and the military has a way of stifling individualism and creativity that a bruised mind needs to bleed out the pressure.
I left the military with a broken mind and a broken spirit due to a clusterfuck of a process it is to outprocess from the military without a little bit of cooperation from your command. It was the first time I really felt replaceable. I never worked retail, I never had a steady job before this point so I had no idea what that felt like. 28 years old and I had never felt disposable before. I know how funny that sounds coming from a guy that worked for Uncle Sam but I really felt like garbage. I came into a new life that didn't really give a shit about my service. As much as I tried to tell myself I didn't care either, I really did. It absolutely broke me. I had the fortune of my father working at the local pipefitters union and showed me how to get my foot in the door. Admittadly, my service did help me skip the interview process, but I had to attend an 18-week welding course without a paycheck to make it there.
I no longer work for the union. I left during my 5th year for the same reason I thought the military was suffocating me; my ego grew too big for my head and I felt claustrophobic. I can do it better than them! If these idiots can do it so can I! So I became the white-trash equivelant of a college drop-out and left the union my last year of trade school because I was too good to follow a laundry list of arbitrary rules imposed upon me by the state and my union hall. I left and decided to go the self-employed route.
Now I could go on and on about how absolutely miserable I was, woah is me!
...I say all this to provide context. I'm telling a story, alright?
Fast forward to now and I'm very much disconnected from my former self. Every 7 years, something falls off your credit report. The statute of limitations applies to life in the same way, I believe. I am a new man; a physically weaker man, but a more spiritually and mentally aware man. Now, thats not to say I'm a guru, I think I've just finally walked enough through life to level up a couple times. Maybe spec into INT and WIS a little bit, if you know what I mean. I feel as though I've reached a breakthrough lately. My perspective of suffering has changed, before I used to believe in the Nietzsche version of suffering, but now I believe in the Nietzsche version of suffering. Suffuring used to be something that I HAD to endure, and now I HAVE to endure the suffuring. I'm being circular, I know. It adds texture to the writing. It's just a bit of poetry, little plays on words. Don't think to hard on them, I'm an idiot.
Suffering is something man has to face head-on. Suffering is what makes anything hold merit. Actions speak louder than words, and so forth. But when you sit in your own filth, when you sit in your chair and sulk, when you sit in your special spot you begin to rot. You are not doing your suffering any justice by not confronting it. Your body is crying out to the mind and the mind is too preoccupied fighting itself. You have to give your mind something external to fight, it is too powerful to fight itself. Your mind will fight across time and space for as long as you let it rage against the void - The void is infinite - and you will die bitter and tired. You will die trapped in a cage of your own design, and that cage will be made of brittle sticks and mud.
I'm no philosopher, I'm not even educated. I'm just a dude that likes to write his pooh-bear ponders.
I do not say 'you' in reference to you, the reader. I say 'you' as my schizo way of externalizing the conversation I have with my mind. This is why keeping a journal or at least writing thoughts down is also important. It let's you see how absolutely fucking insane you sound arguing with yourself internally. You, the reader, do you see how insane I sound? I am absolutely insane, right? No, I don't think so. I think I just spent too long not suffering my suffering. Suffering is the most important part of the process, suffering forces us to make decisions. Suffering erodes an ego too claustrophobic for it's own brittle cage. Suffering will break a soldier down to the grains of sand he should've died on. Suffering will expose any cracks in your foundation, there will be leaks and mold and rats and snakes and all sorts of filth in your home made of brittle sticks and mud.
Woah is me! You've rambled enough.
You, the reader, have read enough.
Go do something more productive now, go create something.
Come back and show me what you made.