Tonight feels a lot like it did 25 years ago... Only what was once a deep-seated fascination with abandonment now invokes something that reaches far deeper. And in much the same fashion as I did back then, tonight I seek solace in only myself. It is in times like these that I am best alone. In the last 25 years I have experienced ruination in a wide range of emotional, spiritual, artistic, and political forms. Back then I was just an eye... and a heart. Seeing and feeling these sensations for the first time. Nearly debilitated by what felt a lot like pain. Tonight the pain is much less acute. I'm experiencing the sensation in much the same way a documentarian experiences his surroundings - artistically objective. Tonight I appreciate all the details I overlooked 25 years ago.
Personally, the hardest part for me has been accepting that I am a spitting image of what my mother resents most... It's what I believe has created the distance between us now. And the helplessness I feel looking at her looking at me trying not to feel hatred is enough to bring me to my knees at times.
In my life, hope is something you can walk and climb on, paint, draw, write and recite. Our heartbreak is always obscured behind the walls of our intellectual justifications and egos. My initial reaction was one of anger. But I could not decide who I was more angry at, him or me. The potency of my imagination led me to believe that this time would be different. But it wasn't. And its predictability stung.
That has been my defense mechanism though - turning ruin into something beautiful and romantically nostalgic. So tonight, I sit the same kid I sat 25 years ago, picking up the broken pieces and attempting to make something pretty with them. I learn to build sandcastles on the tops of waves as the sun sets with the same tools used for digging graves. And after it all, what I've learned is that much of the joy in life comes from the memories of the sandcastles, and the challenge of building bigger and better ones after they're destroyed.
With that said, I want to thank you "Dad". You forced me to recognize and accept that when a father gives to his son, both laugh; but that when a son gives to his father, both cry. And that when one lacks the father he wants and needs, that he must create one because even the blind man craves for a tan he can't see.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Me
