Does anyone know where the manual is?

This is angry, this is sad. There is a lot of blind accusations and feeling sorry for myself in the next few paragraphs, so if that ain't your thing, stop reading now.

Once a man has been shoved into a place where he doubts his own sanity, he is indeed in a very dark place. One that is almost impossible to understand how to navigate through, and find his way out.
What was real, what was true, what was righteous, what was sacred, all are fading and torn images. What is left is doubt, fear and a complete lack of self.

The world then has so many bloody marvellous ideas on how you should be thinking, on what you should be doing, on how you can save yourself. Here's my question: "Where the FUCK was the world while I was being forced into this space in the first place?" While I fought the losing battle of my life, and lost not only my reality, but my dignity and positive outlook. Where the hell were you with your self-righteous know-it-all advice on how I shouldn't be focussing on this, or thinking like that? Had you been anywhere near interested in my well being, you could have stopped this from happening in the first place. But, I forget, that involves putting yourself second, and God forbid, Brian first. Nah....I got better things to do. Besides, I am saving myself for my sanctimonious told-you-so speech.

I am here, this is MY reality, and if you had cared to spend any time with me over the past few months, you would know, you would see and you would understand where my head is. A prisoner, sitting in a little dark room, knowing that all that's left outside that door is a shadow of the life I knew. A remnant of a love that made my heart soar.

Please pardon me if I am not turning fucking flick-flacks to just run with open arms to this world of acceptance that everyone says I should go to. All of us, in our own time, will eventually stand from that cell, and walk out the door. It's natural progression, it's inhuman not to want to progress.
But for now, I would like to sit here, in the dark, and cry, and mourn and die for the loss of a life that I held so dear, a space that I had worked so hard for, for all my life.
It was raped from me. Simple. So, if you cannot understand how someone can still sit here and feel like he has been hard done by, then walk away, and take your arrogant advice to someone else that will accept changing their most deep, and important emotions, into something that the world would rather see.

Here's my thing: If you weren't there, and you gave me no help during my time of destruction, what on Earth makes you think that your mindset, and perspective could EVER be empathetic to my space.
Allow me to wallow, and allow me to die softly here. I will leave this cell one day, and go find the second place prize that is my fate. I am not exactly all choked up to accept a consolation prize right now.

From Zero...to Zero...in 37 years

I honestly can't remember feeling as I do right now, at any point in my rather, um, colorful past.
Life has given me my fair share of ups and downs, but this time in my life is something to behold....well...if you are a sadist that is. In that case, my life is a friggin masterpiece.

Did you ever look at a picture, and even though you really tried, turning the picture upside down, left, right, no matter, you still had no idea what the picture was? All it looks like is a jumbled mess, and you try squint your eyes, stand back, stand close....but nothing...just more confusion as your eyes and brain start to hurt. So you decide that it's best not to try. Just as you are walking away, you notice that as each person looks at the picture, they CAN see what it is, and they look, comment to one another, grimace, and move on. All the while you stand there, feeling like a fool, because it's clearly quite an important picture, and everyone else can see it.....but you.

That long winded metaphor is, in a nutshell, my life. Today, at 37 years old, I truly do not understand the picture, and I realize today, that the reason is, that I have not been the one to paint it.

I just wrote out a few pages of my life's history, and blah blah about my life and decisions, and I decided to delete it all, and instead, try part with some, hopefully intelligible and wise advice:

This is no self-help blog, as I have no idea how to help. This is a warning! This is Paul Revere galloping in, yelling about the British. This is an early storm warning about a tsunami. This is the advice that your mom was too scared to tell you.

We are all equipped with a gift from our caveman ancestors. The voice, or feeling inside of you, that something is afoot. That there is about to be a Woolly Mammoth stampede through your campfire, or that you need to run, RIGHT NOW, just RUN LIKE HELL, because something is coming, and it's hungry.
Now, a few hundred thousand years later, we don't need to fear a stampede, so inherently that voice inside is quiet for the most part. However, if you feel in your soul that there is something wrong in your life, there is. If you feel in your soul that you need to fix something, do it. If you feel in your soul that despite the work and risk, that your life needs a 180 degree change, make it happen. Do it. Now. That voice has evolved into a quieter, but equally insistent protector. You have no idea how, by listening, and acting, that your bold choice today, will save you from utter annihilation later. Our predators have evolved from Sabre-Tooth tigers, to human beings, that we know and love.No one else will save you from  it, because, I have learned, people are naturally, and almost unbelievably selfish, and if you don't value your inner voice (I call it instinct) you will be used, and discarded, and left for dead, with nothing but a confused look on your face, and nothing to show for it. You will be the only one wondering how the hell you got ambushed, so easily, when you had all these people protecting you. (HA! Fooled you!)

I stand today, at 37, with no semblance left of the existence that I had created, with love, for my entire life. It was shattered by the people that I had lived for, almost each of them, to the person, took a turn at breaking a piece for me, while they looked me in the eye, and watched me cry in disbelief. I would start picking up the pieces, but I am still dumbstruck, staring into the wreckage that is my life, like a dog staring down the headlights of an 18-Wheeler on a dark highway.

Only I am left, to not only pick up the pieces, but try to figure out how a life, full of giving, self-sacrifice and love, could prove to be so empty, and fragile. How so easily, those that I thought respected and loved me, could so easily turn on me, and show me the true value of my heart, to them.
When you learn the truth, it will shock you to your core. You will go from a room full of familiar, happy faces, to a sea of confused looking strangers, and a realisation that you AREN'T that interesting and your jokes are actually NOT that funny. Your attempts to make sense of the situation will end you sitting at a Tea Party, along with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, awaiting Alice's arrival.

So, I suppose one could look at a situation like this, and approach it from 2 perspectives:

1. I never saw reality in the first place. Deciding to paint beautiful pictures on dirty walls.
2. People change, and it can happen, that in a year, your entire world can turn 180 degrees on you.

No matter how much I try to rationalize the 2nd one, the co-incidence is simply too great, and too horrible to contemplate. I have not experienced the zombie apocalypse of love. No, I have however, been blinded, by my own need to have people love, and respect me. That need replaced my need for truth. That need became my reality. I respected them, and loved them, therefore, they MUST respect and love me back....right? When you behave like this, and blindly ignore your inner voice, that all is not as it seems, on those nights, where you battle to sleep, and all you can hear is this voice screaming at you to be careful. Don't ignore it. You WILL regret it. When your voice, crying out for help, or recognition, is left unheard, or you find out that your cries for help have become annoying noise to those people, you will die a death that I wish on no person.

I am responsible for being a great guy. I am responsible for giving others a good life. I am responsible for self-sacrifice to allow other's happiness. I am responsible for walking into a dark alley at 11PM, when I knew there was a serial killer there. I am NOT responsible for the knife plunging into my heart. I am responsible for allowing my soul to go swimming in the sea with my friends. I am NOT responsible for the wave that crushed and drowned me. Make sense? I hope so.

It is NOT your fault for being used and discarded, if you truly never saw it coming. If you trust, then continue to trust. If you love, then continue to love. But for God's sake, when your instinct tells you to double take, then do it, or it WILL be your fault.

From here, there is no map. No GPS. No phone-a-friend for help. Its just you, with what you have left as your own. There is no more first prize, there never really was. So from here it's a battle to create some type of picture from the blood and shards that I have in my hands, and at my feet. That's if I can ever stop standing, open mouthed, staring at the mess, like an idiot. I have a voice in me that tells me that I need to begin this repair job, but I never was any good with puzzles.

Take it easy
Brian

The space between....

The title says it all....well....for me, I suppose.

It's a beautiful song, and Mr Matthews summed it up perfectly, in "the space between, those wicked lies we tell, where we hope to keep safe from the pain"

We humans are fickle, arent we? We spend so much time in trying to make our worlds, and the people that make them up, happy and comfortable. What is that world made of? Is it real? We so easily lie to ourselves, lie to one another, under the guise of making it better.

Paint the room with the many splendoured colours of lies, and you will watch as the same room collapses in on you one day. You will be left wondering why....and the answer is so obvious.

The time comes in one's life where the space between, is where you should be alive. The space between, filled with laughter and love. The space between, filled with truth and peace.

I wish that for all of you, as I wish that for me. I seek the space between, it shall be my space, and if you want, you can join me.

catch you later
Brian