Left and Leaving

The sun is out today. The snow is melting, falling from the rooftops. The light blinds the eyes, squinting. It has been dark for so long, it had become difficult to tell night from day. No reason to venture out and no reason to wake up for so long.

But today...the sun is out.

Some say the Earth was made in seven days. Seven days to make the waters, the heavens and the ground. Seven days to put man in the place he was destined to rule. Seven days. The same amount of time left in this place. The bittersweet taste stains the lips.

So this is it. This is what it all comes down to, what every moment of the past two years has been leading up to. Some days it seemed so far away, as if it would never come. Some days it wasn't wanted anyhow. Today is not one of those days. Today is not an end...today is the beginning of creation.

Let there be light.

There is a place waiting for me, one I do not yet know. There is a life waiting for me, one I have yet to live. There is a woman waiting for me, one I have yet to truly demonstrate my love for.

So, my anonymous friends, this moment in time is coming to an end as all things do, but with its death comes the birth of something new. There is no more time clock, no more punching in, no more paychecks to cash. There is nothing left here for me, or the boy I used to be. In seven days a man sets out for a new life...one he thought he would never have.

I sit here and write this as a testament to how hard I have worked. There has not been a moment since I started here that has not been pushing me toward this inevitable conclusion. Not a decision has been made that has not lead me here. Here is the crossroads, the rebirth and the chance to start over. Here, my friends, is the new life I have so desperately longed for.

So I will leave you with something simple, something I hope you will think about...something I hope has meaning for you.

There was once a boy on the edge of his sanity, pushed to his wits end. Battered and bruised. Abused and taken advantage of. Laughed at and disbelieved. That boy no longer exists, in his place stands a man. Resolute in his decision, yearning for the future and hoping on the promise of a new day. One where the sun finally shines. One where the grass truly is greener. One where a life full of happiness is not just a story you tell your kids to put them to sleep.

This is it. This is the end. This is the beginning. This is Patrick...the real Patrick, the Patrick I have never known. The Patrick I cannot wait to discover.

Goodbye my friends. Goodbye for now and forever. It has been a pleasure telling you this story, the story of how I became a man. The story of how all good things come to those who wait.

Nerves

I haven't been this nervous in a long time. I'm losing sleep and smoking more cigarettes than I do when I'm drunk. I get sick to my stomach and have a hard time eating properly. I've lost weight, sanity and a few hair follicles to be sure. The good news though, is it will all be over Monday.

That being said, the bad news is it could all be over Monday.

Two months ago today I got jumped by two thugs at the Marathon station less than a mile from my house. I ended up with a crushed right cheek and destroyed right eye socket. My eye was sinking into my head and my sinus was fractured. I got a nice ride to the hospital in an overpriced ambulance and spent the night in the hospital. Thanks to the marvels of modern plastic surgery, and a damn good doctor, I now look about the same as I did the day before it happened. I've got a fancy new indestructible titanium cheek and an eye-socket implant I need to have replaced on Friday. I lost some wages (and some hearing) and gained some pretty expensive bills (and a semi-permanent black eye), none of which are things I can't handle. Shit happens. It always has and it always will, but that isn't what worries me.

What worries me is the subpoena that I found taped to the door of my apartment complex last week. I am hereby summoned to testify in the case of the State of Ohio v. Tony Adams (the one thug that they did catch). What's the big deal, you ask? The big deal is that he is a gangster, a drug dealer and a fucking piece of shit waste of skin with no regard for human life. How do I know this, you ask? I listened to him laugh as he repeatedly punched my nearsighted ass while I searched for my glasses on the parking lot asphalt. I listened to him tell me not to come back or the next time would be worse. I listened to him tell me I was lucky.

By this point it should be apparent why I am worried. What would this shit hole do to keep himself out of trouble, I ask myself while lying awake at night? What would his little fuck face gangbanger inbred fuck friends do to keep him out of prison, I ask myself as I suck down cigarette after cigarette? What happens if........

The questions are never ending.

So I go to court on Monday, hopefully to put this fucking cunt in jail so someone named Bubba can send him to bed at night with an ass full of semen and blood. I'm hoping someone can make him feel my pain and my terror. I'm hoping he can hear the sadistic laugh of someone way worse than he. I'm hoping someone beats his face in. I'm hoping someone stomps his head on the ground. I'm hoping someone turns him into a pulp...shit, I'm hoping someone kills him. Painfully.

The problem, however, is that I have to get there first.

You could say I'm overreacting and that nothing will happen, I would tell you to come and look at the neighborhood I share with this degenerate fuck. I would tell you to come look at the conditions he grew up in. I would tell you to come look at the drugs they try to sell in the morning at the gas station. I would tell you to come see the gang signs they flash or the graffiti marking their territory in the neighborhood I drive through to get home each night. I would tell you to put yourself in my shoes, think about what taking a bullet would feel like and imagine what bleeding out on a street just blocks from the courthouse would feel like.

Yeah, so maybe I'm overreacting. It is very probable that I am worrying myself for no good reason. The odds are so stacked in my favor, nothing could possibly happen...right? Well come spend a day in my life and see what luck looks like to me...or doesn't for that matter. If all I have to be lucky about is him and his shit fuck friends not beating my ass harder then they did, well I don't consider that lucky at all.

I've got a long streak of fucked up shit that has happened to me in the six and a half years I've lived in this asshole of a town. I just pray that it ends Monday.

Or Lack Thereof...

There isn't really anything to say. Sorry doesn't cut it, it never has. I know it, you know it, let's just get down to brass tacks. There's no point in mounting some feeble defense or making excuses for actions I wish I never made. Words really have no meaning, especially since I've gone and devalued them to the point I have.

What can I say?

My dad told me a long time ago that when you lose the trust of someone you love it is never fully regained. It will forever be a shell of what it once was, shoes too big to grow into. A liar thinks about these words endlessly.

How do you go back in time and fix what you've done, the things you regret most? You don't. You can't. You can't just repair something like trust, once it's gone it never comes back the way it used to be. It's just that fucking simple. Might as well get used to the way you're going to be looked at from now on...the lack of respect you see in the eyes you love. Them, forever seeing someone new, someone ugly, someone wholly undeserving.

The only thing I can think about is the million ways I want to die, the ways I wish I could weasel out of how you will look at me from now on. The ways I can bitch out of my responsibility. It's funny because you could point a finger at me and say, "look at what you've done," while I have none to point back. I have nothing. You've never done anything wrong. I guess that just shows you the difference in character here...or lack thereof

So I guess it leads me back to what I've thought about myself all along, what I've always known to be true. I'm no man, it is time to stop pretending. A man does not act like this. A man is honest, a man is good...I am far from either. One wonders why I even bother trying to figure out what it takes to be a good man when I all I see is how far I am from being one.