PRISONER EXPRESS

I know I'm not the only one who's suffered, but when will it end? In my eternal torture or my eternal paradise will I take this baggage, this burden to exist as my slavemaster or my infinite playmate? In all of this madness I have been good at one thing: making them all suffer. In my victimization of myself, in my rationalization of my ignorance, violence, laziness, and lack of ethics I judged myself. In that judgment I became my own victim and in this victimization I lost something: that little boy who wanted to be an astronaut. And that little boy who saw the world as a magnificent place who loved, and loved to be loved. My ignorance has been all too good to me, and my judgments and rationalizations have driven me to the point of insane violence and delusional rationalization. Inside all of this I made my family my victims and my enemies. How can I make amends with such trespasses? There is no just retribution for any owed for all involved.

I've learned a valuable truth at 30 years of age: we are all victims of this world in many ways. There are none who suffer not. My family, a bunch of strangers who are victims like me. This reality has helped me to forgive them and forgive myself for what they did not provide for me and for what I could not provide for them. I have grown and have children now. They are my family. There is nothing more I want in this universe than their love, respect, and admiration. I once was a man with pride, pride that was my best deceiver and blinded me all too well. I no longer have that pride, that mechanism that assisted me in utter self-destruction. I once was a man who called total strangers, my peers family. A gang. I lived many days, years satisfying ignorant ideas for acceptance of others. Not anymore. I found myself standing at the bottom of an abyss that I manifested through each action and decision I made in my life. In that darkness I found an insecurity so intense, so real that it was tangible even to the lungs.

One day I woke up. I don't know how or when or what exactly did it. Maybe it was a combination of events that were/are destined to happen. Whatever force or energy or thought that slapped me silly and turned the lights on, all I saw was a single vision: life, death, and family. Family from the beginning, in between, and in and after death. My family is in my very existence, in my brain, my skin, my organs, my blood, my face, my soul. When I look at myself I imagine a thousand thousand generations of people who have all led up to me, and a thousand thousand who will come from me. All those behind me, those in front of me are all me... one single soul. My children are me, and forever that will continue in their children's children, and theirs, and theirs. My family I can only pray will forgive me as I have forgiven them. Most of all they need to forgive themselves and stop living as meaningless judgments and assumptions that are only in their reality and conscious thoughts.

My family... that's quite a subject. I love them even though I don't know them and hope I can be to my kids what they never were to me. My family, sheep with no shepherd... lost, wandering about. Maybe someday, God willing, we'll all bump into each other. My family, they're all strangers to me. Whether that's good or bad, I can't answer. There are so so many mysteries and things in this universe I do not know, but one thing I yearn to know is them, and them me, simply because they are my family.