fighting deamons with tomatoes

Life has it's own way of placing you in strategic circumstances that give a person the opportunity to do one of two things: 1) allow emotions and uncertainties to control the way you feel about your future and the way you perceive people's trust, or 2) buck the fuck up, crack your neck and keep heading forward into the unknown without any expectations or fear.

Neither of these choices are easy decisions for a person to make.

Recently, an old friend of mine came back into my life; a dear friend who's been one of my best buddies since Kindergarten. I hadn't seen him since 8th grade when he left Phoenix and moved away to California. He called me out of the blue, with a desperate need for an ear and a heart of someone he could completely trust. Despite his situation hitting uncomfortably close to my own personal struggles, I could not push him aside in fear that my own issues and insecurities could get in the way of helping him throughout his own.

Sparing the details, he had been blind sided out of a 5 year relationship with a woman that he had believed to be his soul mate. Overcome by confused feelings of distrust and abandonment, he was left feeling a failure; an empty shell of a broken spirit that hovered around in circles trying to figure out whatever he could do to possibly win back the love of the girl who meant the universe to him.

"What a waste" he lamented.

His question to me was a simple one. "What can I do?" I didn't have any simple answers for him. Love has never been an easy thing to figure out when it comes to two people's expectations. But if answering that question was only a fraction as easy as it is asking it, there wouldn't be a reason for trying to move along into finding that true happiness in our lives that we all hope for so much. We could all be spoon fed happiness with breakfast, lunch and dinner. That, ironically enough, seems to be the way most people maneuver throughout their days. Mindlessly clinging to material things, or over indulging in social behavior to fill a clear void of something that's obviously missing, whatever that 'something' may be. It's these struggles and the pain that heartbreak gives us that transcends us from statistics of our social environment, to honest, loving men and women.

We are imperfect. We are faulty. There's no getting around that.

It's the way we treat each other when the chips are down. It's helping the people we care about through the tough times, even if it means putting aside our wants and needs to help someone who so desperately longs for someone to listen to them. It's far too easy to blow off something you would rather not face than to step up and confront problems with an open heart and a willingness to maintain a friendship built up after so many years. Not every position can be treated the same, and the circumstantial variables are endless, but often the line between doing what is right and doing what you want to do can tend to get blurry.

Love, communication, true acceptance and appreciation for people who unquestionably put their hearts on the line for others, from what I've found, tend to be the downfall of many people's faith in the male-female human connection today. More so, it can be a hindering condition of trust itself. It's not easy to communicate feelings the proper way when two people are so obviously on different roads in life. Miscommunication and misunderstanding can transform two lives into contempt and unfair assumptions.

I don't blast love. I believe love to be the true force which guides us through this game of life. To me, it's the most beautiful thing in human existence, in any fashion of the meaning. It's the lack of understanding and over compensation of selfishness we tend to get caught up with in our own lives that make people think they know what's right and what's wrong and how they feel entitled to do what they think they have to do in order to protect themselves from that which they assume are good and bad.

Did that make sense to you? It did to him.

Retaining our values, our self awareness, and our mindfulness throughout the pain we encounter in our lives makes us better people with each passing day. Depression tends to have an alluring feeling of comfort. It's easier to give up and accept the feelings of failure than it is to fight them with the courage to say, "I will not let this feeling take control of me". I have never been keen on defeat. Luckily for my friend, neither has he.

I love you Joe. I'm right here with you all the way, brother.

Mr740's Journals

fighting deamons with tomatoes