Writing

The Story Of My Life, And Other Ramblings

It is the story of my life.  All of my life I have spent searching for something that cannot be found.  Something I cannot name.  Something I’m not sure can ever be found, or even exists.  Something that if I found it, I might not even know if it was what I was searching for.

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All of my life I wanted to be a writer.  But writing doesn’t always pay the bills.  So I followed a career path in the medical field; a career for which I would always be needed.  And yet even though I was always part of a team in one capacity or another, I never felt as if I was ever a part of that team.  I always felt like an outsider, a tourist, or a visitor, who simply does not belong.

All my life I just wanted to be a part of something.  Anything.  It really did not matter to me, I just wanted to belong somewhere.  I always wanted to be part of a circle of very close friends, the kinds of friends that are fictionally portrayed in television shows.  Ironically, it was the disconnectedness that most inspired my writing and allowed me to grow as an intellectual.  I felt as if I could be more open and honest with my readers as if I was observing life from afar, and the isolation allowed me to learn about the things that I found interesting.

I still have not found whatever it is that I have spent my entire life searching for.  I don’t know if I am searching for acceptance, inclusion, or simply the place where I belong.  What I am searching for could be a higher power, knowledge, a location, or answers to life’s greatest questions.

Most things in life are considerably easy to find, or acquire, in a physical sense.  Tangible things can be found, purchased, acquired, created, or observed, transformed, or even destroyed.  It is the metaphysical, abstract things such as thoughts, dreams, or ideas, that are exponentially more difficult to collect, quantify, measure, or rationalize.

As of yet, I don’t even know what it is I am searching for.  My mind is always changing.  Thoughts constantly race through my head.  Memories of how my life was in the past sometimes come back to remind me of the good times, while more often the memories of traumatic experiences haunt me.

The story of my life is filled with empty promises and misplaced trust.  I often regret not running away in the summer of 1996; two years before my whole world got turned upside down.  Although I cannot recall the majority of the events, the summer of 1996 was the summer of my childhood in which I remember being truly and completely happy.  I know my life would have turned out differently; I often wonder if my life would have somehow been better.

My father used to tell me that if we focus only on the past, we will never see the future.  He also told me that there was something vitally important that he needed to tell me, but he passed away before he was able to let me know what it was.  I regret not being able to make him truly proud of me; I know that he wanted more than anything, for me to be successful, but the measurement of success is metaphysical at best, and cannot be measured by standardized means.

Perhaps my most amazing moment in life, besides meeting the love of my life, was receiving a message from one of the kids I used to mentor when I was in college who is now an adult.  In the message, he told me how I was a huge influence on his life and he saw me as a role model.  Ironically, I had never seen myself as any kind of a role model, let alone, an influential person.  In all honesty, I’m amazed that he even remembered me at all.  All my life I have tried to figure out what it is I want to do with my life, constantly searching for direction, while at the same time, questioning my every decision, wondering what might have happened if I had made a different choice.

The possibilities are endless; all of my adult life is chronicled in books filled with handwritten pages.  A year before my father passed away, he told me that he had wasted his life doing everything he could to make as much money as possible.  He told me not to waste my life the way he wasted his own.  I wish he had written down some of his life experiences, especially what it was that he needed to tell me, but waited too long.  Life is a fragile thing; one day you’re here, and the next day, you could be gone forever.

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