Tag: Hope

Something of a Dream

January 3, 2022 / Tom

She was there. She was right there, and I let her go.

She is something of a dream. Strong. Beautiful. Perfect for me in every way. Yet when it came time to let her in, I let her go. I shrank from all I knew of her into a cocoon of helpless thoughts, and I ran from an embrace that felt so much like home.

I’ve wondered why. In the time since then I’ve had ample opportunity to quell my thoughts and explore my apprehension. I’ve had time to wander around my stupidity and remove the dead parts that clogged my stream of truth. I look at myself from then and cannot believe what I had done.

What is left? An opportunity to learn. I can watch from a distance as others dine at our table. I can understand what quakes inside of me when I hope for just one more chance. Now, I know what I lost and know that I will not soon make that mistake again.

Dreams sometimes can turn into nightmares. My hope is that nightmares can also turn into dreams.

I won’t pressure her. I can’t. Instead I can hold her in my heart and hope for the best for her. Sometime in our moments I grew to love her and in that moment all I wanted was what made her smile.

My hope is that she finds love, ecstasy, and a companionship she deserves. If she doesn’t, I’ll be here understanding that while I am a fool, I’m not the type of fool who fucks up twice.

In that way, perhaps I can be something of a dream to her, too.

Struggling

September 15, 2021 / Tom

The struggle is real.

I’m struggling to breathe, to find the wide open spaces I once enjoyed.

I’m struggling to understand, to make sense of what is happening around me. Mostly, I’m struggling to grasp what is happening within me.

I’m struggling to deal with selfishness, with greed, with the lack of care we show to one another.

I’m struggling with sadness, with an immeasurable feeling of loneliness and emptiness. I adore my solitude, but struggle with the absence of another within it.

I’m struggling with the lies I’ve been told, with the unending disappointment the destruction of trust brings.

I’m struggling with the absence of meaning. I have to be more than this job, this home, this spot in my life.

I’m struggling with age. My eyes are weakening, my joints ache, my children have all but forgotten me.

I’m struggling with the unending pain.

And now I’m struggling with how to end this story.

Sirens (Finding the Light in the Darkness)

January 2, 2020 / Tom

I have heard the sirens.

As a firefighter and EMT, they were part of the job. They were part of the adrenaline rush. Like the bugles announcing the pending arrival of a cavalry, the sirens let those who had called know we were coming. I have always loved the sounds of the sirens for that reason.

Then one day the sirens came for me.

I was blinded by a brain injury so I could not see them. I could only hear them, and I knew what story they were telling. In all the times I had ridden in the back of an ambulance with a patient I had always wondered when it would be my turn. That time had come.

Some I had ridden with were taking their last ride in the back of the “bus”. I watched some take their last breaths. I heard some whisper unintelligible prayers just before the end. I always had wondered if the language of the afterlife was something none of us were meant to understand. Even when those final words were words I knew, they always seemed to have some meaning I could not fathom.

Sometimes I would hold their hand at the end and feel the energy drain from their flesh.

I felt that their energy was not gone, it was just not there. It had traveled somewhere else, somewhere I had been before and would see again. As I took my ride in the bus, listening to the sirens play their bugle call, I insisted I was not ready to go. This would not be my last ride and this would not be the end of my story.

Fear and Focus

I was, however, afraid. More afraid than I’d ever been in my life. I had decided a short time before they arrived that I would take this ride to its fullest, but something about being on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance unnerved me. Each time I had been in the back of a bus I was the strong one, the one who was there to help. Now I was the patient, blind and weakened in my condition. Yet in that numbing darkness I could still see a tiny flame that pulsed with the rhythm of the siren. I focused on that fire, the tiny glimmer of hope of survival.

That flame was tiny, but it was mighty.

The paramedics were asking me questions and offering me reassurance. I told them I knew the drill and that I had lied to many people in the back of a bus. They answered that they weren’t lying, and I believed them. The little flame suggested that they were telling the truth. I just had to believe.

Things to Say

I knew I had things yet to say. There were the visions of my children that flashed across the darkness. My eyes had failed but my heart had perfect vision. The eyes are not the only parts of me that could see and I was learning that with each passing second. In my heart I was telling them how loved and admired they were. Had I told them that before, I wondered? Of course I had but this time seemed different. It wasn’t my mouth talking, it was my heart.

I hugged them too, a hug that felt more powerful then it ever had. I wasn’t hugging them with my arms, I was was hugging them with my heart. There was such a vast difference between the two.

I saw the Sun rise in my vision and I heard a poem recited in the wails of the siren. The vivid colors of the dawn and the beautiful rhythm of the prose rose from someplace new. My heart was painting on a new canvas and the words flowed from a place I had once only small glimpses of. I still had things to say, stories to tell, but they would not come from my head. They would come from a new and mostly uncharted territory.

I would let my heart tell the story. My heart would be the artist. I would surrender thought to feeling and let instinct be my guide.

Lessons in the Darkness

There were so many lessons learned that night. Time is short. Our moments are fleeting. Bad things happen to good people. The sirens and those sounding those bugles are heroes.

There were some, however, not so cliche.

When my mind is the guide, I see things through clouded and cracked glass. However, when my heart is guiding me my vision is much clearer. In doing something heart-centered I do it with a clear purpose. Mindfulness is not a practice worth much time for me, heartfulness is.

“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” My mind will always be burdened by scars and the traumas of living, but my heart sheds them in the purity of forgiveness. Scars and scabs cannot stain a heart that is pure; such anomalies cannot exist there. What I learned on that autumn night was that my task has always been to reduce the focus on my brain and let my heart lead the way.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

The barriers I had built against love resided in my mind and all its traumas. It was time to tear them down and burn them to ash in that little flame I saw in the darkness.

(Coming soon, a short story based on finding the flame in the darkness. Follow my Amazon page here.)

From this…(A Poem)

March 7, 2015 / Tom

From this end...
A new beginning.
From this pool...
An ocean born.
From this emptiness...
A sacred space.
From this soul...
An endless truth.

From these bounds...
Springs liberation.
From these tears...
A slow release.
From these quakes...
A mountain rises.
From these remnants...
A star is born.

From this goodbye...
A new hello.
From this word...
A sentence born.
From this destruction...
Creation follows.
From this hallowed silence...
I hear it all.

Peace.

A Trail to Destiny (Creative Writing Exercise #2)

September 19, 2012 / Tom

Setting: at a meeting in a conference room on a dark, rainy day

Subject: the raindrops on the windows

I stared out the window as the rain pounded against the glass, making a tapping sound that reminded me of a thousand boots marching out of time during a parade. My head felt like it had been hit by an avalanche, and the weather certainly wasn’t helping. That damned numbness-mixed-with-a-dull-ache just wouldn’t go away as I sat my ass down on one of the plump leather chairs surrounding the large oak conference table. The meeting I had just attended was over, and after the cordialities had been dispensed with I just had to get away from the bullshit being thrown around the office. Everyone was acting so nice, so fucking nice, and I needed to get away from the act long enough to gather my senses. The often strong exterior I donned before leaving my apartment was beginning to crack, and I had reached my limit of fake smiles, jokes and laughter for one day.

It’s tough when a person just doesn’t feel like enough. He can’t imagine being good enough for his partner, strong enough for his family, smart enough for his bosses, or there enough for his friends. He feels pathetically weak in even the most benign of situations. In many ways he was just like the raindrops now finding their way to the window in his gaze. He was helpless, and even though he would give life to whatever he could he went largely ignored unless he was seen as a nuisance. He would never be noticed unless he was stealing away the sunshine or ruining her hair or creating havoc whether intentionally or not. No, he…I…we, would never been seen for the beauty we gave to the world and instead would spend this lifetime in certain role in a certain way.

I followed one raindrop as it hit the glass near the top of the window. It hung on for dear life there, reminding me of my need to hang on. I chuckled at the irony as I stared at that tiny drop of water just stuck there, unable to let go and unable to follow its natural destiny. It would fall, eventually, but for now it just stayed in that one holy spot fighting for its own survival. Or was I? I was in a job I didn’t like. I was constantly trying to be “the one” to my woman I wasn’t good enough to be with. I wanted so desperately to be accepted by my peers, to be noticed among them even as I wondered anonymously between them. Here I was scratching and clawing to remain stuck to the glass, desperately fighting my destiny.

Much like this raindrop I had no idea what the truth was. I had no idea who I was or what I was doing here. I just knew that I had been thrown on this piece of glass and now hung on without ever truly knowing why. I could not look down for fear of seeing where I was heading. I could not look up because, well, “up” had rejected me. All I knew was at this moment I was married to this piece of glass, and if that glass wouldn’t accept me all I could do was try to accept it while hanging on for fear of falling into the abyss.

I could see the raindrop slowly losing its battle. I realized that the battle it was having was not with the glass, but with some unseen force that was dragging it downward toward its great unknown. Some may call that force “God” or “fate”, but I like to call it “destiny”. We are all slaves to destiny it seems, for whatever war we wage to hold on to our piece of glass the truth is that we were never going to outwit or out fight our destiny. As the raindrop slowly began its way toward destiny, I could only wonder what would happen if I just let go and let the chips, or raindrops, fall where they may. In truth I had no idea what would happen because I had never done it. I’d always took the path more traveled and then suffered the consequences.

The raindrop was heading downward now, and I followed it to the known end of its journey. It was gone, save the little piece of itself it left as a trail down the window. Like a tear-left stain marking the spot where sadness had reigned, I followed the trail from its beginning to end, and that was it, a metaphor of my life, which had begun inconsequential and would end meaningless and forgotten.

I wanted so desperately to join that raindrop in its end; to dive out of the window and meet my destiny anonymously and without fanfare. I could feel me falling. Free. Done. Forgotten. I would hit the ground with a splash and soon would become lost in the enormity of it all. Yes, destiny certainly could be a cruel Master but at least it never played games or fucked with the minds of its victims. It just was, unintentionally cruel and unforgiving as it doled out truth to each and every one of us.

Just then the door to the conference room opened. I snapped back to attention, donned my fake smile and forced laugh, and began the role renewed. The fall and freedom would have to wait for another time and in some other place. I would happen, though. After all, it is my destiny.