The Green Machine

You know what? I'm a fucking survivor. I have been through more in my 26 years of life than most people go through in a full life cycle. Living in Arizona has taught me to fight. It's taught me that things CAN always get worse, and they will. It's taught me to appreciate the things in life that I've often found easy to achieve or obtain. It's taught me a lot about loss, disappointment, heartbreak... truth be told it's taught me an awful lot about an awful lot of terrible shit.

I've made a ton of mistakes in life. I've taken the easy way out, or followed the shortest and least winding road. I've lied, I've cheated.. I've even lied about cheating. I am not, by any means, a perfect person. I don't even believe for a second that I'm a good person, because I know that I've got a lot to learn and a lot to gain from striving to be better. I know these things about myself.

It strikes me as very interesting that people can know themselves so well, be perfectly aware of their flaws and the things that bring them down; they can see in themselves the characteristics they want so badly to change, and do nothing. I am one of those people.

I think, what happens, is that you get so far into this rut that you feel like it's almost pointless to try and recover. Things go so bad, for so long, that it seems as though whether you fight for the good or not the same shitty outcome is always going to remain. That feeling of "alone in this" sets in for such an extended period of time, that even though you are virtually surounded by the rotating door of friends and family... all you can see and feel is that you are the only person in the world who understands your plight. I am that person.

There's this weird blanket of comfort that kind of silences all the chaos, and makes it all just a little more bareable. I am that person who stopped fighting, laid down, and accepted that I had zero control over my life. I am that person who disappeared from friends and family because I had no idea who I had become or where my life was headed; and I was truly embarassed of that.

I haven't yet figured out all of the components that comprise that whole "rebuilding" stage. I probably wont know for a while, because I'm still going through it. I do know that there comes that point when you're way down there at rock bottom, almost watching everything crumble away from an outsider's point of view - and you realize "this is not me". That's what happened to me anyway. That's how it came to be that I had to stand up and make some changes.

Its a slow process. I'm not, by any means, saying that my life is perfect and I've made all the changes I wanted to make. What I am saying is that I've realized the value of making those changes, even at the cost of it really hurting; and it has.

For the first time in 2 years I feel like I can make goals. I can't wait to look back on this blog and be proud of all the changes I've made.