Scars Don’t Heal… But They Cover Well

I have been hitting the walls of reality. I have done some inner soul searching. I’ve experienced almost every emotion possible that I could handle.

Worried Man — Image by © Images.com/Corbis

Stress, anxiety, fear, loneliness, fulfillment, happiness, joy, sadness, cheerful, excited, scared, and the list goes on…

But I have realized that I have been so heavy on the past. Everything that has happened to me in the past has really been dictating how I see tomorrow. Heck, even on how I see today. I’ve been out with friends almost everyday and realized something. Life can pass by at a blink of an eye, but the events can seem forever.

Just a simple game of golf, fun night at the bar, or even a nice little relaxing bonfire can just really make you feel something. I have talked so much about my dad. It’s almost unreal. Being that it is mother’s day its a little unfitting that my dad even comes close to being a topic or the subject of the day.

I hit reality that I don’t really want to have kids but I want to be a great dad. How do I even do that? Was the only reason why I wanted kids is to be a better dad than my own? I was told that I will be a fantastic father and a great husband. I guess that’s true.

I’m still young. I’ll always be young. Age is just a number. Age will always be a number until I just give up. People know me. I’m not a quitter and not by a long shot. Shoot… I went to the ICU at a hospital during Marine Corps Boot Camp and still saw it through (SO MUCH REGRET!). So I know that I am a fighter and not a quitter.

One of my good friends asked me what my biggest fears are in life. Aside from the usual of sudden death and what not I told them that my biggest fear in life is never succeeding in what I see as “success”.

I’m so damn hard on myself. I don’t know why. I will probably never know why. I just seem to pick out the biggest flaws in me and just see it as how I am. All of my major successes are nothing but a good story to me sometimes. It takes someone great to help you see what you haven’t been seeing. Looking into my mirror of life I just see a person. Nothing special. Just a young guy in a grown man’s world. I fumble a lot. I trip. I seem lost. I think I have it then it’s like it was never there. I try to find love. I know what love is. I feel lonely and yet so surrounded by people and comfort. I’m going through all the stages of someone in their early twenties. The problem is no one knows exactly “what that is” so we just call it stages cause it sounds better than “what the heck is going on?”.

I mean what is it that I truly want? Is it a great career? Is it to be a dad? Is it to be a fantastic friend? To be someone else’s life line? To be the reliable guy that people can call whenever trouble happens?

I feel like I’ll never really know. That really scares me. We only have such a finite time to figure things out. Our life starts out as a small defenseless dependent individual. As we start to grow, walk, and maybe even talk a little (I stutter sometimes) we have just a few moments to start becoming an individual. We start school, that’s a good fourth of our lives just learning, studying, and adapting.

Reality hit me when I watched High School Musical 3 (it was a weird day… very weird day…). I miss all the opportunities I had in the past. High school just seemed to be another obstacle in the way of something I wasn’t even sure of what was going to be. I blew right past it with all the dumb, stupid, and silly decisions that I made. All for what? A few decent friends to laugh during the moment to only disintegrate as my life moves upwards. Sure we had a good time, developed a bunch of weird but awesome stories, and even shaped us to what we are now. Or rather what I am now.

Then I just think of all the missed opportunities I had and never took. I think of past relationships and how they somehow fumbled and that I could do nothing to fix them. My mother was always there for me for every break up in the world. She raised me to be someone great. She raised me to be a unique individual. She raised me so that I can have the choice to live my life the way I want to.

So why did I feel like I’m on someone else’s itinerary?

I guess you could say that I still showed some scars. I would put myself down until I succeeded and got what I was fighting for. That’s not necessarily bad… right? I just feel like sometimes life’s only purpose is to just climb the ladder higher than anyone else just to fall off at the very end. The better you get, the harder it is to leave it. Sometimes I’ll just sit outside (or stand… I’m very well known to do both) and just wonder “why now? Is there a reason why I was born? What comes after this? Or is this just the grande finale?”

I may never know. No one will ever know. We are stuck on this roller coaster that continuously climbs upwards to a very high edge. Once it’s gone you cant go back. You can’t take back every stupid, funny, or weird mistake you make. You live with it. But just like living with a scar you can find ways to cover it up.

But I don’t want to cover up scars any more. You never learn to live with something if you keep pushing it back. I learned from a very good recent friend of mine that why try to hide what happened? It happened… So what. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to sit in the dirt with a lollipop covered in sand or are you just going to get up and say “F**K IT! There’s still some flavor on this stick of mine!” and just roll on out.

I have never met someone so cool and calm about things that are going on. I mean they’re just as as afraid of everything else. The secret? Just don’t care about what is coming next. Stop anticipating and just keep doing you. Just keep doing what you feel is best. Who cares about what anyone else says about you.

So with my new refreshed and rejuvenated (like I’m old…) life ahead of me I have to consider this fact. Stop thinking and wondering about tomorrow. Today is great. Today is another day you get the chance to prove yourself and to challenge who you were and bring out who you are at the present moment in life.

Don’t ever worry about what’s next. Sometimes the greatest show playing is now and not whats next.

But it’s getting a bit past my bed time. I think after living my life for the past few couple weeks and spending it the way I want to I can finally start living again. Sometimes all it takes is friends, a great girl, and some time. Don’t ever rush a moment cause that is when life will pass by at a blink of an eye.

Raise your glass and make a toast to the present!