Because This Is Real Too

I used to think there was no going back
Some hurts are too deep
Some betrayals are too painful
Some memories will never go away
Some people are just evil...
Some...are just hurting as much as they've hurt you...me. Someone once told me I use the word "you" too much in my writing and I should focus on "me" and "I". This is difficult for me because there is a level of ownership of my own actions and words I don't want to take. It is easier to blame what other have done to me to excuse the fact that I have either acted selfishly, out of fear, or simply because they hurt me.
I've been asking myself if I could allow "I" to let someone back in that has hurt me deeply. Wondering if I am capable of such a thing. I've never looked at it from the other side before this past year. How have I hurt and would those people let me back in? Changes the meaning of things a bit. More humbling. To let go of anger, resentment, grudges, pain, fear. I have not been able to do this in my life ever. Once crossed, I have never looked back...say two people. Once lied to, I have never trusted again...and I have not trusted more and more, and in more aspects of my life progressively or perhaps...regressively. I think this is why I feel it has not been possible with people I have hurt in my lifetime...the ones I miss and have screwed up so badly with...I can't even forgive me. How can I expect them too? I recently wrote a piece, "The Tune Will Never Change", speaking about a past experience I have not been able to keep in the past...one that is over a decade old. Everything in there is true and as it says in the first line, "...scathing". The past three years have brought me to my knees with guilt and shame; thinking about my entire life and those I have crossed or hurt in one way or another. I have walked away just as I have been walked away from. I have abandoned just as I have been abandoned. I have lied too. In my life I've stolen for someone...only now remembering it as I am inventorying my part in a recent relationship...telling my partner I would never have done what this other person did for them. I have been a hypocrite. I have been almost all the things I have condemned people for the past three years and a few more even longer than that. This is difficult to release into the world. Some of the things I've done I will not write about because they are for a different time...a different piece. I am sitting in a living room I can not pay for. Looking out the window at a wrecked car I can not pay for. Eating food I have not bought and can not pay for. Thinking about debts I have not paid and at the moment can not. I am thinking about people I have badmouthed either because of what they were doing to me or a loved one, jealousy, resentment, disgust, and so on...sometimes because they were a reflection of an old self I do not want to remember and have tried to change from and move beyond those times in my life. And here I am now...writing to people that do not know me. Writing on a platform where no one really knows me. I have picked the Nowhere Man name because that is where I have felt like I fit in. Nowhere, Man. I have been unable to forgive a few choice people in my life and it has spread into being unable to forgive myself. I thought I reached a place of peace that had permanently changed me and my fears only to find out that I am still just as angry and scared when those fears were all brought to the surface at the same time. I thought I was a pretty understanding man at this point in my life only to find out that I am still so scared inside of certain things, that my reaction was to lash out and attack before I am hurt again...hurting before I can be hurt again...hurting in response to hurt...in multiple aspects of life. I have relived so many portions of my life in the last three years and failed horribly at being forgiving, understanding, honorable, diligent, quiet. I lost all the "Center" I found so many years ago on a trip I took to try and find them again. I used the word humbling earlier but what I really feel is embarrassed and ashamed of some of my actions and words. I used to speak of one Love for one person in a lifetime and as I have come to realize...against all teachings I have been raised on...I Love many people and still do. So many things that I have been wrong about in this life. So many mistakes, I don't know what to do about them all and am not sure there is anything I can do. This does not have any prose. This is not meant to be edited. As a matter of fact, it isn't on purpose. I didn't edit anything from the past three years so why should I edit this. As I have been going over journals from the trip and writings about excursions into the mountains and what was gained from them, I have realized I have fallen so far behind my goal of growth. I have deteriorated into an angry, resentful, fearful, victim of "circumstance". Everything has suffered because of it, to include people around me. At times trying to do the right thing but in a misguided way from a misguided place. This sucks more than I can express because I have ruined friendships that were dear to me, even if I did not act like it. I've condemned some folks for being exactly where I have been because what they were doing was directly affecting me. Instead of removing self from the equation, I instead put myself first...not thinking of the why's behind their actions and honestly not giving a damn. Only looking at how they were either hurting me, someone I loved, someone I had known, or stupidly because I just disagreed. No matter what the situation I fell short on more occasions than I rose too. When reading some of the writings I've published on here, understand, at that moment that is exactly how parts of me feel...right or wrong, whether you agree or not...them's the breaks. But at this moment, I am thinking of several people I would want to be in front of that I can not. Not because they would be happy to see me but because I have things that need to be said for my well being and hopefully theirs. I'm not focusing on the things and people I know have been actively hurting me because, well, that will be there's to deal with. I've got enough on my own plate to try and clean. This isn't a nice and tidy article. It's just a true one...spit out in a matter of 10 minutes. Puked onto paper. Tired of holding in shame. Tired of holding in resentment. Tired of holding in anger. Tired of any of those things being there in the first place. I've wasted nearly over ten years running from person to person, place to place, bottle to pipe and back trying to get away from what will never leave me alone...understanding only now that the only way to get away from it is to put it down and walk away...letting those that want to pick it up to do with it what they will. I haven't put everything down but I have begun. I haven't perfected anything but I am starting to listen. I wanted to teach so badly but how can someone teach by being a bad example...how not to be...what not to say. I told my father when I was younger, "How can you tell me not to do something if you've never experienced it. I want to experience so I can tell my children through understanding because I've been there and done it." Now, thirty three years later I wish there were some things I didn't know...and at the same time, I got my wish. I now know what it is like to hurt and feel the shame of it aside from the pain that comes from being hurt. I hope I get to use this somehow...running into someone on the side of the road or a gas station picnic table that is in the same place I have been. I said once in one of my writings, "It is what it is"...and because I wan't in a place of peace and selflessness, I've come to hate that saying because at the time it wasn't serving my wants...misguidedly thinking it wasn't serving my needs. My and our needs are simple really. We need to Love ourselves first and foremost only then will can I and we do anything outside of ourselves with selfless purpose for good...otherwise, it will all fall apart or "I" will dismantle it unknowingly. Sabotaging the only thing that is truly ours in this world, ourselves.