When I woke up this morning
I didn’t know
What I would come home to.
Where did you go?
There wasn’t a warning
Now we’re all in mourning
Wond’ring if our time was well spent.

Oh brother dearly departed of mine
Why did you leave
Without saying good night?
I was sleeping soundly
When I woke up to a scream
That I swear was you saying goodbye.

As the time passes
We all start to heal.
Except for one brother
Who just couldn’t deal.
Several years later
All that reckless behavior
Just got him a grave next to yours.

Oh brothers dearly departed of mine
Why did you leave
Without saying good night?
I was sleeping soundly
When I woke up to a scream
That I swear was you saying goodbye.

Now there’s only one brother
Left standing with me.
I thought things were fine
Until he tried to leave.
In sharing this truth,
Though closer in youth,
I thought that our time was well spent

Oh brother nearly departed of mine,
Why would you leave
Without saying goodbye?
I thought that only you
Could understand what I’ve been through,
So at least it would be you
To say goodbye.

Author’s Note:
I debated whether or not I wanted to share this with the world. It’s been a part of me for 20 years. It’s one of the most vulnerable parts of me and putting that on the internet for the world to see is intimidating, even as someone who sees vulnerability as strength rather than weakness.

I wrote that second verse when I was 15 trying to make a song out of it, but more words never came no matter how hard I tried. As the inspiration came though me to write the rest this month, I realize now that I had more life to live before it could truly come to life. It needed to be on the back burner all this time to find the full depth of this feeling I will always carry with me.

I don’t know if I’ll ever try to turn this into a song like the original intent. Just writing that last verse, saying it all out loud, and writing this post have brought me to tears more than once. But it felt right to at least bring it to life as is because Jeremiah would be turning 40 tomorrow and that’s the kind of celebration you do big gestures for, right?

25 years without him, 9 years without Adam, 3 years since other things. This kind of healing doesn’t happen without scars. I am the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been in my life. These feelings still creep in now and again. It doesn’t make me any less happy and healthy, it’s just a small price tag to pay for the love I still carry.

Lately it’s like everything in government is abortion, extortion, and distracting the masses, while the leaders take a portion of the proceeds they send overseas. Doing whatever they please, while ignoring those on our own shores who have needs. There’s nothing I abhor more than to watch our nation bleed, as our leaders continue to bite the hand that feeds… No taxation without representation. A term which should be so ingrained in us, it shouldn’t need explanation. Our forefathers found the only solution, was to rise up in revolution. They made their declaration known, and fought to create this once great nation. Yet here we are today dealing with inflation, moral deprivation, an over run border, and everything we were founded upon in disorder…
The heart is wicked and full of deceit. For a moment of comfort during distress, we’ll lay our rights at another man’s feet. Selfish, self-centered, self-righteous beings who are lovers of themselves… it’s funny how quickly others we’ll forsake. To take all that they have to take. Until the will of that person finally breaks… Even an honest and pure man given power, can have these thoughts start to bloom until they flower. One will seek to further his control over his brother’s soul. Even if they’re from the same mother, and their corpses both lie in the same hole. For pride is their father. And to truly care for another, to them, is really quite a bother. They only seek to further their own gain. Meanwhile doing whatever they need to do to keep hold of the reigns. No matter the sorrows nor the pains. They care not as long as they still carry their title tomorrow…
The whole situation leaves me grieved. To see that our streets aren’t the only places flooded with thieves. As a kid I never would’ve believed that we’d be in the state that we’re at. It’s as if we’re divided more than ever, over everything, especially between republican or democrat. Has this thought ever occurred to anyone else? That maybe, just maybe, the left wing and right wing belong to the same bird? That maybe we’re just pawns in their game? I’m not the type to be given to conspiracy, but it’s like slowly we’re slipping back into a state of tyranny. Where are the ones who care about the common man’s well-being and security? Instead our leaders create bills with their agendas written in obscurity. Where are the ones who walk upright, and in purity?
I’ve witnessed first hand with my own eyes
just how our government and media lies.
Feeding us bits and pieces of truth and misinformation, leaving us to have to follow the clues…
I still remember a Russian man telling me “if you want to know what’s going on in your own country, watch foreign news.”
Or going to a far less wealthy country, and found it quite bizarre to see their currency was worth more than ours…
I’m not saying that I’ve seen the writing on the wall…
But I fear if things don’t change soon, our once great nation will fall

Dearest Readers,
When was the last time you were told “this is what’s wrong with you” and you believed it? For me? I have yet to believe what doctors tell me. Ever since I can remember it has always been “Oh, this is what is wrong.” or “you’ve been walking on a broken ankle for a week.” I am almost always misdiagnosed or told “it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” I was born 3 months early with a hole in my heart, a heart murmur and severe lung issues. 3 months later, I contract viral meningitis and the child abuse begins shortly after. I was adopted and raised on a farm, but oractically lived in hospitals and doctor offices. I have 4 different types of migraines that took several years to diagnose because “You don’t have the typical symptoms so it can’t be that.” I was misdiagnosed with POTS disease when in fact, it is a congenital heart defect. I also have brittle bones, an undiagnosed hypermobility disorder, osteoarthritis, Hashimoto’s disease, healed skull fractures from the child abuse, scarring on my brain from the meningitis and a benign brain tumor that no doctor will touch because “it is in a vital area, but it’s not causing any symptoms.”
The moral of this story is, do not ever accept a diagnosis first thing. If your gut is telling you “something is wrong.” please get a second, third and fourth opinoion. It may just save your life!

Dear Younger Self:

I take one glance at you, and the first words that come to mind are weathered and worn. You have been through so much and have had it sheltered in what you had considered your safe place. I know you were so young so there was no way for you to fully conceptualize the magnitude of everything that was happening to you as you were developing.

Waking up and dragging yourself every day was a struggle. You would beg and plead to just stay home as to not face what was going on with you in school. I could look at your face and see the visible stress that your childhood was causing you.

You went to school only to get teased and laughed at because of your disability. Something that was not your fault and no one else’s fault. You were being neglected and left behind by teachers and the people who were meant to be there as a building block in your life seemed more like a roadblock.

Because of the neglect I felt, my typing teacher called a meeting to tell my mother that I smelled of urine. My mom got visibly upset and said that if I had the help I needed, this meeting would have never had to happen.

I would say that this situation was the turning point that caused you to go downhill as far as depression is concerned. I look back on that version of you, and the first thing I recall is the bags under your eyes from no sleep and your disheveled hair from an obvious lack of self-care.

I can clearly remember when you were begging your mom to let you stay home from school to avoid the overly emotional load and toll it took on both your mind and body. Your parents had to continually remind you of how far you had already come and that you only had a couple of months left.

I knew from the way that you were struggling that months would feel more like years. Thec days were grueling, going from feeling like you were someone important to the feeling that you felt like you didn’t matter to anyone.

These mood swings had your depression declining in every sense of the word. So much so that you had begun to wonder if life was worth living anymore. You came home every single day to put your Lifehouse “No Name Face” CD on and cry your eyes out because the lyrics of every song had an unusual tug on both your heart and mind. You had never felt a connection with a band like this, and you knew that it was something very special. So special in fact that the lyrics from the song “Simon” can be credited with saving your life and bringing you back to life in a way that would become nothing short of a miracle.

As you move on in your life and graduate from high school, this is when you begin to see significant changes in both your behavior and mental health status. You had never experienced such a positive feeling before. College was a turning point when you had a great interest in your social work studies and were fully immersed in techniques to help others while also becoming a better person and working on the prosperous adult you were working so unbelievably hard to become.

Your grades were excellent and you were feeling like a brand-new person in all aspects of the word. I believe that college can also be credited with your positive decisions to keep going no matter what roadblocks you have yet to face. There would be numerous ups and downs, but the good news is now you know how to handle them in appropriate ways.

You should be immensely proud of yourself. You rose up from the very bottom of depression, only to rise as a more confident and loving human being. You did what a lot of other people unfortunately don’t end up doing, and that is surviving the worst moments of your life. You still do not give yourself adequate credit. You are so strong; your strength is your pinnacle. Not enough can ever be said about the way you have chosen to live despite the fact that your disability has taken over your body and stripped you of your once-treasured independence. You always tell others that your patience and laid-back attitude are your secret to happiness, However, I feel that your strength is your real superpower. Give yourself the credit, it is not arrogant when it is the truth.

This Planet is under an invisible force field of electro-magnetic waves of a holographic system. To the eyes of many, everyday life is lived in a routine fashion of duality in an infinite cycle of death and rebirth in an omnipresent universe of interpersonal evolution for the ever changing transient beings that we are.
“But through the breath of nature, the lens of extra perception expands beyond the pixelated world of what truly is a non-reality, as it breaks the defense shield of the Elites false normality, exposing the darkest degrees of a lewd Lodge of slitheran whose agenda is to soul snatch the pure nectar of the youthful adolescent in a covert operation to feed the cold blooded entity with a hallow glitch of a stare.”
A mind altering system, of muted subliminal tones to fragment the subconscious of all; with a joyous yet baneful mask, “similar to those faces they wore during the ancient Greek theatres marveling in the guise of laughter, as if it was a land where there was no time”. Under Forced control, with out the remote control, it’s mind bending.
For they find solace in constantly modifying todays hash tags ,like it’s a closed caption to a cliffhanger of a dark mantra to the soundless crimes they commit. For it echoes a deaf tone to muted ears, A lost child sobbing in the shadows of is own abyss. Why must society continue to ignore and be blind to the horrors these Dark Lords encrypt?
Its a Slow dance that is so dense, you can barely see the movement as it shifts. “It is the purity within That vial of nectar that drives those sex demons they possess rampant, somehow its a plot twist to being stuck in between the devils grip. ” Though it is Grim, it is truth that must be unveiled. Like pouring rain flooding the ground , an earthly sound, with clouded skies when the Heavens drown the bloodshed spilled upon the rotten soil to wash away the raging anger of yester years sorrow when they took away the old Queens Crown.
But like sand through the hour glass,
The thinning of those puppet strings hum sounds of harmony like a violin streams screaming swing low sweet chariot ( Because we want every bit of our existence to be free like once again).
Free from the shadow figures body jumping into empty humans as they multiply the supply of rebellion in baals court. Something like A Mighty morphing entity Or so as they pretending to be…
“They find strength in numbers, until one dies then the spirit goes out on a hunt to re collect the next vessel it sees fit to proceed on as a henchmen on the quest.”
But Even the shadows of the main shadow will come to surface with the light of truth before all to see. “They find those with a silent nature a threat, something like me.
Im agile with the gaze of a jaguar , like eyes written on the wall, a witness to there ghoulish acts of psychopathy , a dormant trait I see hidden behind those lazy eyes.”
This is the upside down world, where smiles are really frowns And hand shakes are binding spells for the princes of darkness to hold your gifts and talents in the palm of there hands, its a sizzle in your wine glass like poison for you to drink, Dont blink”. Keep your eyes on the wooden boy who was carved from the hands of another man.
Geppetto was a strange fellow, a forefather who has molded the minds of todays ring of elite Pedos. A Charismatic Puppeteer pulling the strings slithering its tongue in the ear with the charm in his music like the Pied piper in a field of poppies , never fear just beware.
Stand tall and Stand strong, Roar like a lion so that they scurry away and exude the Goddess that you are, like a gleaming Star of shooting fire from far far away.

The past still haunts me when I pull into certain places. I can still feel your grip. I thought I made amends with it, but it still makes itself known as a horrible nightmare that won’t go away. It’s been seven years now and it can still make me cry. You probably don’t even remember.

I had been running errands all day and had to stop and use the restroom. The closest one available was the one I didn’t want to stop at. Damn! That would mean I would have to go out of my way to find a different one. It had been seven years since I had been in that gas station. God, I don’t want to go in there. This is so stupid! Jesus, it’s been seven years. That’s it I’m going in. I am so tired of you still dictating where I go. You probably don’t even remember.

So, I parked my car, and stomping my feet I went in. As soon as the door shut, I was brought back to that night. I honestly don’t remember why you even got mad. Wait it’s the reason you always got angry. Jealously of some made-up thoughts or ideas in your mind of me being with someone else. The funny thing is I was always with you even when I didn’t want to be and that was a lot of the time. I remember you dropping me off at Walmart and threatening to leave me again like you did. So I ran to that gas station. You probably don’t even remember.

You would do that a lot drive around endlessly never taking me home. I felt like I was in your car for days staring out the window…oh wait I was. I remember you asking me “What are you doing?’ I said, “reading all the signs.” I thought if someone could hear me then they would know where I am and maybe they will find me. You know if I ended up dead. You would then threaten to leave me at some faraway place with no phone and no money. Standing there in the parking lot helpless and hopeless. You probably don’t even remember.

God what is that smell…oh I’m still in the bathroom. I was pretty sure you were going to hit me again. So, I locked myself in that nasty stall, so I felt safe. Then the knock came along with your voice and as scared as I was, I let you in. Damn, why did I always let you in? You pushed your way in and grabbed my neck and shoved me up against the wall. I honestly can’t recall what you said. My mind just shut down and then you left. I slowly opened the door and went out I didn’t see your car thank God. So, I ran to Walmart only to find you there. Looking left and then to my right not a car in sight. Damn, why did I always get in? It’s finally starting to fade the memories of you. Thank God I can’t make your face out I guess my brain is shielding me from you.
You probably don’t even remember.

Why can’t I love him?
He makes me all tingly in the morning leaving me begging for more.
Why can’t I love him?
His Cheshier smiles draw me in and hypnotizes me.
Why can’t I love the way he kisses me?
As if my kisses alone are the fountains of youth to my soul.
Why can’t I love the way he speaks?
With that accent that leaves me like putty in his hands.
Why can’t I love the way he cuddles me in his arms?
He shields me from the world.
Why can’t I love the way he laughs?
His laugh Ignites a spark in my heart that brings me pure joy.
Why can’t I love the way he takes care of me?
He makes me feel safe for the first time in a decade.
Now tell me why I can’t love this man.