The Difference Between Living and…

Innocent as smoke - the aroma noses love. Strangers sniff and follow. The scent can be sour, even burn, adding an impulse we learn to crave.

Regret holds sense hostage because we’re scared to be free. A prayer making up strength, so we temporarily don’t feel the weakness. Light shapes you different when you stop hiding.

Facing the life we brought into this world brings weight we didn’t ask for but carry anyway.

It seizes. What more proof do you need?

Chaos. Family. Neighbors. Leaders neglecting to respect life.

Biting the hands that feed us, then spitting angry greed.

We keep asking for and seeking a new fantasy to make up happiness.

You ever wish you could pause time - to hold and play longer while it’s good - because nobody you’re with really tries to keep living that way? The good never feels designed to last.

As an occupation, I conduct check-ins and ask assessment questions various ways, a bunch of times. The kind designed to pry into your darkness.

There are questions about suicidal thoughts - ideation is the clinical term - and then there’s the blunt version: have you ever tried to kill yourself?

Over the holidays, when all my kids were under the same roof - getting along for the most part, annoying the shit out of each other in ways loving siblings always do - I had ideations about whether freezing time and memories would be a way to keep that moment.

But that’s not really living.

Freezing is just fear dressed up as preservation.

I decided to keep going - not out of guilt, not out of obligation - but because my kids always want something that requires taking my time and giving it to them. Presence. Attention. Energy. Living.

And I still have much, much more to give before it’s naturally up.

That’s the difference between living and freezing.

Music I’m Enjoying

Beauty And The Beast by Kanye West

Book I’m Still Reading

You Deserve to Be Rich by Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings

Dad Joke

what’s better than a rose on a piano?

tulips on my organ.

To all the fathers wondering HOW THE FUCK DO I DO THIS?

My advice is Just Don't Pull Out!