If I could carry that burden in your stead....I would in a heartbeat.

You know that feeling of helplessness when someone you care about is having a hard time and you can't do anything to turn them around? I'm feeling that pretty hard, especially over the last few days. I don't wanna go into specifics, but I know this person is finding it hard to fund anything positive right now and this negativity is starting to take it's toll on them.

It's hard seeing someone with such a generous and caring spirit carry the weight of the world with them everywhere. It's even harder knowing I can do nothing to turn it around.

Healing

Sometimes I wonder if some wounds will ever heal. Sometimes I wonder how deep the damage I did actually was, and wish I could just take the pain away from those I hurt last year. Sometimes I feel like a very worthless human being.

There's no excuses for any of my actions last year. I lied, cheated, and was a very selfish bastard. It was the least proud moment of my life. I look back at it now and wonder who I was or how I could ever have been so cruel.

But it's been over a year since then. Wounds are healing. Relationships are much stronger than they were. But the scars of yesterday still show themselves, and sometimes….like today…..they bleed. Those I love bleed, and I can do nothing to stop it. Those I need hemorrhage by my hand and I can only watch and sit back feeling the immense guilt of my actions. Those whose lives I couldn't stand to be out of show the damage I caused to them, and it makes me hurt.

My only wish is to be able to take the pain away. My only want is to be able to make her happy. But I'm cursed to watch the woman of my dreams crumble under the weight of the emotional wounds I caused.

And it is in these moments that I am ashamed to acknowledge the person I was ever existed. It is in these moments that the guilt overcomes me and consumes me, and I long to crawl into a hole and die. It is in these moments that my resolve gets the better of me, and I can do no more……

….for I can do no more. I can only watch the suffering and pray that it will all be gone one day. I can only pray that the pain will ease, and the questions will subside, and the fury will be vanquished, and all that will be left is the perfect union of souls that I know exists between us. I can do no more at this time than to wait, and to be everything I can be to her and this family. I can do no more than to pledge my entire life to her, and to mean it, and to dedicate my every move to the betterment of my family. I can do nothing more than to be here and fight for our survival and for us to thrive……….and to wait by her side as she walks through the valley of the shadow of death alone…..until she comes through on the other side. I can only wait until that day when, by the grace of God, her wounds are healed and her spirit can be at peace.

…..and I will wait, patiently, even if it takes 5 eternities. I will do this, and so much more, for her. She's the only one who was ever worth it and she is the only one who will ever BE worth it.

And so I wait.

Frailty

Everything a person has can be forever altered by the actions of another. I've learned that lesson in spades over the last 24 months. It's led me to appreciate what I have, because nothing is finite. Everything is frail. All it takes is a small misstep, and it all can come crumbling away.

I don't want to go through that again. I lost everything I had and everything I was in early 2011. I went rather crazy with it, and treated the woman I now want to make my wife like a disposable piece of trash. I wounded her deeply, and played games with her. I try very hard to make amends, but I do not deserve her. I never will after what I've done to her.

But I am no longer in my dark insanity. I treat her like the beautiful loving woman she is, and I treat her how I truly feel she deserves to be treated. I try to remind her often that I love her more than life itself, and that those days have been behind me for some time. But I was afraid that with the move stirring up ghosts of my own pain from last year, that it might also stir them up in her.

I'm happy to be moving in with her. I want to make her my wife, and I want to be a father to her kids. But I know it's all in her hands. I know I only have what I have today because of her. I'd still be in Marion without her. I wouldn't have a family of my own without her. I wouldn't be able to move to a new studio without her. I wouldn't have a best friend without her. I wouldn't be happy without her. I wouldn't be able to live without her.

But all that I have is in her hands. I need to never forget that fact. I was happy in my previous long term relationship, but she wasn't. I was selfish, and she took it all away. I was selfish and a major dickhead to Laura last year, and will never ever ever deserve to be with her. But she says she wants to marry me, and I'm thrilled by that to no end! Yet, there is this thought in the back of my head that says "you may have her, but you scarred her! You'll never be good enough for her!" And that voice is speaking the truth. I'll never deserve her. I always need to remember that at an moment what I have with her could come crashing down. My life is in her hands.

So while she suffers with the pain and anger of my past mistakes, I'll suffer with the endless regret and anger and pain of my past mistakes. I'll suffer knowing that I made it this way. I'll suffer knowing that I deserve nothing less. But I'll honor her until the day that I die.

Despite everything I've put you through, I'll always love you Laura. I get sick when I think about you hurting, knowing that I caused it. I feel selfish expecting you to love me back. But I need you to know that you mean everything to me.

Everything.

Past

The things I did last year keep coming up to bite me in the ass. I fully deserve it, but still wish it would just bury itself and let me be happy. It would seem that this isn't going to happen anytime soon. I still wouldn't trade what I have for anything in the world, I am however cursed with the knowledge that I've tainted what I have, possibly forever.

Penance is a bitch.

It's like I just want to take the person I was and pistol whip him. I want to take so many things back.

funk.

Hi Blog. How you been?

I like having a blog like you to turn to, it gives me an outlet to unload my problems and thoughts.

The past 24 hours has been quite well, thank you! Jovy came to the studio with F.R.O.E. Records to put down tracks for Jovy's first release, and earlier today I was recording country demo's for Darron Docie. Fun times.

But I'm not having fun right now. There are things that are looking well for me, but I find myself in a funk. I'm kinda stuck here actually, because I'm not very proud of myself.

I've let guilt sink in. I feel guilty because I am guilty, I've done some horrible things over the summer of 2011 that cut some deep emotional scars into the person I love. What can I say, no one's perfect……and yes, I now believe that I was clinically depressed during that period. I wasn't thinking clearly, and I regret some of the choices I made every day.

Do yourself a favor. Take a virgin forest in a pristine wilderness area. Now, on the count of 3, burn 1/3 of it down. The forest is still there, for the most part. And look, now you can see the damage you've caused. That's a good analogy of what I feel I've done. I've taken something beautiful and scarred it out of ignorance and self mindedness, and now that I realize how much I valued everything I scarred, it's already marred by my presence.

The amount of guilt that I have is immense, and I do feel in some weird way that I deserve to feel this way. I don't want to feel ok with what I've done.

It's enough to make me feel, for a fleeting moment, that none of what I have now is real. It makes me feel that I'm just sleeping in my bed in Conifer, and that I'll wake up any moment now. My life won't have fallen apart in 2011, and I won't have spray painted the trunk of the most beautiful tree in the forest.

It all makes me hate myself and hate where my life has gone over the past 19 months. This is only fleeting, and I realize that. My uber confidence will kick back in later tonight, and I'll be firing on all pistons again. But it's ok to feel these things, because these are human things. So right now, I'm allowing my guilt and escapism have it's moment.

I realize I'm obsessed to a certain point with where I used to live, and with how my life used to be. But who can blame me? Even if we both lied about our contentness with one another, I had a companion that I hadn't scarred. Even if we were only scraping by, I was living in the most majestically beautiful place that I've ever seen. Even though I'm now more aware of my financial state and of how to fix it, I was in oblivious bliss when I lived there.

In other words, even if they were only a facade or my own ignorance, things didn't seem so hard for me there. I long to escape back to a day when that is the case yet again, but I look ahead at my life and I see only more obstacles and struggles.

….and then I see the person that I can't picture living my life without……

…..and I see the scars I've caused……

it makes me wanna just run away from everything.

I realize that right now I'm just in a funk, and that later today I'll be back in the saddle trying to fight the good fight and continuing to reach for the proverbial bootstraps. But being human, I should allow myself to feel like a piece of gutter trash when that feeling comes through. It should have it's moments so I can work through them and move on. I don't have time for emotions to stay hidden and fester. I need to work them out now, and move on.

So thank you for listening Blog. You're always such a great listener.