departure.

I'm starting to finally realize it all. Why this life goes the way it does, and why people end up the way that they are. I look at this truth without frustration or anger, not even disappointment. I believe I look at it as a person looks at death when it immediate and inevitable. With understanding and sadness. Understanding that this is the way it has to be, and sadness for not being able to do more. A friend of mine told me that I will find my place, that I am seeing the world in pieces, and when I see it in its entirety, I will be at ease, for I will see how I fit into the puzzle. For a brief moment I was comforted by that thought, that I will experience that seemingly ever-elusive feeling of true peace. But I know now that for me to have peace in this world, as it stands, means in no uncertain terms, that I have compromised. That I have given up. That I have made complacency my home, and traded in my conscious for peace. Because things are not right. I don't know if things are as they should be, but I know for damn sure, things are not right. They are so unright that to make changes at the margin of the problem would be the ultimate exercise in futility if not foolishness. Or maybe both.

I can't even begin to explain what is wrong. Everything is the best way I can describe it, because, for me, it is the only way to describe it. Everything is so wrong that people can't even see what's wrong anymore, because there is no standard of what's right to judge it against. We have identified the problem. Everything.
Now, we have to try and find a solution. I take the liberty of saying we, but that is making the bold assumption that you feel the same way. You may not, which is fine, but you can still come along on the journey for a solution, even if you are a passive observer. As far as the course we are going to take, I have only plotted out the first step. We, or me, or some combination of the two, will have to draw out the rest of the journey. But all journeys begin with one step.

We have to stop buying into answers that answer nothing, leave us unsatisfied, but with enough complacency to move on. Such is life. That's the way life is. I'm only human. Eh, whatcha gonna do? These have become the answers to our most dire questions and situations. Answers that leave us not better off before we heard them, and without the dignity to at least allow us a restful nights sleep. These answers, and more infamously, the mindset that accompanies these answers, have left us unable, unwilling, and unlikely to change what is indeed wrong in the world and in our lives. We ask god for the serenity to accept the things we cannot change. And if we were made in God's image, there is very little we cannot change. So many things that are detrimental has been accepted as being apart of life. I agree, these thing are apart of life, but they are not our lives. If we do not give up, then they can, and will, change.

Your life's path has not been set out for you. It is in large part what you make it. What you do, or do not do, who you are around, how you choose to spend your time, who you help, or do not help. These things determine the shape of the life you are going to live, the fullness, richness and satisfaction of your life. Or the lack thereof.

I have been asking a lot of my friends would they buy condoms for their children. An overwhelming majority of them say they would. They are going to do it anyway, and they rather them be safe. They say this knowing that in there lives, besides the climax, sex has not brought them any long lasting happiness, satisfaction or joy. They say this knowing that instead, it has brought them the opposite. Because they have brought into those horrible answers. If this is your child, the one thing God has truly given you to protect, why would you give up so easily? Why would you give up period? We have even become complacent in loving those people we're supposed to love.

There have been times that my father has been calling me to talk, and I didn't pick up the phone because I have having sex, or trying to. He's dead now. I can't go back and have that conversation that I missed. Times that I left my moms in the house, alone, watching movies, because I went to a club. A club? I could have shared that moment with her, gave her the love of her son through a conversation, and received in turn a mother's love for her son, and more insight about this world than I could ever get on my own. I can't lean on another unsatisfying answer. "Your young, your supposed to run the streets and have fun". But at what cost? The decisions we make are not inevitable. We choose to make them, everyday. And often times we turn our backs on true comfort for false satisfaction. It is so false that often times we have to abuse it just to feel something. Getting drunk. Going to 3 clubs in one night. More sexual partners than your age. 4 hours of T.V. a day. More clothes in your closet than days in the year. Abuse. "Such is life" can't save me now.

We have the power to change everything. How we live our lives. How the world lives their lives. The world we live in. Everything.

Everything happens for a reason I keep hearing. Your right, but for what reason? If the reason is horrible, does it still protect your decision? Does it still remove responsibility from you because it was "inevitable"?

If you believe that this is the best life has to offer, that all these terrible and truly unsatisfying things are just what life is supposed to mean, then you can have my piece. I don't want it anymore. I won't even charge you. Consider it my gift to you before I leave. Cause leave I will, because fight I must. I have to claw tooth and nail for change. For life.

I have it in me to get it.

So do you.