So… I used to never want to talk about anything… Never wanted to dig too deep, never wanted to discuss a “serious” or “hard” topic in regards to a man–woman, boy–girl relationship… I routinely would dodge any semblance of a serious conversation, refused to participate in any talk about the future, did my own thing, cared mostly only for myself and then had the audacity to wonder why I one day woke up crestfallen and full of discontent…

I think the reasoning for these reluctances to “dig in” have varied in my life… The intensities of these reluctances also shown no sign of being consistent either…In the briefest of summations, I have concluded the following in relation to this piece of my past…

“I feared hurt and the chance of being hurt”…

(or as I had first listed “I was chicken shit”, but decided against actually listing this bit of nomenclature for fear of being viewed as too much of a redneck. : )

I know that not dealing with the points of pain and fears in my life have cost me dearly…I also know that it’s never too late… I can’t go back and begin at the beginning… but I can start now and make a new ending…That’s probably in my top 10 of mantras…

Recently in my life I survived an epiphany… I decided that not communicating the things inside of me was a mistake… The feeling of sincerely wanting to get my act together offered a new lease on life for me…

I took a long walk alone on Thanksgiving Day of 2008. I left out from my house around 5AM; it was an unseasonably warm and sunny day… I carried with me my laptop, blackberry, pen, paper and a lot of heavy feelings… I drove to the East Nashville Greenway area… I was able to pick up a wireless signal from the surrounding neighborhood area most of the time…. I sent numerous emails of thanks to those who have helped and loved me the most… When emailing failed, I began to text; the phone rang several times from some unexpected places… I wandered quite far that day… Somewhere in the tears, walking, laughter and beautiful sadness of a sunny, solitude filled Thanksgiving Day… I decided I needed to do better, to try harder… I needed to become better at living out loud and on purpose… I previously, had been expert on hiding and not allowing vulnerability into my life… I promised myself somewhere out there in my ambulation that I would allow parts of my broken ego to die, so that the best parts of me had a genuine chance to truly live… One of the last things I did, after both the battery on the laptop and blackberry had expired… was to make of list of the things I wanted the most in my life… I’ve mentioned a couple of times this “list”…If you can make a list… Great! That’s step one and your more ahead of the game than most… If you actually have one or two of the things on your list, I recommend a heavy dose of gratitude… daily and anew… Embracing your blessings can and will drive away your burdens… I felt it better to move on, than hold on…I arrived back to my car at nearly dark, 500p or so… I had taken water with me, but hadn’t eaten all day… Oddly I wasn’t hungry when I arrived to the car... I feel as if I had fed on rebirth… Somehow throughout the course of the day my sustenance was the possibility that I realized lay before me… It was possibility that I had denied myself for far too long… I wasn’t the sad things that happened to me… I wasn’t the mistakes I made… I wasn’t much more than an animal walking this earth, but I wanted to be an animal with an out loud and on purpose heart, everyday that I lived…

This epiphany has given way to a couple of others…Coming to realize who you love, and why you love them is a feeling that is second to none…

I started this post with the ideas of pain, communication and suppression in loving relationships… The aforementioned walk covered all manner of darkness for me… Mostly I focused on what I want in my life…A couple of times in the months that have come to pass I have retrieved my list… All at once I can feel the sun on my face from that day, the contrast of the cool autumn breeze… When I hold the list I’m back to that day, I feel the gratitude in my heart… I gaze at this list; I feel love, progress, growth and possibility in what I have listed… Can I ask for anything more?? ?


I had a great conversation with a dear friend recently about God and pain… I’m referring to the pain that sometimes comes out of our eyes, the pain that is an anvil on our heart, the pain that keeps us from our joy…

My friend essentially thought that the pain is presented to us by God as an instrument of invoking us to communicate somehow to someone… something… Not to say that God wants us to hurt, moreover God wants us to feel and think (as if those two things went hand in hand)… He did mention numerous times that the “communicating” most likely needs to be going to God, in the form or prayer… Talking to friends, family, loved ones, of course are also tantamount to progress in relation to addressing the pain. Also, the pain would remain till we’ve talked enough to whomever we needed to talk to… By parallel, once we’ve talked enough, the pain would have diminished.. So I came to ask.. Can I then assume…conterminously…. That pain and communication with the right people, places and timing will allow both the pain and the want/need to talk about the pain to dissipate together… maybe ??? No universal solutions were agreed upon, but it was a great talk with a great friend…

The pain that we can’t figure out who to talk to is by far the worse…. Maybe a two way tie with the pain that we also realize isn’t logical…Trying to be logical and feeling hurt all at the same time leaves you somewhere between frustrated and anxious…

I try to find balance in thinking and feeling… as I’ve stated many times … a work in progress to say the least…


I’ve realized that spewing my pain out on the world isn’t the best idea either… This is where I find myself now… This also is where I want to explore a deeper understanding, somewhere within the realm of loving, open communication and the proper suppression to filter out the unnecessary issues I should own and truly embrace… I want to be able to address what needs to be communicated to one another…and leave my ugly humanness aside…

I want to achieve the most effective, efficient communication possible with the one I love the most, so we can spend our time enjoying our life together… as I know no one enjoys emotion wrenching conversations… no one wants to feel as if they are in a “fight” I’m done fighting, I’m going to stick with talking, listening, trusting and living out loud with someone I love…

I know I struggle with the best time to talk about hard things with the one I love the most… All I’ve come up with so far is this… With all the love I can, after I’ve allowed enough thought to pass, when my partner is in a place where she can really “hear” me... so I can be the best person I can for me.. And for her…

With the right amounts of suppression and thought, communication and love, time and prayer, meditation and patience… The realities of time, space, damage and distance don’t seem like such an unconquerable foe…

There is much more to love than simply always getting what you want…

Melancholy moments are moments and moments alone…everyone at some point in time will find themselves there.

I recently read a very thought provoking book that encompasses “Loving and Letting Go”… this thought I’d very much like to explore and expound on sometime in the near future…

I know that giving into trust fully, and with your whole heart takes time… more often than not, one will come well before the other…

Somewhere betwixt acceptance, compromise, and understanding what you truly want… is my salvation, my resurrection and all of the reasons I’m grateful for every millisecond of this life…

Tune of the day

“So Far From Me”
By Brett Dennen