There is a point where it is hard to trust anyone, you feel like you're just waiting for them to fuck up. But then that is a matter of perspective really, is the glass half empty, half full or merely at 50% capacity? Most people overlook the fact that 99% of the time they were true and concentrate on the negative, because it stands out just in the same way someone can fuck up repeatedly and be praised for fixing one moment and they overlook all the bad that was done. I suppose its just a natural system to encourage people to keep moving forward. Nothing ever stands still, in life or relationships. Its always going forward or back. Which is why we begin to lose trust, its not something black and white, its not absolute, its a sliding scale just like the range of colors which can be seen with the naked eye from blue to red. You might have loved them once upon a time, but now you're in love with the person they were or you think that they could be. Maybe it is still in the cards of fate or maybe its not, but I believe our choices determine fate and every choice is based on what we have learned. Always smile when you think back not only to the things that made you happy, but the things which have taught you something.

If you have nothing to look forward to then find something you enjoy in life, a person - a hobby - a place. If you're not sure where to begin, look at what it is in life that seems to make everyone around you happy. I used to wish for death, I used to wish to forget, but now I don't. Now I only wish people could see themselves through my eyes and how they effect every emotionally, mentally .. and all of the future with a mere act. Most people don't realize how much can change in the blink of an eye. Picking up a book, a soft kiss or hug, a sudden car wreck, a phone call to someone you haven't seen in awhile. Something as simple as taking the time to give someone a hug goodbye might be enough to change the time it takes to be forced to stop at a light and miss the car running it when it was green. Ultimately we can never truly predict all the consequences of our actions, however just like a chess game, the more moves out you see the more opportunities you have to change the outcome to favorable results.

You can't control how you feel, you can teach yourself to think different though information and communication. Education isn't just about books and school, but life as well. I find most people dwell on the past because they haven't learned from it, they don't know what they could do different if it all happened again, they aren't sure where they went wrong. Sometimes its because they didn't do anything wrong at all and measures are just beyond their control. Things in life happen because people will them to happen, the words of man can move men to move mountains. The only problem with this is everyone bends the universe to their own will and some are opposing, so as science teaches us.. we must always be the stronger willed one as the strongest force always wins.

Sometimes we project a bit of ourselves onto others or we think that because others might that the next person will. For the most part people only believe what you tell them and know what they see and hear with their own eyes and ears. In my experience if your gut tells you something, you should follow it. I think its your subconsciousness way of telling you something that you haven't learned to put into words.

I would say 9 out of 10 military who are taken in some way end up cheating at least once, its in human nature to some degree. To release those hormones, to not want to be alone, to scratch that itch. I will admit not all do, but it comes down to a couple of things in the end. Number one, weather it is true or not... can you live with trusting them to be faithful? Number two, if you feel you can trust them and you find out otherwise then who is to blame? Should blame even be placed or merely accepted that it won't work. You have to decide if a relationship with a few scratches, scars, bumps, bruises and cuts is what you want, how it could be repaired... or do you throw a blank set of dice for life and hope to get a better roll for your relationship with someone else. You have to decide if the honesty, loyalty and respect in the past are enough to hold onto for tomorrow and repair. I believe that every day a man wakes up he has to prove himself to the world and himself because no one mistake is worth the judgment of a man as a whole, but one can't ignore the patterns and ultimately who they are. You are not who you think you are, but rather how others see you, how you act really. Don't judge a man for the company he keeps, but his actions - his intentions and his results.

I have learned a lot about love in my time, ironically almost too much to put into words and almost not enough to get by it would seem. I know there are many types of love. Love of friends, family and romances and none between yourself and any other person will feel exactly the same. Yet at the same time people throughout time have all felt all the love and pains that we have. Just remember love might be a necessity in life or relationships, but not the only one. Respect and loyalty is as well. If you want others to love you, then you have to start loving yourself. If you of all people, who know everything about who you were, who you are and who you want to be can't love yourself, how can you expect anyone else to see anything more in you? You can't really, but somehow I do all the same. I see some of my past and pains in you, I see your potential, I see how much you care. I want to help you bring that beauty to the surface and give you a reason to smile again like you did as a child.

I feel like a birth we are born in a drug like haze that wears off of the years. I think I was happiest when I was five. The one memory I have of my life before recently when I was happy was me in a brownish beige long sleeve coat in the early fall picking flowers and giving them to my mothers. It wasn't until 15 years later that I realized it made her smile so much not just because of the natural mother - child bond, but because my father in 21 years of marriage never bought her flowers once. In 2nd grade something traumatized me. I don't know if it was an imagination from different things in my life that I randomly pieced together or if it was real, but I remember the car ride on the way home, I remember choosing not to answer her knowing she wouldn't understand because I myself couldn't understand or remember. So thinking that I was molested back in 2nd grade led me to hate school and push teachers away. As I grew up I was incredibly smart and a math genius which lead teachers to suspect me of cheating often when in fact I was the most moral of kids up through my early to mid teens. Once day though I woke up and I felt different, calmer.. more in control. The anger was gone, but I was empty and hollow. It wasn't until I was 17 or 18 in my gym health class and I heard another students project on disorders we had to look up that I was able to put a name to what I felt. In his clip about manic depressives was a movie and I tuned into one sentence that identified it perfectly to me, without the slightest of doubt. "I just woke up one day and I felt different".

As time passed from 7 to 15, not knowing that I was manic depressive and in a depression which caused my anger, I acted out for some time. My fear, for lack of a better word, of teachers caused stress which in turn cause physical and very real illness manifested by my mind. I in turn missed so many days of school that I faced truancy issues and my parents were looking at jail and myself Juv. Lots of time and money was wasted on lawyers and little known to me until years later, time spent talking to the school board. My natural genius is the only thing that saved me. Despite missing 3 out of every 4 days of school I still passed every end of grade test and exam with flying colors - they agreed to continue passing me on to the next grade. I began bouncing around schools and missing days for some time until I was home schooled to avoid truancy. In the end I was put in home school. My father tried taking me to the college he worked and took classes at to teach me, my mother brought home work for me. I shunned both ideas quickly and refused in my own way. Eventually I spent years sitting at home with a computer, games and the internet. I taught myself computers, I had amazing intellectual debates on religion and politics and found friendships with people online. It wasn't the same thing though, nothing would quite fill that void. I don't regret any of it, I wouldn't change any of it though, it has made me into the man I am today and I have learned to see that I have an amazing effect on peoples lives, which one day you will too.

Money problems aren't solved with money. Its about life style, choices. Its about managing your assets. There are many programs to reduce debt, setup payments, teach you skills and help find jobs. Just remember money has no value unless you spend it and there is no shortage of it in this world, its just about what you are willing to do to get it and how much you are willing to endure. When I was 17 I started living with my buddy Mark for 6 months before I got my own apartment all alone and was paying for everything and about to start my own online business. Two months later I got my buddy Aj as a roommate to help pay rent. I pissed off my boss who I felt was mistreating me at the time and he fired me as I knew he would. I ended up joining Aj working at a pizza place and barely making rent. Knowing my computer skills though, I found a way out. ComputerTraining.com, they would teach me. Get me 3 major Microsoft certifications. They would build my resume and fix it up. They would find me a job and negotiate my salary. I blew their entrance exam out of the waters with flying colors, naturally. I had no credit though. I was 19 and had neither good nor bad, but even after having a special meeting of the board to reevaluate my circumstances and approve me for the 25k loan for the class, they wouldn't allow it. So I joined the army and left. When I came back I lost every position I ever owned basically, lost a 30k stock portfolio and was put thousands of dollars in debt. To this day I would still take a bullet for him though and I don't sweat it. The day I die most of the things in my life won't matter and I wont remember half the days that have come to pass. So when I get the money they will, no rush.. they can tack on some late fees if they want. They have to allow me enough cash to live off of. I have survived everything over the past 20 years, a few bills won't stop me now. Just remember, they cannot be progress without struggle. If there was nothing to challenge us then we would have no desire to move forward and better ourselves. If $6/hour was all I needed in life, what would push me in life to make $20/hour? Even though I have enough knowledge to make $15/hour starting right now though, I have yet to prove myself so I make nothing. I don't have that damn degree to show it.

Just be disciplined, have will power and take small steps. In the end you know that everything has a beginning and an end, as long as you never give up hope and keep going then you will reach the other side and see the light. Hopes, dreams and wishes are the fools gold of life though, don't get over confident either. Hoping for something doesn't make it happen, you make it happen. People look to parents, teachers and even god to do things which they are quite capable of doing. Rosa Parks was just a mad black woman on a bus, now she is a martyr. Einstein flunked math and was crazy, but he made countless inventions and breakthroughs which have changed all of society as we know it. People will try and tell you all your life that something can't be done. They said we would never reach the moon, that the sound barrier couldn't be broken. I say the impossible just takes a little longer.

I spent all of my life wanting to drive and I lost my license almost as soon as I got it. I wasn't hurting anyone. I wasn't endangering anyone. I was in control of my vehicle. I just wanted to see my mother and get back home before midnight, yet somehow they felt they had the right to take it simply because I was driving faster than was ideal in their eyes (99 in a 70). I have found in life there is no such thing as right or wrong, good and evil. Its just different people or groups with different views trying to bend the universe to their will. There will always be consequences, both good and bad to acting or not; choosing one over the other. In the end you just have to decide with is the lesser of two evils and what will make you happiest based on how it effects not just you, but everything and everyone. Sometimes easier said than done.

You know one of my favorite shows was Jon of Arcadian, a take off of Joan of arc. God would appear as random people and tell her to do random things. Say that she was wasting her intelligence by taking advanced classes when she could have taken lesser or courses and tutored people. He would tell her to go to the library... where she would randomly bump into a person who would give her a book which is why she decided to take a pile of wood she found at the river side and build it and send it downriver where a boy found it and entered a contest and won and decided not to commit suicide or blah blah.. some strange series of events all because she decided to do one random strange act that god asked of her. Maybe life didn't deal you a bad hand, maybe we all just have to learn things in our own way and our own time. You'll figure out not what you are meant to do in life because there is some divine purpose, but one day you will find something that you want to share with the world because it betters the world to have it and it betters you to pursue your gift and share it.

I don't know if there is a god or not. I simply know that like a fish in a bowl of water, we float on this rock and space. From my view though, science or god doesn't matter. We have to take a leap of faith to believe in either. Don't blame god or your mother, your life has always been your responsibility. Of course, no one is expecting or demanding you to do anything. They are merely hoping you will do more with yourself and live up to your potential, they want you to find your happiness and push on because they care. So just remember when you feel someone is holding a bar too high for you its because they care and want you to succeed. Just like in exercise, life is something that is rarely perfect. If at first you don't succeed, then your probably running about average because to err is human. So keep jumping to pass that goal post. With every jump you legs get a little stronger. That pain just tells you that you're still alive and gaining and growing.

I can't yet sympathize, if I ever could, with the loss of your mother (or even your father it would seem), but I can try to empathize and listen. Just because she got overwhelmed doesn't mean she was bad, we all have our own difficulties in life. Just remember that without death life would not be worth living. If we could do everything infinitely and endlessly then it would hold no meaning. The fact that we can't do it all and have to choose our paths in life and lose our loved ones is what makes it so priceless and meaningful. So don't cry for the times you lost, smile for the times you got to share.

Family is complicated, but in the end they are your only one. I don't know too much to say. I think your grandma feels the same about you and knows how important you are to one another. You two seem like you are completely irreplaceable to one another and I don't see that ever changing. As for you father, well I don't know the whole story or really any of it. I do know that we can't help how we feel, but we can help how we act. He choose to act as he did and he knew the risks and consequences when he did that. When he chooses to accept that is up to him. I know you love him, but just because you love someone doesn't mean anything other than you care beyond measure I think. You don't even have to like someone to love them, but I don't think anyone you love is someone that you are capable of forgetting with any ease if at all. Sadly we all have to make our own mistakes and learn the hard way. It is sad, but true that some things in life cannot be replaced. Luckily most possessions can and most relationships can if all sides can find a reason to change and learn from the past.


And I just had a fucking heart attack because I accidentally closed this tab and thought I lost everything above that I just wrote... but amen for Firefox saving stuff in memory. *Waits for heart to slow down*

Its hard to trust people, we just have to accept that first and foremost that everyone will mess up and likely more than once. Like I said.. to err is human and judge a man not for the company he keeps but his actions, intentions and results. The only thing worse than betrayal is living life isolated and alone, never letting anyone know who you are. Sad and quiet in a black and white world curled up in the corner begging for pain to remind you that you're still alive. Dare to trust, because you need trust to hold onto love. Don't be afraid to reach out and look for old friends in new places or for new friends in old places. or New friends and new places for a new beginning. Follow your heart and heed your head young one.

Though we just met and you tell me how cold you are and how sketch your past is. I don't see some kind of monster. I see a beautiful girl who was confused and got hurt and forgot how to keep walking forward with the distractions of life. So just know that I am merely a letter, a call or message away. All I ask is your loyalty and respect and you will have mine and much more. Give me that much and I would walk 20 miles in the dark of a cold nights snow just to give you a hug and remind you it will all be ok in the end.