My Dearest Annabelle...

I have been in the south way too long. Don't believe me? Here's some reasons.

-I'm realizing the differences in camouflage.

-I answer all women, stranger or not with a quick "yes, ma'am" (pronounced 'mae-yûm')

-I have acquired new phrases (i.e. "fittin-to", "say-what-now", "do-what-now", "whatcha-lookin?" Etc.)

-Trucks are appealing to me now.

That last one is the one I'm most surprised at. I've always been an old school 4 door, muscle car or SUV type guy. To me a truck bed was wasted space. Now, it's practicality and uses prove invaluable for the region in which I live. If I get a truck, I won't need to get a trailer for my motorcycle. I could climb it straight into the truck bed. Can't do that in a Tahoe.

If I get to harvest an animal, I can throw it straight into the back without worrying about getting blood everywhere, like say in the carpets of an Escalade. I also wouldn't have to sacrifice seating space for storage while traveling with luggage. Throw it in the truck bed and now theres enough room to ride comfortably.

Probably the biggest difference in living around here is, a year ago, I could hardly understand the accent. Now, Its still a struggle, sometimes, but I'm learning a day at a time.

Although I am slightly out of my element in my current location, learning about those around you will pull the barriers and reservations down.

Don't be afraid of the unknown. Branch out. It might be fun. :)

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Kill the Dragon...

Why is it so hard to move up and better yourself?
Why is it that when you decide to do something that makes you better, other people are always right there to cut you down. Hardly anybody around to encourage and uplift you; to come along side and grab your shoulder to say, Im here if you need ANYTHING! and actually mean it. Everybody is very quick to tell you why you can't, instead of being the "friend" that they call themselves and being everything that the job title entails? So many times we look on the person we are, and compare him/her to the person we envisioned we would be at this point in our lives when we used to dream... We continue to disappoint ourselves because we convince our psyche that we will always disappoint. I say we break the mold, and kill the Dragon named Disappointment, in our lives and forget what the world says we should be. We should just be who we are, and the best one we can be, at that. A foot print is there to show where it is we came from, not to lead us back to it. When you feel discouraged, look behind, see how far you have come and realize why you left in the first place. Our lives are our own. The decisions we make depict who we have become and where we wish to be. Live, because we only get one shot on earth. Don't regret, because life rarely gives a second chance. Remember, because if we forget, the journey wasn't worth it.
Here's one of my older pieces. Hope you enjoy it. Do not maintain. Excel.

WHEN?!

When did it become normal for a brother to kill another?
When did we begin to accept givin our hearts to one and our bodies to another?
When did it become acceptable, no, delectable to be unfaithful and appear shameless-
Then, when the sweet turned to ash, and we're left all alone, we look for whose blame this is...
When did our sisters become shields, and our ladies become targets?
When did life lose its value, to something as trivial as respect?

When did our young bodies become strapless trauma plates
Meant to catch society's spent bullets of distrust and hate?
When did a compliment become an ulterior motive?
And when did love become a four letter word for sex and was impulse and explosive?
When did the results of that "love" start bein "problems" and "dependants"?
And a welfare check rather than what they are.... our children.
I'll tell you when this all started- When these plagues were birthed into vile existence.
It was all when we chose to "Maintain", and decided to fit the stereotype and not be resistant.

-Vs3

Life is but a....Hunt?

Sitting in a Deer Stand, on this gloomy morning got my thought process working in a certain direction.

I am at the South west corner of the field. There is about 2,000+ yards of field to my right, and approximately 200-400 yds collectively directly in front of me and then to my left. The woods tree line is just after those measurements. There is wildlife all around me, I can hear it all, but I cannot see any of it. Having a tacticians mind, I immediately drift to thinking up every possible worst case scenario from my current position. After my mind has an executable plan for every predator that could come out of these woods from a rabid squirrel to a Russian Zombie army with assault rifles and the mental capacity to use them, I sit and figure my plan for if a prize buck with non typical points and more meat than I could have hoped for just happens to step out of the tree lines shadow... Then, I'm stuck, tactically. What do I do if he steps out just out of my rifles range? Do I let him walk? Or do I risk the kentucky windage and take the shot? Possibly missing, or worse, just maiming the animal, awarding it a painful, agonizing death for surviving all these years. Thinking about this, I realized that life is alot like this. Your dreams, goals, focus, everything is in your sight. Whether you have a plan, or the capacity and means to execute that plan depends solely on whether or not you are going to take the shot or at least mentally prepared to take aim.

You have been given everything you could ever need to be successful. You were meant to succeed, But don't measure your success by others standards. Do the best you can, with all youve been given, so at the end if it all, You really did enjoy it.

Keep dreaming, but take aim and bring the dream into reality. If you can dream it, you can do it. Youre worth it.

-Vs3

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Recovering Addict of 5 Hour Energy (conclusion)

Sacred Heart Clinic...

I walk in still shaking and so paranoid that I actually did jump at seeing my shadow a couple times. Walked to the counter, filled out the 80 pages of paperwork, yadah yadah yadah. Tests, Waiting room, tests, blah, blah, blah. Finally get to see the practitioner, she asks whats going on, and I tell her the whole kit-n-kaboodle from Nuke plant shift to the chest pains, and bloody mess the night before was. Of course, i get a stern reprimanding, concluded with, "...why would you do something so stupid?!" To which I replied, "I missed my family." Her eyes went a little misty as she reached for my test results. She suddenly got serious, "what all did you say you took?" I rattled off approximations of pills and energy drinks and coffee. Her eyes got wider "...And all this., on an empty stomach?" Until she said that, I had forgotten that I hadn't eaten that entire day of travel. "Yes ma'am,

I guess it was."

She was shaking her head now, "Your stomach lining is almost completely destroyed, and you overworked your heart. If you had taken just 4 more pills, it's a very real possibility that your heart would've either stopped, or exploded."

My jaw dropped. I was 21, and this lady just told me that I almost died. I lost track of time and quite honestly, everything else she was saying, until she said "...you should call work and tell them that you need a few days to detox, because I'm not going to give you a note if you go back tomorrow." I promise that I will and leave with my note.

Back at my car, I'm looking for a place to stash my note so I won't lose it. My visor was no good and I would've lost it in the middle console. I decide to put it in the glove compartment inside my car manual for safe keeping. The glove compartment drops open, and the missing pack of No-Doze from that last box falls out. I turn it over, and there's two pills missing... Leaving only 4 in the pack. I don't know how they ended out of the box and up in the glove, but I'm still thankful.

All that to say... A good tool used the wrong way, can be very detrimental.

And be careful with 5 hour energy, "all natural" doesn't always mean safe. (Or you can just follow regular dosing instructions) ;-)

Things get better. Thanks for reading.

-Vs3

Psalm 40:1-5

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Recovering Addict of 5 Hour Energy pt 2

The new anxiety had set in. I was still at least 30 minutes out from my destination. I began to sweat uncontrollably, my heart began racing, panic, utter terror gripped my mind and forced my muscles to spasm. Where my hand was on the steering wheel, was now a gaping missing piece of rubber that was about the size of my grip. I had inadvertently ripped a piece out of the steering wheel. My heartbeat began to grow, at this point, every time my heart beat, my vision blurred because of it. The best way I can describe the feeling is, I imagine it feels the way an epileptic in an active seizure looks. The panic, the terror, and utter lack of muscle control. Frantically, I begin screaming, lost in my own world of trying to dodge headlights on the freeway, and yelling at them to get out of the way, because I had no control of the vehicle. I'm 15 minutes away from my destination, now. I realize that between the muscle tweaking spasms and trying to dodge killer street lights, I don't remember the last 10 minutes. Was I driving while blacked out? Did I go off the road? Or worse, did I unknowingly hit anybody?!

I swear that I need to stay awake, but if I killed someone in my sleep, I couldn't forgive myself. How could I live with myself?? I am in no condition to drive, but I keep on In this current state of mind, vowing empty promises to God if he got me to my Brothers house safely, blah-blah-blah. You know the drill.

I turn the radio up as loud as it gets while I flip open the middle console in my Buick and snatch my last box of No-Doze. I unfold the top and dig into the opening with my fingers as quickly as I could when suddenly, my heart dropped, and my mouth dried at the same time. I didn't feel the sleeve of pills. Could I really be out of pills?! I really ate 30 No-Doze in a space of 10 hours? O_o

8 minutes out, I reach down into the floor, amongst the bottles and cups of my "wake up juice" concoctions from throughout the day. All Empty. My mind is going a million miles a minute, keeping time with my heart rate, as I'm thinking about what to do next. I decide to reach for my cell phone and call my brother.

He answers, and I don't remember much of that conversation, but I remember him being there for me, listening to my babbling, my screaming, and whatever else happened in that conversation.

3 minutes out. I begin crying. I don't know why, but I feel broken. It's a deeper set feeling. My Heart, still beating like an angry snare drum, now feels heavy in my chest. Almost like it's out of breath. I know these roads, and these turns seem familiar, but I must be on auto pilot, because everything is just happening. Everything seems to be slow motion. I can see everything happen, but I couldn't stop it if I wanted to.

I turn on to my brother's street, and he's on the porch, lights on, phone still to his ear, listening to me babble weakly. I park the vehicle and stumble out of the car. I don't know how I made it up those steps, but I did. I lean in to hug my brother, and partially collapsed while we hugged.

As he's telling me everything is ok, and is going to be ok... that feeling that overwhelms and pushes up from the pit of your stomach, the uncontrollable one, when it feels like someone took your diaphragm twisted it, wrapped it around your organs and yanked on your esophagus until the only reaction it's what word describes it. Hurl.

But it want what I ate, I was bleeding from my nose and mouth.

The rest of the night was a blur between a destructive headache, a rapid heart beat, and a constant flow of the red stuff from my nose and mouth. I thought I was going to die that night...

Next- the conclusion..

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Recovering Addict of 5 Hour Energy

Those little bottles make colors smell like the fruit that they paint, they make any image 4 dimensional, and they make you crash worse than a fistful of pixie sticks.

The last time I was this high and then low, was the time in 2006. It was Mothers day weekend, and I hadn't been near any family in months, so I decided that after my 12hr shift of security work at the Nuke Plant, I was going to drive 14 hours to Pensacola and see my Brother and his family for my extended weekend.

So, I did what any 21 year old would do, I stopped at the first starbucks and ordered a Venti Mocha with 10, yes,10 shots if espresso. I was suped, I was ready, I was.... on fumes in the next 4 hours, I wasnt even in Georgia Yet and I was swerving so wide that if I were in a cornfield, crop circles would have resulted. So, I stopped at the very next truck stop I saw. They're truck drivers, they do this all the time, so they MUST know what they're doing. I told a trucker my situation and he recommended an illegal substance, which he just happened to have for sale. o_0...

I declined and asked a trucker sitting in the light if he could recommend something for my situation. He said "No-Doze", I thanked him, asked the clerk for 5 boxes (each containing 6 pills), paid for my large coffee, gatorade, quickly downed 6 pills and got back on the road. I was feeling gooooood. I wasnt buzzing, and I wasn't sleepy. Somewhere along the way, I figured, or rather, I concocted in my mind that if I kept a steady stream of no-doze in my blood stream, I would be ok.... 9 hours later, I'm in my last hour and I'm in Flowmaton, Alabama, and fighting sleep so violently, that I can feel the car jerk on the road, when I kick myself awake. For the last hour, I have been chewing on the pills to get the powder into my blood quicker. I figure "a chewed pill is less to dissolve". So there I am, PEZ-ing it up, when I hit I-29, and I had never nor have I ever since that "trip" (pun intended) seen so many lights. The streetlights were dancing and elongating, looking like giant glow sticks waving at me, that I thought I had to avoid. The billboard guy giving me the "Uncle Sam-we want you" finger was in my car with me. I was spazzing what I thought was the worst... And then it happened... Blue lights and sirens behind me. They flooded my car with every window and mirror reflecting EVERYTHING. I could smell everything, as I rolled my window down to cut the glare, diesel, palms, sand, other...things. I was sure that my swerving had caught the attention of an over zealous rookie looking to fill his monthly quota of tickets and citations. My nerves steadied somewhat when the State Trooper zoomed around me... But then I realized, I still wasn't at my destination yet, and a whole new anxiety set in...

(to be continued)

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Mind of a Nice Guy

A nice guy will always finish last, but at the end of the "race", Nice guys will be surrounded by those that love him. Those that didn't give up on him. The point isn't that he finished last. It's that he didn't give up.

All throughout our lives, we will encounter three types of people:

1. There are those that do us absolutely no good at all

2. There are those who don't mean to hurt us, but always end up doing so.

3. There are those that genuinely want us to succeed.

The ones that do us absolutely no good, aren't hard to find or to point out. They make your life difficult for no reason. They may know why they don't like you, but it's not a good reason.

In reality, these types of people have inconsistencies in their lives and because of them, they choose to discharge their dislike for inadequecies in your direction.  I call these people broken mirrors. They don't see themselves as broken, they just try to "shatter" your own view of yourself. Forget the haters, broken mirrors cut everyone around them. It's their nature. I promise, it gets better.

Those that don't mean to hurt us, are usually the ones we trust the most. Family, lovers, friends. They have no intention to hurt us, but when they do, they rarely know they did. In their eyes, they are helping us or trying to be there for us. No matter how abrasive they can be, remember, they think they care by default because they love us. These are the Full Length mirrors. They see all of you, and right past you at the same time. They don't focus on one thing. They see the whole picture, including the clutter around you. They care, but they haven't taken the time to develop the relationship to the stage where they know how to approach you. They're setting is still "Love by Default". Give them time. Things will get better.

The Last person is all about everything you do. Full speed. They don't have to love you, but they do. Unconditionally. These people are the personal, hand mirrors. They see you for you, a little bit at a time. Nothing else matters, they stay focused on you, regardless of what else is going on. They're the ones that ask "Whats really going on?" and "How are you doing, really?" They took time to learn who you are. They're the ones constantly telling you that "Things will get better." And believe it.

In closing:

Haters exist everywhere, you can't get away from family, and look around at your real friends. Things really aren't that bad. They're tough, but if life was easy, it wouldn't be worth living.

Remember, Mirrors are reflections of you. Look your best, and make sure that you always see who you want to be, not who you used to be.

Things get better. I promise.

Psalm 40:1-5

Vs3

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