What i was saying, was not if you believed if you have killed that kid inside you, because clearly you do believe that side of you is already dead. But I would put forth that that side of you has never left but is only buried too deep to feel. Repressing that side of you for years and years would make it incredibly difficult to touch. Your belief that it is dead is a mechanism to keep it down and locks you in a world that is cold. You believe you can only be an asshole, therefore you are one.

Opening oneself to emotions that have been locked away makes you vulnerable and makes your subconscious want to avoid them at all cost.

I’m merely saying, don’t write yourself off as someone who has lost the ability to feel happiness through the smile of a child, cause i already know that isn’t true about you. It seems that the transferred anger you felt as a youth envying ignorant innocence is the barrier to empathizing with people you don’t know in this situation. Where as with you daughter, you can enjoy her smile and delight in her innocent energy. Other who you are unconnected to, you cant enjoy their happiness because you still feel that need to hold on to the pain that separates you and them as a means of survival.

Empathy can be the hardest thing to achieve when your backs been against the wall for so long. You have an amazing ability for introspect, but your selling yourself short.

Sorry i dont mean to be Dr.Phil blogger ahahah.
Got nothing but love for you homie.

Imagine for the people like me who hold it all in while time keeps ticking and the image of happiness becomes more like a picture that’s been created rather than a relfection of their true self…digressing, sorry.

I truly admire your willingness to go there and I ain’t even ever met you.

Peace.

Respect…….it’s all we got.

T

The insight on this piece from you all has allowed me to step a little further back from my own emotions and creativity and look deeper into something that I felt I knew so well. So what if I was able to break down entirely what I meant line for line. You guys have given me perspective on what may be between those lines and have helped me make a more conscious effort to fill those spaces out.

I do agree with the thought that I have quite possibly already committed a murder internally. Maybe this fight is about me and my past. Maybe its just about what I feel I have lost, and the ‘murderer’ is not the bryan you all see. Its the person I once was, attempting to take ‘me’ away from the person I would love to be – happy, enjoying life, and smiling genuinely with friends. Maybe I am my own attacker. Maybe what I despise in others is actually what I long for in myself, and because it is foreign to me, I feel like it is something I will never know. Maybe your interpretations of what I’ve written will become my introduction to letting myself go.

At the end of my explanation, I say:

“(A single gunshot will end it all. My now smiling face. My own new victim.)”

This wasn’t meant as an explanation for me killing the young man with one shot. He had already been murdered in the piece. I actually meant it as me committing suicide with a smile on my face. Hence, the illustration of me with the blood behind my head.

I consciously wrote this as myself – the ‘good’ me – killing himself. But after seeing what you guys have had to offer, I may have subconsciously written this as the ‘haunting’ me killing himself after satisfying his own hunger to end ‘my’ pursuit of happiness.

I’ll admit to this – and I do it with all honesty – you guys, through commenting on a fucking blog post for god’s sake, have helped me feel and understand that these bouts with schizophrenia and visions and sounds, and hauntings and hiding alone in my house, are not a series of fights that I am entirely at the mercy of. They are there for me to learn about the person I am trying to be, and to understand what I am stopping myself from becoming.

You guys are amazing. And the love I have for you is an honest one.

Thank you.

By the way – this doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop writing about this shit. Lol.

much love to you bro.

In the end I see with your explanation that its transferred anger at others who didn’t have to transform as dramatically as you. Or perhaps its anger that you couldn’t maintain that piece in you. Either way it seems the piece is more about the murder you already committed on yourself.

Finding out if your really killed him with one shot is the question.

What you mentioned about people never fully being able to make it to the point you have, dealing with bouts with schizophrenia is true – and you have every right to say it. The truth is that most people can barely function and do daily everyday activities…and here you are…a mentor, and leader in your community. That is outstanding. And its also an inspiration for others who are induring the same thing.

Sorry for the novel. lol. I love literature…and have a great thirst for yours. Its not your everyday type of writing, which I appreciate to the fullest. In fact – when I check your blog and see things other than new literature to share…I become disappointed. haha.

Keep up the good work. The countdown to you publishing a book about stuff like this is on for me.

Bless

J~