This is me

So it has been a couple of weeks since my last post. Life and work have gotten pretty busy. I am writing to you tonight from a hotel room in Farmington, NM. I am a long way from home.

In my last post I posted a poem. I received a lot of feedback about that poem. I don't really know if it was more of people being nice or if people really thought it was a good poem. I have often worried about what I post on my blog...and I am not sure why. I guess a part of me has always been afraid to show people the real me. I suppose I worry what people will say and think about me. I guess if I really cared that much, I wouldn't post anything. There is a part of me though that wants to let you know the real me, who I really am.

I haven't always been one to share my emotions and my feelings. In fact, most times if you were to ask me how I was really feeling, I wouldn't be able to answer. I have spent a good deal of my life ignoring how I felt because I felt feelings I thought I shouldn't feel. Things like fear, loneliness, pain, and so on. Feelings I didn't want others to know I was feeling. So typically I just bury them somewhere. In many ways that has to do with why my marriage has come to its end. I can't really blame anyone, not even myself, the best I can do is to learn and grow from the experience.

So if you didn't like my poem, too bad. Theresa told me a quote she had heard and I am going to repeat here and probably butcher it. Basically she said that art is spilling our guts onto the canvas of the artists choice. I have always felt it easiest to spill my guts on paper, usually in the form of a poem. So poetry is my art, it is me spilling my guts. It is me putting myself out there.

Over the years I have written many poems, and yes even some raps. Most of them were jotted down on scraps of papers and not kept. Others are kept in my journal (it's not a diary) or notebooks. I typically didn't want to share them with others because I was afraid people would see me in a way I didn't want to be seen.

I didn't want people to know that I hurt inside, I wanted to be perfect. I didn't want to let people down, not my parents, my siblings, my wife or my kids. I always wanted to be what I thought everyone else wanted me to be. And when I felt I wasn't being that person, it hurt.

I can't live that way anymore. I won't. I am who I am and people can accept that or not. I feel that at this point in my life it's time to just be me. To be imperfect, to stop trying to be Superman.

In that spirit I wrote the following poem tonight.

THIS IS ME

You need to know how I feel
You need to know I am real
I feel sadness, pain and sorrow
Sometimes I pray for a better tomorrow
I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders
My burdens are heavy, like giant boulders

Sometimes I do cry in the night
And pray that things will turn alright
Sometimes I stumble and even I fall
And have hidden myself behind my wall
But it's because I don't want you to see
The person who looks in mirror at me

I don't want you to know I am weak
I am afraid you'll think I am a freak
I worry about what this world will say
So instead I've try to keep hidden away

But I am who I am and that can't change
So say what you will, call me strange
I can't stay alone behind my wall
The time is now for it to fall

So here I am for everyone to see
Here I am. This is me.

So there it is. I suppose you will be subject to more of my poems, it's my art, it's my expression. Some days I feel like I am on top of the world, other days I feel like I'm buried under it.