I have finally realized how much I've been suffering for the past year and a half. But do not pity me, dear reader. I have buried the suffering so deep with anger and resentment, that i don't need any sympathy. This is simply the cost of being a caregiver to a brother with schizophrenia. I will call it a kind of collateral damage.

For a good 30 years my primary intention was to break down the walls that I built around me during my first 20. My professional and personal life were dedicated to being compassionate and kind. In most respects that was the identity that I created for myself. My children and family deserved it. My patients needed it to succeed. I humbly think I did pretty well with it.

But since my brother took himself off his medication, I've had to slowly purge the compassion from my soul. To be clear, it is only a small part of my soul, but this has been a journey more difficult than grieving for both of my parents. How ironic that i have needed to rebuild the very same wall that I vowed to destroy long ago. It was as if I was betraying myself. However, it was a necessary step to progress forward. For both of us.

I am happy to report that there has been major progress today. Progress that was decidedly unexpected when I woke up this morning. My sharply tuned guardedness was not bending until he handed me all the keys and garage door openers to the house. He has officially moved into an apartment. This is just the first small step towards stability. Yet there is still a long way to go.

I still have not really cracked open the window in the restored wall. But now, at least the curtains have been drawn.

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

A sketch for nothing is not quite right either. Life is a story without a plot, a Bildungsroman in which we were once children, and the change out of that form of existence is subtle yet constant, a plant unnoticed to be growing day by day but unrecognizable from seedling to tree. We grow unrecognizable from infant to teenager, and the leap from teenager to adult is so insecure it leaves many young adults reeling in denial. Not me, not yet! I’m not ready!

And yet can the same not be said for all life? An eggtooth cracking a baby bird out of its embryo is unaware it will fall from the beak after being used for the first and only time. An actor going on cold is an actor engaged in improv, yes and, yes and. Yes, and what else could life possibly be?

Repetition simply can only occur after one has first lived through the first time. The train ride only seems like an act on autopilot because of the times spent anxious at every stop I rode past first.

The first rehearsal only occurs once the lead actor has obtained knowledge of the plot, whether scripted or not. Background characters can be placed clueless on stage, bit parts can be played without dialogue, accurate accents, time period true costuming. Nobody knows how long the runtime will be, if they will see Acts Two or Three, if the audience will ever appear, will sleep or be left on the edge of their seats.

And some people live their lives convinced they are background characters in the show of life, unimportant, unseen, unloved, and their efforts entirely unacknowledged until they start putting the bare minimum in.

Life in the form of work would be less scary if it weren't always the first run through, if we were given scripts and scenes beforehand. I hadn't known until my third full week on the job what I had thought was an internship involved me doing paralegal work. So instead I sit here typing this as I am entirely unsure what specifically a paralegal even is, nevermind if I can do the work when my boss regularly leaves me alone, adrift in the deep end.

But life is not drowning, it's living - the work will either get done or get me fired. Writing is not work, is far from my first run through, is a skill grown through repetition and practice, albeit one that rarely ever results in profit. If I was a better employee, I would cease writing on company time, and yet I have no willpower, no desire to stop typing, moving my thumbs through this and then feel accomplished despite being far from successful in what I will be ideally maybe paid for if I'm lucky.

But life continued, the day ended, the work did indeed find itself completed, and now I write again from the comfort of my bedroom floor. A vantage point wherein life continues to feel repetitive, though each experience ought to be new. One new experience in my future will be a class in which sketching will take a different meaning - digital art, complete with layers, a more accurate metaphor for life than traditional sketching would be.

We can’t control everything, though our egos would argue otherwise. Sure, you can pick which color socks to slide on today, choose to leave early to avoid getting stuck behind that goddamned school bus again, or skirt the edge of insanity by adding two shots of espresso to your Mocha Grande Frappuccino. But constantly trying to predict a hundred-mile-wide asteroid you never saw coming in the first place—that’s impossible. Dragging along years of bitterness, anger, and worry—a huge waste of time and energy.

So why do it? Why dread the things you can’t control? Why carry a mountain of worry?

Life is a series of lucky chances, random encounters, and risks we try to mitigate daily. We’re constantly dodging self-imposed catastrophes while holding it together just enough to avoid a meltdown. Each of us is on the verge of...

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'til next time...

blue, pink, red

When exposed to air

She never saw her end-self come

Until they stared

Memory is a bone

Ivory and unseen

She is in her forgotten words

Pink turns blue

No air

I am here

She cries

Memory is a bone

Ivory and unseen

I was born to live

And I lived to love the die

Such, was born to die

Birthed forth to live, I

Burst for, and by, chance till I

Berthed me in to die

Placed life on the line

Doubled down and threw my bones

All to win more time

Life is a crapshoot

"You win some and you lose some..."

Until you crap out

perhaps life is an illusion

and i have lived too many lives

in the skins of paper and ink

but i have pondered time and time again

what is connection, attraction, desire, and admiration

they are painfully distinct

and they are the same

lived and relived

through every human through all of time

recorded, reimagined, reviled, and relished

in every instance unique

i do not know boundaries or language or truth

i do not distinguish fear nor heartache nor exhilaration

it is one as i am one

i approach death in every and all moments

equally as i approach life

breathing language i cannot begin to understand

sharing soul, earth, and body in ways only mortals can

i am yet broken

i am yet inspired

i am yet bound by those i love and am loved by

i cannot define the lines, rules, or meanings

i do not know what is fair, fear, or folly

i cannot fathom meaning beyond love

as concept, as truth, as immeasurable and immaterial

i do not know the meaning of what i write, only that i do

i do not know the meaning of love, only that i must

1.2.2025

Inspire someone

Invoke creativity

Translate the divine.

•

Inspire someone

Expand actuality

Bestow the Sublime.

•

Inspire someone

Show them how to learn and make

Render worth in mind.

•

Inspire someone

To truly be a someone

Let their brightness shine.

•

Inspiration lies

In the well between your eyes

Just express yourself.

•

How to make real art?

First express your truest self;

Then you show your work.