A message for Mark

Mark,

I've been healing since you left, as much as I can. I keep holding my breath waiting for you to return to me. I keep turning around hoping to see you there smiling at me with those beautiful blue eyes. I thought I knew the meaning of pain before you left, I thought I had traveled to the deepest depths of where my pain resides. I thought that I had felt this pain on my arm, this pain in my heart and that it had passed. I thought I wouldn't have to see it again, I told it to go back to where it came and to let go of my love and compassion. It's not gone though Mark. It's just changed and its has grasped every part of me, it's taken my strength. I want your loving arms to embrace me and to embrace my pain. I crave to have you near me Mark, I crave your physical presence. I crave the immense love that you have shown to everyone, the love that you have shown me. You took the crumbling mess that was my heart, the labyrinth that is my mind and you took the hand that had done harm to myself. You took all of these things and instead of showing judgment, instead of showing ignorance and  instead of showing a need to take care of yourself... You showed much more. You showed me that in this world of people who look at a loss cause like myself that there are people who care. I was lost and miserable. You showed me the true meaning of love, compassion, and acceptance regardless of the stupid things that set us apart as living breathing organisms. I want you back Mark, and I know I'm not the only one. I feel like I've lost a piece of my heart.. a piece that helped my live. A place where love resides and there is nothing but love. I can't wrap my mind around the fact that someone so miserable and un kind like myself would continue living when someone as loving and kind as you had no choice. It's hard to find an explanation for many things these days.. 

A message for Mark 

Waking up

It's amazing how quickly ones emotional state can change. You can wake up one morning feeling like today will be different from the rest, that it's going to be better than the dark ones before. But sometimes even reading a short text when you wake up can be enough to cripple your whole body down to the floor. Sometimes just seeing a picture can bring back stories left untold that were locked away in your chest a long time ago. Our minds hold every single thing we have ever seen in our whole life, whether or not we can access that image or not its still there. So when we see this image there's some kind of link emotionally that connects causing us to react or feel a certain way. 

Sometimes its hard to understand why you're feeling the way you are though. You wake up with a smile on your face, but not a smile because you're happy. You wake up with this smile hoping that the longer you hold it the easier it will become to one day truly be happy when you smile. But sometimes it's just so hard to pretend, so hard that you can only smile as long as the time you have to spend being around other people, but even this is hard enough. The time you are alone, well that's the time you collapse and show how you're truly feeling inside. When no one is around and its just you and your mind left alone to wander with thoughts. You sit and start to question what everything is and why certain things happen. Figuring out the meaning behind everything is hard enough when you don't even know who you are yourself. It's when you're alone that you let yourself open up and let your guard down, letting all of the darkness in the corners of your mind start to grow. Slowly making its way through your whole body like a virus. Created in your mind but then spreading to your heart, pumping it like toxic sludge through your veins. You wake up from this moment though, however long this moment alone is and you eventually lift your head back up. But even after lifting your head back up you still have those moments and you can never really understand them.

Everyone wakes up, by this i am referring to the moment of consciousness after being in a state of sleep. Everyone of us have experienced this moment many times since the day we were born without a second thought. But how can something that's part of our everyday life be difficult when it is so simple. You never think to question it or think its out of the ordinary because every single one of us shares this. When you ask someone what their morning routine is, what is the first thing that comes to their mind first. Their answer could be that they brush their teeth or the first thing they do is drink a cup of coffee. But how many people start with "I wake up". What many people don't realize is that for some, waking up can be one of the most difficult things to do. For some people it's because they don't want to be as miserable as the the day before when they went to sleep. They're so scared of going out into the world and getting ripped to shreds. They don't see the good that could come to them because In their mind it's all blocked out by what could go wrong. In their mind any good out there is just a dream, not a dream that could ever be hoped to be achieved either. This is a dream that is only seen when you're asleep, but even then that's only when the nightmares haven't engulfed your mind.

Life has to be taken one step at a time and a step to be taken is finding the beauty in waking up. The beauty of taking a deep breathe when you wake up filling your lungs and the relief of exhaling it, the beauty of taking your morning coffee out to watch the sun rise or maybe just waking up next to someone you love and looking into their eyes. There is beauty and love in the world and there will always be beauty and love in the world. There are places undiscovered and places to be explored. There is something amazing to see every day but the only way you can see it is if you go out there and find it. In order to start every day of the rest of your life, you first have to wake up.

A whole life ahead of you

I created this blog a while back not really knowing what its true purpose was. Maybe i just created it thinking it would be my journal open for the world to see, an insight to what makes my mind tick. Is it possible i just created it thinking that i could unravel this blurry image in my mind that is "my life" and try to translate it into words. To be completely honest i don't even know myself... Maybe after a while of writing i might be able to figure it out myself. Everyday millions and millions of thoughts cross through my mind, ones i think i understand and ones i think i don't. But then again who's to even say what is right and what is wrong, everything is pretty much nonsense that we make up as humans to explain things we don't understand. But these are all these thoughts floating around in my mind talking, for now I'll try to at least focus on at least one thing.

I thought for my first post i might just speak openly about whats on my mind and a number of other things. A big part of my life recently has really involved my dads, for those of you reading this who are not in support of love between two men you might just want to stop now. For those still reading, you may either have already known that i have two dads or may not have, either way I'll explain just a bit further. I grew up with a loving mother and father and nine other siblings. My dad was a hard working man supporting his family and my mum was a stay at home mother taking care of her kids. I can go on for a while explaining my childhood and my family but I'll save that for another time. My dad and my mum are both beautiful and kind people, but sometimes peoples paths have to diverge at a certain point. Their paths diverged when i was twelve in sixth grade.

A little while after this event had occurred in my life my father came out to me as being a gay man. Well everyone has a different way of reacting to any life changing moment,  i had no idea how i was supposed to react to this. I grew up in the LDS church since the day i was born and in doing so had never been sat down and talked with about the matter of gay marriage or anything else similar to this. I was taught that it wasn't "normal", that is what a "problem" and that you shouldn't interact with people who were attracted to the same sex. This was an ongoing battle in my mind of what was the truth. I knew that my father was a loving and kind person, i knew there wasn't anything wrong with him. But then again everything i had known since i was born was what i was taught in the LDS church. Do i love the man who raised me and cared for me, or do i follow what was inserted into my mind since i was a child.

I started to distance myself from the church and try to better understand what was going on in my own mind. I started to spend more time with my dad after he had moved out and try to understand why it is i shouldn't spend time with him because of the reason that he was attracted to males and not females. Over time it just became ridiculous in my mind that he wasn't a good person because of this reason. I still somewhat associated myself with the church because i was still confused about things taught and because my mum wanted me to be an example to my four younger siblings. Talking about my dad being gay wasn't something i really shared with anyone because of the fact that i basically live in the LDS capitol of the world and was nervous of getting made fun of at school or anywhere else. I enjoyed spending time with my dad and loved him for who he was. Then he introduced me to a man named Mark. Mark was his partner at the time and just like before i didn't know how to react to the situation. But after time went by i learned to love him and accept him into my life.

So at this time i lived in a Mormon household with my mum and a household divided of siblings who accepted my dad and those who didn't and stuck to the church's teachings, then i would spend my weekends with my dad and his partner. I was stuck between these two places not sure what to do for a while. I finally put a foot down when it came to the day that my very Mormon friends mother ran into my dad, Mark and my four younger siblings coming out of a play. She then asked me the next time i came over who the man with my father was, i had never been put in a place where i discussed my dad and Mark before. I explained to her nervously that Mark was my dads partner, she was very puzzled at first. We started talking about him and Mark and she began to explain that was he was doing was wrong, my emotions bouncing off the walls in my mind at the sound of this. She started to explain that his "decision" to do this was wrong and that i should spend the minimum amount of time that i have to with him. I wouldn't stand there and listen to these things said about my dad. After this i just couldn't be around her because she was so close minded and i didn't need anyone who would talk negatively about my own father to me. It was after this that i was done with the LDS church and decided to go off on my own path and figure out what I wanted and not what was wanted of me.

Now that you have a bit of a background as to how things started out, I'll move forward with things. I am currently living with my dads, Joseph "my biological father" and Mark "my other loving father". They were married in Maui this past year and i couldn't be happier for them. I have come to learn and accept Mark into my life as part of my family and love him unconditionally as i do with my own father Joseph. I am so proud to tell all of my friends about them and the rest of my family who many would view as "unusual" or not the everyday family you see. But I've really come to appreciate the unordinary and have become so much more loving/accepting of the different people i meet because of this upbringing these last couple years. When you meet people who aren't as excepting of the life you live and don't appreciate the things that make you happy you just move past them and hope one day they get the chance to view the world as you do.

(My Dad on the left & Mark on the right)

Well there's a lot to say about my dads, there's so many little individual things that make up who a person is and they each have their own special aspects. But if i was to start off with anything, it would be that there is so much love between them. They are such kind and caring men who have been through journeys beautiful and grueling, but always come out the other side with more life and love then before. There hasn't been anything that they couldn't conquer holding the others hand and bringing their love together. Well one of the hardest challenges they've faced was the moment Mark was diagnosed with prostate cancer.. As soon as it seemed like they had fields and cities ahead of them to run through and see together, to live and love together with one thought "what will our next journey bring". It was like all of that was taken away and they were placed in a doctors office with only one thing on their mind, "The rest of your time together is on a short timer quickly counting down to zero".

How do you react when your dad tells you that your other father has cancer..? Just take a moment and explain the process to me of feeling like you've been shot through the heart over and over again. I didn't understand, i still don't. Why did this man who was kind and loving of every living thing around him, get everything taken away from him in just a quick moment. He was an ER doctor and did hospice care. He took care of people and he only ever wanted to share love and happiness to everyone around him. This just didn't add up in my own mind. Why couldn't it have been me? Why can't it be me? Mark didn't do anything to deserve this, he doesn't deserve this.. I wrote this in my journal for Mark this past summer and haven't shown a single person till this moment.

A letter to cancer

I have tried to teach myself
not to detest, insult, berate,
but I cannot follow my own advice
when I am so filled with hate.

You are slowly stealing my father
and though some say this is God’s will,
those words will never stop me
from despising you, still.

Yes I hate you, cancer
like I’ve hated nothing before,
I’ve cried so much, my eyes are dry
for tears…there are no more.

If only I could fight you,
my anger alone could win the bout,
I would crush you down to ashes
until "surrender!" you would shout.

And if you were a mighty tree,
I would destroy you limb by limb
until you swore to put an end to
all the pain you’re causing him.

What gives you the right? What gives you the power?
Just who do you think you are?
You have no feelings or compassion
for all the many lives you scar.

If I were a scientist, I’d concentrate
on finding the key to your demise;
just like those cowards on 9-11,
you attack with a heartless surprise.

 You personify evil,

you are wicked and cruel.
You thrive on others’ sorrow…
like cars run on fuel.

You are forever my enemy,
my nemeses, my foe,
but before you take my close friend,
there’s something you should know…

He hasn’t relinquished his dignity;
his inner strength shall persevere
and you’ll never have the satisfaction
of realizing his fear.

Because if you had a face,
he would look you straight in the eye
and he’d say to you what he’s said to me…
that he’s not afraid to die.

You may have chosen his last day
and though he may or may not be near it,
your power has its limitations
because you’ll never break his spirit!

There are times in every single persons life where they feel like everything is over, where they feel like they've hit a dead end and there is no turning back. Those times where you wake up in bed and just lay there looking up at the ceiling for hours on end feeling.. nothing, absolutely nothing. You have no motivation whatsoever to get up, thinking there is nothing out there but pain and suffering. There is good and there is beauty in this world I'll give you that, but in these moments the bad always covers any hope of good out there. You start digging yourself a cave deeper and deeper, hoping the rest of the world doesn't see you peeking through the cracks in the earths surface. For the people who haven't experienced days like these i hope you never do. But if you haven't then could never hope to understand what it feels like to have zero motivation to the point where you lay in bed for days at a time feeling so hopeless. People ask you how you're doing when they see you and you take a deep breathe turning to them with a smile and saying "I'm fine", walking away with deep ache in your heart saying "I'm slowly suffocating and i don't know whether to give in to it or keep pushing".

Life is hard. Not one single person can convince me otherwise because it is as simple as that. I have yet to see the day where i meet someone and everything has gone as perfect as they plan. Things will happen whether you're ready for them or not and you just have to get back up and keep going. I love my dad and Mark and i refuse to accept that this is his ending. He did not come into my fathers life and into my own just to leave us the next moment. He is a living breathing human being and has the capability and strength to overcome whatever obstacle stands before him. This isn't what his whole life led up to, this isn't the end of his life and his cancer will never define him. When i introduce him to other people i refuse to say "this is Mark and he has prostate cancer", I will say with confidence and a smile "this is Mark, my loving father and he has his whole life ahead of him to do amazing things and nothing will hold him back". 

My Dads are two Strong, Loving, Beautiful and Amazing men.

And they have their whole lives ahead of them to do amazing things together.