I was on Facebook the other night. Probably around midnight. School night, and something compelling was driving me to write and say true. So, I did.
Lost 7 friends.
With only having a few hundred people on my list with some form of interaction with them at least once, this was noticeable to me.
It wasn’t anything truly bad or controversial that I wrote. It was mostly middle of the road, everyone can agree on kind of stuff.
However, at the end of the post I left off with the topic of Facebook advertisements and I simply put: “Just fuck off”.
I mean honestly, can they just stop trying to get into my head all the time and let me enjoy the lives of the people I love?
Anyway, it was very off-putting and I lost some of the folks who I had met a long the way. They didn’t want to start their day with such things.
Some of these people I’ve had on my list for years and vice versa. Now all of the sudden I wanted to post something real and that’s not what they signed up for.
For years, I’ve been the single dad on Facebook. Posting pictures of my kids, and I, doing awesome things and loving life.
We would post funny moments, dress in crazy costumes for Comic-Con, have extravagantly cool birthday parties, and model for beach-background silhouettes.
That’s what people thought of my girls and I. The cool single dad with awesome kids.
And it’s true. I do have awesome kids. But, cool single dad was a different story. I mean that’s just what I was doing well at selling. Off the record, I was failing left and right.
In the background, I was struggling with alcohol abuse issues, massive bouts of depression and manic behavior, relationship difficulties with family, financial instability from poor decisions, inability to establish positive relationships with others… the list goes on and on.
Yet, to the outside world, I was an example of what a single dad should be doing.
In part, they were right, I was doing well by at least trying. Being there for your children, doing your best to have special moments and spend time with them, hoisting them up above your own needs for a moment and making them feel special… The was the right thing.
Even though I was doing those things for likes on social media. Anyone that looked too closely could tell I was pretending. But, my kids didn’t know that. Or maybe they did?
Anyway, at some point I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t allow this to be what my life is ultimately. Somehow, I needed to evolve.
How do I become on the inside what I was faking to be on the outside?
Or even more, how do I become even better than that? True self kinda stuff?
At first, I pretended to be at peace of course. Because that’s what everyone who was acting happy and all I really knew how to do was pretend. Try and copy what these other, happier people were doing.
Again more faking and it wasn’t real. Yet, I knew it was out there. Happiness. I’ve had glimpses of it.
Next thing you know, this girl enters my life. Not as a companion, but as parent. She helped me take care of my girls for a year and I paid her. Some people would describe it as a nanny.
She was very spiritual and about peace. And she was gorgeous. And I did what stupid guys do and tried to make moves.
It started out by chatting with her in the mornings before I would go work. She would arrive about 30 minutes before and we would talk.
That part lasted for most of the year.
But, what ended up happening was she taught me so much about life, spirituality and myself. She ended up becoming such an amazing friend and an even more amazing role model for my girls.
She was powerful in setting healthy boundaries with people and the same time loving them.
One of the things she passed onto me was a book called “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. I listened to the first couple of chapters and said I got it.
Don’t need to read anymore. I understand what he was trying to say and can see the point he was going to get at.
Yet, I didn’t get it.
Fast forward a year later. She’s gone. Moved to another city to start a new life. I’m still here, but I met someone. Thought should could add a ton of joy and positivity in the life of my girls and I.
Ended up being horribly mistaken. We were just an experience for her. To play house and pretend to be someones mom for a moment. Then when the daydream gets old, you move on to the next interesting moment.
I call them ‘tourists’ and they’re something that any single parent has to be worried of.
Meanwhile, we got hurt. My girls recovered faster from it because they are very powerful and strong. Not me though.
When she left, her words to tore through me. She could see the falsity of what I was trying to portray to the world vs. what I was behind the curtain.
And now I’m sitting there alone feeling lost once again from what I just came out of. That relationship took so much of my energy and left me facing the mirror.
Hated what I saw. In fact, I didn’t blame her for ending the relationship. I wasn’t woke at all. She got too close and saw the facade. She was right.
And there I was. Broken. Looking for a head change. Ready to listen.
I found myself asking what? Then that book came into my mind. I remember it being an exciting thought. So, I gave it another chance.
Really glad I did. As those words entered my ears and ultimately my thoughts, I could feel them. I knew they were true with all my being.
I gave in. Listened to every chapter and did my best to put the whole thing to the test fully. Using my life as the experiment.
And it freed me.
It snapped me from what I thought was reality and threw into real.
I took the blue pill never went back. Finally out of the Matrix.
A prisoner my whole life, but not in a Science Fiction based post-apocalyptic virtual reality kind of way. I had been a prisoner of my own mind.
My thoughts were the enemy this whole time. Strictly because there were too many of them. They never ended and I had no escape. Did my best to try and control them. Focus them into something positive and be in charge.
It was a fools errand. It always had been.
I learned that my mind was always going in one of two ways: Into the past, where it thinks about things like mistakes, betrayals, negative moments and broke relationships. Causing depression and sadness…
Or it goes into the future and tries to plan everything ahead. It pictures deadlines, tasks, changes and perceived happiness. Causing anxiety, hyper-tension and stress…
Yet, what it never does very well is be in the moment. To be present.
What’s going on right now? I started asking. What’s happening around me?What can I actually reach out and touch? Once I started being able to turn off those non-stop thoughts, it became easier to see.
Then comes tools that help you get there. I finally learned what mediation was. Turns out, it’s just the practice of turning off your mind for a moment. To stop thinking.
So, I started practicing for the first time now that the end goal was understood and it became all about how to get there. Starting however, was very hard. Very difficult indeed.
Trying to stop your mind from thinking after spending a whole lifetime being stuck in that prison is not trivial. At first, I could only hold the focus for maybe a second or two. Then it became more.
Practicing and practicing. I felt pretty good once I reach the total of 15 seconds. Which took about 6 months to achieve. I know it sounds like a lot of time to put forth just for just 15 seconds, but it’s not like that at all.
You actually start to realize it’s like a piggy bank and every second you do goes in there. So, all that practicing over 6 months meant many seconds went into that bank, slowly filling it up.
As it filled, I started feeling really good about everything. Stressing about things was way down. Depression started dying off. I was sleeping better. Felt motivated and most importantly, started loving who I was for probably the first time in my life.
But it was a process and it just happened to be super fun to do. I couldn’t wait to start living life again. Everything became about living in the moment and letting go of those draining thoughts that were sucking my soul away.
It was a feeling of not being in Kansas anymore…
It’s like you’ve been spinning yourself in circles this whole life and now you’re trying to stop.
Dizzy and disoriented, everything is still spinning around you and you’re still trying to keep your footing but nothing’s going where you want. You keep trying to stop because at the same time, you know that something’s different. It feels right and that gives you a massive amount of excitement to keep moving towards the goal!
Anyway, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind and I’m finding myself in a good place. Not perfect, but at the same time perfect. The haze is clearing and I’m so much better at catching my balance.
Not that I don’t have my spin ups from time to time. Yet, I have the power to see it as it’s happening now and catch myself. Which is nice. It feels empowering.
I learning to love myself in the moment. The person I become is real and true. He is not overthinking or scheming. He’s not about having negative thoughts about the people around him or lost somewhere in his past. He’s just here.
Ok cool, so what do I do with this now? I’m still extremely flawed from all accounts, but know how to reach brief moments of peace and clarity. Enough, it seems, to change my course to something new.
I guess that’s what this blog is about. A single dad just trying to find himself so he can teach his children just one lesson… To love themselves.
And that’s something you can only teach once you know it yourself.