Not the Man

I am not the man I want to be.

But I am more of the real me than I have ever been in my life.  I can come across as prickly, stubborn (not new), aloof or incredibly childish, a trait the ‘kids’ at my wilderness training called “46 going on 20”.

If you think you know me, and we’ve only recently met, then you just might have some insight as to who I am.  For those of you who’ve known me ‘my entire life’, family, friends, other, well I hate to tell you, this new me, the one who just doesn’t give a damn about the social norms that keep getting shoved at me, who will just say “no”.  This is me.  But as I said at the beginning of all of this, I’m not the man I want to be, not just yet.

One of my closest friends said there was a seismic shift coming.  That this year, another year removed from the struggles and tragedy that came upon my young family and older children, would be bigger, better, different.  What that’s code for is it ain’t gonna look like the cookie-cutter life that I see many people striving for.  Pools, Hot Cars, McMansions, trips to Exotic Destinations.  Those just probably aren’t going to be part of the deal.  I stepped away from the misery and I bet on the one sure thing in my life.  Me.  Roll the dice.  It’s make it or go home, empty.  There’s no safety net and I don’t know that I’d have it any other way.  I’m scared, but aware that I get to make the leap.  I get to decide the path; the way things will at least start out.  Because how many of our lives end up going exactly the way we plan?

I find myself escaping this city I have always loved more.  I find my heart pounding in ways it hasn’t known before.  I am here.  Fully present with all that has been so much a part of my story, and yet it isn’t the definition of Chad.  What happened behind closed doors on Short Street scarred me.  Formed some pretty detrimental core values that many of you reading this have given me the advise/direction to “give to Jesus”, or “face him” (the abuser).  Get it.  We all give unwarranted advice when we really don’t know the path, or we don’t understand the person standing on that path.  But God does.  And he’s always been right here.  So, lay off the over-Jesus-ed rhetoric.  I know the stories.  I know the passages.  

One of my favorites, “Rend your heart, not your garments”, from Joel talks about exactly where I’m at.  The locusts came.  Devastating and destructive.  Wiped out everything except the skin over the bones of the population.  And that’s where I was.  I couldn’t function without hating.  I couldn’t breathe without feeling a sting.  And believe it or not it wasn’t the memories of my past.  It was realizing I still expected myself to be what everyone else saw as functioning, successful, living the dream.  Well I’ll take the nightmare that still sometimes haunt over 2.5 kids and a three-car garage and a trophy wife that believes in Fox news and Betty Crocker.  I have rendered my heart over and over again, only to find that many who knew my struggle didn’t really know me. 

I still weep.  Usually at really cheesy romantic movie clips from YouTube.  Or when I miss my kids.  I rarely cry over my past.  I do cry over the day I tried to end it all, but wouldn’t you too?  And I’m writing this for me.  I don’t mind if you read it, but I only put this down in words tonight because it’s important.  Not for you.  This is always for me to gauge just where I’m at.  

I’ve tried to love.  It sucks.  And I’ll most likely try again, though I find I’m pretty blunt and hard for some women to take in.  I come across about as subtle as a hand grenade at times, but I have a huge heart that would do just about anything for those I care about.  Even sit at hospitals, which I loathe and try to pretend I’m the dutiful son, while inside I’m just trying to escape a place I have seen the inside of for the wrong reasons.  I don’t mean to complain, just try to understand that I ain’t there for the coffee.  If I remember correctly, we had a great uncle Marvin that was the town curmudgeon.  Maybe that’s my lot!  Wouldn’t that be a hoot, to have my little shack and the kids all avoid or dare each other to throw a rock at the windows?!  No, that’s not me, but I’m not normal.  I’ve got too much Goddamm Martin in me.  

What I am doing is trying to take responsibility for the bullcrap that I do, and not make promises I can’t keep.  Tell people when I can’t handle any more and do everything I can to voice what I can really do.  Not promise you I’ll be there when I know from the beginning that it just isn’t going to happen.  It probably hurts some, and some just scratch your heads.  But I’m learning me.  I’m such an odd duck at times.  But I’m full of life, even when trying to hide it.  Like Family gatherings.  I sat at the last family gathering I went to and had the best conversation with my cousin and his wife.  They live the Jesus life with church, sports, probably a three-car garage, but I respect them for their commitment to each other and appreciated the one time at that gathering that I felt ok.  I don’t like big groups like that.  It’s never going to be ok.

I quit my job back in April of last year to see if I could find passion in what I do.  I need to be passionate about work.  I can’t just go fill out TPS reports all day and clock out at the end and be satisfied.  And the job was killing me.  Literally, I went to my doctor and she told me the stress of driving so many miles a week, trying to balance the pace and workload was something that I needed to change.  Told me my eyes were sunken and I looked, well, sick.  I am still trying to find the right job, the right position that will match my love of people (yes, though I avoid some settings, I still love ministering, listening to, helping others).  But I’ve held some cool smaller jobs that have helped me pay my bills and see other lines of work.  We’ll see in a couple of weeks if some of that is brought clearer into focus.

My kids are good, and I’m still here for them, but I’m just never going to be the TV dad that I feel like some want/expect me to be.  Unless it’s Al Bundy, now there’s a role model.  Whatever happened to just showing up.  Trying each and every day.  Isn’t that pretty good in this crazy plugged-in, checked-out world?  I’m going to see my son take the next steps into the Army.  Hopefully he’ll survive basic and find a path for him that will allow him to grow and mature, while teaching him a skillset that he can use for life.  My daughter is already at Kennesaw State University this semester, her last semester of high school.  I can’t claim much on this one.  She’s done it herself.  I’ve signed some papers and keep urging her to stay on top of things, but in reality, she’s in control of most of this.  And I’m thankful she is going after what she wants soooooo much.  To be a teacher.  We’ll see if it stays that way.  But she’ll have opportunities no matter.  And little man, well that’s a whole other paragraph.

Last January I was shaken.  My little man, who I love so dearly was taken.  And I’ve weathered that.  The emotions.  The distance.  I don’t like it and there are still a lot of battles to fight with his mother, the person who truly hurt me more than any other in this life, but I see him this weekend and that makes it just a little easier for tonight.

And with everything I’ve typed before this, I still have hope.  I hope for adventures while doing something that I’m passionate about and sustainable for myself and my family.  I hope for my kids to all find their own journeys to conquer, to fail and to get back up when they do.  I’ll always try and be there, but I want them to know what it takes to go alone at times.  For me, I have realized that I don’t need to have someone in my life.  I want someone special, but it isn’t needed.  And that puts things in a much different light.  Hell, I pray for whoever decides she wants to some through that door.  She’ll have her hands full.  And let me say this.  It is my deepest desire, that when things get ugly, when the shit hits the fan, that my someone special will know to just SHOW UP.  It has been the one thing that hurts still.  Those who say they care, but not walk through the door.  Picking up the phone.  Sending a message.  But the biggest is being there.  The last relationship I had was about three months.  And I knew it wasn’t going to work when I lost a kid I was close to and they weren’t there, both physically or emotionally.  Just show up.  You get extra bonus points for that!

Still find refuge in the mountains.  Still believe there’s a lot to learn and do in this life.  And I’m growing.  Every day.

So, I’m not quite the man I want to be, but I am the man I’m supposed to be.  One day at a time.



P.S.  Take the time to get to know me.  Really learn who I am.  If I let you in, you're part of a special small group.  You're my family.

Light of a Clear Blue Morning

I woke this morning in the mountains.  I know, shocker!  But it’s different.  I am always amazed at the power of the Appalachians’ pull.  Their wisdom and spirit coming up from the ground to caress the day.  They await the sun, and for thousands of years have beckoned nature to dress their hills with an adornment of green, living cloth, frost capped winters and verdant summers.  This is home.

But this morning is different.  I told a dear friend as we approached the top of one of her hills, that I had always called Atlanta home, but home can change.  It’s not the city that I love, grew up in and have went through all the major tragedies and successes of my life.  Home is something more.  Home is heart.  Home is here.

Two weeks ago I started a new journey.  I enrolled in Wilderness First Responder training at SOLO Southeast, located at the Nantahalla Outdoor Center in Western North Carolina.  It was 8 intense days of medical training and outdoor scenarios designed to make me and my fellow classmates aware and prepared to face the challenges that can come in the backcountry as well as in the urban settings we live.  But it was more.  I met more of ‘my people’.  It’s so good to find others that share the same passions and love for the outdoor world, but beyond that, want to help others enjoy that world with the knowledge of how to better assist and aid them if something were to go wrong.

I met a couple who shared my heart beyond the class.  A teacher with the experience and the hands-on training that I needed, with a wit that truly rivaled many comics I’ve spent money to go see.  A gentle fireman who I predict will one day be putting his life on the line daily fighting wildfires.  A strong woman who already leads other women into the joy of the outdoors, who slept in a freezing SUV for part of the week.  And a photographer/writer who I’ve grown to adore.  There were others, and if you were there, you were special.  

Where is this taking me?  Well, just ask me.  I’m not quite ready to spill the final destination, and in truth, I’m allowing life to help shape the “next” destination instead of fully heeding the pull to one final place.  Paths change, direction shifts, the wind blows and our hearts and minds often follow the beckoning toward something totally new.  Maybe westward.  Who knows?

But home remains.  It’s inside me, but so much clearer on a late January afternoon on top of the Black Mountains. 

Three gifts, one wise-guy.

So I’ve decided to do something a little different.  Not overlooking my kids or those closest to me, but honestly, I just absolutely hate Christmas.  I hate what we’ve made it into, and I hate that I feel very little joy around it.  Sure, it’s the birthday of ‘Christ our King’, ‘Jesus Christ’, ‘the Savior’, all those titles.  But what if it doesn’t resonate with you?  And it doesn’t have to resonate for you to have faith.  It really isn’t about that. “It’s a trap!”  Like Colonel Akbar calling out to those going into the second death star.  December becomes our trap.  And I know that many are festive and jolly, and I am thankful that those people exist.  They counter for me and my Scrooge, Grinch, “what the hell are we doing this?” beliefs.  But you don’t have to be anything other than yourself.  And I know that I’M NOT ALONE IN THIS! 

The Story talks about a boy being born, and it talks about simple.  It doesn’t talk about gifts until later in the story when three Wisemen from come from afar (‘a fire’ if you’re from the south) to worship.  Well I don’t know that I even do that well, the worshiping, because my faith is entrenched so much in the spirit and prayers echoed in the mountains that sometimes it’s hard to join in our modern-day corporate worship.  Really hard.  But I woke up this morning, still fighting bronchitis, still a little down, trying to figure out how in the hell I can make a difference.

It’s simple, in the bigger scope of the world it’s sometimes hard to see that we’re making a difference, but in my neighborhood, the places that I live in, shop in, I have the ability to do much more.  So Walmart was my first stop.  I got the two or three items that I needed, and I paced up and down the checkout aisles until I found someone I thought was the right person.  A mother with a teenage daughter and a little 3 1/2 year-old boy.  I have one of those.  I struck up a short conversation about her son, said merry Christmas, and then before she could finish unloading her cart, I said “Ma’am can I do something for you. Can I buy your groceries?”

She gave me a hug, she teared up and allowed me to buy them.  Hugging me again before we parted ways.  I felt a little something.  What I really want is to feel something about the stupid fucking holiday.

I got back in my truck and cried.  My kids really don’t need excess.  They’re going to have a good Christmas no matter what.  I hate this holiday, but maybe I can do something a little better than just buying more stuff to break and throw away down the road.

My second stop was at one of the local Grocery stores.  Similar situation.  It’s incredibly heartwarming to see the look on a person’s face when they realize you’re for real.  I simply paid for their groceries, walked out and got in my truck.  No expectations, just trying to do a good deed.  

I’m on stop number three.  Kroger #2.  Hope I can show a little more compassion and Christmas spirit, and might actually feel something “Grinch-like” in the process (remember his heart grew three sizes that day!”)


Merry Christmas!

Like Tommy Boy!

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.  I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
Matthew 10:34

A sword or possibly a Callahan Brake Pad?!

Have you seen the movie?  Please say yes.  It’s one of those stupidly funny SNL spinoffs that defined a generation of comedy that we may never have again.  And it also is a pretty good life lesson, if you can get through the slapstick, fat guy in a little coat, Rob Lowe destroying humor.

God I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I want to be a little more like Tommy.

In April of this year I made a decision to live the most authentic life I could live.  Not by anyone else’s standards, but by the truth that I believe inside me.

And...

I failed.

I cracked and lost.  Realized that it wasn’t as simple as putting words on a page and believing that those plans will happen.  That in my moxie I left out the ‘how'.  I forgot reality for just a moment, a couple of months actually and found myself struggling much like before.  The plan was grand and glorious, but also misconceived and flawed.  Full of holes.  I had let emotion and the need to prove I was more than a traveling tuba salesman drive my attempted future.

So yes, I have failed.

If I wanted to make everything rosy and palatable.  Wrapped up like the bows on so many gifts under trees at this time of year, I could write this in a very different way.  I’m sure I could convince myself and some of you reading (all 4 of you) that this was a minor setback.  A bump in the road.

It’s not.  I am back to beyond step one.  First and 45 in football vernacular.

Instead of blowing smoke up your ass, I have to be real.  Authentic means that it’s sometimes, maybe often times messy (remember the verse at the top - sword over peace).  One thing that I realize, I am so thankful for the faith that I have.  But even that gets whitewashed so many times.  I see many trying to make it seem as if faith gives us privilege, or we’re to “give it to God” and everything will be alright.  Well guess what?  I am alright.  I’m not defeated, just down.  And even if I don’t make it to where I hoped I would go, accomplish all that I hoped to, I know that my beliefs are there.  And they are Master Yoda strong, not fickle like Luke’s so often were.

But what does all this mean?

It means tomorrow I get up.  I face the tasks at hand.  This week I have several hard conversations that need to be had.  I’ve got some plans to reconsider, and I’ve got to work. I always work.  I’m not sure the outcome, but I am going to be real.  Be authentic to me.

I’m not sure exactly where all this is going to lead, and I’m not scared in that.  I mean I don’t want to end up living in a “van down by the river”, but I’ll take where I’m led.

I went hiking for the first time in almost a month this last Thursday. Then again on Saturday.  I need that.  I hear the spirit there.  My mind clears, and the aches I feel are not the sickness that seems to continue to grip me, but aches of sore muscles that have been yearning to be out there. It hurt on the uphills.  Just like it hurts right now to know that I’ve got to go back up.  But I can’t stay where I’m at.

So if you have the ability, take the place you’re in - Find your faith.  Find solace in you.  Who you were made to be.  And don’t rest in the complacency of our times.  We were made for so much more than streaming movies and video games, waiting on amazon packages and living lackluster lives.

And when you fail.  When life really sucks.  Just remember that those times are just seasons. Valleys on the way to trails moving through the mountains.

Do I regret the decision to be more authentic?  No.  It was the first taste of truth and 'belief in me' that I’ve had in such a long time. And I’d rather be right than doing things for society’s “right reasons”.

So, I’ve failed.  Now I just have to get up.

Click to Watch Tommy Boy Chicken Wing Scene

"Hallelujah! Holy sh-t! Where's the Tylenol?"

“Oh, the silent majesty of a winter’s morn. The clean, cool chill of the holiday air. An asshole in his bathrobe, emptying a chemical toilet into my sewer.”

I feel dumped on.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
I've been up all night.  

Let me preface what I'm going to write below with this.  I do not want anyone's pity.  I do not want to make what I am about to share a public spectacle.  What I do ask is for ALL of you, whether you believe in anything beyond this world or not, to PRAY.  Pray for the dark, hardened, stench of rot that might have once held a feeling part inside her.  Pray for her fucking soul, if there be anything resembling the burnt-out husk of one inside her.

I'm aching tonight.  Terribly.  I have realized over the last couple of months that the journey I am walking through at the moment is a parallel of the one I went through with Cade and Cambrey's mom soon after we were divorced.  And it is so F*C&ing eerie!!!  Yet 10,000 times worse than when they were moved away.  And I am mostly to blame.  I can blame her emotional sway that took me almost two years to beak.  I can blame my lawyer.  But in the end I am the one who let this happen without a battle-royal.  A twenty man, last man standing fight that should have at least given me a fighting chance against the gorgon.  

I sit and watch, trying to communicate, wanting to touch.  Wanting to hold him when he's upset, wanting so much to help him understand.  And what I'm getting is a game.  A game not being played by my three year old, but a game of control being played by an adult who should understand the hurts that he doesn't understand.  The loss of time and proximity that he can't begin to comprehend.  His spirit recognizes what she cannot.  The fracture and how it is affecting the core of our son's heart.  Her tepid attempts to console him are a laugh at me through the screen.  She knows she owns the rights to control.  Because how can you question a three year old about such deep concerns?  I've had attorneys say that the emotional isn't questioned in the courts, and I've seen it firsthand. 

If only there was a child psychologist in his life...... wait....... well you all know that answer.

After a week or so of seeing him pull back from our time talking, and realize I'm not expecting more than a few minutes at best with him on the screen each day, I felt I had to do something.  It will be over a month until I see him if I didn't ask.  And it shouldn't be an ask at all.  Again, the control game.

I texted her and asked to talk briefly.  I wanted to surprise him, and selfishly get to see his face and hug him tight.  I told her I wanted to come up and visit for a day.  And yes, I assured her I would pay for the trip - over $500 just for the flight - just to see him for a day, an afternoon.  She said yes.  But then my gut started to feel something.

I texted her just a few minutes after I booked the plane ticket.  Feeling I needed to get it in writing.  

And I got it.  What my gut was screaming at me.  "It wasn't a convenient time."  "It was too much."  Hell, I had just asked to see him for a few hours.  He wouldn't care if they were traveling the next day.  He might actually be good after spending just a little time with dad.  Might even give her time to pack.  Might be good for her son.

She is a snake.  A bitter person who shows such a pretty, put-together exterior.  But her actions show.  She doesn't really care for the "tribe"* she teared up and described us needing to be.  She only cares about control.  And she has it... for now.

I have to fight.  I am white hot and so angry that I haven't been able to sleep, hardly able to breathe.  I want my son to be happy and healthy, but the realization of castration as a father is going to force me to grow a new pair and make some waves.

So, in the words of Clarke Griswold...

"Hey! If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I'd like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head, and I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is! Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?"

Amen.


*below is the article she professed such a yearning for when we were working out our visitation

Our Tribe - Co-Parenting

Come and Drink

When my spirit is thirsty
Parched from the days of endless strife
Look around for a little wine, some water
Anything that might satisfy

See, I’m still out here in the desert
In a world full of restless souls
All the sadness, lives in turmoil
Dried up my senses – can’t taste no more.

Then you say “come and drink”
I say “why, what for?”
You say “I’m all you need”
I say “I’ve heard this all before”

I fill my cup with so many distractions
Lead me astray, yet I deceive
Myself with haughty notions
Of what my life could really be

I’m still not willing to surrender
To you, a foreign deity
Without sitting down at the table
I’ll taste your cup, but don’t expect me

To turn from skeptic to believer
Without a moment between you and me
When I can lay it all before you,
The hurts I still can’t seem to let go of –
Then maybe I’ll have that drink.

You say “I am the living water”
I say “I’ve heard it all before”
You say “I’ll be here when you’re ready”
Maybe one day, hopefully
I’ll fall down to my knees, and say
“I need you Lord”

11/12/18 
clc

Just Show Up!

Shut Up!

I don’t need to hear you.  I need to see you.

Our words are full of our own desires and twists to get what we want.  Subconsciously or consciously.  They are used to debate, to cajole, to turn other’s opinions.  Guilt.  Sternness.  Overbearing.  Sweet.  Even sometimes the tender and kind words get mixed with the vitriol of seeking our influence over another.

How many times have I said things that I didn’t mean, or worse, things that I could never follow through on.  I am working on this.  If I say I’m going to do something, there’s stuff, life that often creeps in and rearranges my schedule.  My priorities have often swayed like the wind.  I hate it.  

Words are fickle, like a flaccid member.  And whether you are a politician, religious leader, father, boss, mentor, they are often the first line of a subtle abuse that most of us have practiced or have had transgressed on us.  They hurt, sting and unlike the rhyme that we were taught as children…. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”, they do hurt.  They damage.  They get into our thinking, especially if you don’t know yourself well enough, don’t have the capacity to set up appropriate guards to keep words from really eating you from the inside out.

But this isn’t about words.  It’s about something much more important to me as of late.  Showing Up.

I look back on the hardest times, the ones that much of this blog is written around, and see a trend.  Alone.  Dark.  Hard.  Even when certain people were in my life, there wasn’t a person who understood.  And let me be the first to admit that I’m really damn good at isolating when I’m sulking, hurting, angry at God, bitter…

I’m trying to break that trend.  When little man was taken in January, I reached out immediately to the two friends that were closest.  Adam and Nate, along with their wives Jessica and Maegen, dropped everything to be there that day, and in subsequent days after.  But that was a first.  When the kid’s mom died, I tried to do everything myself.  I wanted the weight, the burden, not sure if it was out of guilt or an overstimulated need to be in charge.  When I ran hardest and deepest from my faith, I did it alone, often finding myself in harder spots because I didn’t make a phone call, or just show up at a friends house.  

So here’s the deal.  If you show up for me, your’e special.  You’re loved a little more by this jaded heart and I see that I matter to you.  I wish I did this better for my friends.  I’m pretty rotten at times.  I say things I want to do (with good intentions), then end up having to bail.  But those of you who have sacrificed your time to be around me, like Adam giving his time to go on a bike ride the other night, because I just needed to expend some stress and breathe, you are beautiful people.

And then there are the times when a group of people shocks you.  They all just come through the door.  All of them.  The ones you needed to be there:

Nate
Maegen
Adam
Jessica
Diana
Amanda
Dabbs (DCS Baby!)
Sarah

I cried on the way to get my gear for the performance.  Tears of disbelief turned into reality.  I had invited a lot of people to hear me try to get back into this singer/songwriter thing I’ve always toyed with, but hadn’t done in over ten years.  But this group, well they’re special.  And every lie I’ve always believed about people not caring or being willing to show up just got blown out of the water.  I still have to work on me returning the favor, but those people have in many ways over the last year given me a better sense of hope, trust (the biggest one) and sense of family.

Thank you for just showing up!