"your heart is fractured but it's still valuable"
- r.h. Sin

J Cole once rapped that "there's beauty in the struggle."

I wish that I could believe that. If that were the case, my life would be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

Today is a very triggering day for me. One year ago today, I was getting ready to leave CT for CO, after my 2.5 week vacation, that wasn't even a vacation at all. I was struggling. I would say I was spiraling downwards. Hard. It was the second toughest time of my life, right after the passing of my dad. I was sitting in Rizzuto's (one of my favorite Italian spots) in my hometown with my family, and I was tearing up, thinking about how badly I wanted to end my life. I just felt like I couldn't go on anymore. And then I looked at my niece. And I felt so stupid for thinking that. For wanting to leave her. She's such a great kid, one of the reasons I keep getting up every day. I couldn't leave her, wondering why I left her. I just couldn't do it. A few weeks after I got back, I got a lady-head tattoo on the back of my left arm, to symbolize her, the women I've hurt, and to always remember to keep fighting for my life.

I flew back to CO that night, and Jackie picked me up from the airport. She was waiting for me inside the terminal, at the top of the escalator. If I didn't despise her, it could have been romantic. That was the last night we were together as a couple. She drove us to her apartment in Greenwood Village, and I spent the night there. I just remember thinking I didn't want to be with her. She was supportive, but really mean to me. I didn't deserve to be treated badly by her. I was also at a very strange spot in my life to have wanted to be with her. I was just so down all the time.

I feel like I'm so haunted by my past. I've made so many mistakes since I moved out to CO. It's ridiculous. While my peers were focusing on their careers and lining their pockets with excess cash, I was floundering financially (I'm a little better off these days, but honestly not by much). I was on food stamps (as were all the other AC's in my program). I focused on being with women. I've been on over 30 first dates. That's all I really wanted to do, honestly. Just date. I was known among my coworkers as a player and a playboy. I loved the attention. I loved sharing my stories. But they were all empty, meaningless. Because at the end of the day, I ended up getting hurt (in many ways, irreparably) or hurting the women I dated, and feeling nothing.

I felt nothing. I oftentimes still feel nothing in my life.

But I'm a survivor, I guess. I keep going on, for whatever reason. But why? What is life?

I was talking to one of my best friends, Bobby, earlier today, just pondering why life is so unfair. Why is it that bad things happen to good people? And why do those bad things keep happening? Why is it that the shitty people often have the best luck in life? I hate that. What's God's plan? Why do good people suffer while bad ones prosper?


Why do I keep getting shafted in life? It just seems like nothing has been going my way, pretty much all of my life.

It's so hard for me to feel happiness for others' successes. I just feign joy, when in actuality, I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing (which is generally how I feel most days). I just sit back and wonder, when's it going to be my turn? And then I remember, "never, Michael! You're not supposed to have nice things in your life."

I don't think happiness exists. For myself, anyway. I think that out of a scale of 100%, people generally are content at an 85% (my understanding of life, anyway). I say this because not everything in life runs smoothly, and set-backs, disappointments and sadness bring down the percentage. 

If most people can be happy around 85% of the time, let's say being content, or somewhere in the middle of being completely miserable and happy is 60%. Contentment in the sense of things being status quo, your ability to handle adversity, etc.

I think for me personally, I run at about 30-40% on a daily basis. I just feel unhappy, and miserable. I'm tired of adversity, of things just always having to be an uphill battle for me. I just wish things would come easily for me, for once in my life. 

In thinking about my own happiness, I don't think I've really felt content since I was 15. I think that's when I started being preoccupied about what girls thought of me, and I very much so intertwined that with my self-worth. If a girl didn't like me, then I didn't like myself. And that kind of rationalization went on for awhile. I felt unattractive, unwanted, ugly. Things just started getting harder from there. Heartbreak and heartache abounded. 

I think I lived a sheltered life, and that was shattered with my first relationship. I think I learned about the cruelty of this life and that heartbreak is one of the worst things to feel. Looking back on it, I had a very naive conception of what love was. 

I think the harshness of this world came to light with the passing of my dad when I was 17. He held our family together and in many ways protected me from the cruel realities of this world. I was sheltered from alcohol and drug abuse, from cigarettes, from cheating and being unfaithful. All of these things I had to deal with and learn about from my own personal experiences later in life. 

But I digress. I had to watch my dad die right in front of me. I remember it was a Friday afternoon, right around 2 pm. I remember that was when I first began to tumble into depression, a hole I still haven't been able to get out of, honestly. I started doubting my faith in a higher power. What kind of god would take away a loving and wholesome man from a boy? What kind of god would take the life of a healthy man, who used to run track, who never ate any fried food in his life? How would I ever pick up the pieces of my shattered life? How would I ever live a somewhat normal life? Truth is, life was never the same after. I started drinking, I began thinking about killing myself. A lot. I tried to take my own life a couple of times when I was 18. I wanted so badly to end my life, to end the suffering, the feel the sweet relief of death. 

Does True Love Wait?

Wow, I fucking hate you. You fucking represent everything that I've worked so hard to get away from. You're all of the following to me:

You're that toxic girl whom I couldn't say no to, whom I ended up cheating on.
You're the girl who doesn't make enough time for me
You're the girl who when I'm vulnerable with and tell her I miss her and want to cuddle, you respond with "I'm taking a bath"
You're emotionless. You're cruel and callous
You get to run away and hide in your home state
You get to hide behind your Instagram and social media posts to pretend to show everyone life is grand

You're a phony. Nothing about you is real. Your words are empty, soothing me at first, but later cutting me and tearing flesh from bone.

Actions speak louder than words. Never ever forget that. People make time for those that they want to make time for. And clearly you're not a priority. You haven't been a priority for a woman in 2 years. That's a fact.

The world is a cold, dark place for a millennial trying to find love. I say this because it's difficult. Everyone is out for themselves, and they can't seem to prioritize others. And you're no different. I can't believe I fell for you. How could I be so stupid?

I hate you, I love you, I hate that I love you.

Fuck you for breaking me. Fuck you for letting me fall head over heels for you. I hate you for letting me feel things for you. I hate you for being so callous and telling me that you want to keep things casual, that you don't do long distance.

I fucking hate myself for ignoring the signs and for perpetually wearing my heart on my sleeve.

You don't give a damn about me. You don't care, you never did.

I just want to fucking shout from the rooftops. I want to scream my fucking head off. I'm so livid. I'm so heartbroken. And yet, I did this to myself, too. I let girls hurt me because I don't respect myself enough to look out for myself.

I keep ending up in this same spot, with these fucking girls who don't give two fucking shits about me. Girls who are fucking anomalies, who are callous and selfish and mean. Girls who I let into my life, who I make room for because I'm too weak.

I don't think I believe in love anymore. I think that was the last straw that broke my back. I think my heart is finally broken, once and for all. Slowly chipped away from my mean exes, and finally broken thanks to you. I fucking hate you.

Why don't you fucking retreat back to the safety of Cali when you graduate in December? That's all you Cali girls are good at, is coming to Boulder and breaking my heart and then leaving. Go back to your warm state, because my heart is fucking cold and irreparably damaged.

Take Note, There's Still a Hole in your Heart

I haven't written in this blog in like a year and a half. I usually journal nowadays, letting myself be the only audience of my thoughts and musings of my life. But for some reason, I've been drawn to this blog. I've been thinking about it the last few days, and today, I finally decided to open it. To see all the memories I've chosen to share on this, the pain, the anguish and the growth and change I've experienced throughout my college years and now into the "real world."

To see that fundamentally, I'm the same at my core. But now with more life experiences to back up my writings.

I'm lying in bed, oddly stricken with anxiety today. From working a 12 hour long day, to personal shit and everything in between. My breath short and quick, slightly worried I'm gonna black out as I have on several occasions, the last one last summer when she said her hurtful shit. The hurtful truth, her truth, that she dropped on me so casually. With no sense of empathy or caring. Impulsively, as if I wouldn't care or bat an eyelash. She was cruel the whole time. Always fucking selfish. One of the hearts on your arm, held up by the bird, a literal reminder of her. A reminder to yourself to never, ever let anyone walk all over you like that again. That no woman has the right to ever break you. But most importantly, that you have no right to break yourself like that.

But I'm over that. I'm over everything. I'm protecting myself, because at the end of the day, all I have is myself. But that's selfish. What would your dad say? Would he be proud of that? He was so selfless, and caring and gave everything. Literally everything, including his last breaths, for his family.

Every time you love someone, whether it's a friend or a partner, you give them a piece of your heart. You give them a bit of yourself. You trust them with yourself. With your insecurities, your faults, your flaws. Your secrets, your quirks. In the hopes that they won't crush you, won't let you down, won't break your already fragile heart. Because you're so trusting. You want others with you on your journey through life. Because you saw how short life can be when you watched your father die right in front of your eyes and lost every bit of yourself that afternoon. That afternoon when your heart broke for the first time. Almost irreparably.

Your heart is fragile from death, from love and loss, from regrets and heartache at watching others hurt at your hands.

But you've grown strong. You've nourished yourself, eaten your fill through spirituality and through the company of others, become stronger, falling down and picking yourself back up over and over and over again. And in those moments of weakness, you find your strength, your passions. Your love of others, your selflessness (very much so to a fault), your connection with others.

And while your heart might be broken, the only hole that's missing is the one your dad left behind. Because that's the biggest hole of them all. But he's always with you. He helps you along. Through your loss you found out who you are, what your commitments are. To serve your community.

And I'm ready to let others in again. To love those in my life with my heart. My heart that has been broken open so many times, yet it never gives up. Those who break open your heart teach you a lot about yourself. That you want to be different, better, to grow and change  It never loses sight of love and hope.

So, please be gentle with my heart, my soul, my being. I'm strong but fragile. Courageous and brave, yet insecure and unsure. I am myself, unapologetically myself. Unapologetically Michael

I feel like I only blog whenever I have an issue, or after a long period of time. Granted, it's only been a week and a half since my last post, but that's still a long time! It still amazes me how quickly things change in such a short period of time. I'm just feeling really burnt out from work. I can't wait for Thanksgiving break in 2 weeks! Although I don't want to rush these next two weeks of work, because I should be enjoying it more, and enjoying this season in general. November and December are my two favorite months, and I have such warm feelings about this time of year. I just love the fall, sweater weather, Thanksgiving and Christmas! But I'm also feeling really unsettled because I'm single this year for the holidays, the first time in like 5 years (although I was single for Thanksgiving 2011). But I just guess I feel really unsettled about everything. I wish everything wasn't so transitional this fall. Almost everything in my life has been up in the air since moving to Colorado. And while I've grown a great deal, I still feel like I'm missing that special someone. I definitely am not trying to settle for any girl, but I just wish that I had found someone I could be official with right now. I just guess I'm feeling really lonely recently, at a time when society tells you that you need to spend the holidays with the ones you love and are romantically involved with. It's an unreasonable expectation for me to find someone in such a short period of time, but I feel like I need to!

It's not the worst thing in the world to be single, and I'm so grateful for everything I've been given, and so thankful for this awesome opportunity to live in such a beautiful state. But I can't help but feel so lonely. I hate the feeling of going to bed alone. I just need to keep things in perspective and stop complaining so much about something that's pretty much out of my control.

I went to a workshop yesterday on body-based communication, and it was a really awesome workshop in which the facilitator taught us the importance of show ourselves appreciation rather than criticism. It's so easy to be self-deprecating, but so much more difficult to show ourselves self-love. The key to a good relationship (even one with yourself), is to give 5 compliments to every one criticism. So the facilitator told us every day when we wake up, we need to compliment/ appreciate things we do for ourselves to start our days on a positive and upbeat note and to give us energy and strength. I need to appreciate myself more and keep working on self-care, which I am realizing is so vital and important to my mental well-being