JUST FACTS, NOT A "WOE IS ME" ENTRY

I don’t push people away …. I have got to be the most misunderstood person around.  Misunderstood or not known.  People don’t me.  Not the real me, the me that is deep inside, the me that they hurt without realizing it, the me that is taken advantage of constantly, the real me.

Sometimes, a lot of times, I just want to disappear.  I don’t like people.  I don’t like noise.  I don’t like being told what to do by ungrateful people.  I don’t like being ignored until it is convenient not to ignore me for a few minutes.

But it is ME that is at fault.  I don’t get it.  I do whatever I am asked and more.  “It is what it is”.  Things are what they are.  I didn’t see things evolving with people the way they have turned out to be.  It isn’t my fault that things are the way they are.  It isn’t my fault but I pay the price as though it were.

But I push people away.  I am there at the snap of a finger whenever anyone snaps their finger at me.  Is the fact that I really don’t ask anyone for anything mean I am pushing them away?  No.  It means I want to live and die on my own.  On my own conditions, time table, and where I want to.

“I ain’t asking nobody for nothing if I can get it on my own.  If you don’t like the way that I’m living, you just leave this long haired country boy alone.” (Charlie Daniels)  What is wrong with not enjoying getting my hair cut?  I have ALWAYS hated to get my hair cut.  Not because I want it long or am trying to make a statement, I just do not like the feeling of getting my hair cut.  It means nothing more than that.  I don’t like to shave.  Does that make me a mountain man or something because I don’t like to shave?  It simply means I do not like to shave.  Hate it.

Who am I kidding, they won’t miss me one bit.  No one will. And I don’t care if they do or not.

“From now on all my friends are gonna be strangers.  I'm all through, ever trusting anyone.  The only thing I can count on now is my fingers,  I was a fool …” (Haggard)

Is it strange that I use music to do a lot of my talking for me?  Probably is, but I don’t care.  I can relate to some of these songwriters, philosophers …. They say some pretty honest things in their songs.  Brutally honest.  So honest it makes you think … “wow .. oh man … he knows me …”  The people that seem to know me best are people that don’t know I exist, and I mean they actually don’t know I am around, not like those that know I am around but until they need something, don’t know I exist.   The people that know me best … let’s see… Hank of course, Haggard, Willie, Paul Simon, Dylan, Lennon, Seger, Chapin, Kristofferson, Kooper,  the boss, Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson,  David Gates and James Griffin,  Billy Joel to a degree, Cat Stevens, Neil Young,  McLean, Don Henly, Greg Lake, Clapton,  Jackson Browne,  Mellencamp, Leon, Zevon … list could go on forever.

This sounds like a “Woe is me..” thing.  It isn’t.  It is fact.  Pure logical fact.

The time that I feel I can be truly me, without judgment from others, when I can find that solace that I crave, is late at night by myself either reading, watching a documentary or a movie, or lying in my little bed with the earbuds on.  Most times I listen to music, but a lot of times I listen to Supreme Court Arguments, or Kevin and Mosh, or TESD.  I love documentaries and I love movies and something by Charlyne Yi or an episode of House or one of the Law and Orders.  It is sad to think that Bruce, Carlin and Hicks are gone.  They were able to use fact, logic, and tell the truth about how crazy this world, or life can be.  A lot of the things that those three said are funny on the surface, but if you really break it down to what they are saying, it is kind of sad in a way.  The truth seems to always be sad.

My grandfather.  Oscar Laclede Hill.  The closest thing to perfect as a man can be, right?  We all look up to him and his life and what we knew about him and his wisdom.  He was far from the picture that we paint of him in our memories.  He once told me that even as much as we talked, there were things in his life he was ashamed of.  Things he would never tell another human being.  There were a lot of things that I would never know about him and that was just the way it was going to be.  I often wonder about the afternoon he told me that.  Why he told me that and what some of those things could be.  I don’t have a clue, and that was how he wanted it.  Doesn’t mean he was a fake or lived a lie, he still was a very good man, but there was that part of the REAL Oscar Hill that nobody knew, or would ever know.  I wonder if his wife even knew.

As I get older, there seems to be less and less people to look up to.  When I was a young boy, I looked up to my grandfather and my dad and a host of baseball players that I knew only from watching them on the field.  They were classy men, these ball players.  Dick Green, Campy Campanaris, Carl Yastrzemski, Brooks and Frank Robison, Hank Aaron, Noland Ryan, Roger Maris, Curt Flood and Bob Gibson, Al Kaline and Bill Freehan, Rick Monday and again, the list could go on and on.  I don’t look up to sport figures anymore.  I admire their ability and talent and the way they act on the field, but over the years the reality that they are just ordinary people that has a part of them hidden away that no one knows, has come to be reality for me.

Now who do I look up to … well, my grandfather and my father.  Some those song writers mentioned earlier who had the guts to post about reality as they saw it.  I don’t look up to politicians and especially Presidents.  Everyone is hiding something.  Nobody is fully themselves.  Nobody really knows anybody.  I suppose that is one way we all get along.  Hide a lot of ourselves so people only see the best we can put out there.  Sometimes, for some of us, even the best we can put out there is pretty bad.

I’ll tell you who I look up to.  One person I look up to is Rachel Gibson.  A fine young lady who left this world far before the world was ready for her to leave.  She was brave.  She was strong.  She kept her faith. And she comforted those who she was preparing to leave behind.  I admired that young lady long before she entered into the last phase of her life here on earth.   Now I am sure that Rachel had her faults just as all of us do, she was human after all.  But her being human was surpassed by her ability to be humane.

Another person I look up to is Caleb Hill.  Caleb is my cousin’s son.  Caleb was born with Down Syndrome which is what makes Caleb even more of a person to look up to then he would have been if he had not been born with the syndrome.  Caleb is intelligent.  Caleb is caring and loving.  Caleb is honest.  Caleb looks at life with thankfulness and lives life the way life should probably be lived by all of us.  Caleb has found inner strength to bypass the syndrome as best as he can and he does a great job of it.  Honesty like Caleb’s is something all of us could strive for, but we don’t and we won’t.

I look up to my niece Kimberly Porter, her husband Shawne and two wonderful kids that they adopted from China, Joshua and Mei.  The challenges that happen on a daily basis for Kimberly and especially Mei, would wear the normal person out and have an urge to just give up.  Not Kim though.  She is unbeatable when it comes to raising her kids and helping them face each day on a day to day basis.  Shawne is just as strong as Kim and just as dedicated to those two kids.  I admire both of them.  All four of them.

There are other people out there that I could say I look up to for various reasons.  One thing they all have in common though is that there is a part of them the world will never ever see.

Okay.  Stop and re-read what I have written so I know how I got to where I am in this thing.  Took a HUGE left turn back there somewhere.

Well, it turned into a bunch of rambling.  People do not understand why I feel or think the way I do.  I don’t either.  I try to be a good person, I try to live up to the ideals I see as making a person good, but I fall short.  We all do.  We all will.   I am not a happy person.  I find less joy in life than most people and I don’t understand it.  When something bad or not so good does happen to me, it seems to affect me a lot harder than it would other people.  I don’t understand it.  I feel it.  I know it is there.  But I don’t understand it.

There are times, many times, when I just want to go to my bed and just sleep.  Sleep more, and more and more.  Just sleep so I don’t have to deal with anything or anyone. Just sleep and let time flow by without me being aware of it passing.  Forever.