I usually insert a title before I begin writing to get me into my frequency for writing. This time I’ll have to label it after I write it out. This one may not make the presses. I won’t know until I process it here. I struck a vein in my nightly meditating. A golden one I think.

Explaining this will be difficult without going into detail about my whole time here on earth.

But I’m going to give it a try. There won’t be any focus on story telling or engagement at least not purposely it’ll be an analysis I’m still downloading but I need to process some of this to hold onto it.

This will be extremely emotional for me.

I’ve been very transparent about my relationship with my father. I’ve sung his praises on here and expressed my feelings about how he has been my hero since day one of my remembrance. You all got to see my joy when he was featured in Masters of Air. I was on cloud nine for months. It was exactly what I needed to experience. I always thought my dad should’ve been exalted for the amazing person he was. Me sharing stories about him wasn’t enough for me. I wanted the world to see him the way I saw him. And the whole world got a good glimpse. It felt like a big release for me. I was finally able to put my dad’s heroism to rest.

My dad was 50 when I was born. In fact he was exactly 50 years and one day older than me. I was practically his 50th birthday gift. If you’ve read any of my blogs you will know the significance of that number. As I approached my 50 years of life that’s when my reckoning was born.

When I turned 50.

My dad, from my own point of view and memory didn’t exist until he turned 50. I have no idea how to visualize my father in real life other than the years I shared the air with him from his ages of 50- 64. Around the time he began his slow decline in life.

I’ve expressed my pain from how I felt my father got dealt a bad hand in life. From war hero, multiple medal achievements. He sacrificed his young adulthood to fight nazis and other wars unselfishly. He killed for his country. He spent over a year in pow camps. He was assumed to be dead for god sakes.

He was a widower left to raise 2 daughters on his own. And he did without a peep. He met my mother and took in her other three children and once again did it without a single word of discouragement.

He owned a very successful bar in the 70s that took a turn for the worse from bikers ruining his bar’s reputation that my father had built up. You could say they became a cancer to my father’s business.

Or even a virus..

When the bar closed my dad worked some amazingly shitty jobs to make ends meet. He worked for major steakhouse buffet chain, Weiner King where he had to wear a ridiculous paper hat and name tag. Bankruptcies, divorced when I was 8 (I got front row seats to that argument). When my parents split my father moved into a garage that was turned into an in-law suite from my oldest sister’s talented husband. After that my father worked part time at a local bar in Mauldin cooking for happy hour. His weekends revolved around me coming to see him. I know this because I could feel my dad’s love for me worlds away. I’ve inherited my father’s love of his child. My daughter melts my heart every second of my life.

I look like my dad about as close as you can for someone that was split down the middle from two people.

I may go all over the place to try to piece this together and I may fail but this has to come out while it’s still hot.

Chicken or egg here.

I am a reflection of my father’s failures.

My father is a reflection of my failures.

My actions good and bad have been a reflection of my relationship with my father.

My own perspectives I have created and have subconsciously manipulated over time.

I’ve been down a deep corridor of self reflection. Literally

I’m training my mind to see how the people in my life are also a reflection of my subconscious. Or at least how I read them. My perception of them.

I’m mirroring some habits, happenstance’s, trauma, god I can’t even come up with the words at the moment.

I’ve never viewed my father as a loser or a failure. Absolutely never and even though I’m pushing violence away from my mind if anyone referred to my dad as a loser or a failure you’ll find out real fast what my feelings will be.

My father was an amazing man filled with love for his family. A war hero.

But at the end of his days, in my mind, I felt like he lost. He failed.

Man that freaking hurt to say outloud. and I apologized to him last night when I said it to myself.

I’ve absorbed my father’s failures into mine.

It’s what I’ve done. What I’ve been doing. I’ve recognized it now. It’s been right in front of me the whole time. The whole

Fucking

Time

Self sabotage

I’ve been doing it my whole life in different stages since early adulthood.

My father was here for 64 years. I got him for 14. Let’s chip off a few years because my first few years here like everyone else, I was absorbing life. I can recall some amazing memories at an early age. My dad was the big strong dad in my kid days. He carried me around like I was nothing. He was beating the crap out of unruly bar fighters and kicking out a biker gangs. Shot a man in the gut off the back dock of his bar. We was the definition of true grit.

In my early adolescence as I got older, he began to appear frail to me. My dad smoked (as did I), he drank (hello). His limp from the war (millions of people got to see that happen on tv) got progressively worse. He aged terribly. Who can blame him for all the hell that man experienced before he even turned 25. He didn’t take good care of himself as he got older.

And life chewed him up and spit him out.

And he never said a discouraging word. He picked me up every weekend with the biggest smile on his face. As his son I was his world. Just like my daughter is to mine.

I absorbed every single fiber of this. I absorbed his pain, suffering and love.

I’ve spent a large chunk of my life trying to replicate all of it.

All

Of

It

Without even knowing it.

Well until now.

I’ve made random comments to others and thoughts to myself about how at 53 my dad had Greenville by it’s social toes with his bar. He was the talk of the town. The mayor of the bar business. Exactly what I was trying to recalibrate for myself. There weren’t bars and restaurants on every street corner in the 70s. It was much more intimate and organic back then. In my memories his bar the Cock and Bull, came and went briefly in my timeline. I can remember it being open, I can recall being inside and running around playing inside like it was my own home.

And then it closed.

We sold our house

We moved and downsized into an small apartment

My parents would divorce a year or two later. Sorry my memories get a little mixed on that timeline.

But

I split with my business

We sold our house

We downsized to a small rental

And we came close to the next part a year later.

And that’s when my reckoning began.

When I turned 50

The same age as my father when I was born. Missed the exact moment by one day.

I’ve been down a long road of self reflection. Of why I do certain things. Why I find it easier to sabotage than to celebrate. Why when something good comes within my grasp I do my best to push it away.

Subconsciously

I’m mirroring my father’s past.

Without even realizing it.

When I look inside of myself after realizing this several things began to click.

In my mind I was constantly telling myself and I’m paraphrasing because my mind can be jumbled at times -“what’s the point? My dad was amazing, he had a successful business and he still failed”

“No matter what I accomplish I’ll most likely lose it all like my dad”

My father lived with my oldest sister until he passed.

His father who I never met, also lived with his eldest daughter until he passed.

I have a one child. A daughter.

It’s been said and written millions of times to always pay attention to history because it repeats itself. Too many of us think of that in global and regional terms involving conflicts, laws and wars. How often do we look inside of ourselves of how it affects us on a personal level?

I love my dad man. It’s apparent. And I’m mimicking him in every way consciously and subconsciously. I was only following his footsteps out of love. I just wasn’t watching where.

My failure paradox

Failure brought me down

Failure broke my spirit

Failure released my confidence. Holy shit did it ever.

I got tired of “pulling myself up by the bootstraps” because in my head I keep thinking it’s going to be on perpetual repeat. “All good things come to an end”

When I opened Graze in my head I was already saying to myself “what are we going to do in three years when the lease is up?”

This is why I’m constantly changing things. Always moving things around. I already think I have failed, things aren’t working so I keep it fluid.

Inconsistent

Constant change equals imbalance

Ouch

Ouch

Ouch

On the other side of that spectrum this is why I do things in rituals and habits. The things that work for me. Because going out of my comfort zone brings the possibility of

Failure.

Holy shit one more time.

We base our reality on our past, present and future.

Our perceptions.

And our reflections.

Memories can be a tribulation that attaches to your subconscious for your entire life.

Or they can be badges of recognition. A reminder for reflection and reconciliation.

I’ve been riding on the tribulations most of my adult life.

With no hands on the wheel

I have/had a war raging inside my subconsciousness.

My reckoning trying to get me to break the chain of repetitions of my past all the while my trained subconscious was trying to keep me in safe mode. Safe mode can be a oxymoron. It keeps you contained. Man have I freaking contained myself the last 5 years. This is why I camp in the same spots, hike the same trails. Do the same things over and over every week.

To protect myself.

From what?

Growth.

Real

Growth.

Real uncomfortable growing pain growth.

My anxieties have been on high octane because I’ve been working on myself but at the same time I’ve wrapped myself in bubble wrap because I’m afraid of falling off.

Off of what? The things I’ve done to fix parts of my broken self. It’s like getting all the dents fixed on your vehicle and then parking it in the garage so it can never have the possibility of getting wrecked again.

50

I always asked myself why 50?

I thought it was just a solid number. Half century.

Missed it by a mile

It’s hard to relay what my head is trying to explain.

A light started to form in my subconscious as I approached 50. I knew a reckoning was coming months before it came.

Just like knowing a new child is on the way.

When I hit 50 my mind told me a change was coming, happening. When my dad turned 50 here I came.

When I turned 50 I went through a rebirth of life.

Here I come again.

And every year since then I’ve been growing into a different person. Slowly shedding the skin of who I used to be.

It’s taken me up until March 14th 2025 to recognize this.

This wasn’t a trail marker. My head walked right into the tree.

Recognition

I can’t accurately describe what this feels like. It’s still resonating. It may never stop.

We have memories that stick with us. Define us. We replicate what we experience in life. It’s literally how we learn things. Most of us don’t even realize it. It’s what makes us who we are.

Environment

When you can change this environment you aren’t only healing yourself at that moment, you’re releasing decades of trauma, negative energy, bad habits.

Don’t look at it as I fixed something yesterday.

Instead you tell yourself I just released 40 years of pain.

You no longer carry it. Once you recognize that it’s not a part of you then you can tell yourself it no longer exists. When you can train your mind to think this way you won’t perceive yourself as that bad person that you’ve always portrayed yourself in your head. You were only repeating what you’ve been shown.

I’m not a therapist or even close. I can only explain this to you through my own perspective which is the only one that matters. That’s probably not what you think it means. It’s a healthy one.

My father was a high school drop out. My grades dropped dramatically when he passed and never went back up. I graduated with the lowest gpa it takes to graduate.

I had one job that required a name tag. I was written up several times for my refusal to wear one (see above about my anger at my father wearing a paper hat and name tag). I never made the connection I just perceived them as indignant. My dad went from being his own boss to working for crappy places where he was no longer in control.

My mind screamed when I worked for corporations. My disassociation with my old steakhouse began when they became more corporate. My defiance to authority. All because of my dad’s paper hat and his look of defeat when he wore it.

This is why it’s impossible for me to work with anyone. It’s why I fought you head on if you didn’t go with my work flow. To SOME of my partners, I get it now.

50

Past

Present

Future

It’s all right here. It’s not tomorrow it’s not yesterday

It’s now

Just like my father, I had another child. It was me

Again

And I’ve been trying to protect him as one. I’ve got to let this one grow without the attachments of my old self

Without the attachments of my father and his father.

I feel like I just broke something

A mold

That’s all I’ve got right now. That’s a big ol lie but this is all I can say about it at this point.

My trail markers just changed to a new frequency.

Time to label this subject.

Time to walk this new path.

Ill be spending the next several weeks processing this. I could continue writing about this for the next several hours.

But

Ive got my hands full downloading all of this. This is may take a while.

Peace ☮️