the person revealed....

i've been somewhat lost for a while. turns out as i randomly hit old journal entries that it has been more than a while. i've been lost pretty much forever.

what makes me tick? here's an old entry. verbatim.

July 10, 2001

gilbert

colton james morris

07.02.91 - 12.17.91

sec J blk 38

ten years. so hard to believe, that it's been 10 years already. so much time has passed, yet here i am still searching for myself. still lost. frustrated, unsure, frightened. what have i accomplished? or changed?

i sit here, in this melancholy place, and feel the presence of grief and sadness filter through the stillness. light wind blows through, breeze rustling the grass and the toy wind catchers. this section, reserved for newborns and small children is almost heart wrenching.

and what do i feel? a little sadness, but no one should be forced to live with such overwhelming disabilities. melancholy? a touch, for he was the son i never really knew. what i do feel, is a sense of grief for the tragedy, and a sense of irony.

and perhaps it is the feelings, the other feelings i harbour in relation to this event that are the ones that don't allow me to get beyond this point.

i have a sense of guilt for feeling them. for they are the ones others dictate i should not feel. anger. betrayed. frustration. rage. but why should they not have a place? they would had the child lived.

anger at myself, for letting myself be manipulated, for not making a stand as i should have. that was my worst mistake. not fighting for my own rights.

anger over my treatment. someone else deciding i should have the right to know, and then deciding i was no longer allowed to visit my own child. frustration that the rest of my family was allowed, but i was being manipulated out of revenge and pettiness.

rage for being told to stay away from the funeral. rage at myself for doing it.

and now? perhaps it was better, not knowing him well. closure? i think finally come when i last saw misty, and met her two kids. that was when i realized she had never moved on, never changed as a person. that she owned the problems, not i.

the judgements made over my actions coloured, overshadowed by their prejudices.

my guilt lay, lies still, in not standing up for myself. i know, but somehow have not yet learned fully, that the cost is infinitely higher than the consequences of taking a stand could ever be.

perhaps, that is what this lesson was all about. to finally come to terms with the fact that i do have the right. that i need to take a stand. and that i don't own anyone's problems unless i choose to. and that it's ok to choose not to.

after 10 years, perhaps i have finally brought this to a close. i feel a sense of peace about it now, and a sense of pity. the feeling of anger over it has lifted. and now, there is a little sadness, a little tragedy, and a sense of finality and closure.

it's not something i believe can ever be forgotten. nor should it. but i think it will now stop haunting.

happy 10^th birthday colton. i am sorry life was so short and painful for you. forgiving myself will bring us both a better measure of peace. you will not be forgotten.