Someday, someday

My jaw clenched at the name, and my heart ached. As if his name were a call and my damn soul were answering.

I'm here whenever, okay? In the bliss or the shit.

“You have a huge heart. A genuine kindness. And it’s sucking in every bit of misery that comes through those doors every night and not letting go. Right?” I turned my coffee cup around in circles. “It’s hard. There’s so much pain.”“There is. But the desire to help alleviate that pain can’t generate more pain for you.”

No one can force you to be what you’re not.

Keep your chin up, my good man. It is always darkest before the dawn, as they say.

Apathy, I learned, was like a ravenous animal. The more you fed it, the hungrier it got. The less I did, the less I felt like doing.

Someday isn’t a day of the week. It doesn’t come around automatically. You gotta go out there and get it.

I honor my past, but I don’t live in it.

Every minute you’re alive is a second chance to start over.

A shitty actor reciting lines. I was a character in the play of my life. A life that was nothing more than an endless string of days pretending, lying, burying truths and feelings until I was more stone and steel than hot, beating blood.