It's Always Interesting...

Today has been a whirlwind type of day, perhaps it's the fact I've slept for two minutes within the last 24hrs or the fact that I drove two hours and change in order to do twenty minutes worth of work; I can't figure out my decision making, today. I've also failed to mention, that I ventured out of the house in order to watch Manchester United play Southampton, at 6am. Yes, you guessed it, I should've passed on the match and done breakfast with the fam (freakin' hindsight).

The day has been an absolute blur but in the end it has been a decent day. I rarely find myself out and about these days, our air quality is atrocious, and Covid x Delta x people who don't care, doesn't seem too fun to me either. By people who don't care, I'm not referring to folks who haven't been vaccinated, I'm just talking about the folks who aren't clean to begin with!

Over the course of the last few weeks, I've had an itch to do more, see more. For the most part, I haven't come to the point of feeling confined but lately, as in the last three weeks or so, it feels as though things are closing in around me.

Today, my dad called and informed me that he was getting rid of old items, of mine, which he has had stored for close to twenty plus years. My dad makes these moments super easy, as he knows what's in each bag. The hardest part, for me at least, is breaking up with the memory. I'm not a pack-rat so if it's not functional or valuable, it's gone!

In typical me fashion, I got to my parent's place and sort of relaxed a bit before I started sifting through "stuff". The memories held in some of these bags are great reminders of how far I've come in life. Before I began truly going through the bags, my father said, "Don't get emotional when you see of these things...". The heart of a father who truly understands the past hurts of a child, can be seen within their actions and approach to matters of the heart. I smiled a bit and said, "I've sat here before and walked away feeling fine, I think I'll be okay". The famous last words of anyone before they come face to face with something they fear (haha)!

As I sifted through the neatly organized bags, I found remnants of a past that was filled with pictures and memories of wasted time. I wasn't sure what to feel as pictures stared back at me and a few words from notes flashed across my eyes and memory. You see, these times were me attempting to fit into a box that wasn't meant for me. The pictures of me smiling, hid a lost and insecure kid; I was battling a darkness which in the end almost took my life.

A smile came across my face as I sat there with my dad. There was probably some parts of him which were worried or remorseful about years gone by. At one point, my father said, "Man, you took a lot of pictures", to which I laughed and said that I had indeed taken many.

The bags were filled with old hats, three of which I took and will place back into the rotation, after twenty years of hiding, a few pictures, notes, business cards, the closing documents on my first house, and a name plate. The dozens of pictures weren't ripped up and thrown in the trash, that would mean there's still some sort of resentment; instead these pictures were left exactly how they were placed/found. "You can throw these away, I've moved so far from the guy in the pictures, pop..."

The look on my father's face bore a sense of peace and understanding. IT'S ALWAYS INTERESTING what takes place when you least expect it. My dad looked at me and explained that he had a picture of me in his wallet that has kept for over a decade. "I really like this picture, I wish I could increase the size of it and put it on a wall. Your hair was neat, sometimes I used to wonder if you ever combed your head". I had zero idea what he was referencing, given the fact I've had a few ridiculous hair styles over the years and of course by ridiculous, I mean dope. The picture that he produced was the very picture I used for my passport some ten years ago. The picture is weathered but not faded, it has traveled with him everywhere he has gone and that's crazy to imagine.

In retrospect, the find of the day wasn't the few items I'm restoring back to life, the find was me... within the eyes of my father. Life is constantly teaching me lessons.