I know my weaknesses more than most. Upon reflection, I can feel the scars and the collateral damage that rarely escape my awareness. I can be cruel, crude, and blunt especially with words. Often enough I am insensitive and outrageous, the very things that grant me certain freedoms shackle me just the same.

As an emotional war veteran and as such conflict is a way of life. It makes me insensitive to those less experienced and those less resilient. They often don’t know the weight of their behaviors, or the shackles built by their thoughts. I know full well as if Scrooge himself; I layered more weight than any man.

I remember when I was first sent into the fray; a punishment of youth; a punishment for marrying  passion and ignorance under the house of naivety. Quick and dim witted, I’d push myself farther and farther into harm’s way. In all my cleverness, I pursued a righteous crusade thinking the enemy some external beast. I was so brave, and vacant a knight, that I continued fighting on into exhaustion; even then fighting through.  My virtues of endurance and resilience carried me on, yet with the wrong motivation, took me further away from a path to happiness.

Back then, I thought myself noble and living the words of forefathers as if they were truth. I thought I was one of many, under command of some far better man. It was not until receiving my first major wound, a deep cut that hurt in every breath, and still does to this day, that I realized my foe was my very reflection and shadow. I was my greatest victim. I did not even act in service of myself, yet I served some unknown suit, ideal, and unrefined notions  of pride and glory. I swore an oath and betrayed only myself.

What a funny man I was, slashing through the air, swiping at nothing, a victim of my own imagination of my own creation. My side claimed all the casualties, a notion I dismissed as if darkness were so cruel not to acknowledge or carry off its dead.

We all picture ourselves and the vices, fears, and behaviors we face as  overwhelming and unbeatable odds. It keeps most lazy, serving humble excuse for surrender. For me however, it keeps me motivated. Outnumbered by so many foes, yet I do not yield my character to mere numbers, and I choose the battlegrounds, and now one can find me  fighting them in narrow hallways one at a time, progressing in half steps and lunges.

On the battlefields of self discovery, self-mastery, dealings of love and compassion, women often choose the front lines and men refuse to take their posts. They are given better equipment, better training to battle in the mind, where roles are twisted and reversed. Here, I thought, men were usually mostly cowards and that explains for their often exterior expressions of rage and aggression- conquering on land and victims what they cannot achieve in the mind- the true and most divine . Women were heroic, and their physical expressions were synchronized and true to their very souls.Of the men, those who make it back, usually cower and run from any emotional commitment of any kind. Men create world to  run to the battlefield and away from their women.

These epics were my growing pains, my humble beginnings, and I feel myself a child and yet ethereal all the same to have lived and learned through them all, each seeming a lifetime, and still here I stand, a happier, healthier young man. I am not naive and know that one day my guard will be let down and age will take me, but it won’t be this one. Not in this Spring, not on this day of days, this triumphant parade of most brilliant blues and greens. There might be a day when I give in to the glows of the TV and computer, defeated the world of man. There may be a day when all my blood is returned to the earth, but it is not this one. This is the day I lead the parade and celebrate return and awakening. Today is one of easy victory- achieved simply by stepping outside.