Holding on

How do you get kids to avoid the same mistakes you still make?

Leave them-to let them dig their own graves?

No amount of dirt covers that feeling of your children questioning your success. Looking at hand-me-downs that hold you down, out of nostalgia, time, comfort, conformity, desperation, lack of confidence- cause you prioritized self-indulgence over self-knowledge.

Positively remembering all negative moments, of how you were raised, never minding, your part, in how you behaved. Those old excuses, like the chairs and table that used to be new. You kept them just in case. Useable, but rickety and outdated. It runs in the family, like gifting concussions, instead of discussion.

You avoided staying sharp, like the dull, jagged silverware with that weird stain. The messiness, allowed for so long it seems senseless to clean. Home sloppy- like the minds and bodies inside it, from good fat and healthy overeating-a curable disease we refuse to treat. 

I been angry all my life. And it aged me twice as fast. Angry at the rules I refused to learn because I didn't like games, and got played anyway. Disliking attitudes but thinking people need to respect mine.

Why do free men keep an inmate’s mentality? Caged behind open doors and windows, staying out of touch with any improvement to their reality. The scent of a new day and silence filled with noise that drugs can’t quiet, seems scarier outside the walls you trap yourself behind.

We can always imagine beating demons of the past while avoiding the present opportunities.

But the same lie tricks fools and wise men.