The wildest thing about flowers is how unconventionally strong they are. Think about it...some flowers bloom under the harshest of conditions.

When they're beaten and battered by life and the odds are arguably against them, some flowers find a way to bloom through the cracks in the sidewalk.

If a flower can survive amongst the chaos of a crowded street, think of it's potential in the midst of a cultivated field. Where love and encouragement flow freely and days are spent growing a future and not just dodging the blows of footsteps threatening to squash them from all directions.

Towering above the rest in the field, one singular sunflower stands alone. Stronger than the rest, built out of neccessity and self preservation, a tough exterior because she has had to have one.

And sure, the sunflower has grown on her own for years, done well enough surviving, not quite thriving, the yellows of her petals not quite as vibrant as they could be because so much nutrients has been ****** away by the weeds clinging to her from below.

She needs not a savior but wants nothing more than someone to take the time to stop and appreciate her strength. The phrase "stop and smell the roses" has never made much sense to me until now.

We all admire flowers for their surface value, for their beauty, for what they can offer us immediately. How have we forgotten over the years that flowers provide the very oxygen that we breath? That in addition to their beautiful exterior, they're also the backbones of what makes us who we are?

So no, I do not have a green thumb and have not a clue how to cultivate a future but I do know I'd walk through a field for miles, clearing debris if it meant you got to spread your roots a little further, soak in a little more sun, and feel a little bit stronger.

Because anyone can admire a sunflower's beauty, but the real work begins when you long to spread your roots and cultivate a whole field.

While beautiful indeed, one sunflower on it's own is no match for a windy day...but a field with stakes in the ground and love in the soil is a force to be reckoned with.

I've never been a holy roller but I found God in your eyes.
I've spent nights praying for a woman like you and cursing him in the same breath for not bringing you to me sooner.

I'm not a cosmic universe "has a plan person" but I'd move heaven and earth before I'd let the stars in your eyes fade away.

I never understood what it meant to have a "person". A "ride or die" a Bonnie to my Clyde, the mother of my children and the woman I hold at night, I've never understood more than I do now the carnal need that men have to walk on the side of the sidewalk closest to the street.

The way that life has turned from a burden to a privalege is like night and day. The way you look at me with so much love...like you'd want me even if some days I'm Superman and others I'm just plain 'ole Clark Kent.

While I've never been one to tout God, my faith in you does not waiver.

I know not of any scripture that could have predicted a woman like you, I know not of any hymn that could come close to singing your praises....and yet I'll belt out my off-key symphonies anytime in the car because it makes you laugh...and that sound is a bigger dopamine hit than a shot straight to the veins.

No, I'm not naive. No, things may not be easy and no, I will not waiver. Because you are in fact giving me the greatest gift of my life, far beyond all of my holidays and birthdays combined.

You were sent to me in the last moments of my head being held underwater, those moments when your lungs start to burn a little and you're not sure how much longer you can put off the inevitability of your chest filling with water.

Those moments when the light at the end of the tunnel fades and all of a sudden, you're left wondering if the only way to win this game of life is to not play at all.

A highly competative woman once told me that participation trophies don't mean a thing and the only way to play is to win. So, I'm putting in the work and taking nothing less than 1st prize from here on out.

Because at the end of it all, the work is worth it to get to spend the rest of my days building a life with you.

So no, I've never been a holy roller...but I'd make a deal with God to never lose that spark in your eyes.

Letters, voice memos, videos, pictures anything I can do to leave you memories of me before I embark on the next chapter of this journey.

No, I did not see the light at the end of the tunnel. Did not undertsand all the euphemisms about finding a reason, a will, amongst the inspirational posters hanging along the doctor's white walls.

My eardrums bleed, beg me to stop blaring music, pumping the booming bass directly into my brain because at least in those few moments the bad sounds dim. The voices battle against the rythmic, upbeat pop songs I play to drown out my current reality.

It's crazy, I seem to think, as I lay in bed again at night wishing more than anything that I could sink into the dark depths of the sheets and wake up the next morning a souless shell, because at least then I would not have the capacity to feel what I feel now.

I've tried to no avail to explain the claws of my subconcious that continue to pull at my feet, whispering sweet nothings into my ears, reminding me that the sweet release of a life not yet half lived is only mere moments away. The edge of the abyss always there, always towing the line between the "jokes" and intentions followed by actions followed by inevitable consequences.

What were once calls of help are now full blown battle crys. What were once outlandish thoughts are now full blown plans for the adjectives in my obituary.

See we all know how this movie ends, the sequels canceled due to budget cuts and a total lack of creative freedom, the story not yet finished and perhaps tucked back on a shelf in a pile of other manuscripts and news clippings of stories ended too soon.

It's crazy, the way that thoughts bounce through my brain, echoing along the walls of the chasm in my mind. The people I care for the most, long gone, the ones I know I've failed are far too deep into the great beyond for me to voice my apologies now.

Those who are left are the mere souless bodies, walking the face of this Earth pretending to love until their sense of obligation fades away. They've long sold their souls to whatever beings exist in the underworld in order to buy themselves their own ticket to surviving their tumultuous existence.

As the credits roll...I beg no one to ask themselves what they could have done differently. I beg no one to get introspective and challenge what brought us all to this conclusion.

Instead, I ask you what good is a story that has no ending? Were there in fact lessons to be learned along the way, or did we merely just waste each other's time? What good are memories if they all fade to black eventually.

Congrats on your participation trophy as a valued member of my life. When the bar was set so low, most of you still found a way to trip and tumble over it anyway.

The funny thing about the credits at the end of a movie is that...no one ever sticks around to see them. So let's not kid ourselves and pretend we've started caring about the plot now that the story's almost over. What were once main characters in this tale are now barely honorable mentions and who remains now but an old VHS tape in a box in the attic, destined and praying to be forgotten?

Who would've known the devil I chose...looks like an angel when she's sleeping.

Who would've thought a snake's venom tastes so sweet when I'm drinking the nectar of the woman I loved.

You are but a story, in a chapter, in the long book of my life...and here I thought we'd be co-authors together.

No. Because as much as I miss the idea of you, our four walls, our future together. I realize those ideas are merely thoughts of who I wanted you to be...not who you are.

I longed for a place atop your mind for so long. Spent days wondering what I had to do to make you smile - never stopping to question if I was happy with you...or the merely the mirage that I created in my mind.

I spew lies to myself, tell myself I won't find better than you. I don't deserve better than you, that I fumbled the biggest hail mary in the history of this field and yet as I stand near the endzone in the 4th quarter...I wonder if it's better to just to take knee and lose this game so I can come back and play another season.

A hail mary....is a last ditch effort...with a low probablity of success...it was never meant to be sustainable...I see that now.

We did not know each other very long...and yet I crashed into life with you 1000 miles a minute flying so fast I couldn't hear that little voice in my head...you know, the one that tells people not to fall in love overnight, not to trust the woman who lives with a smile on her face, a chip on her shoulder, and stake sticking through her  heart....

No. I do not know what is on the other side of this mountain, but I'll be ****** if I sit at the base crying for someone who does not have the capcity to love me, no I'll be ****** if I don't reach for the stars in search of a better tomorrow.

The thing they don't tell you when you shoot for the stars...is how likely you are to hurl straight pass them...forever lost in the abyss of space.

So I ask you...is it better to shoot for the stars with a chance of missing...or stay on a planet that is actively dying...a little more every day?

He looks in the mirror, distraught. Is he...getting old?

Because it felt like only yesterday he was chasing the woman of his dreams and fawning over his little girl.

He hasn't felt like himself in a long time, the mental illness drowning his thoughts of truth and reality, blinding his minds eye.

Some days he doesn't surface from the rolls of waves pulling him under, some days he flies higher than any kite in the sky because this is his reality.

He is bipolar. He is desperate. He is alone and the fear of growing older slowly gnaws at his insides.

He misses the way things used to be, the world is but a confusing shell of what it once was...much like himself.

He clings to memories of a happier past, a brighter time when the future didn't look so bleak and the kiss of death didn't seem to be pulling him in closer with every breath he takes.

He longs for love like most rugged men do, and yet he finds only a small portion of the comfort he once had in her arms.

He longs for a life filled with success, where he doesn't have to worry anymore, where he can finally fill that hole that has been empty since the dawn of his existence.

Some days he longs for the waves to pull him under, to fall asleep one last time and leave nothing behind except a life lived of regret and a world in which he no longer fits in.

And yet when he wakes up each morning, a look of disappointment crosses his face as he realizes another day trudges on.

This is the story of my father and the man he grew to be, or maybe the man he always was. His story is not yet completed, his chapter not yet closed and like it or not,

I am his sequel.

"He's young now." I look into the mirror. "He'll grow on you."

"He's learning. Unwise in his few years, low in confidence."

I ponder..." Will he always be so...scrappy?"

Here stands a young man, looking in the mirror. Still baffled at the reflection he sees.

There goes a woman, his mother, still determined to have a youngest daughter.

People say "He's changing, look in the mirror...see for yourself."

What I see is a scared young man....

scared to live, scared to take up space, scared to make a sound in the noise of society's never ending chaos.

She's trying...she says. To understand. To support. To move on. She knows not her faults nor the effect her words have on you...she only knows that one day her daughter stopped wearing dresses, cut her hair, and left a life of pink and pageantry behind.

No, she doesn't know what she does, but she can see the light in your eyes began to dim when she calls you her little girl.

His father....slowly decaying, pushes the ideas of a son out of his mind. Refuses to see the beard and changing physique in front of him, clings desperately like a moth to a flame to his little girl who he swears never grew a day past the age of five.

Back when things were simple. Back when there wasn't so much **** change. Back when things mattered less about pronouns and more about peace of mind and reputation.

When I grow up, I want to be the change that I wish I saw in all of you. I want to embrace who I love with open arms, decide that I'd **** for the man I see in the mirror. Let all those who disapprove be ******.

Because if I couldn't protect the light in that little girls eyes so many years ago, I'll be **** sure that the man I become is one who will protect mine.

Intoxicating...her laugh, her voice, her scent.

Dangerous...her sense of flight and fear of being hurt like all those times before.

"Look at me", she says as her eyes drown mine in complete and utter kindness, a safety I have not yet felt in this lifetime.

"Take my hand", she says as she leads me over the edge and into the unknown abyss of a life I've not yet felt the freedom to live.

They say stars burn at billions of degrees and that meteors crash faster than the speed of sound and yet still the only thing I know for certain is that when she speaks...the synapses of my brain begin to alight like supernovas.

"You better not **** this up." I say as I lay my head down at night, wondering how something so good could've happened to my life.

It's the forth down of a quarter life crisis and desperately when I needed it most, someone threw me a Hail Mary and though I'm the most unathletic person on the planet, I'll be ****** if I don't run arms open wide straight into the endzone.

Because I don't know what comes next, I cling to the realty of her lips, the smile in her gaze, and the feeling that our tomorrows together will be infinitely better than all the yesterdays before.

Thank you for pulling me from my glass house of insecurity and fear, and finding a place in this world for my blossoming life to flourish.

Here's to that next ride out past the city limits, where we'll get lost amongst the fields, the stars, and each other.