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Mar 2016
What are you supposed to do when everything that used to bring you pleasure fades? Has been fading....for a long long time. It's not like you can do just more and harder drugs. Going back and trying to make things okay with old flames isn't an option either, they've just mastered the art of moving on, while you clearly haven't. And it's one thing to have not been able to move on, but another to wake up and realize that the people you love are standing around on tiptoe, waiting for you to lose your mind.

This isn't for them though, this expose isn't for my loved ones. This is for me.

It's 10:54 PM on Friday the 18th, and I am only responsible for my own actions. That's it, that's the beginning and the ending of everything I have ever written, or thrown up, or cried, or whispered into a lover's ear.

My name is Jon Daniel Shierling, and my Father was a Navy boy. He did the best he could with what he had, and he loved my Mother deeper than he knew how to express. My Mother was a Virginia girl, the blacksheep of her family, the hippie girl just a few years too late, but she had a vision and a hope. This scene I'm giving you is probably very far from the truth, but it's what i remember and what I've been able to piece together. For better or worse, their story is one that has followed me since I pieced it together. Not that it really matters anymore.

I'm just your run-of-the-mill garden-variety baser(as my brother calls them), but I used to do good, I used to try. I gave all I had in pursuit of something. I joined the Army in the hope of making a difference. Turns out I was just the same nobody I always knew I would be. Lemme tell you somethin about hookers boy, all of em are lookin for the one, and you ain't it. They've all got the face of your long lost love that you couldn't be there for.

There's no such thing as the one, and the girls that you've met dying for something more, it's not your job to give it to them. You'll never be able to give them what they need, and it's not your fault.

You knew this, way back when at Flagler when you were still a boy in cowboy boots getting chucked out of beach parties after trying to steal a bottle o ***. What a ******* scare when you saw Kiki up in St. Augustine a few months ago, as if that was a good enough reason.
Get mad if that makes you feel better, but you know it won't be the truth. You're the same old soul today as you were driving down Hwy 98 with the wind in your hair in the old green Taurus. You had people you loved with you, and it ended. That idea ended. Just because it hurt doesn't make it okay for you to stop being a caring person.

I digress, I stopped believing. I stopped believing the day that I understood that I couldn't love a girl enough to take away the terrible things her father did to her. I couldn't **** that man and make it better. And she's not the only one who loved me. I attract girls looking for hope that I don't have to give. I loved Rachael too, but there was nothing I could do to take back what her brother did.

Maybe my real failing, my real **** up, was not recognizing a good thing when she came my way. Maybe that's why I couldn't understand something so simple. God Amanda was, is, beautiful.....she was all I was looking for. And yet......I never slept well in bed with her.

Yes I have hurt people, hurt people that loved me without my understanding. This I thing, this I word, I'm not sure that abandoning will get me to where I should be. We'll see what happens. We'll see where I end up.
Jon Shierling
Written by
Jon Shierling  Old Florida
(Old Florida)   
1.6k
 
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