#offthechest

Time. Four letters. There are so many words longer than time, and yet, those four manage to manage our lives. Life. Another four letter word. So important that makes longer words seem miserable, unimportant, unseen, unloved. Love. Guess what. Four letters. And as much as needed as the other two. Another four letter word. And as important as those above. But time. Ah, time. Life. Love. Time rule them both. All four letter words, grammar be excused. But what is time? Is it the seconds, minutes, days, centuries, eons? Is time a moment, an event, or is it the limbo between moments, between events? Is there lost time? Do we have enough time? What if we had more time? What would we do? Would it be worth it? Do we need more time? After all isn't it what this is all about? Aren't we desperately trying to get more time? And how do we use it? There's no such thing as lost time. Even sleeping, when we aren't doing anything physical for a moment, there's so much going on in our body, in our brains, that calling it “lost” is almost like cursing it. I felt I hadn't been having enough time, sometimes I still feel it. Like I needed more time. But if I had more time, I'd just make that limbo bigger. There's just so much that I could accomplished, that I could have done, if I had had this epiphany sooner. Why do we try to get more time? Why do we try to control it? Time is unpredictable. If we knew how much time do we have, what'd we do? Use what we have, or use it to try getting more of it? Time is a matter of principles. Of priorities. “Why?” You'd say. Because money isn't and have never been the currency. Time is. What we sell, what we buy. We sell our current time, in order to get Time later to spend with others, to create moments with others. We are constantly choosing where to spend our time with. And there's so much happening at the same, that we're always giving up time for something to use time on another. And we regret when we don't choose well. Because Time is different for each one of us. My time is different than yours, for infinite reasons. For some, time is of the essence. The essence of what exactly? I don't know, and maybe neither do they. And what do we do? We mold our time to match the time of our lives with the Time of the life of people we love. Time. Life. Love. How intrinsic those four letter words are. And how could one be without the other? If there's love, but times don't match, there's pain. And pain is a hard thing to live through. Pain. Four letters. Again. Time. Life. Love. Pain. Four four letter words. If love turns into pain, we get stuck on time, and life doesn't move. If there's no life, love and pain may be the only ones allowed to exist, for a certain time. So, what's the point? What is it that we struggle? To have time. To live. To love. It hurts. And it frightens me. Us. That we may not have the time to live, to love because we sold our time in order to get more time later. And that time never comes. Because your time ran out. Because you ran out of time. So I'll live, I'll love. I'll hurt. I will make my time worth. I will respect others time, but I'll care for my own, even if that brings me pain. For me, or someone else. Because time, and how you use it, makes who you are. Because time rules. Rules Love. Pain. And life. But I can't make it rule me.

Next up for #theguywiththepurpletie is: Offthe_chest: #offthechest [Second, third and fourth pic all credit to: @offthe_chest] #Cdesta #OriginalCswritting #theguywiththepurpletie #thepurpletiereview #purpletieshoutout #originalwork #writers #mywords #performance #writersontumblr #writersontwitter #writersoninsta #writersofinstagram #writingcommunity #spokenwordpoetry #spokenwordartist #poetry #mentalhealth #spokenword #healingthroughpoetry @offthe_chest @yungifto @elladg @questors_theatre @rakayaesime @nothing.exceptional @gbyg.a.o @wordspokenpodcast @withbeckwith ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- #TheGuyWithThePurpleTie Would Like To Welcome You To The Family. SUBSCRIBE AND JOIN #ThePurpleTieFamily: https://rb.gy/nuegoc INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cdestawritt... TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/CdestaW AUTHOR FB: https://www.facebook.com/cdesta.thewr... PAGE FB: https://www.facebook.com/Cdestawritte... TUMBLR: https://www.tumbral.com/blog/cdesta-w... SNAPCHAT: Cdestawritting ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (at The Questors Theatre) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8xRhkigGMd/?igshid=6wvuge9wu7lo

Next up for #theguywiththepurpletie is: Offthe_chest: #offthechest [Second, third and fourth pic all credit to: @offthe_chest] #Cdesta #OriginalCswritting #theguywiththepurpletie #thepurpletiereview #purpletieshoutout #originalwork #writers #mywords #performance #writersontumblr #writersontwitter #writersoninsta #writersofinstagram #writingcommunity #spokenwordpoetry #spokenwordartist #poetry #mentalhealth #spokenword #healingthroughpoetry @offthe_chest @questors_theatre @rakayaesime @nothing.exceptional @gbyg.a.o ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- #TheGuyWithThePurpleTie Would Like To Welcome You To The Family. SUBSCRIBE AND JOIN #ThePurpleTieFamily: https://rb.gy/nuegoc INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cdestawritt... TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/CdestaW AUTHOR FB: https://www.facebook.com/cdesta.thewr... PAGE FB: https://www.facebook.com/Cdestawritte... TUMBLR: https://www.tumbral.com/blog/cdesta-w... SNAPCHAT: Cdestawritting ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (at The Questors Theatre) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8h-eaGgyWO/?igshid=16ts6krned4bo

You know, I lay in bed at night and think of all the times you had crossed my mind in a day, and I've come to realize there isn't a moment that you don't. When I'm watching the sun set and there's not a cloud in the sky, just a beautiful gradient kissing it goodnight. When the wind blows the snow off of the trees and it swirls and shimmers around me, the crisp wind caressing my face. And for a brief second I'm swept away to a realm of fantasy where nothing else matters. I want something I know I can't have, but no rationale of thinking can keep you away. I long for the times I can dream because it's the only place I can share these things with you. I can only hope that you'd want to share with me too.

So this Father's Day, I was forced to move my daughter to her mother's home about five hours away. She is almost nine years old, and really doesn't deserve to be in this situation. Three years ago, my wife left me with my daughter, and after she discovered I left her at home asleep for a half hour while I went to work and came back to get her ready for school, my ex picked up my daughter from daycare, came into my home, and took my daughter without my knowledge. She only told me what she had done when she was halfway home. Skip ahead a few months and after being told I wouldn't get to see her again after 'being rude' on a camping trip by not speaking to my ex or her friend, I had to finally beg and humiliate myself in front of my ex and the local pastor to finally keep my daughter at home. Child Care and a severely reduced schedule of time with my daughter as I was forced to send her to bed early and get her up early came into play. As a Water Treatment Plant Operator, I get decent money and was able to afford raising her on my own after consolidating some debts I had accrued. Then I discovered my ex was dating. Were you aware an iMac doesn't actually format its harddrive unless you have a new operating system to over write it? I wasn't. After trading a new laptop for my ex's iMac (I wanted something I could do better video and photo work on. I was kinda disappointed) I got a rather graphic glimpse of the kinds of guys she was meeting on Plenty of Fish. So I went to the lawyer and began the divorce process. This is a very costly process and rather than have it lengthen and pay more and more fees that I knew my ex wouldn't help with, as she couldn't hold a job and had a brand new truck to pay for, I served her the form. She insisted I pay back her parents half of the money we had borrowed from them. So I got yet another loan, one I could afford, barely, and paid them directly. With the lawyer fees rolled into it, then a hefty vehicle repair fee, I was finally the custody holder for my daughter. It was going to be a hard job being a single parent, but I thought I had a good network of friends and family to support me. Then the Celiac hit. We didn't know what it was at first, but my daughter was constantly going into the ER for a variety of reasons and the doctors were little help. During a summer that my daughter visited my ex (major holidays and summers, my daughter went to her mother's because child care was crazy expensive, I would need a break to work on the unfinished house, and to put in some overtime at work to catch up on bills), the city doctors did the blood test for Celiac. The Auto Immune Disease that results in your intestines being essentially burned up by gluten. It's ridiculously sensitive, but after throwing out the toaster and cutting boards and anything else plastic or wood that may have been used for food preparation, my daughter came back and we started again. Only gluten free foods aren't easy to find, or cheap. Just getting bread or cereal required an hour long trip to the city, and anyone that's had to buy gluten free meals knows it costs about twice as much for about half the amount. No more treats. No more eating out. Time with my daughter was cut even shorter as there were no quick meals I could prepare. No more shortcuts. I began to get frustrated and tired; being less inclined to focus on my work. I lost two years of advancement because I failed an exam. Sending my daughter to friend's homes became less practical with the allergy, and just trying to educate schools and child care about Celiac was a challenge. Up until a year ago, things were looking bleak and I needed to get a line of credit that slowly began to climb. Then my dad passed away. I wasn't particularly close to him since my mom passed away quite a few years earlier and I learned some things I'd rather wish I hadn't, but that's another story. But the house I grew up in out on the edge of the nearby lake was left to one of my four brothers. Another brother decided it was his right to live there rent free, and proceeded to run it down. When he finally left, the estate holder brother and I were able to start cleaning up the mess that was left. The hope was to restore it enough to sell and after repairing a few essentials like power lines and hauling a few tons of abandoned vehicles from the yard, things were looking up. Even my ex, whom I had at least become friendly with for the sake of my daughter, came to help clean out the garbage that had accumulated over the last few years. Around the same time, I was told that someone was interested in purchasing the collection of lots that I live on in town, willing to pay for my still unfinished house. But they needed all the lots. Four, to be precise, three of which my neighbour with a pair of dilapidated trailers owned. If either house sold, I would be debt free. The weekend after we did several days of clean up at the lake property, the deadbeat brother returned, set up in the house again, and threatened anyone that had been cleaning up the property. The estate holding brother, the one that actually had the power to do something about it... didn't. So it won't be long before deadbeat gets squatter rights and wins the property by default. Within the same month, the persons interested in my own house backed away because my neighbour wanted too much money. So, with my line of credit rising, day care fees increasing, no more support to watch my daughter at a moment's notice when I'm on call for work, I had to swallow my pride and make the tough call. We went to see Pixar's Inside/Out on Father's Day before I returned home, and the parallels were uncanny. I think seeing a young female character dealing with a lot of the same feelings helped ease the transition for my daughter, as well with a good palette to draw from in how to deal with emotions. For myself too, to be honest. A family of all boys left little room for sensitivity growing up, and literally the though of losing my daughter is one of the few things that breaks my stoic-ness anymore. As gut wrenching as it was to drive home without her again, I hope that seeing me break down lets her know that it wasn't a decision that was easy to make. I'm not sure whom, or even anyone will happen upon this, but it needed to come out. Not even sure I'll feel better either, but I'm hoping something good will come of it.