Row Your Ocean: Part 2-C

If you haven't read part one, go back and read part one, then read this one. Click here for part one. What we, unfortunately, don't have time, space or the memory for is every single up and down along the way. It was work, that much I can assure you. Sit down with my father or mother, ask them, how close I was to the brink several times, and yet somehow I still stayed long enough for things to heal.Somehow amidst the turmoil and destruction, I was able to forgive myself for whatever I did or didn't do in my life. I don't know how, I don't know why I was able to forgive myself...maybe I didn't even need to go work in a disaster zone, maybe it was just time and coincidently it makes for a great story that it all happened while swimming in the floodwaters of Houston. Maybe it was the intense weekly counseling that I went to at the VA before that. Maybe it was the other therapy I'd had before from the four other psychologists over this ten year period. All I know is, I'd gone to Houston wanting to die, I came back wanting to live.At this time I wouldn't be surprised if you asked, "What the fuck does all of this shit have to do with rowing an ocean and this long ass metaphor you're trying to convey John?"Well, I'm glad you asked, I'm going to wrap it all up nicely now in a little bow. Or at least attempt to.See, getting to a point where I could forgive myself. That was an ocean to cross. I hated my life, but the only person that could TRULY affect change in my life was me. I had to want it. I had to work for it. I had to suffer for it. I had to endure many seasons and times where I just didn't want to work for it anymore. Where I just didn't want to try because it was so painful. But, through either sheer dumb luck or pure stubbornness, I emerged on the other side of my pain. Not unscathed or clean, but dirty, tired, exhausted and almost defeated. Almost.I'd be a liar and a swindler if I told you I had it all figured out. I don't. I have it figured out enough to have something resembling peace in my life.Rowing an ocean is no small feat. Mastering yourself (which just an FYI, never stops) and learning to cope healthily is no small feat as well. It takes you being one hundred percent honest with yourself. No pandering to your own ego or justifying your actions. You've got to own whatever shitty ass garbage you have in your life and WORK to change it, and it's not going to be a linear path. Just like rowing the ocean you're going to get blown off course and you'll have to adjust. Then you'll get blown off course in another direction and you have to adjust. It's constantly evaluating and adjusting and evaluating and adjusting. It's dealing with storms and dealing with your fears and insecurities on a very real, personal, and honest level. See there is no lying to yourself once you're out on the "ocean". No, there simply is or isn't. And you're either going to work to get across or you're not. You're either going to put in the painstaking effort to row, or you're going to be lost, adrift in the sea with no purpose and no direction, at the whims of whatever life throws at you.I know, I'm just some nobody writer in the great expanse of the internet, I know I'm wrong about a great many things, and I've burned many a bridge, but...one thing I know for a fact, no matter who you are or what your circumstances are, that if something is to change, to REALLY REALLY REALLY CHANGE, then the only person who can facilitate that effectively, is staring back at you when you look in the mirror.Row your ocean. Take control of your shit. The good, the bad, the ugly, your secret shame, your biggest insecurity. Own it. Cop to it. Then get to work fixing it. It'll be a long journey, but fuck if it isn't worth every single piece of physical and mental effort.Row your ocean.