'I Saw That Coming'

When I was a kid I never really paid attention to the things going on around me...I guess I was too busy reading a book or drawing or just plain day dreaming to notice the real world. I suppose I picked up on some things subconsciously, certain words, stances, looks, especially those that advertised 'Danger' in big freaking letters. When those came along I usually turned around and tried to avoid any contact with what was causing them. I always figured I was something of a coward.

Turned out, that wasn't the case.

One day I was sitting outside the gym building waiting for the current class to leave when this bully came up to where I and others were just talking. I don't remember what he said, only that it was mean and ugly...He had an older brother who was once the school bad ass and I guess he was leaning on that reputation, I don't know...But then he reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out my typing eraser and ripped out all the brushes and I remember this 'Click' going off in my mind. Everything all around me was silent, calm. I took off my glasses and handed them to someone and stood up and beat the shit out of him. After that it seemed like some invisible door was open and almost everyone he'd picked on started beating on him. 

That 'Click' has happened in my life more than a few times and I never really knew what would set it off. What eventually made me start to pay attention was a series of unfortunate events which led to legally enforced 'Counseling' and I discovered there was this blank spot just before I actually acted on the 'Click'...Which, I need to mention, I usually never really remembered what went on during the time between the initial 'Click' and when it eventually wore off...It's like I have this 'Buffering' happening and I learned to stop myself from entering that dark place.

Usually.

Now when I hear things, see actions, I pay attention but I have that buffering and I don't act immediately if at all. Sometimes I'll hear a phrase like 'I saw that coming' and it won't go away. I start to pay attention and things everywhere around me are different...I try to do a whole Sherlock Holmes thing, put all the clues together and figure out the answer on my own and that never really works for me. So I ask and the truth is almost always worse than the reality.

But rarely surprising. There are certain types of people in this world...Those who will push themselves to succeed, whether in work or sports or just to make their own lives better, and then there are those who will never do anything beyond the barest minimum and constantly complain about the bad luck that's always happening to them. They take no responsibility for their own actions and you can't believe much of what comes out of their mouths. I've known a whole lot of people in the art industry like this, artists who always say they make everything up in their heads and writers who claim they created all those comic book heroes that are now making billions of dollars on the big screen to the people living in small towns who have absolutely no ambition beyond watching television and lying on the Internet. 

Anyone who has bothered to look around at the world shouldn't be surprised at the idiot in the White House, they shouldn't act surprised when athletes come forth and talk about being sexually abused, and when some white dude gets up and says 'Let's make America great again!' you know they're talking about making America white, led by powerful men who can abuse, rape and kill at will because that's what this society has become. 

I saw this coming. We all did.

We let it happen.

We're responsible and it's our job to fix it.

Three will always be those who will abuse the system, or try to do so, anyway. Those who have no spines, no ambition, no nothing that will be remembered when their dead. They take up space and they pay the outrageous salaries for actors by going to their movies, by watching other people work.

A day doesn't go by when a new 'Revelation' about just how horrible we are as a people, as a country, and you can't possibly be surprised because all you have to do is open your front door and walk outside, go down town or to your local mall and look and listen to the people and you'll see that we're going backward in time, not forward.

It must stop. Now. When I die I really don't want my last thought being about how I failed this world as a human being because I didn't try hard enough.

later