I’ve been having the most terrible thoughts.

I’ve been wrong.

I’ve been sick.

I’ve been crazy.

Well, not crazy but…sick. Sick the way my mother used to refer to people who did horrible things. I haven’t done horrible things except that I have. I’ve put my family in constant risk and kept them in a state of terror by following a life path fraught with risk and doing so for totally selfish reasons, reasons so selfish I could not even see what non-selfish behavior was. I didn’t think it existed or was anything more than a dodge by those looking for a reason to rationalize having no talent or drive. But it wasn’t so. I wasn’t so. I was wrong. I was sick.

I’m still sick. Might as well be honest. Hell, would I be writing this if I were healthy? No. I would be safely ensconsed somewhere writing a brief or singing karaoke on a Friday after my white collar job was over. I would be somebody in the normal world, not who I am, not this lie, not this Noah.

Yes, I have felt like Noah, touched by God. But truth to tell I was touched by mental illness, by abuse suffered as a child, psychological abuse, some of it normal, some of it not. I watched people I loved suffer at the hands of people I loved. I saw futility to such a degree I snapped and refused to accept the possibility of failure in my life and charted a course when I was a teenager that I’ve never deviated from. I took on the task to do and be something that had never been. I set my sails and everything that followed was defined by that one surging goal.

And it still is.

I still sit atop my mountain of ambition with the results of it apparent in a crumbling house,  and family trying to fight against the insecurity I threw at them.  Oh, I was there for them, loving them, playing with them, but I was never there thinking of them only, fighting for them, sacrificing for them. God, to realize how selfish you’ve been…

And yet, am I any different now for knowing? Am I capable of changing?

It’s hard. Very very very very very very very hard to change.

To be healthy.

And do I want to be?

Really?