Check It In.

Abbie Intang.  The human turtle.  A porter who has been journeying the road less traveled along the slopes of Mount Kinabalu for as long as he can probably remember.  Carrying large loads for others.  Merchandise, everyday necessities, at cumbersome proportions.  Employing sinew and spirit, between base and peak on a daily basis, just so that the day-end gratitude is sufficient to translate into coin that sees to him feeding his family of eight. 

Your life is tough?  Get off your high horse and smell the fcuking roses, Charlie.  Options for some are limited.

Loads.  We all carry them.  In some form or another.  Some more than others. 

But just how much can one take?  How much strength, tenacity and will do you need to walk that mile with something alien to your being - attached clumsily to your body, your mind, like a parasite that denies being shaken off, but instead sucks your mana dry.  What and when is it considered regular, when is it not?  When do you buckle?  When do you break?  What are your limits?  Do you know them?

If you do not, then be prepared to sink to a gradual but eventual low.  Your life will change.  Oh boy.  Do not rejoice my friend, because you will get ugly.  Be prepared to find yourself alone, angry and bitter.  From the depths of your psyche where your insecurities well, you will naturally and conveniently unleash selfish expression.  You will lament.  You will think you have it bad and project your ill sense of hardship on to others to gain some form of recognition or sympathy.   Pain will come because you think it and welcome it.  But at what expense and what the fcuk for?  

In our journey, we choose how we travel.  What with.  And whom with.  Whether we find ourselves crippled by the burdens we carry one day is dependent on the choices we make today.  The principle lesson is to never overextend.  Do not be the camel that you aren't. 

If the load doesn't have a purpose, dump it.  Leave it whence it appeared.  Nothing more than baggage.  Weight that you don't need. 

So unless you have eight mouths to feed, take flight... glide and soar.  Like the eagle you were meant to be.  Up from way high.

You're not a punching bag.  You're not anyone's porter ass mule.

Fcuk that.  Play your options.  Choose your load.  You are your own life.

To My Beautfiul Daughter #1

To my beautiful daughter,

I confess that I was lost and helpless, not knowing what I’d have to do to stop you from crying.  I remember my only knowledge of you at the time was that you smelt nice.  And you still do, by the way.  Everyone else around me appeared to be a better parent to you than I was.  Letting fatherhood kick in naturally felt anything but.  So I took guidance where it was given, and I enjoyed being schooled in a role that I thought I was being naturally bad at.  I thought there was progress.  You stopped crawling away from me and began welcoming me into your space.  You started to laugh with me.  I was happy.

Then IT happened.  

The threads of life began unraveling.  The spiraling.  The cold and piercing darkness.   I felt fear of how painful it would be when I hit ground fast and hard.   And fast and hard it was.  There were more questions than there were answers.  The blame game started and the man in the mirror loathed me for losing control.  What had happened?  Why now?  When and how?  I was frantic.  Desperate.  Hopeless.  I lost my emotional compass, my confidence, in what I had wanted to do and become. 

Never before.  I thought I had life reasonably well charted out.  I had side stepped and dodged many the slings of outrageous fortune, ripped out arrowheads like a barbarian on a war field.  In my mind, I was indomitable.  Impenetrable.   And then in a flash, my heart was somehow beating outside my chest, exposed to the harshest of elements.  I had to continue projecting that I was still the same man in the day, the same force at work, the same father who would catch you as you fell off my shoulder while you attempted to climb me like the tallest castle wall.  I have been tethering on insanity, babygirl.

All this, while I would have you perched over my head, so that you would not see that the other half of my smile was draped with a tear.

The choices before me are simple.  Continue to feel lost and helpless, or ride the crescendo that is life with wild vigour.  Today I choose to step out of the darkness, because I am no good blind – to those that I love and care, and to you my sweet child.

Loving you has been a welcome intense and profound experience.   

One fear nevertheless remains, and constant it has been – that of hurting you because of the choices made by those you put your trust in.  This is perhaps the most painful experience ever, and I know it may get worse and be too much to bear.  As your father, I vow to protect you from the world.  But I realize that I may instead have to protect you from me, as I may potentially be the one who would end up hurting you the most.  My heart breaks when I flash forward, imagining you speak of me with disdain, ashamed of my failures and my choices when you are an adult.  

Despite what I think is light, it is really still dark, and just too dark for me to properly see.  The future remains blurred.  I forge ahead nevertheless with you as my beacon in hope that I can grow into the hero that you so deserve.

Daddy.

In Over The Past 1 Year 5 months & 19 Days...

..life just had to come put its hot stamp on things. Old partners left. New partners came. Dad passed. Friends passed. Little kiddo came. The 911, 166, and the R53 rolled out. A new Focus, and an old 78 TA28 Liftback project rolled in. I know. Cool factor just slid down a whole hundred points.


But am sure as hell not out for the count. Despite the throw downs, I'm very grateful for the moments of joy that find their way in parcelled in between each bout. The times you think that life's not all fair? It typically passes and sometimes when you least expect it, will just surprise you in a very good way. Stick with it. Roll with the punches. Look outside the ring. Loved ones - family.. friends.. that's what its all about.

Just need to constantly remind ourselves to remember the good. And forgive, forget but take notes from the bad. No one needs to be the sorry ass angry bitch that we all fail to recognize sometimes staring back at us in the mirror each morning.

Life's actually great.