His name is Robert Paulson.

What is hard? Some days I do not understand myself. I am drawn to do hard things. Mostly physical, but a lot of just difficult things. They suck, they hurt, they inflict pain on not just myself, but those around me, yet I want more. I can not really say if it is a self destructive bent or if I draw some dysfunctional pleasure out of my own pain.

Sounds sick, but I used to think that I deserved pain; that I did not deserve good. Perhaps part of it comes out of the idea that people are hurt on a daily basis. Suffering through a mile of shit smelling foulness that I don’t want to imagine. The idea that I could take pleasure in something makes me sick to my stomach.

Example: One night a week they have surf and turf night. Chowhall has steak and shrip/seafood for dinner. Tonight actually. I hate it. I do not partake. There is part of me that balks at the idea of eating steak when my boys are out there eating pouches of food and crapping in a bag. Perhaps I don’t feel that I deserve it. Perhaps I feel guilty that I would draw any sort of pleasure from life in such a place of shit. Perhaps I want to sit here and remember the last steak that I ate because that was such a happy memory and I don’t want to pollute it.

Any way you boil it down, I refuse to eat it. I eat a powerbar and call it life.

Some days you must choose the harder path because it is were your heart is leading you. I do not fear that. I trust my heart, I have faith in it. Its more than just trust. I know that perhaps I will one day make a choice and follow my heart and it will be wrong, it will hurt, I will suffer, I will inflict pain on someone else, but my faith says that I am better off following my heart rather than living a life of silent slumber.

I detest the life I see lived around me of silent people making motions to go through life. Good or bad, I live by the heart, it has steered me well, I do not fear to follow it.