The Most Valuable Antiques

“To give a person an opinion one must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not.” ― Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai This assignment was a bit harder than I thought would be possible because of some of the thoughts and emotions that I had to bring up in order to accurately write about each of the ten people I choose. If I am being honest with myself I have to admit that my relationships with everyone on the list I have either strained or distanced myself from to certain extents because of my own self abhorrence. If I treated and spoke to myself better would I have the issues that I have with my wife and my Heavenly Father?  I’ve always hated the saying that you can’t truly love anyone until you love yourself and the reason why I hate it is because I don’t want to accept that I am not fully and truly loving those in my life. That I haven’t truly accepted them into my life because I hav...

"Our fathers were our models for God, if our fathers bailed, what  does that tell you about God?"  - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club In the book “Fight Club” the main character’s psyche is fractured causing him to create a split personality who he believes he’s interacting with which is never disclosed to the reader until the climax of the book. A big part of the book is the banter between him and his second personality with the above quote being one of those conversations. The rest of the quote goes as follows: What you end up doing is you spend your life searching for a father and God. What you have to consider is the possibility that God doesn't like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen.” For a long tenure of my 20’s I whole heartily believed that God wanted nothing to do with me and if He did it was to hate me and I could easily see why as I hated myself just the same. In fact it was th...

“An ugly personal disdain for life is a reaction to an internal fury. A rage of immense portions clogs my veins. Similar to a convict sentenced to death row, I know my fate. I deplore living in solitary confinement. I hunger to locate the hidden power to escape a loathsome prior self. The gallows is the only apparent reprieve to the paucity of my personal existence. Unless I assassinate my pernicious ego, I will continue to experience life as a revolving wheel of anguish, suffering, guilt, remorse, and self-hatred.” ― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls Nobody can verbally abuse me any worse than how I verbally abuse myself. I am the king of negative self-talk and the amount of hate, loathing, and I completely lack love for myself. There is no negotiating with myself because I don’t have a good relationship with self and my mind is constantly in a state of conflict. I know how I speak about myself shapes how others view me, I know it damages our family and makes our family unh...