Getting lost in the gray...

Everything worth doing is worth doing to the best of your ability. Everything I do comes with an intensity that may be hard to understand by some. If I make a choice to commit, I do so with a passion that is at times unreasonable, at times contagious, at times pure insanity and I have no intention of changing anytime soon. It may not be a choice others are willing to make, but for me, I have made a decision to live in a very black and white world. Living this way puts some questions to rest and at the same creates havoc within me.

When life's events are put into black and white...good or bad, beautiful or ugly, it takes the "what if" thinking out of the equation. It is either black or white...simple. I love hard, live hard, joke hard, fight hard, hate hard. I tell people upfront I am intense and I do so not to make apologies but to warn them never to come back to me later complaining. I do not enjoy gray, I do not understand gray and I refuse to try. Make no mistake, living this way is my choice and it is not always easy. There are things in my life that I would love to have the gray areas take over so I would not have to acknowledge they are leaning towards the black.

What I have learned is when I delve into the gray, I lose myself. I become a person I do not recognize and it is too difficult to bring me back to reality. When in a gray moment, I justify actions of others that in my world are inexcusable. If I live honest, upfront, and open then do I not deserve for the people around me to give the same? I no longer make excuses for others that do not believe life should be lived exactly as they feel it. If you are angry, show it...if you are happy, show it...if you are sad, show it...if you are proud, show it...be intense because you deserve to live with clarity. Stop hiding your emotions thinking you will save yourself or another from the grief. Gray is the stick we use to beat ourselves to the bone; it lives as misguided hope we can change an outcome from black to white. As we try to hide our feelings we enter a world of gray...alone, empty, unknowing.

Honor your feelings, feel them as either black or white and know it can be just that simple.