Taking Inventory

This isn’t going to be pretty.
I left all of it behind; wealth, glory, health, sex, status, freedom, and comfort, all, because even with those achievements and blessings I thought enriching my life, ones many never experience in a lifetime, I grew deliriously unhappy with my lot. Unbearably so. Even with all that appeared to be the proverbial pot at the end of the rainbow, I couldn’t exist in that suit of clothes one day longer. I was nothing short of hog-tied miserable. So I didn’t take it. Not one more day. I chucked it all away, all of it, and I walked.
Here I am today...
I’ve not had a paycheck in over 6 years.
I’ve been without a job for 7 years.
I’ve never gone totally without, but if life is a high tech light show, I’m in the dark.
I used to perform for 25,000 people a night. When opportunity arises I now see little clusters of smiling faces -and that’s a good night.
I almost died during this process and my near death continues to take its toll.
I’m now a diabetic because.
I’m quite literally losing parts of my feet, my instrument, due to injury after bewildering injury.
Genitalia has a mind of its own. Poor guy.
Life as I’ve always known it is over, now I must exercise cautious discipline for just a smidgen of the qualities of life I used to take for granted.
I’ve not had a girlfriend in years, no one there to give me comfort, solace, support, or love during this rebuilding process, this trial, this tribulation.
I’ve not seem any of my blood kin in over four years, and my musical family is scattered to points all over the globe, cut loose and set adrift by a recent passing of one of the most important people in my life, and theirs, too; his flame snuffed and gone while we continue to wander the Earth trying to get a grip on just what it is he’s passed on to us.
I am now officially old (even by my standards), and considered ancient by my peers. The young ones don’t know nor do they care who I am, what I’ve accomplished, or continue to accomplish.
For many years I regularly traversed the entire globe. I haven’t traveled beyond the state line in 4 years.
I live in an efficiency apartment with two dogs. One is crippled and I’m unable to properly address her health concerns which reduces me to abject nothingness, an overwhelming, helpless guilt constantly lashing me, rending chunks of my flesh with each murderous stroke.
Some bills must go unpaid and I agonize. I’m still a fugitive, unable to afford insurance for a driver’s license. Life’s emergencies stack up, unpaid. Every bill for basic life necessities takes an exhausting amount of energy and effort just to pay. Forget casual spending money, money for any thing else really, and I do mean ANYTHING. Horrific.
I lose a piece of myself each day, consumed as I am by this soul crushing duress of a seemingly never ending struggle.
Joy is a distant friend. Laughter is fading. I’m threadbare and dented.
I have been reduced to this.
But, and this is where I differ... far from lost and hopeless, I am well on my way. I don’t know where, and that is okay. A little beat up, worse for the wear and tear, yeah, but I am wiser, well on my way. This I know.
And I am happy about that.
Despite all these hideous, problematic hells, I am happy.
Verily, I am happy.
Almost happiest.

I wouldn’t change an iota of this road less traveled. Not one iota.
A very courageous woman, Bernadette Devlin, said, “To gain that worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.”
I made my decision without having read her insightful words, only finding them during this sojourn, and since undertaking this journey further into the unknown I’ve found her words to be a beacon for me in the darkest of storms, and there have been many. Smelling the coming blooms, sensing the light ahead, I’m reassured her words speak the truth. This I know. So I am happy. Despite. And laughter will return, laughter that will have all new meaning in the glory of morning’s dawn; a dawn that is now cresting my horizon.
Almost happiest. Almost. But for now, I continue to hunker down and keep me wits best I can, what is left, that is, after a thorough cleaving away, what’s left repurposed and refocused for what lay around the corner.
This is where I am.
Not the prettiest of pictures, but one glorious in design, and getting more aerodynamic and enchantingly mysterious by the day.
Far from done I am here. I am. Here. I. Am. Far. From done. I. Am.