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| The Death of a Dreamer
by j_steele at 1/10/2008 4:15:04 AM
When I started down this path of love I had a pocket full of dreams. I had this whole idea of what the world was supposed to be like, how people met, fell in love, shared everything and lived happily ever after.
There is no happily ever after in this world, only series of smooth spots between rough spots in the potted road we travel through every day life. Recently I chased love all the way to Michigan, and while there I lived high on the hog. I had a good thing going. I was working with a politician helping him get into office, I had the “girl of my dreams” a nice roof over my head and a new car.
It was in Michigan  that I found my passion for writing. I had always had a knack for it, but Michigan was so different, and there was so much to write about that I got a great deal of practice doing it. I was able to hone my rough writing skills into a fine art of using words to paint elaborate pictures in the minds of those who read my work.
Writing for me became somewhat of an obsession  and I blogged from the time I got up until the time I dropped. I began camping out at my desk. Just outside my office window was a fresh new world, with subjects that tantalized my fingers and satisfied my need for that writing fix. Writing became my new drug.
I had a little blog in a local paper's website called The Road Less Traveled in which I would post pictures, poems, lyrics and short articles about my new surroundings. I did not notice that the world around me was growing distant, and those I cared about were moving on doing other things, The newness of my craft had tarnished with time, and my writing became a bit jaded.
I began to feel te pang of guilt  for running off to Michigan chasing a dream and leaving my son behind in Indiana to fend for himself in the cesspools of Granny’s and his biological mother's abodes. Our daily telephone conversations became shorter and shorter and our conversations more and more routine. 
My pocket full of dreams was quickly becoming a box full of memories.  I realized as much as Michigan fascinated me with it’s diverse political and social culture  it was not where I belonged. I had a son who was growing up without me and an ex-wife that would not allow him to even visit. I also learned that what I had thought was the perfect solution had become the perfect storm. 
My life began to stagnate, and me along with it to the point where I became distant and disinterested in everything. I backed into a hole where I hid from the world around me. The only viable solution to my problem was obvious, come home. I was at a loss for how to do that, but as fate would have it my own actions and lack thereof solved my problem for me.
The political race, at least for us was over, and the love I ad chased up there had long since stagnated like so much pond water caught in a mud hole by a pond on a hot august day. 
After a short stint of what I can only describe as hell week, I was off on my way back home to Indiana where I belonged, Michigan in my rear view mirror.  All in all I learned a valuable lesson from my trip, I learned that happiness no matter how real it might seem if it comes from outside of you is merely an illusion you create for yourself. True happiness must come from within. 
Now I have a new memory in my box. It is time to reach into my pocket and extract the next dream. Will this one be “The one” ? I don’t know, fate as it would have it is always a funny thing. Just when you least expect it reality can come rushing in on you, or you can find that star, the one that cartoon cricket was always wishing on, and singing about it not mattering who you are… I hope that is true! 
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