Regrettes, I've had my Share

If you are anything like me, you spend way to much time asking "why".

Sometimes, not often enough, I can get going without getting too hung up on the question. For a while, I was able to just get things done.

When I was on my own, with my dogs, a lot of stuff made sense. Or it seemed to make sense, or I was able to ignore that things didn't make sense just because if I didn't get out of bed everybody would starve. And dogs can't wish their movements away.

"Why?" Then, it was for me. For Stella. For Warden, and Regrette. For Us. For Tony's memory. For ex-cons everywhere who were trying to make it on the outside.

In prison, I could get by just dreaming of being on the outside. But on the outside, what am I living for, when the soothing dog rhythms are gone and the only thing left is a middle aged man who can't get out of bed?

I remember, a couple years before I fired the shot, Tony and I were biking to a party when my chain slipped off. I didn't know how to fix it, but Tony was gone. It was dark, and I was all alone. Miles from home, and miles from where I was going. I wasn't upset at Tony--he had an urgency to the way he operated that kept him from ever slowing down--but when your best friend can let you down like that, the world feels like a much darker place.

I go to the diner with my dad sometimes in the morning. The old retirees meet there and they talk about baseball, and houses, and stuff like that. They get excited, and they talk about whose kids are are on drugs and the ones that got arrested and then they remember that I'm there and they twiddle their thumbs and they look at the ground and they wish I wasn't there, and my dad wishes I wasn't there, and I wish that I wasn't there. But where else can I be?

I am not going to ask "why" anymore. I am going to get on my feet, and I am going to get my dogs back.