Design a Life You Love

Design a Life You Love…

Easier said than done when the life that was bestowed upon you was already fucked up.

People always say, “Just change, man. Do better.” But when you’re chock-full of PTSD—unless you take that bull by the horns and sort through it all—you’ll never have the chance to design a life you want, let alone love.

I tried my whole life—countless times—to make a life I loved. Fuck, I would’ve been happy with one I just liked. But I wasn’t able to succeed because I had an anchor tied to my ankle. That anchor was PTSD.

How can you work through shit you didn’t even know existed? I was stuck—no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much determination I had.

I exhausted myself time and time again—starting over, thinking, This time I’ll get it right. This time’s gonna be better. And I did that for 40 years!

Maybe it worked for a while—until that fucking darkness found me. Again. And again. And again. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

People have said to me, “I wish I had your life.” HA! No, you fucking don’t. I make it all look easy, eh? All the while, I was suffering inside.

Not until I worked through it—all of it. The only way out is through. I shit you not. Some of the stuff you see in memes and quotes on social media— are actually real. True.

But this is what I’m saying—people toss around terms like “Design a Life You Love,” and it sounds lovely. For someone with a clean slate—it’s just wonderful.

Shit, if I had read that when I was 14, I would’ve been on it! I actually didn’t have to read it—I was fucking on it straight out the gate.

But when you’ve been defeated time and time again because of the trauma—the darkness that lives inside—those quotes are disturbing.

When you’ve tried and tried to fix yourself, but never really knew the problem… You can’t fix it. You can’t just “Design a Life You Love.” You’re stuck.

Now I can. I’m not stuck anymore. And now I am going to design a life I love. Shit, I feel like I’m halfway there. Finding peace will do that—it’ll lead you toward creating a life you love.

Trying to create a life you love without peace is like trying to find a rose in a bed of dandelions.

I don’t know how one finds the path I was put on to work through my shit—my PTSD. I only know how to prevent it from happening in the first place, and that’s by talking about what troubles you, what doesn’t sit right with you. Work your shit out as it comes. 

Can’t hold that shit in, man—it nearly destroyed me.

The reason I’m sharing this is to tell you, to show you, to teach your younger ones—your kids—not to hold that shit inside.

I saw a piece of art today with those words on it—‘Design a Life You Love’—all black and red with a rose, and I thought, “What a nice piece of art.” Then the wheels started spinning. And for some, that’s all it’ll ever be—art.

But for me? That wasn’t just art—it was my whole damn life on repeat.

Because I assure you—nobody has fucking tried harder than me, since the age of 14, to find or create a life that I liked, let alone loved