When the enemy is invading your country, raping your women and children, murdering your people and beating down your door. What will you do? What is that you will look for? Who is it that you will look for? A belittled, submissive, feminized man? Or will then you be looking for that man whose masculinity you considered toxic? The traditional man that would stop at nothing to defend his people. The man that has killed a living thing before. Trained in marksmanship and physical combat. A Man, that won't show fear when he is terrified, even though that is toxic. A man that will not yield until his foe is vanquished. For all that fuels a traditionally masculine man is the preservation of self and his family.

How have we circled so far in the concept of acceptance that we have arrived back at intolerance? Intolerance of traditional gender roles? None of us have the right to tell the other who they should be or how they should live. Toxic masculinity is the lack of it. Weak, little, pitiful men are abusive and toxic. True masculinity is firm yet gentle. Strong yet understanding. Courageous but intimate. Tough yet compassionate. Protective and nurturing.

Masculinity is necessary and our society depends on it.

It is ok to be whoever you are. Diversity is what makes us strong. We all have our roles to play. We are all our important.

I take a deep breathe, sweat stings my eyes, blood drips from my lips. Evey muscle in my body ready to quit. Utterly exhausted, I go to stand, my legs buckle beneath me as if they had no intent of keeping my body erect. Concussed, a broken nose, 2 or 3 fractured ribs, and my left eye nearly swollen shut. I have a 6-inch gash just above my right knee. The enemy moves closer confident and swift. Whilst attempting to control my breathing it crosses my mind. Should I use one of my last 3 rounds on myself? Is it the coward's way out if there is no choice? If I am to die regardless, I do not want it to be at the merciless hands of my assailant. Do I wish to prevent potential suffering? OR am I to take as many souls with me to the next life as I can manage? I have nothing left to give... but I will dig deep. I will manifest more will. I will find the courage I lack. The resolve I require. For I will not bow down and allow the enemy to have its way with me.

For my enemy is relentless, brutal, foul, and formidable. Experienced and creative in its strategies and weaponry. No matter how terribly I am wounded. No matter how desperately I wish to give in. I will fight until my last breath. For if I don't I want to get to live anyway.

My foe in all its might, underestimates me. Wounded and battered I stand. It hurts, tears run from my eyes. Drenched in sweat and blood...

I look life in the eye. "C'mon... Bitch."

It has been so long. I do not know what to say or where to start.

To busy I have been tearing myself apart. Working myself sick just to stay in a place that sickens me with no time left to for the things that have given me the joy I now lack. I'm searching looking for magical map of the road back to my former self. 15,000 words my work is still incomplete. I wish that I could say I have only neglected it for weeks. Simply because I am too weak. Though, the truth is much more bleak Its more like 6 months. Not because the words are not there but because I am too exhausted to care... this life it begins to wear. These words I muster now are more bitter than mustard brown and probably produced the ugliest frown from you right now. Without a doubt the worst work I have ever done but I am coming undone this is not even for fun I'm just trying to get my brain to run. This here and now I hope is just the garbage I'm throwing out. Trying to un- gunk my gears so I can hear my spirit sing to me again the words I knew to be my truest friends. At the end of the worst days they used to at least pretend to have my back. I hope to get them back again. I will at least pretend and fake it till I make it until this suffering ends.

Lost are the days of star gazing.

Lost are the ways of bar raising.

Once was a time where we layed beneath the stars.

With no inclination of what we where looking at, only that it was beautiful and beyond our understanding. So, what did we do?

We reached.

Never stop reaching.

Reach for the stars.

Reach for the one you want.

Be it a person, job, or lifestyle.

If you are not religious; have faith.

If not in the universe than in yourself.

In the ones you love.

No matter how bad it hurts or how much your burdens weigh.

Keep reaching for all the things you want.

You owe yourself that.

Shoot for the moon.

Reach for the stars.

Most of all, never stop raising your own bar.

What if, the inferences made about the nature of the universe are the very things that manifest its laws? Please, try to stay with me as I attempt to find the words to convey my train of thought.

So much of human discovery was hypothesized by the ones who unveiled it secrets. In a Schrodinger like metaphor: The universe is inside of a box. Simultaneously has rules and no rules, without analysis. It is not until we analyze its properties that we discover how it works. What if the assertion that there is gravity makes it so? Before it was a thought it did not exist. Sure, our feet were planted firmly on the ground for thousands of years before hand but there was no explanation as to why. Until Newton said, there must be a force pulling us toward the ground. We still do not utterly understand gravity. It was not until later that Einstein told us that mass bends space and the space around us is pushing down on us. Even still this does not fully explain the mechanism by which it works. Yet, when is the last time we thought of the nature of gravity? Now, I cannot get these questions out of my mind.

Is reality only as we perceive it? Can we truly manifest it through will alone?

If we can imagine the way something works clearly enough will it become so?

Surely, we all experience it much differently, yet we are here together.

Yet somehow, we are not processing the same thing.

Did Einstein not meditate heavily on the theory that E=mc2? Through sheer mediation and force of will did he not make it so? As he worked tirelessly to conceive an equation that was logical and rational? How often have we seen 2 people given the exact same piece of information yet determine completely different conclusions from it? I have long had the hunch that this existence is only as we perceive it. I do not know if I fully believe we can will the laws of nature and physics into existence. However, to my knowledge, we cannot prove that is not how it works.

I am now beginning to recognize all the evidence to support the theory that reality is manifested.

I leave you with one final thought in desperate attempt to summarize.

Human inuition is to question existence, so, does the question not demand the answer? OR has the answer always been there waiting for us to discover the question?

For those of you that came along on my roller coaster thanks for

listening to me ramble. If anyone has any ideas on this line of thought I would love to hear them.

Perhaps nothing I said makes sense. Sorry if that is the case.

Fingers are weak, my hands are fatigued, and soul drained. Grasping for meaning, perhaps the only real reason we write is to give meaning to meaningless things. We tell ourselfs that it is only the meaningful which inspires us to pick up the pen or open up the keyboard. What is there to distinguish the difference? Pehaps we decide. Maybe, just maybe, we ourselfs decide rather or not to give our lifes meaning.

Maybe we should all do what matters to us, let us abandon the shackles of societies expectations, and laugh, converse, experience, love, and try to bring energy into everything we do. Let us have the strength and resolve to only spend it on those people and things that are worth it and nothing else. Let us be brave enough to say no to the things absent of meaning.

A sensation of despair fills the air. Each breathe is drawn forcefully as I regain conciousness. Ears ringing, eyes blurred, head thumping as I struggle to lift debris off of me. once I remove the hunk of wall from my chest I realise there is a steel beem pinning me just below the waste. I begin to hyperventalate as fear attempts to strangle me. I concentrate to regain control over my mind. I can just barely reach the lip of the door jam. I use all the strength in my fingertips but my efforts are futile. Panic shows its face again when a sonic growl bellows from the sky. Fear fueling my adrenaline, somehow I had managed to keep my shotgun firmly gribbed in my hand throughout this ordeal. “It’s all or nothing” I think to myself. I don’t know what I will have to face outside but if I stay here I will be at their... or its, mercy. There is peace of ceiling dangling by an few wires. The way the beam is positioned leaning on top of the refrigerator. If the ceiling drops my logic is it will work like a seesaw by landing on the oppistite side of the beam lifting the side that is pinning me. Or a million other things that could happen the most likely of which involve me impailing my self. The only alternative is to stay where am at awaiting a fate I will have no control over. “Fuck it” I whisper to myself as I cock my 12 gauge I take a deep breath as I pull the trigger “AHHH!!” I shout as I do. I miss, some peiece of the ceiling crumbles and falls just inches from my face. I flinch as my arm is trying to recover from shooting so akwardly. I try to sit up and the rubble shifts, all of a sudden there is an intense burning over coming my left leg, atleast now I know I can feel it. I struggle but I hold my self upright enough and fire two rounds back to back.The peice of cealing comes crashing down the beam flings up and off of me throwing the debris on top of it into my face. Blood poors from my head as I pull myself to saftey in the doorway. I sit up and lean my head against the jam. Now i’m waking up, I must have lost conciousness again. Now there is a crack of sunlight through the dust and rubble shinning right onto my wounded leg. The pressure of the beam must have kept me from bleeding out, I must have lost concioussness from the bloodloss when I was freed. I act quickly thinking I am lucky enough to be coherent enough to do so. I take my shirt off and tie it as tightly around my leg as possible. My gun, I need my gun, where did it go? I see the shotty laying between me and the front door. The hall was still standing, I force myself to my feet struggling to pick up the gun. I use it as kind of a cain to make it the rest of the way to the front door. It's dangling from only the top hing. I glance to the right just before I reach it and see the living room was a pile of rubble. I catiously peak out the door and see a parade of futuristic militia in the streets. Camoflaged units shimmer as if one entity. I cannot tell where one being begins and the other ends. It’s nearly impossible to make out a profile of an individual. They sprint up and down the street with hell machines following behind I can’t make out any of their features because of the intense search lights mounted atop of them. Most of the neighborhood destroyed or on fire. Sirens blare and the sky Is dark as it echoes a countinous monstrous growl. My wife and kids where at my sons baseball game with her father. I had returned home early from work and was getting out of the shower when the trembling began. I had just put my shoes on I grabbed my shotgun and was running through the kitchen to the back door... then I woke up trapped. I have to get to my family is all I can think. All I can think is “how?” All I know is that I am pinned down.