MAY 25, 2025: “The Anchor” …

When this question was posed on my writing forum today, “What is the biggest burden of your life?”, my answer was instantaneous and all but jumped out of my skin:

Perhaps amongst the heaviest burdens in my life is the one that as an empath I feel compelled, if not psychologically hardwired to bear when it comes to all but SCREAMING to others I see carrying all the heavy stuff that they refuse to just PUT DOWN!
{See Also :: “Heavy“}

You can say it all fades away in time, but this grave is a ladder that I must climb! Since the day that you left, I can’t seem to move on. All the weight that I felt, will I sink ’til I’m gone? THE ANCHOR!

Look, I don’t know who needs to hear this right now, but truth being told, although the lifelong effects of grief in every form do tend to fade away in time … be it grief for the dead, the living, or all the tangible things a person can lose … just six feet beneath every grave is the first rung of a ladder that you must climb up before you can move on – BUT – you’ll never make it up that ladder and out of the endless amounts of burial plots we humans dig for ourselves unless and until you CHOOSE to let go of the chain that keeps you anchored to that unhallowed ground below.

Remember …

No weight of any kind can just jump into your hands, wrap itself around your neck, or straddle itself across your back. YOU have to agree to either pick it up or allow yourself to be burdened with it. Do you understand this? It is CRUCIAL to your human survival, mental wealth, and growth that you understand this! Make the choice to drop that anchor and unburden yourself!

I have long believed that the truth of just about anything can be found in all the questions you aren’t allowed to ask. A more sobering truth, however, is that often the person who is refusing to allow “the questions” we so desperately need the answers from is the one we face in the mirror. With that being said, I cannot encourage anyone who’s searching for the reasons they’re sinking to the abyss strongly enough to do that most important work of all, which is to sit with yourself in solitude and have what just may be the most important conversation of your life.

Who, what, when and where do I need to let go of so that I can finally learn to breathe again?

(ps)

IF I CAN DO IT, YOU CAN DO IT! Trust me when I say I’ve have had my share of “heavy shit” to carry in my head, heart, and soul, but it wasn’t until I DECIDED to do the work, ask myself “the questions”, then drop all the weight that I finally started living freely and became my OWN “master“. No one else could have done it for me … not even God Himself! It’s called free will for a reason, people, and one will only ever be “anchor free” when they CHOOSE TO BE! Just sayin’.

Tyson Liberto

MAY 22, 2025: “Today @ 8:12AM!” …

Dear Me,

Oh, how this epic roller coaster of a life I get to ride on never fails me! Five years, six months, and one whole day later, and leave it to that ride or die of mine and his bittersweet, cryptic, and powerful “music thing” messages to bring one of THE most important Diary entries I’ve ever written full circle by sending me THE perfect song to finally pair with it!

Meanwhile, and dare I remind you …

This is no longer just our communion. The worms of our flesh have turned with all the sacrifices you once swallowed, but now the once cold blood from the cup is warm again. It wasn’t so evil, as much as it was hunger … this body and the bones I picked clean. I built that cage I was trapped in with her, but guess what? I REMEMBERED WHERE I’D HIDDEN THE KEY! All of the reasons for me to get by became a need to get “high”, then pulled me down into an abyss of a life that was no fucking life whatsoever! The trick was always for me to get out of my own skin, but the beast had been calling for me all the while and slowly assuming control. I once truly was a taxidermy sewn into my own soul, but THESE days? NO MORE SLEEPING … only STAYING WIDE AWAKE in this dream that’s allowed me to get out of my own skin, because I was only ever as sick as the secrets I kept within! Those days are gone now, though, aren’t they? I’m so fucking proud of you, me! I LOVE YOU!

APRIL 27, 2025: “The FIGHT Club!” …

“It didn’t kill me … but something changed.
A piece of me lost … forever estranged.
I walked away … yet not the same.
A shadowed soul … a quiet flame.
That day took part of who I was …
left me searching, without a cause.
I carry on … but feel the void.
A heart once whole … now destroyed.
It didn’t end me … but I’m not whole.
An echo remains deep in my soul.
I’m here … I breathe … but truth denied …
A part of me that day quietly died.”
{Author Unknown}

You’ve oft heard it said, What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!” Indeed, I wholeheartedly agree! HOWEVER, what prolly also should be said literally every time someone utters those ever so famous “seven words” is:

“… but not before it literally fucking BREAKS you first”!

I’ve had the, err, “privilege” of one of these “falling to your knees and screaming” moments three times now. The first was more of an internal raging scream at that moment my nugget of a daughter slipped into the next room, headed to The Brighter Side Of Grey, and flew off with a piece of my soul. The second was that night back in 1999 when one of the less than a handful of men I’ve ever truly loved hopped on his Harley and rode head-first into a brick wall going 90mph with no helmet. The third was on August 23, 2019, when the police chief of Parker, Texas walked into the hospital where my daughter was also shattering to tell me they’d found my husband dead in his car courtesy of the hollow point he’d put in his own head:

No, I don’t think God was laughing that day or that He laughs on any of the days we spend facing the wrath of His angels. In fact, I’m certain that He was on that hospital wailing WITH me and holding me tight as every shred of what I’d come to believe as truth turned out to be the devil’s lie. God DID give me wings, but it was MY job to learn to fly. I had to face not just Zack’s, but my own “devil in the mirror” before I could ascend to the sky.
(“I’m Alright, Thanks For Asking.”)

So, yeah, I’m still here and none of those moments killed me, but here’s to that sorry ole devil for trying, right? (#IMWINNING, lol!) I guess what I’m saying is that if you haven’t had one of these moments yet, God love you. No, seriously.

Even more seriously, though, while this, err, “fight club” of sorts really really stinks and the membership fee sucks massive BALLS, know that once you get your card you’ll be welcomed and embraced by the rest of us who’ve gone toe to toe with everything that was meant to break us and lived to tell about it! Until then, take NOTHING and NO ONE for granted, please. Life is precious and so is your mental wealth, so here’s hoping that when (and not if) your time finally comes to hit the floor and shatter, you’ll find every bit of power, grace, fortitude, and resilience hiding within yourself to join the ranks of us who’ve SURVIVED (and even THRIVED) “post-mortem”. And oh, yah, one more thing …

“#MEMENTOMORI“!

I’m Alright, Thanks For Asking.”

APRIL 13, 2025: “The Voices & The Caterpillar!” …

… meanwhile, no matter where I go, what I do, or who in or out of this world I’m doing it with, which (ps), is usually just me, myself, and MUAH, there’s always at least one of the following sages musing my psyche:

A musician or a poet (which are often one in the same) screaming, serenading, or waxing poetically into my ears;

An author inscribing their impeccable words all over the cords that pull at my heart;

A Roman, Greek, or worldly philospher from centuries gone by ‘neath the lamppost in my mind whispering their wisdom of ages;

An artist leaving pieces of their masterpiece, signed with love and hanging in every corridor of the sacred temple that is myself;

The spirit and prayers of the long-departed kings, queens, survivors, and conquerors of my past who never let me forget who I am, whose ashes I’ve risen from, and that one day I’LL be an ancestor, too;

Or some random, beautiful stranger dropping THE most precious petals over every surface that envelops me that none of you can see.

Meanwhile, while yes these “voices in my head” are, indeed, legendary (not the least of which is my own), THE Voice that greets me first and foremost every morning I’m blessed to arise again always beats my inner voice to the punch before I can commandeer it and screw things up by forgetting not to take the brevity of myself and life in general too seriously. This includes any attempts at “talking myself” into not just getting in my own way, but in the way of others via my empathetic propensity to meddle with the “natural course of things” (… and thus the real story of the caterpillar)!

And so, with that, “Bye everyone, it’s me, CAT (and my voices)”! Here’s hoping that you, too, are nourishing yourself with all the very best running commentaries and internal dialogues this magnificent collective has to offer! Please now enjoy this clip below of me and my voices in their most every day state of ridiculousness, joy, laughter, and refusal to not just be ME …

APRIL 27, 2024: “NO! We Ain’t Gonna Take It!” …

The Quora question was:

… and my unfiltered asshole

TRUTH BOMB of an answer was:

Lol, the “no contact” thing with adult children today is the beautiful, powerful, collective result of an entire faction of adults who are now embracing their mental wealth and the accompanying new and improved relationship tools acquired as a result of the former generational stigmas about mental health advocacy and therapy. Long gone are the days when all them dirty little family secrets, poisons, and cyclically toxic patterns that had been gathering like moss on the proverbial pebble that started rolling downhill and passing down infections since probably the beginning of time! (Geesh! THANKS A LOT “Cave Grandpa and Grandma”!)

Imagine instead humanity-wide shift, if not earth quaking of broken children turned enlightened and healed adults who have bound themselves together like a rogue faction of Mad Max-men against the former “powers that were” singing together like twisted yet still standing upright sisters and brothers the words to this blast from 1984:

“We’ve got the right to choose it! There ain’t no way we’ll lose it! This is our life … this is our song! We’ll fight the powers that be .. just don’t pick our destiny ’cause you don’t know us! You don’t belong! Oh, you’re so condescending! Your gall is never ending! We don’t want nothin’ … not a thing from you! Your life is trite and jaded … boring and confiscated! If that’s your best, your best won’t do! We’re not gonna take it! NO! We ain’t gonna take it! We’re not gonna take it … ANYMORE!”

Do you get what I’m saying, people? Some say oblivion is bliss, but I say FUCK all that blissful oblivion! Being brave enough to finally open up your eyes and stare into the wreckage you availed from, as well sometimes the eyes of the monsters standing over that wreckage that some of us had to call “parents” and say,

Umm, yah! FUCK THIS SHIT and FUCK YOU, TOO, “mommy” or “daddy“! I neither signed up for OR deserved ANY of these heaping piles of bullshit you forced me to literally choke on while you were ramming them down my throat with those fists full of poison, so, DUECES! I’m OUT! K, bye bye!

And so, with that, indeed it’s true that if your adult kid doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore, YES, it is your fault! Didja hear me? YOUR fault! It’s YOUR fault! It’s ALL your fucking fault! Now, stop you’re damn crying like a Jean-Claude Van Damn effing victim and either fix what you broke or swallow this truth serum and STFU about it! But hey, what do I know, right? Lol! Oh, and one last thing: HAPPY 35th BIRTH MONTH to this actual “Mad Max-men” of a song!