You are beautiful...no, really.

Often people often ask me how I came from the streets of Detroit to where I am today. Retired from an incredibly successful career in the Navy, running a company with my gorgeous girlfriend (who LOVES me), and be blessed with so many people that love, and graciously receive my love and trust in return? This is actually an easy question to answer.

I changed who I was. What the heck does that even mean you may ask? It means this, I had to change who I was on the inside, and more than who I was on the outside. I was so preoccupied with what people saw of me, I was ignoring who I perceived in the mirror. I was abusing the most precious relationship I had, the relation with myself. I was always quick to anger, lashed out at people, and even insulted others because I was internally ashamed. I was ashamed because all I could ever see in the mirror was this dirt-poor kid, who was ghetto as they come. I did great in school, but quit at the eleventh hour and did not graduate high school. I bet you didn’t know that, did you? Don’t worry I went on to college and got myself one of those fancy schmancy degrees, currently working on the nest one.

I will tell you that the brain works a little slower these days. I am very intelligent. This is not a boast, but a fact. It took me years to come to terms with it in-spite of the evidence before me over the years. I was inducted into the who’s who Among American High School Students; which only 5 % of the student population can get inducted, I scored 130 on an intelligence test, not genius or anything, but respectable. Yet, because of my hate for myself I stagnated my potential for years. Years that I could not get back. In short I suffered from depression. Major depression. It stems from experience I will not disclose here on this forum. Not to mention being diagnosed with A.D.D. for good measure. Needless to say, I used humor to keep people at bay. I would study psychology like I was paid a million dollars to do it. I needed to see what was wrong with me, why was I the way I was?! One day, I was sitting on the deck of the ship, and I was looking out into the ocean just as the sun was coming up over the horizon. The effect was a beautiful pinkish-rose haze. The salt smell in the air and the waves lapping against the hull, and a warm breeze dancing across the air. It hit me, like a 20lb sledge hammer. Don’t ask me why, how, or what I was thinking at the time. All I know is it happened. I need to love my self. What kind of wishy, washy, crap is that?! In other words, I needed to be comfortable in my own skin Folks. I needed to be ok with me. Accepting of me, the exact same way I am of others.

When you accept yourself, you really need to dig deep and truly understand who you are. I can tell you that as long as you’re not running around killing, hurting or have bodies of people hidden somewhere you are fine. Please believe me. If you are anything like me, you have your fair share of mistakes. Who cares! We ALL make mistakes. The media will jump on every tiny thing that people do and blow it so out of proportion it isn’t even funny. It is actually annoying. The world does not work like that. Forgive yourself, truly and completely. One more thing is to please love who you are, it took all of that messed up stuff to make the wonderful person you see in the mirror every day. You can never fly if your too busy weighing yourself down.