This is All For Them, Whenever This Ends

This is All For Them, Whenever This Ends

John Paul Derryberry

I spent three hours attempting to type this blog and during that span had 3/4 of this written. Twice! only to toss up my hands in frustration at 11:30p.m. with heavy eyes and a headache. I angrily clicked "erase all". I elegantly had written about muses, inspiration, and focus and how those things change for different people and throughout life. Something was missing, the words rang hollow. I shuffled off to bed at midnight, frustrated, with writer's block and a tight time-frame to finish this week's Sunday Night with John.

I had hoped for seven hours of sleep, but my girls only gave me five. Blurry-eyed and chugging coffee to stay focused on our new, ever-moving, two one-year-olds, I realized what was missing from my unproductive writing session. Yes, I may have been word-smithing about Shakespeare's inspiration, but that is not enough.  The realness of life, the messy emotional roller coaster we are all on, was absent.  Just like I had hoped for more than five hours of sleep last night, I had hoped I would have had more than 14-1/2 years with my father and 17 with Eric. We all know life is messy and has never gone according to the plan in our head.

The fulcrum of my stories, writings, and presentation rests in the confusion of life. How, somehow, many of us create a beautiful mess. Our experiences change our perspectives, behaviors, and forces. My favorite point in my presentations is not a single 7-year-old in the history of the world who mutters, " I want to be a loser, a druggie, a selfish a..hole when older."  Life forces us into impossible decisions, and through perseverance, support from loved ones, factors outside of our control, and just dumb luck, we sometimes make it through those choices. We end up with life at 37 and go, "I didn't expect it to be this grand". Others sit around and examine and think, "I have become a waste". The line between is always thin, between those extremes.

I want my girls to know my line between success and failure was thin as well. My life wasn't easy, and boy was it messy! I want them to understand there could have been a lousy version of John, a guy who made different choices, who would have ended up with the awful parts of my personality driving my decisions. I could be in jail, maybe divorced two times, experiencing crippling depression, possibly dead from suicide. Over the past 20 months, being a father has made me realize this blog, my stories, will be that for my girls. These messy parts of me are archived here. I have passed on my thoughts about versions of myself that were not pretty. I have written about my treatment of people less fortunate, the good, the bad, and the ugly. They will know I loved deeply before but hadn't yet met their mom. They will understand I experienced heartache and caused some as well. They will see my evolution as a human being. My daughters will know I have struggled and continue to struggle with stuff. Heck, they will see my first blogs were terrible, and I got better. They will know I did not get this life on my own.  I have written about people who supported me, loved me, cared for me when I needed it; people who offered me forgiveness when I didn't deserve it, people who laughed with me to heal the pain.

My mess is here for anyone who wants it, and for the long haul it's here for them. And since I started writing and story telling way before they arrived in my life, there is no washing off the grit, the mess. We shouldn't do that for our kids anyway. They will see my writings have become more focused since their arrival. I will explain to them it's because they are my muse, my inspiration.  I've always wanted to make the world a more equitable, just and inclusive society. Now I have two critical reasons to leave the world a better place, Amelia and Greta.

So when this ends, and someday it will, maybe I will move on to another project. I may not be here with you anymore or (gulp) you all will stop reading and inviting me in to tell stories. When it ends, my girls will have a catalog of thoughts, musings, and writings that will show them their dad loved many, fought for many, and grew from many. They can return as they need to, ignore it completely, or skim it as they wish. But it will be here for them, 'cause that's the beautiful part about this mess, finding people who are always there for you.