One morning I awoke and committed to making things different.  I would do everything different, everything better than I had ever done before.  I felt good before trying.

I tried, I really did. I tried and I failed.  But I didn’t fail to try.

So I set off on a different path and just decided to be a better person and try to go out of my way to be nicer to those I knew and those I was meeting for the first time.

I tried, I really did but it did not yield the results that I had hoped for.  Saturdays were still dateless.

I wondered what it was that seemed to work so well for others while not much of anything seemed to work for me.  So I thought and I thought.  As long as there is an idea left with even just a little hope behind it then there is still a chance.

I decided then to get involved, to come out of the shadows and put my name in for anything that I could possibly handle, to open up and really be part of the team.

That kinda worked, but just for a while, just until I challenged something and was essentially thrown from the team.  For them, trying was not enough. You had to come along to get along.

I knew who I was and what I was and all of the good that I had to offer.  All those field days with me and just a couple other dads.  All those contacts with teachers and coaches to establish a relationship.  All those contributions of time and money to causes and events.  The attempts to join in to neighborhood events and get closer to the neighbors.  All the times I helped folks around their houses or helped them to pack and move, later never again hearing from them at all.  The hours planning the right courses for my kids, the paths that they should follow in this sport or that class or that musical pursuit or this club or that friend ship.  The faith and trust I placed in others who had no such capacity themselves, at least not for someone such as me.

But I guess in the end I am not much good.  I am left for dead when ripe for living and presumed missing when front and center.  I am invisible.

I have accepted all of this as fact and processed it as truth.  Life is as it was meant to be for all those involved.

Your time will come if you just keep trying, they have always said to me.  Or maybe they said it to someone else and I just overheard, thinking in the process that someone had cared enough about me to care about me at all.

But there are good men and there are great men and then there are men like me.  Or maybe there really isn’t.  Maybe I’m all alone.

Finally made it all the way to unique.  Finally made it to a place I can call my own.  Finally feel at peace and at home.

Finally time to pack up my own house and get along for now I know that my time has also almost come, my time is almost here.

It’s a shame that I’ll be gone when it finally does.