all in, all out

some people will never understand how it's so easy for me to make huge decisions on a whim, throw away everything i have for something i don't. it's never easy, closing your eyes, throwing your weight into it and running blind. i mean, i've learned a lot in these twenty four years but i won't pretend i have all the answers. truly, i have none. i only know what i do because it works for me. but here's my secret. it doesn't work just as often, if not more, than it does. i've been built up only to be let down and everyone around me could see it coming and warned me and did everything they could to stop me. but they couldn't. you see, people say a lot of things about the kind of man i used to be, have become and will continue to try to be someday, but the best compliment i've ever been paid is that im unstoppable when i set my mind to something. being incredibly competitive, i rarely lose. what has changed over the years, though, is what matters to me most. it's not the wins or the losses, i'm learning. it's about the score. it's about how in it you were or weren't. it's about how hard you fought for what you wanted. that's pretty easy to say when you win but you should learn to embrace the same when you don't. sure, i've lost, i've been hurt, i've been broken and lost and lost everything. but i've loved and helped and built and gained so much more than that. there was a girl i knew once, SO. i was never in love with her but i loved her, and that was new to me. in the thick of it all, she taught me more about myself and the world and what matters than any class i'd taken or teacher or professor i'd ever had. and the lesson came five years late, maybe, but it's still the same. i know what it's like to look someone in the eye who has wrecked your life and taken a torch to your heart and offer them a second chance. i know what it's like to feel betrayed and hurt and broken but still get up off the ground, get back in the ring, go eye to eye and fight for what's right. when you've been there and seen and felt that, you learn it's never too late to fight for what matters most, no matter how heavily the odds favor the other side. and that's a lesson that's just not in the books. all in or all out, i've probably let down as many people as i've impressed. all i can hope is that, at the end of the day, i'll have helped more people than i've hurt, i'll have loved more than i've lost, i'll have truly changed the world around me and not taken the passive stand that leaves most people beaten down and blown off in the wind. all in or all out, it's just how i live my life. i follow my heart and trust that it is as god made it. all in or all out, it's just me. this is stephen churchill. if you're reading this, thanks for sticking around.