Good morning everyone. Today is my anniversary. One year. Not one drink. Not one smoke. Not one mind altering substance. I have abstained from intimate encounters. I have refrained for the most part from publicly expressing my opinion in the form of emails or critical essays regarding cultural phenomena, social facilitation, bullying, politics, and social injustices.
Perhaps now the world is a better place?
This past year, there were very few public displays of personal thought, life circumstance, pictures, or ideas. I stopped writing the book, promoting my brands, networking, and participating in most group and social activities. I began pulling away from friends.
For someone with a compulsive desire to outwardly express myself in every aspect possible, this experience felt miles beyond a miracle, if not radical and revolutionary at times. Yet, through a series of human experiences I felt decidedly placed here.
I turned inward for solace. My Pokemon became my closest allies, carrying me deeper into an introverted chamber where I felt protected, held, and at times consoled.
All the beauty, hardship, overwhelming fulfillment, excruciating loneliness, monumental despair, and unending search for hope became magnified to a degree that felt blinding at times. At some point along the way, I realized for years I no longer experienced myself and what it felt like to have a life of inner value and a spark of conviction.
As a tomboy kid, I was a civil rights and anti-war activist, a radical feminist. I stood up to bullies, and spoke out against injustice. As the years went on, I allowed myself to be silenced. I had conformed in subtle and overt ways societally and within peer groups to the point where I no longer felt comfortable occupying the space inside myself. My mind was a factory of uncontrollable thought, and I wanted out. Living outside myself, didn't seem to be a choice. It appeared to be basic survival by propulsion. I was numb to the mundaneness of the wheel I was on. And unaware that I had become part of the problem.
I cannot pinpoint the exact time when I became one of "The White Walking Dead", but, I have been trying to escape it ever since I can remember. Substances always felt like the friends that would wake me up inside and give me that spark of conviction. But, they always turn on you as anything does when you misuse them.
Thus, I have lived without substances most of my adult life yet, returned to them as I had yet to discover that everlasting and elusive answer to the fine art of living an absolute, unequivocal righteous life.
The process of deconstructing educational, religious, and familial, influences has been more straightforward, than dismantling sociocultural influences. As banal as this sounds, it appears a common thread in modern Western thought that we look outside ourselves for meaning and value. The cliche of keeping up with the joneses is alive and well and exists in subcultures as well. I have been part of them. Awakening to the fact that the systematic assimilation of certain american ideals which are essentially a construct was keeping me dead inside. I had learned to measure my value and self worth by my economic or non economic status, professional success, hardships, friendship circles, bloodline, college, external displays of charity, minority statuses, external acts of kindness, subversive acts, physical attributes, social capital, and perceived performative abilities.
Pokemon take me away!!!!
At one point over the summer, it became obvious and impossible that until I became absolutely nothing to the "outside world" and until the "outside world" became nothing to me, I would not be able to create this righteous life worth staying awake for.
The formidable task began. I started exploring and practicing most aspects of my life and psyche alone in their purest form without external approval or disapproval. I stopped asking for opinions and advice. I stopped telling most people what was going on with me. I wanted to learn what it truly meant to trust, have faith, and know myself. Influence in the form of likes, no likes, comments, no comments, individuals friending and defriending became of no consequence. I wanted myself back, whoever that was.
I began paying the closest attention to my inner life, nature, higher powers, uplifting entertainment, my Pokemon and rescue dogs.
But, finally what really brought me the closest to finding some of the answers was the love of a little boy. He didn't care who I was, what I had done, what I looked like, who I knew, or what I could do for him. We just occupied ourselves with play and loved each other.
It felt like I began existing again and with that I am almost at an end here and am not sure entirely what my point is but I will end saying this:
Somehow, I wish and hope with every part of my being that grace can always come with my words. At times they come out as a group of wasps flying uncontrollably out of my mouth. Not so eloquent, sending me or the other running, and fearful of coming close again.
I wish more than anything that I had the ability to write something so staggeringly beautiful it could take away all the harm I have ever caused anyone, save the wild horses, stop the pipeline, end sex slavery, bring justice and equality to all, and stop all the hatred in the world.
Until then, i'll keep trying.