Brighter Diamonds on Haight-Ashbury

I moved to San Francisco 3 weeks ago and am filled with gratitude. The way that took me here has been winding, filled with adventure, and absolute heartache. But I’ve come to realize that we are the ones holding ourselves back from our horizons.

11/16/2021 Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco.

We block our light because we don’t believe in our own brilliance. We are more than cobwebbed echoes floating through eternal space. We are brighter diamonds, sparkling in the deep night sky. ✨✨

Love on Haight, San Francisco

We are vast beings beyond our physical bodies and minds. We are consciousness born anew every day. It’s startling to witness & difficult to understand. True being can only be lived wild and unfettered- out beyond our finite comprehension.

Freedom feels dangerous because we’ve been conditioned to fear the strength of our own dreams. The ways to awakening are before us at every moment.

In each attempt to create the best version of yourself you actually become that person. Through every act of conscious co-creation we bring Earth into greater expansion.

For we too will one day be buried, and all of this will have become so beautiful.

In that final moment what will your last thought be?

Perhaps we are here simply to guide each other along the conversation of life. Pieces and people come together when you are ready for them to be put into place. Inspiration arises organically when you surrender to your dreams. Walking every arduous step led you to now. 🔥

All of us is everything and everything is us. Separation is an illusion. Nothing is greater than being the love that changed you. Everything which came before was preparing the way to your calling. Become your full potential. That is how the light gets in. Go to where your destiny is taking you. That is how you change the world. 🖤🌈🌏❤️✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼✊🏻🥰🙏✨

Setting the Record Strait

It’s no small irony that April Fool’s marks both my 2nd year of life on the American West Coast; and the closing of my chapter in Portland & the job in social work I started two years ago, today.

It’s a fitting reminder that things aren’t quite what they seem at first. For a fool’s heart can lead you onto paths of great adventures, broad exhilarations, and deep despairs.

Tomorrow I leave for Mt. Shasta and a 2 week trip to California. I find myself being beckoned back to this legendary mountain. I’m reminded of the surreality of an experience that occurred there late last September, within riddles and stone labyrinths.

In the wake of the California wildfires, and amidst several personal and societal devastations, I received a message from something higher than myself. Thankful for reasons and second chances to fly.

The mountain itself was parched but unscathed from the flames which had vociefrously consumed so many of its neighboring forests. The scorching of the West seemed symbolic of the combustible state of America. George Floyd couldn’t breathe when he was murdered by police.

Many populations across the West breathing in masks and the worst air quality in the world. The tyrannies of systemic injustice and police brutality were punctuated by Covid, and continued collapsing of civil liberties and crises.

I was sat in meditation upon a plateau full of rock labyrinths in the sacred heart of mysterious Mt. Shasta. Asking the Universe for answers, as always, and waiting for a sign that I was on my path. Knowing this time I was not the crafter of my life disaster. This time the fuck- up truly was not my fault.

Like our embattled country, My heart had been healing from twin aftermaths: the events surrounding my first book. And more intensely the accompanying fallout from being drugged by gay white supremacists after a Black Lives Matter rally in June 2020. Yeah, I know how crazy it sounds.

I looked up from my perch and saw the answer in the form a dark long-haired woman walking 1000 feet away, along the horizon of Mount Shasta. Little did I realize pieces of my future would soon come clearer into view.

Perhaps we are briefly guided by signs from another realm. Maybe our trials double as secret Talisman readying us on the next leg of our journeys. And as I set out on a new one, it’s time to clarify my truth which has been misconstrued. It’s finally time to set the record strait.

Rainbow Connection CDMX

Let us give thanks then- instead of to a nation, but appreciating unto each other and loved ones who came before. Let us be thankful for the abundant beauty, biodiversity, sustainable resources, justice spread out in every movement of our planet spinning on an axis- as fractured as it all may seem.

It is from the agnostics, shamans, queers, the “reprobate” of polite society- I have felt at peace with. The awakened, pagan people, inner-city yogis, backpacking explorers, Indigenous spiritualists, those seekers of the divine mysteries, the humble-hearted outcasts are the ones whom I instantly love.

This shaman gave blessings to all without judgement or persuasion of conversion. Love was given without a conversation. In the process to unconditional love- there is radical forgiveness. When we give empathy and understanding to those we deem not worthy of forgiveness- we bring grace incarnate into the world.

For we are still bound to promises

made with those borne of this land.

The promises of your ancestors “Come, now!”

Before we betrayed traded hands.

In achieving equity for all, the co-creative diverse cooperation of humankind will push us father into echelons of brilliance & sustainability. For the porches of our hearts are where we always meet one another; beyond superficial labelings like racial ethnicity, citizenship, or time.

We are united in the pursuit of human rights. And when we achieve justice for and with another person we have seen and honored the image of god who is represented by their being.

Every day is an open chance to live with all

of your possible futures before you.

Nothin’ But Time part 1

It’s almost been one year since embarking on the eloquent adventure/disaster that changed the landscape of my life. I keep coming back to Mount St. Helens- a mountain who is no stranger to spewing new effigies upon the land.

It’s the geographically closest and most accessible of the great 5 mountain peaks of I now live by. The gem of the PNW mountain range has now been reduced to 2/3 of its original height and glory. Magma began filling the mountain increasing its mass for a year and eventually reaching 400 yards a day prior to the explosion. How oddly relatable.

Mt. Saint Helens Before & after 1980 eruption

The pressure rose in St. Helens’ until that fateful day in 1980 when this sleeping giant hurled lava, pulverized rock, a side of the mountain outwards, killing 57 people, melting several glaciers and created the largest mudslide ever recorded.  Calamities millions of years in the making only took seconds to raze foundations entire ecosystems and collapse empires.

Yet 40 years later this mountain is now replenishing itself. Life is returning with hundreds of new habitats, ponds, and waterways in this ancient place.  

Which version of Mt. Saint Helens is the real mountain?  A gem reduced to ashes. An antagonistic foe looming in the distance biding time until its next eruption? A ticking-time bomb drowsing until the pressure builds to a crescendo and Saint Helens wildly flings destruction to all in its vicinity? A haven for life, a peak which glacier water flows down providing the source of many rivers? A mother, a place of beauty, a liability a home?

Are you the you who had it all together or are you now the person that is left after blasting your life into fragments? Are you something else altogether?Each perspective is valid but binary conclusions fail us so much of the time. The mountain, the aftermath, the you before and after are all of those things the good, the ugly, and the authentic self.

The volcano where I was unknowingly rapid cycling through a manic-depressive breakdown is also the mountain that has brought me back to life. A cataclysm of eroding glaciers within oneself.

Just as this mountain has done countless times over the centuries. Re-shaping and forging the land through destruction and setting the stage for new creations. Sometimes caused by brutal natural calamities, at the hands of others, at the hands of yourself.

Nature vs. nature is an antiquated paradigm. For It is within nature we find nourishment and true being as we have since time began.

The more we connect to the Earth the more we begin to connect to our truest selves. The false self begins to peel away the false self the egoic nature craving and never at peace.

You realize aspects of your personal identity – the job, the relationships, the home, coping mechanisms, habits, and patterns of self were aspects of the false-self. How many of us cling to externalities to validate and explain who we are?

The egoic nature craves and screeches to satiate desires- to fulfill the idealized version of yourself. Buddha said, suffering is caused by desire. Suffering is also caused by looking for things outside of us to determine our self-worth.

The dizzying thrill of an unrealized manic high was exhilarating. I felt like a rockstar. Everything all my dreams were within reach and anything was possible. Nothing and no one could stop me. Mania is the closest thing to being a superhero and a supervillian at the same time.

Mania mirrors some narcissistic qualities. Writing a book that partially included my life was misinterpreted by some as overly ambitious or egotistical. Those who judged my first book as a vanity affair didn’t even crack the cover.

Yet my personal worth began to be increasingly tied to social media, gaining followers to build a writing platform, and with each gain I began validating myself and experiences with things outside of myself. But mania causes a sort of inner Stockholm Syndrome daring you into climbing stratosphere’s into mountain peaks you would not dare to travel in your right mind.

And when it all stops and you’re left to confront the emptiness and then to build your life the way you really want it. With the first step, the first trickles of snowmelt you begin again. If you’re still alive you still have time to forge the life you want.

When you’ve reached bottom the only way is up from there. We finally start seeking out the people, places, activities & thoughts that are good for us the more we believe in our own worth.

Sometimes it takes losing everything to find who and what is really worth fighting for. And eventually time will reveal the things, the people, the mountains left standing after the dust has settled. You’ll be surprised about how much remains and how much space you have to gain.

Running Up That Hill

She spoke out of the side of her mouth on a sunny Seattle morning,  “I lost 4 kids to the state. I was the one who wasn’t supposed to make it, but I did. It took two decades and finally my fifth child to get it all together, and now I help parents who are in the exact place I was in. I went to rehab and all the classes. I did everything it took to get my son back. I was clean and sober but still toxic inside for a long while.” #relatable

A room full of social workers sat quiet and stunned by this woman’s incredibly powerful story. Her vulnerability was buoyed by the steely strength reflected in the angular ridges of her sharp cheek bones. She was made of true grit, borne with cards stacked against her, and full of personal tragedies scattered throughout her life.

She didn’t talk about many generations of societal oppression, decades of prejudice, inequality, poverty, denial of rights, betrayed promises, lack of resources that are disgustingly common to so many Americans & people around the world.

And If she only could, would she make a deal with god? Would she want to shout profanities to the mountains too? How many of us have done the same only to hear the resounding shrill of well-meaning Christians but not the voice of god. The void of silence is deafening. At least it is quantifiable. As much as it sucks at least silence is real.

The hardest part about social work is that there are just too many underlying factors that have brought families to their lowest points. There is often a lack of knowledge of the resources available not to mention the Manila and brown folder bureaucracies sidestepping the way to freedom.

Parents and caregivers are often depicted and treated as villains– when in truth they are often using substances to self-medicate, to just get through the day, to function in a world that sees their disabilities and mistakes as another reason they are unsafe, unfit, worthless, unsalvageable. There are those who have committed unspeakable acts against vulnerable children and who should have no access to their children.

Washington has a ton of resources available to aid parents and children- related to housing, mental health, medical care, counseling, dietary needs, summer camps, and programs that work to strengthen parental skills and personal development. The strengthening of our most vulnerable populations should never be seen as a handout. There are millions of people who have not been afforded opportunities that so many of us have taken for granted because we lived in two-parent households and graduated from school districts that reflected a certain tax bracket- or those of us who barely made that echelon and have been trying to keep up with the Joneses and the Richers, who often live a very guarded and gilded lifestyle- putting the blinders on to the plights of people living across town and sometimes just across the street.

But now I have felt the harsh judgement from people who used to be closer than family. The darkness enclosed like a coffin, like an abusive lover holding you down along with your shame. And then I held myself in the lair of guilt and self-recriminations. I will make sure my clients don’t go it totally alone.

I’m the one who made concessions and apologies but have not gotten any in return. I didn’t hold certain people accountable for being there for me when I needed them. I let them off the hook now. This bitterness does not serve me. The reminiscing over the wounding only infuriates the healing. It takes a while to get your life back on track. Especially when you’re the one responsible for the fuck up.

Part 2: A deal with God

Not gonna lie, this transition has been amazing, but quite solitary; it’s not terrible it’s just different than I imagined. It’s also just the beginning.

I had been living in patterns of devolution for months. A persona unrecognizable to others who knew me well. I hit upon a rage that had never been expressed and a volatility of shockwaves that rippled beyond the bounds or intentions of my person. It all had to burn away before I would have accepted a bipolar diagnosis and that I needed help- that I needed to change some ways of living.

Moving is an inherently solo journey- one I’m so fortunate to be complaining about. Things could be seriously so much worse. I’m very thankful they are not. I’ve been lucky to have a lot of amazing people & friends physically present in daily life.

I wish could take back and redo a lot of last summer. I wish I was over it all. Most days I am. For awhile it was all I could think about. Now I’ve accepted that it’s all part of the ebb & flow of healing.

Sometimes you wonder if you’re alone because you want to be or b/c you’re the problem. Maybe it’s your time to “work on things,” but when does the working cease? When is someone finally worthy enough?

The annoyingly spot-on answer- You’re the only 1 who can determine that for yourself. And in case you want to argue spoiler alert- the fact that humans and this Earth even exists is a 1 in a quadrillion chance miracle. *don’t @ me on that math. 😂

A client told me if he had known what would have happened he’d have done it differently. Wouldn’t we all? He strangely didn’t seem completely remorseful couldn’t figure out why at the time. Then it hit me- he’s accepted the reality of awful circumstances that led him here and apart from his family. I’m grateful the stakes have never been that high for me.

This current journey into social work is much different than it was in Texas for many reasons. I now know what it’s like to feel out of control, embarrassed, regretful, alone, sober, forgiven, in treatment, and finally becoming the best version of oneself.

The ones who have seen the error and changed course- those are the ones who are worth fighting for, and deserve the resources to get their life on track, to get their children back.

How many times have you regretted an action and let it play out over and over in your mind? You remember the events that led up to certain actions and thoughts. Your body revs with anxiety as you relive the event in your mind. When recounting or thinking about a trauma the human body cannot qualify whether that action occurred in the past or present.

Whatever you focus upon will also reflect in your body as your neck tenses, heartbeat increases, etc. In essence we are reliving that past trauma every time we talk about it which often causes involuntary physical reactions. It feels like a haunting at first but distance from a problem or a helps one to see things w/ perspective. Never underestimate the power of your breath in a chaotic situation & therapy to address everything else.

It’s true you can’t win every time. You can’t save everyone and there are some relationships not worth saving (which is tough b/c I’m a life long friender.) My sister gave me the gift of being present while I confronted the personal beasts raging in my head and heart. She gave me the gift of family. My dad gave the gift being there without me even knowing it. So many friends have done the same.

All we really need is someone who will stand with us between the raucous & silent phase of darkness. Western skies are filled to the brim with nights made of stranger diamonds.

There is a beauty in new beginnings- wildflowers blooming in wind. Fragile miracles embedded in the tomb of dirt and earth. We are plants bursting through soil. That initial thrust must have been initially painful, but so worth it now that everything has bloomed. Trust the process for if you are trying- the harvest will eventually bring its bounty.

 

Avalanche Gardener or The Slow Migration of Change

The slow migration of change sometimes begin within waves which look like endings. Or in this case snow tracks on a northern slope that suddenly descend into hardy dirt paths- overlooked & abhorred for their non-eloquence.

But sometimes the dirt is where you find yourself standing. There’s nothing particularly pretty about soil on its own. Wonder if the first gardener decided to plant flowers and shrubbery because they got tired of seeing a bunch of brown earth and manure everywhere.

Sometimes the dirt and the shit is the only way to intentionally plant blackberries, ferns, a life that will give back and grow.

I got tired of putting up with other people’s collective shit so I left them and left a state that I had never really felt home in. Yet in the barrenness I found piles of my own bullshit and self-serving actions.

One good thing about breaking down in private is that left alone for long enough you start to really see your own toxic behaviors and ways of thinking that led you to act in ways you didn’t think you could. Sometimes you find the reason for your behaviors are linked to a specific abuse or unaddressed mental and emotional health issues. No matter how you got there your issues and setbacks, your faults and your traumas are your responsibility.

You find out who you really are when you finally accept exactly where you’re at. Real change comes when you accept the shit heap garbage person you can be without hating yourself for it. You must love yourself enough to fight for the good parts about your self and life.

It’s even easier still to track the cessation of a habit with apps that count the seconds, weeks, and years since that last sip, smoke, or snack. What about the last beating, the last puff, who measures the distance between god and the last time you stepped in church? The last time you saw your parent, your lover, your ex best friend?

I was the most stable I’d ever been at the onset of last summer- or so it seemed. You can travel the ends of the Earth and still not know wholly who you are until you’re too broken to keep running. Until you finally ask for help. Maybe that’s what this amazing fucked-up year; all these breakdowns and breakthroughs were about.

The heart and mind are each our greatest evolutionary inheritances. Without which we would be relegated to live like our first ancestors in tightly bound clans around caves and bands of forested rivers. But there is a wild peace in the barrenness. You learn who you really are when stripped from luxuries, designer brands, designer boyfriends, and endless cars & credit. I never really employed any of those for my own.

Travel and the search for authentic people, the wild experiences, raw expanses of landscape and personal truths are what set me & my finances constantly forward then back. Hopefully I’m richer for the wear rather than the other way around.

Your people are your modern-day tribe. Instagram stories are postmodern oral histories passing through 24 hours of dedicated finite screen time. We used to spend those days together. Why do our callings and wanderings leave us spread out so far apart from the people we most want to be with?

The college nights raged with best friends in glorious abandon? Those nights out on southern sun scorched patios filled with drunken laughter and chain smoked conversations? We often don’t realize how lucky we were when our best friends, our family, our lives were nearby.

The constant irony is that we’re hardly ever present for our lives as they’re being lived until the friendship, the love affair, until the blissful time is over. We lament because it feels like things will never be right again. So easy to forget when you’re living it that the Earth is supposed to go dormant in winter.

“A soil, exhausted by the long culture of Pagan empires, was to lie fallow for a still longer period.”

The fallow period of the soul lasts not forever. This ending is just a different knot inside beginnings.

Feet stomped through snow lead closer to new lands with every aching step. It felt like I’d never be happy again. I am almost back to my usual self, trimmed up and a bit more quiet around the edges.

Behind the Sun

I wasn’t ready for things I once wanted. It’s a weird sigh of freedom An aloof relief comes after losing.

Drink alone from your inner gourd. Reach out; Stretch past the belly of your breaking.

Shove your nude emperors out into the forests Out of your front doors. Holographic victories Fall hollow & not at all.

We want the life that sticks together. You found life in the back pair of wings.

Silence gave me room to give. Love is mana we must breathe.

I saw the world in golden ringlets. Will you grasp things behind the sun each & every one,

with me?

Within You Without You

Joseph Campbell explains the hero’s journey as a circular cycle of polarities common to all human beings. The call to adventure spurs one to leave their home and travel into the wild. The hero encounters many obstacles on the journey to their destiny.

Traversing through the dark roads filled with various real and imagined terrors & foes one begins to doubt their calling. Some even abandon their quest altogether and question the gods and themselves for a way out. Clarity comes during a period of introspection and acceptance of mistakes and losses which have occurred.

Eventually help is given in the form of “supernatural” or subtle aid enabling the hero to return to their goal much wiser and reinvigorated than before. Each one of us is the hero in our personal narratives. There are many years have some have lived the song of the downtrodden. Some never get a second chance or become to afraid to venture out again. Some succeed and arrive at their destination immediately (i.e. Billie Eilish & all overnight sensations.)

For most of us mortals it takes a longer more arduous route to get there. We are being forged while in the inky darkness.

Chipping away chunks of marble eventually reveal the intended sculpture.

But we are not marble. We are beings of light in corporeal forms. The chisel strips away excess on an internal level.

The work happens in our hearts our minds; in quiet corners where we cannot objectively peer deeply nor can others wholly understand. We are even mysteries to ourselves.

This start over in Washington state feels surreal and is very welcomed. It takes a while for the new normal to set in. I find myself wanting to go back to a sense of normalcy, but there is only going forward- at least in the traditional Newtonian sense. It’s been hard to reconcile certain events that occurred during my recent travels but I have come to accept everything as it is without too much romanticizing or self-critique.

I let the world in on my life and in some ways feel the distance this openness has allowed. Private battles and past challenges have been disclosed in hopes of helping others own their journeys. The one-sided judgments on the other side of the tablet and cell phones are not known yet I have felt the sting of silence too. Vulnerabilities begin to harden the longer they are exposed to the elements of time and social media.

The brightness of the world has dimmed in some ways. The bushy-tailed optimism still intact but more myopic in focus. Broad reaching hope for people to live their truest selves will never diminish in my heart. Despite my own failings & disappointments I still believe that we are good and worthy to be fought for.

I didn’t try hard enough to find a literary editor to publish Break the Violent Fetters. I’m more in the business of build it and they will come than the other way around.

Yet over the past few months, I found there exists a stigma when you release art or self-publish on your own. It’s almost as if self-publishing delegitimized the gravity of my message.

As if these words were not good enough to be traditionally published- which was not the case at all. I just didn’t want to wait upon other people to judge and evaluate my life’s content. I had already lived through the threshing ground of societal judgment. 

Or maybe people felt like I hadn’t lived a hard enough life worthy to write a book about.There are billions of people on this planet that have experienced physically, environmentally, emotionally harrowing events in their lives. I speak of an experience that is unfortunately almost stereotypical for LGBTQI+ people throughout all societies and most time periods.

Putting pen to paper about my experience is an honor because so many other people have been silenced and never given the opportunities to share or live their truth. My first book is for those who haven’t gotten to tell their story and for those still figuring out their own.

We are not fair judges to ourselves but what happens when others are also unfairly judging you? The most shocking aspects of it all were people forgot to look at my heart as I blew up in minor crises for miles across America. I don’t recognize aspects of the person I was last summer/fall while in the throes of mania. My sister told me that I won’t ever be able to separate the manic behaviors and my true self. She’s right. They are bound to one another in a chemical compound that was its own venomous form. That also means I don’t have to stay the same.

The personal toll taken in telling this story is still yet to be determined but at this point I don’t think I would do it again. At least not in the way this all unfolded. Sometimes I cringe when I think about certain personal details I’ve allowed to disseminate into the masses, my friend and peer group, people I will never meet on various ends of the world and its wide web.

The dismantling of a life in progress at the height of its young successes has been hard. I was going to buy a house. That was the original plan, but this wanderlust would not be tied down or settled. I still find the wanderlust fighting and resisting the urge to stay. But maybe my stubbornness wouldn’t have allowed it any other way.

I was not ready to settle down until the pieces all fell apart. What is it in our wanderlust hearts that keeps us wanting more? This call to adventure is not so much a running away from problems as it is a hopeful, somewhat nebulous, expansion we are running towards. The saboteur and hero are one in the same. Dualities cannot exist apart from the other. Within you Without you.

It is tempting to judge yourself and present situation while you’re in the midst of a shit show. How can you see anything else when your present existence, one you’ve worked so hard to create backfires and your left with scarce remnants of what once was. Some friendships left in fragments. Others joined in the sea of so many little regrets.

Writing about the psychological, societal, and emotional chains I had broken in turn broke me all over again. It’s a cruel irony. It has spawned a new slew of regrets. I’ve wanted to press the reset button on my life so many times this past year. There was a way out of it all that kept calling. An unholy echo bidding me to an undug grave, yet again. I hope that call has been silenced for the last time.

You can’t see the way out when you’re mired in the reality of the shitshow you’re digging out of. We will not know how our actions truly affect another person, our families, our own lives, generations of people we will never meet.

The present is a confounding experience and difficult to describe. For we are not impartial to ourselves. We each possess a degrees of unreliable self-narration because it is difficult to remove yourself from the reality of your present circumstances. An exhausting difficult period of your life feels like it slowly spreads to all aspects of your psyche. Clouding your vision and hope of ever escaping the dungeon of regret.

A lot of times the current sorrows will not matter in the long run. Epitaphs aren’t filled with credit scores, or how shiny and straight your smile was. Even still, there exists a compulsion that drives me to write and to share that is insatiable. Our lives aren’t often remembered for the mistakes we have made- unless an egregious act was committed.

How many times have you regretted an action and let it play out over and over in your mind’s eye? You remember the events that led up to certain actions and thoughts. Your body revs with anxiety as you relive the event in your mind. The human body cannot qualify whether an action occurred in the present, past or future.

Whatever you focus upon will also reflect in your body as your neck tenses, heartbeat increases, etc. In essence we are reliving that past trauma every time we talk about it AND have an involuntary reaction. It feels like a haunting at first but distance from a problem or a situation helps you to see things with a broader perspective. 

A tragedy, an ordeal by fire smolders long after the flames have been extinguished.

Sometimes there is little to retrieve back from the ashes. In that case the embers of a former period of life are the beacons. They are the guides on our way forward. You can only see what’s up ahead when you are nearing the destination.

We are our own maps. Each day a thread running through paper folds.

I had been living in patterns of devolution for months. A persona unrecognizable to others who knew me well. I hit upon a rage that had never been expressed and a volatility of shockwaves that rippled beyond the bounds or intentions of my person.

I’m almost back to my normal self and personality. Now the dust has settled. The scattered pieces have been recollected. Some pieces and people will never fit again. There many more pieces that are still here and ones yet to find.

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive,”Joseph Campbell.

Life is no longer stuck in a long looped waiting room. I’m finally where I wanted to be. There’s still so much left to explore, to enjoy, to live.

HomoErratic- Same as it Ever Was

“Omg. This is what my clients must have felt like.”

That’s what I said when I called MHMR- Mental Health Mental Retardation of Texas. I found myself dialing the same number I referred at least 300 people to as a social worker. The Universe. That old crafty bish. Playing the long con.

I’m not used to being a person in crisis. Or feeling like I’m alone because I freaked out and pushed everyone away for a while. Not used to being uninsured. Not used to feeling embarrassed. Not used to being exactly where life has brought me.

You go through long swathes of life being stable and thriving. The length of maintaining relative stability for so long becomes part of the process that is helping you function. However stability cannot help you heal if your treatment plan isn’t aware of the root cause.

The relative awesomeness that is your current life can fill in gaps and distract you from times that didn’t completely make sense. You wring out the bar rag of your personal narrative hundreds of times to see where you went wrong. You can mostly account for yourself and actions and then you realize the filter of how you saw yourself was tilted, misdiagnosed, and misunderstood. It’s no one’s fault. We cast judgments based upon the actions we see before us.

Who are you when all the fanfare has ceased and you’ve stripped everything to the foundations? How do you keep moving when you survey the loss and realize that you caused your own suffering. When you laid bare most all of your secrets, and still drip with regret.

When your world crashes it feels like life has veered into a parallel reality. “There is no way this could be my life. “This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife.”

I used to sing that line in karaoke ironically. I’ve cradled those words in my mouth so many times during this newest predicament. See Talking Heads. See chest tattoo. Still #lameasiteverwas.

Wendy Williams is living in a sober house and still has a talk show. Pete Davidson pulling mad game with Ariana and Kate. Did we enter some weird time space after the 2016 election? Like the freaking Universe must love a well constructed joke because the configurations that occurred for all this to happen are too precise.

I mean it can’t be coincidence that you discover you’re bipolar in the same room you had your first conscious same sex attraction 23 years later. Like surely I’m in a Zach Braff movie. Better writing but with a shittier soundtrack.

This time the walls are bare because you haven’t lived here for years yet thin enough to hear your dad playing the bongos and ukulele while your stepmom with dementia is wandering the halls. Did I shave my pits for this? Welcome to My So-Called Life: Early Thirties reboot and I’m reprising Claire Danes’ iconic 90’s role. (Jared Leto where you at?)

Pop culture references aside, To accept yourself you have to accept the moment you’re in. Not who you were going to be. Not who hurt you. Not what that “7 Rings” tattoo was supposed to say and still getting it wrong the second time 😆. Those things are important and they are threads in the tapestry. Once you start admitting where you’re at you can start changing.

Stripping away the distractions bring clarity so you can fix the root cause. cluttering reality. Whittling down the small grievances brings greater freedom. It leads to self-examination. Unshackling yourself from external expectations is as much as a tragedy as it is a weird form of release.

You are not your job or your things or social standing or lack thereof. So if you’re not your job or your things, friends or social position then who are you? Cue refrain from The Who. Rinse & repeat.

I came to terms with my sexuality at 24. Ten years later and I’m blasted with an unexpected mental diagnosis. The damning double shots of completing several goals while on the cusp of unrealized mania. I felt indestructible and invulnerable. I didn’t care what anyone thought anymore. The brazen armor of grandiose confidence is intoxicating. I felt completely liberated. Full blown mania is like having liquid courage and beer goggles for limitless days without the alcohol or hangover. The final crash, months later, was worse than any weekend partying or misstep I’ve ever taken. I don’t know if the world will ever shine as brightly ever again.

I don’t blame anyone for judging. Right now a lot of this unintended reality just fucking sucks. Because this was not supposed to be my life. I didn’t betray myself, finances, future, my family & friends on purpose. I’ve always been the person who seems to get in way more trouble when they make mistakes compared to others. Perhaps because certain behaviors seem out of character or frustrations that I never seem to learn. Maybe you invite criticism because of difficultly setting muddled boundaries from the get go. You can rail against, curse, or plead your case but there’s no escaping that your new normal is studied in abnormal psych 400.

That culminated with a book decrying the shackles of the past which got tangled up in unrelated circumstances going on. Multiple frustrations with my job, and a couple relationships fed the frenetic gasoline winds of mania. The behavior becomes more erratic finding matches every where to light fires you didn’t know were inside of you. Cool, the time I get a little attention I also go off the deep end on social media.

The pendulum doesn’t stop swinging just because you got off the ride. This slow motion beheading keeps repeating in my mind. One solution just brings another problem into greater focus. A second Hydra head growing in place of the singular cut down beast.

So if you’re mad at me, or still think I deserve to be punished, or just over it, trust, I’m so over myself. That’s why I don’t want to blog anymore.

The self-spoken diatribes against myself have been more brutal than any venom you could spit in this direction.

Forgiving is also a form of acceptance. You acknowledge that a grievance occurred and make amends towards restitution. Forgiveness to others usually comes easy for me. It’s an on going process and sometimes you have to forgive other people a hundred times before cutting them off. Maybe science will perfect time travel but even then we cannot escape ourselves. You can run but cannot hide. So I’m baring it all again because I can’t do it alone and can’t pretend I have it all together.

But I’m putting my shoes on and packing my bags once more because Britney survived 2007 and ancestors survived much worse. You might be facing eviction, infidelity, bereavement of a loved one, grief over the losses in your own life. If I can get through this tumultuous time I promise you can too. You can face whatever comes down the road. You are never as alone or lost as you think. You are consciousness wrapped in flesh and you will be so much stronger and clearer than before.

When your life has whittled down to a scant collection throw fire upon the remnants of your old existence. Use the flames to power your growth. A kiln in the fire. Physical and relational losses have become symbolic. Shedding away former identities and aspects of self that were shrouded from seeing. Stripped and bare-boned. A lot of the best things happen when you feel the fear and do it anyway. How we react how we deal with blowbacks and pileups- that is who we really are.

Idealistic temperaments, mood disorders, and bad credit scores often don’t lend themselves to ideal paychecks and parking spaces. There exists a place for all types of lifeforms out in nature. There has to be places for each one of us, too.

I’m retreating to nature. I let the grief rush through me in liquid form. In swells of water fallen mountain streams. Sometimes your heart cries out for assistance and you don’t even know that’s what all this is about. It’s okay. You will be okay. You must give yourself grace to see that you are still worthy. You must allow your own life to blossom again.

If this weight was cast upon me for no reason I will use it to light another path, even if no one follows. I’m about to make it on my own.

I can’t wait to live in pine mountains and taste sea salt in the air. Wherever you are right now I swear that you will eventually make it to where you are going. “You’re gonna make it after all.” Da da da duh- hat toss. (Mary Tyler Moore)