The Past Few Years, Vol II

I have some apologies I want to make. 

I'm learning to not apologize for things I need not apologize for, and, I also am coming to terms with the role and responsibility I hold in the social spaces I have been in (namely online, I am referring to).

If you've been around since my Facebook days the past several years, well before even my breakup years, you'd know that I've been very loud. I don't apologize for being vocal, passionate, and loud. I think it's exceptionally important to use your voice and to be your own leader/your own person. People have approached me over the years to let me know how impactful my words have been and how much they appreciate my perspective, the things they learn, and the way my brain works. I know my voice is not the problem, even more than I used to. 

I would like to apologize for the ways I have wielded my voice at times, in irresponsible ways. 

I have utilized shame-based tactics and dwelled in a rage that has teetered questionably on the precipice of hatred. I know that most of the time, in my heart, I am not feeling hatred. I am feeling righteously angry, hurt, and sometimes scared. I am hoping my voice will make an impact if I scream loud enough. I feel like I am tired of feeling small, that I am speaking for my inner child and the inner children of others. I carry in me a fire that I myself admire at my best. I also know that there are times when, in my search to find my voice, I speak with a certain vitriol that is something like acid venom. I can hear myself and feel the acid as it comes out of my mouth, as it happens, but I have not entirely learned how to control that anger. 

For the ways that I have hurt you with my words, I want to apologize. 

In my time in the church, I really took with my the art and worship of lament and doubt. Some of my final projects and poetry pieces in that space wrestled with these concepts and themes. It never left, and truthfully, approaching my feelings as sacred expressions of the deepest places that well inside me has informed so very much about how I carry myself. Truth be told, I'm revisiting many of those places within me at that time in my life and finding a mine of gold I built for myself. 

When I left the church, I cannot even describe how extremely lost I felt. It's a strange thing to explain to people I know these days, but I didn't always used to be this angry and vocal. I've always been vocal, but I became so much angrier over the years. It was a necessary and sacred practice, and it still is. 

But I believe I harnessed some toxic places within me as well. I have spent time around some very toxic community spaces on this side of things, too, and quite truthfully, I think there were times that my loud anger served to virtue signal to those folks. I used to feel like the need to conform was a suffocating experience in the church, and believe me, it is. But as time has gone on, I have come to realize that I connected with some of the realest Christians and you can damn well bet the queerest ones (lol). On this side of things, if your theory isn't perfect, your voice doesn't count or you can expect it to either get drowned out or be excluded in very socially backhanded and manipulative ways. 

There are plenty of great people here, too, but our voices are stifled, the social cues are so incredibly complex and confusing, and the way some of these spaces operate with an heir of secrecy and lack of transparency is, to me, more bone chilling than some of the cult space I operated in back then. The groupthink is thick out here, too, in the most (white, classist, ableist) radical of spaces. 

And I have been just like them at times. It's immature and when I have been my most hateful, it's also been inappropriate. 

I do not want to be like that. 

I want to be righteously angry as a sacred practice and I want to make it very clear where my lines are drawn. I am not afraid to draw them as a necessity, and to move them as needed. A line is a rigid place for me, and I will defend it. 

But, I do not want to hurt people anymore. I want to use that line to also protect those standing behind it. When I am too angry, I scare those people and leave them feeling vulnerable. Especially people that are just doing their best, even if we don't consistently agree on everything 100% of the time. All I need is a solid 75%. That is the place we can draw some ideas for strategizing at making the world a better place together, as leaders together, as our own people. 

I have been trying to do my best, but I recognize where I have missed the mark in my anger at times. I am trying to practice a more disciplined life these days and am moving away from chaotic, reactive,  unaccountable spaces. I hold the same values I always have and seek to grow in ways that make them more and more an integrated part of my life. I cannot do that if I am spitting vitriol every which way and I want to make my words more principled, careful, thoughtful, and expressed from a place where anger does have a boundary. That is such an uncomfortable journey for me because anger has been the one thing keeping me from making decisions that are not healthy for me for such a long time. But it has also boiled, bittered, and become a burden on my expressions and I don't want to hurt people with that anymore. 

It will be a journey for me, most certainly, but I wanted to express my intentions to remain on it and to truly apologize for the hurt and confusion it has caused at times.