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. 

My Testimony, 2023 (if you will)

I'm sitting here listening to Tommy Green's newest project, xholynamex, and I'm surprised to find myself here. 

I'm listening to the first track, "Meet me Somewhere Quiet." I've deep dived into what he's been up to recently and discovered he's finding some affinity with the Orthodox church. Because of course he did. 

I can't tell his story - it's not mine to tell - but I recently sat in an Orthodox church at the local Greek festival. I'm not a Christian, not a religious person, and I'm skeptically revisiting my sense of spirituality recently. I don't think I even believe that Jesus was a real person, nor heaven or hell real, any part of the story really. But as I've aged, I've come to understand the importance of mythos in the lives of all of us. 

As I sat in that church, I was kind of overcome with just how beautiful it was. They're big into iconography and catch a lot of heat for it. I've found a lot of affinity in my own Greek heritage with the way Greeks create and bask in aesthetics. It makes sense the Orthodox church would be oriented so. 

I don't want to get into all the things I hate about Christianity, religion, the Church etc. You've probably heard it all before anyways. I'm no new voice there. 

But I do believe in dichotomy and paradox, and two truths co-existing in this terribly confusing world full of suffering and ab*se. 

I've carried so much intense shame about my time in the Church. Many of you that will read this know what I'm talking about. For those that are new to hearing about this part of my life, I'd like to try cracking at talking about it. I feel I'm finally finding the through line of truth and healing, deeply and thoroughly. 

I grew up Lutheran and attended private school until my dad had an affair when I was about 8. My parents were quite devout, but not in a strict way. I am very lucky that my two Aquarian parents are people that were just looking for a way to feel connected to something bigger than themselves and to involve their kids in what they felt was best at the time. Lutherans are also probably the most laidback Christians, aside from perhaps the Orthodox church. We did church and school, and then we did life. 

When my father had an affair with a woman I knew and admired, my world shattered. He was the beginning of my longstanding wrestling with vowing to never be as shitty of a leader as he and many other people like him have been/are. 

My family went through an extremely tumultuous time post-divorce. I'm not comfortable sharing it all here - I'm still processing much of it - but my connection to music was probably my own form of spirituality at that time. Mom always made sure we had access as a serious value of hers. Music can save lives and it certainly has done that for me and my family at our hardest times. 

I did not return to the church until I was 15. I was watching myself become depressed, struggling to make friends and to utilize those friendships for support when I did have them. I started to recognize that something was going on inside of me and I know what that is now, but a 15 year-old from small town Indiana with no language for processing trauma, abuse, and mental health had only the framework of my upbringing - Jesus. 

When I tell you that I found a diamond in a rough for little hillbilly Martina in Franklin, Indiana, I mean every word of that. I was invited to a local youth group at The Gear, a local music venue I had visited once before. 

Current Church was not your typical church. Most everyone that attended were covered in tattoos, piercings, gauges, sagged their beanies, clipped their caribiners to their back pockets, and many people had rough upbringings. It was a proper artist's hub - musicians galore that loved the same music as me, artists, photographers, tattoo artists, entrepeneurs. You name it, they went there. 10 minutes from my boonies ass home. 

I met people with completely different backgrounds than mine, and some with very similar backgrounds. I made friends with a lot of fellow kids with fucked up families, all trying to feel something like me. Youth group was like family to me.

I became heavily involved with Current, spending probably 2-3 days a week there for various services, band practices, service opportunities etc. 

I had a very zealous spirit as a youth group leader, and it was encouraged. This was a charismatic environment associated with Assemblies of God, a more modern, "non-denominational" kind of feel, and being "sold out for Christ" was the expectation. We spoke in tongues, jumped around for joy, sought after spiritual gifts, and strived to use our artistic talents for the Lord. 

This was my adolescence. My brain literally developed around this atmosphere. And it's a strange thing. 

I was developing my musical abilities alongside the nonsense. A hub to do that in the middle of nowhere Indiana? There was no letting go. 

I became a damn fucking good guitar player because I had to be, and I'm so proud of the shit I put out at that time. I wanted to be able to stand next to the metalcore dudes in my space. I could do things with my right hand I cannot do today. I'm a damn good rhythm player because Christian misogyny pushed me to be. 

As I was preparing to go off to college for worship ministry, the atmosphere of my church began shifting. My pastor was making poor choices and pissing off longstanding members and many of us were outgrowing the immaturity of preaching a message obsessed with reminding us of our sins when Jesus had already fucking died for them. 

A radical, very heretical "grace" and "finished work of the cross" theology began sprouting in the charismatic communities around me, and my pastor wanted nothing to do with it. 

I spent some interesting time around some interesting people as I transitioned out of Current. I think I honestly experienced my first commune up in Fort Wayne at the Firehouse. These were people intent on celebrating the finality of the Gospel and basking in the idea of completed Oneness with the Father through Jesus, being "drunk on the Holy Spirit" and I don't know any other way to say this, but it was a wholesome kind of open-minded, silly, joyful, charismatic environment. It just was, in the great context of Pentecostalism. Some sincerely liberating ass theology came out of those movements. We started questioning the need to obsess over work in our spiritual lives and began viewing it as a place meant for rest and healing. 

I'd spend time doing this in my spare time, then head back to class to realize I didn't want to teach people shame-based shit. 

We shed a lot of bullshit we'd been indoctrinated with in our respective cults. 

Unfortunately, the more I shed, the more I saw. 

My studies in systematic theology and biblical interpretation, next to my much more progressive thinking worship studies professor, helped me see the nonsense - the misogyny inherent in Sky Daddy theology, the racism in white Jesus, the constant splitting of denomination after denomination in the name of God telling me so, and what we called "legalism," or the Old Testament approach to modern life post-New Testament. 

I think, too, that as I aged, I began to recognize some weird relationships elders were building with me as an adolescent and it was just over for me at that point. Not to mention, I was having serious sexuality and gender questions at that time, too. And we all know how that goes in those spaces. 

(Funny enough, I think I spent time with nearly only queer folk, even in those spaces, that later came out. We always find each other, don't we?)

(I hope if you're reading this, you're also beginning to see the early threads I found in dismantling capitalism in my own life, before I even had words for it. This time in my life is why I believe capitalism truly is an abuse on our humanity. If you dig into yourself, you'll find that fucker in there).

When I left the Church, it was the single most isolating experience of my life. I only knew that I wanted to remove Jesus from my innermost experience of myself. I still love Jesus as a mythological figure - dude is sick as fuck and I can gladly make the argument that he was an anarchist. He was the first radical figure I really studied. 

I studied global religion for about 7 months and got just far enough to realize that it was the whole of religion that I really wanted nothing to do with in my innermost experience of myself. I'd spent my whole life doing it. I felt I owed it to myself to explore outside of that framework. 

What I found over these 10 years is that life is so much more uncertain on this side. And I love that, in my sense of spirituality. 

I'm currently kind of searching for something that feels a little more stable, but I am also currently riding the wave of getting off anti-depressants, learning to re-access my feelings and creativity. I think that's where my sense of spirituality finds its best expressions sometimes. 

I like to think of spirituality as being carried through the vessel of humanity. Rather, I think being human is the end. We're not vessels for anything other than shared humanity. I guess you could say I got real fucking curious about the human side collapsing in on the divine side of Jesus. And people truly are both. I think it's one in the same really. 

I think I'm letting go of being bitter, too. 

I've witnessed enough things happen in community space out here, too, that I'm actually so grateful to have experienced my time in spiritual communities. While it is seldom done well, there is an inherent sense of process for accountability and rehabilitation there. I've only seen it handled appropriately maybe a couple times, but it's a beautiful fucking thing when it does happen because it is wholistic. 

I'm disillusioned with a lot of community right now. I'm kind of building my own sense of it, and I sense that's what I need to be doing anyways. I don't think I'm meant to navigate this world in any kind of normal path. I have the potential to make something new, to pave something just different. There's nothing particularly normal about the way I operate or think. And I'm learning to lean into that. 

I'm entering what I think is my sabbatical era. I want to meet myself somewhere quiet, perhaps somewhere I used to keep the concept of God. I want to find out what my humanity means for me personally, and then learn what it will mean for me to integrate into others. I haven't found that yet. But I do get a little closer each day, and I think that's maybe the goal of ending capitalism. Maybe we'll all find each other somewhere at the end of the arch of justice if we keep practicing the discipline of bending it righteously. 

I want to name things for what they are, in community, in myself, in love and in grace. I want to find a new way to relate to each other. I want to decolonize as a white person. I want to place stones graciously over troubled waters and do the work of walking and transforming. Hell, I think I am meant to be like Jesus because we all can be. He reminds me that the path is laid before us from pavers before us. I honor them and hold space for more of them. 

For now, I need solitude. Healthy solitude. 

I am going to move into the woods, lean into my family, reconnect with friends, focus on getting my fucking degree if it kills me, and learn what it means to be a healer in a field that, like every other field, is broken and serves capitalism as its own industry. I want to flip tables and ruffle feathers in the right way. I cannot and will not do that without thinking holistically and humanely, and I have been on a journey of making my personal life more true to the path I am walking. 

No more letting other people tell me who I am, even those I think I hold the most affinity with. My energy is not up for grabs anymore. 

I am working on building what my therapist calls a filter. I am a beam of light in every room I am in. The capacity for leadership, to see shit for what it truthfully is, to transform and to heal, to inspire and to motivate, to fucking move - that is my value and purpose. I hold the capacity to adjust the temperature of whatever room I am in, not because I am better than others but because people listen to me. I am trustworthy and a hard ass worker at doing what I feel I need to do. I am not perfect, but I am not afraid of my imperfections. I am learning to move with less anger and more grace and learning the boundary that holds space for me to be me and you to be you in that grace. 

When I am done incubating, I will be an absolute monster.
When humans move, the earth shakes. We are one. 

To all that is for me, "If you want me, come and find me."

To my Last Ex

You’ll never see this, 

Because I won’t let you 

Same way I’m not letting you see me these days 

The last time you saw me was December 8th of 2021

It’s coming up on 2 years 

You did a lot of things after we broke up that you said you couldn’t do with me 

because your life was too busy and too chaotic 

But I’ve realized you couldn’t see me

because you missed the forest for the trees

as much as you loved feeling my breeze

you got lost 

and maybe you were lost all along 

I don’t think I’ll ever know that 

But I’m letting you go forever

And I hope we never see each other again 

You viewed my TikTok profile at 8 o’clock on a Saturday night 

i’m sorry you’re so busy you still have the time to gander my way out of a morbid curiosity 

and thank god, my profile looks old

you don’t know that my hair color and length has changed

what my girlfriend looks like or her name 

or that I’m leaving your fucking city for good 

because I’m drowning, a lot like I was when we were together last 

But this time, 

This time

This time

I am letting you go 

You vortex of utter destruction 

Like a moth to a flame: That’s the boundary 

The edges of me burn off the ends now

Trying to Find Alignment

I am back to a place of finding my alignment once again. 

I heard it said recently that a significant breakup takes about 2 years to get over. It’s been about that for breakup #2. 

My intentions for this year, around April, were for me to spend the summer just working and being in therapy. I was feeling myself again for the first time in a long time and began the journey of getting off SSRIs to regain access to my emotional palette and creativity, two fundamental and necessary tools in my healing capacities. 

I hoped to begin digging deeper into the ways the last breakup fucked my mind up, and I was prepared. My semester was tough but going well. I was financially okay. Alignment was there. 

Moving my roommate out very quickly readjusted my entire life. I made a series of decisions that felt necessary but did not protect myself and my life in the process. I am $4000 and counting in debt for it, and I will likely be paying that off by myself. 

My car having been stolen was the final straw for me. Living in survival mode after finally getting myself back to a place of thriving has been utterly devastating in every way. 

My semester has started and this statistics class will be the death of me. Our study session tonight involved our tutor crying and lamenting about how the professors knowingly give us false information sometimes, at their irresponsibility to correct the material for us before we study. 

I have dropped down part-time at my job because it is so physically exhausting, I cannot keep my eyes open enough to be mentally present anywhere but work. I am the top employee, which means my reward has been to take on other people’s work, often without my consent. 

I’ve also discovered that I hate being buff. It’s dysphoric to me. I am genderfluid, not a full-time man. 

I have had a series of mental breakdowns recently as the SSRIs are beginning to wear off, and I am recovering from my birth control having been swapped out for a pill that gave me dry heaving panic attacks like I’ve never had before. It will be about 3 more weeks until I get back to normal on my usual pill. 

The breakdowns, I am not afraid of. I know how to work my way through them. But I am tired of having them. 

I can feel the coursing crumbling of capitalism in my fucking bones everytime I have them. 

Nothing is working, nothing is sustainable, the world is on fire, and virtually nothing can be relied upon right now. Things are not like they were. They have gotten worse and I anticipate will get worse for the next 5-6 years. 

I am trying to find myself in the midst of it all. 

I am not skilled at cooking, nor cooking adequately sustainable food for myself. I am discovering, upon taking vitamins, that I may have an iron deficiency or some energy deficiency. I cannot eat enough of the right foods - I am constantly hungry and constantly unable to feed myself, though I have access to food. I am getting better, but it’s embarrassing. 

I am living in the city and I am finally beginning to understand what that entails. I am cautious everywhere I go and I trust no one. Being a visibly single woman living alone provides me no safety to fall back into. It simply does not exist. My body is on alert everywhere now, and I guess you just get used to it out here. I fucking hate it. 

I am trying to come to terms with how little I really know being on my own for real for the first time ever. I’m embracing that. I love learning. The growing pains are worth it. But they’re embarrassing as shit and I wish I knew how to better take care of myself sometimes. 

My emotions are attempting to let me in again and remind me of who I am. This badass that lives inside of me is realigning and this time, we have to make decisions that will actually benefit us. It is time to feel selfish, though I am not. 

It’s time to feel like a bitch. 

I’m moving back home. It is the greatest safety net for me at this time, and that $4000 won’t fix itself. 

In a year and a half, I will be eligible for getting into the psychology field with my degree. I’m fucking terrified. I am not mentally stable enough to be helping other people right now, and I don’t suspect I will be any better by then either. I have internships to think about along the way. 

Nothing feels stable anymore. Nothing. 

I am my own stability. I am the only part of life I can control. And I will do just that while the world burns around me, until I am ready to re-enter it. 

It is time to hibernate, practice healthy isolation, and gain some clarity of mind with my intentions to align life to what makes the greatest sense to me and no one else. 

I need the practice of silence back into my life.

I am becoming ready again. 

The Past Few Years

I write this piece from a meditative place today. 

I honor the space I am trying to create. I honor all the versions of me that have survived to be present with now. I honor who I will become after this writing. I honor all who read it and give me the time of day to be seen, not just understood. I honor all of life’s cycles just as they are, and therefore, me as I am amidst them. I am present. 

I also write with a heavy, weighted heart that feels full of wisdom yet. 

*takes a deep breath and exhales* 

The past few years have been hell and heaven alike. I have had the worst moments of my life in them and some of the most divine, life changing ones. I have cried more than I even knew I could cry, lost more in several years’ time than I even thought possible, and am still managing to stand as I am. 

I feel it was all necessary, though. I feel lighter in my body than I ever have, more connected with my sense of purpose and capacity, and more alive. I feel most me, in an entirely unpredicted way. 

Today, I would like to share all the ways I have become me in this moment. I feel it important to document, to release, and to to share with those I love and feel comfortable with. 

I have not been my best self online at times. I am not proud of some of the ways I have expressed myself in this time. I deleted my Facebook to continue on my journey towards communing with my greatest sense of being. 

I have struggled with oversharing my personal matters in what I felt at the time was an artful way. I love raw, bold, clarifying art. I love pure honesty. I think it helps us grow when we are real with each other. 

I did not present myself as best I could at times, though, and learned a thing or two about the power of privacy. That is just as artful a practice. Not to mention, it’s just simply confusing to others when I am confused in my own expression, and that is a nuance I don’t think I quite have time to unpack at the moment. 

Needless to say, I wanted to share these things today for clarification as well. Maybe it will make sense, maybe it won’t entirely, and I am comfortably letting go of the need to feel perfectly understood at all moments with my words. I just simply want to be seen and to use my voice to do that today. 

*I breathe and release all past versions of myself that needed to do this to survive. I move into my greater self in this moment.* 

This is going to be very hard, and possibly very confusing, for some. I apologize that it won’t be simple. Trauma never is, and if you are prepared to walk this journey with me today, you are someone capable of knowing that truth. I honor your capacity and thank you deeply. 

I got a divorce a few years ago. Sorry, dissolution of divorce. We finalized it about 6 months ago. 

I could not get myself out of bed and into the court to do it for a long time, but I wanted to be the one to take the official step. 

When I was 22, I got married. It was a lovely marriage in so many ways. By all counts, I married my best friend. I was in love. I saw the future together. I don’t know that I would have left them had there not been longterm issues and concerns. 

Whilst we dated, I began to realize something was very wrong swimming around in me personally. I started experiencing the clarifying sensation that something had happened to me in my childhood that I could not remember. I can’t remember so very much of my childhood and that seemed like a joke to me for awhile, until I was out on my own for the first time. It stopped being funny. 

Sex became hard for me. I felt like a failure, I felt incapable of providing for my partner’s needs, I felt like a broken, washed up piece of dissociating nothingness that shouldn’t be struggling with something I wanted. 

I entered therapy when I was 24 and began working on myself. My struggle with sexual intimacy was approached from every angle - maybe I’m gay, maybe it’s the religious trauma, maybe I’m overthinking sex, maybe I should just try more, maybe I should expect my partner to blow up when they feel rejected because I’m making a bigger deal out of this than there is. 

Those therapists did damage. In couple’s therapy, we approached our mutual therapist with an incident that had occurred between us in year one. We were both sincerely curious to know if my partner’s behavior had impacted me as a reason for why I was pulling away. She told me it would never hold up in a court of law and I was being unfair to put that on my partner, despite that not being the question we had both asked. I felt small and voiceless. 

We switched therapists and our first session? “You mean hell yes is yes? Sometimes therapists can do damage too and that must have been so invalidating to hear. Martina, I would like you to tell me how you want these sessions to be guided and what you would like me to work on with your partner in our private sessions. You are guiding this ship.” 

She helped me work on noticing my dissociation, approached my sexuality with tenderness, prided me on setting boundaries in my marriage that I direly needed, and very gently, so so very gently and expertly guided me through a few EMDR sessions. 

I began working on my memory. 

I started having a panic attack when we targeted something I did remember. 

2 weeks later, we found a place in Columbus. 

My last session with her was so very saddening. I knew I needed to continue this journey with her, but I also knew a good deal on a place was a good deal when it presented itself, despite the knowledge I was uprooting my life for someone I was in therapy with. I cried the night before that session and the whole way home. I still miss her to this day. 

After we moved, my grandfather-in-law passed away. He was my grandpa by all accounts. In some ways, I’m glad he never knew my partner and I broke up. I’m still spinning records and it reminds me of him sometimes. 

Not long after, I met someone and my partner also met someone. We had years prior been preparing to open our relationship. It felt like right timing to explore separately but simultaneously. 

The person I met immediately respected my sexual boundaries and needs. One very early conversation with them changed my life. I realized how much of a choice it could be to believe others and I realized that I was not capable of maintaining relationship with someone that had hurt me and only after years of bickering, sought the change I needed. I broke up with my marital partner three months after moving. 

My newly met partner and I fell madly in love. I was absolutely crazy about them in every way. We had the gentlest, sweetest, goofiest dynamic. I realized I was not bisexual but a lesbian in this relationship. (That started feeling apparent to me as my marital partner came to terms with being trans as well). I worked the hardest I have ever worked on a relationship in that one. Our communication was seamless, our desire for secure attachment was met. So many things went right that I couldn’t even name if I tried to.

About 6 months into this relationship, one of their partners behaved in a way that was extremely triggering to me and at my attempt to set some basic privacy boundaries, my partner told me I was projecting what I had just been through onto the polycule and being possessive and jealous. 

I was not ready to let go of this relationship, and would not fully let it go for some time after we broke up two months later. I felt broken, vulnerable, and so so very confused. 

Therapy language had been flipped around on me, my years and years worth of work in therapy seemingly meant nothing, my polyamorous orientation was called into question, and my trust in being respected was shattered. I had spent almost two months time in therapy preparing to respectfully ask for boundaries to a broken promise. 

I had spent years working up the strength to leave my longterm relationship and the reality that being in such a vulnerable place in a new relationship was not good for me had finally caught up. My partner had joked that they liked knowing I was struggling because it made them feel good about themself and having to actually face that reality was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. 

I cried every day the week before I broke up with them. I was in and out of the bathroom at work. I made a plan of self care for the weekend following the conversation I was prepared to have. 

It was sweet, and tender. I wrote them a poem, expressed my concerns with how my needs had gone unaddressed, and hugged them goodbye. That night, they sent me one last text I was not expecting and my world crumbled all over again. I paced my room and was unable to blink in a grief stricken state of panic. It felt like I had ripped a limb off and little did I understand, but that text changed the course of everything. 

I kept texting them for weeks after we broke up and re-opening the wound over and over and over again. I had little control at all of my impulses. 

At my friends’ concerns, I finally let them go in all capacities and got myself on Lexapro. I had been experiencing suicidal thoughts and spiraling into an identity crisis before we had even broken up - after those horrible things had been said to me. My partner was quite pregnant at the time, however, and I simply could not bring myself to make them aware of the impact of their actions. With Lexapro on my side, though, it was time to take care of myself for me, not for anyone else. Once stabilized, I was still full of a rage I could not place nor express. I now understand this to be the reality that I was in a situation I could not be honest about after I had worked myself up to honesty. I struggled to not go completely internal and nonverbal. I’m still wrestling with using my voice like I used to to this day. 

I have had days glued to my bed in extremely depressive states, moments of dissociating so intensely it scared me, and so many panic attacks in a row I had to leave work.

Since then, I have been taken advantage of as I’ve helped other people, my wallet stolen, and then car stolen after my previous one broke down on the road to Oregon. Those cars were points of pride in my supporting-myself- post-divorce era. 

My apartment has new holes in the floor and tears on the wall I will lose my deposit over. 

One night, I went to kiss my partner goodbye and one of my neighbors yelled “That’s so hot, can I join in?” I have seen a man verbally abusing his wife in the middle of the street in broad daylight, and my neighborhood has told me to just get over it or get involved. 

If you are reading this and consider yourself an activist etc, I would like you to consider what that means to you. 

Do I owe it to people to share my very intense and tumultuous trauma and mental health journey just to be seen as caring? The world isn’t ready for that intersection and I know that, but do other people? 

Is it easy to bring yourself to a protest when you’re glued to your bed? I made myself go, but it wasn’t easy. Was I visible enough? Was I loud enough? Did anyone see me?

Is it easy to feel safe as a (visibly) single AFAB person anywhere I go now? I make myself go places but I don’t feel safe ever, not fully, not the way a cis man would. I made empowered decisions to be single - do I not care about the world around me because I am struggling to keep my head above water on my own some days? 

Is it a privilege to not know if I’m real some days because I’m dissociating out of my control? If I have gone nonverbal, unable to articulate what is happening to me, does that make me callous because I cannot speak? Am I being selfish in taking a step back to heal, knowing that I am not a good candidate for leading activist campaigns and putting myself in harm’s way on any front line? If I have also suffered community trauma, does that mean I am holding out my natural leadership skills when I say that I cannot involve myself in most spaces right now? 

What does activism mean if it’s all virtue signaling and proving oneself instead of mutually working towards liberation for all of us? 

Do none of us deserve refuge at times we most need it? Is capitalism also subsuming activism up into itself, requiring productivity to build trust? Where is the sense of ableism in that? 

I have a new therapist and we are working our way to picking up where my EMDR journey left off some 2.5 years ago. She helps me see that I can trust myself and my body’s instincts. I feel less alone with her, and I am finally doing okay, I think. 

My marital ex and I are okay. I do not know how to explain it but I believe them when they say they are being a better person. I truly do. It is not my responsibility to rehabilitate. I can stand in some sense of humanity, I suppose, with honorable promises to do better and be better. 

My last ex and their partners made a podcast about 6 months ago smearing me not in name, but in rewriting the narrative as enlightened polyamorous thinkers. What does activism mean if it’s all virtue signaling and proving oneself instead of mutually working towards liberation for all of us? 

I am still healing, though. In so very many ways, I am healing. 

🙏 

On Being a Loner and a New Way Forward

My friend said this to me over the phone recently: 

“You carry yourself with authority.” 

We are constantly on a similar path of seeking growth and enlightenment together and have been since we’ve known each other. He approached me in middle school gym class one day as we both sat on the bleachers, staring out at everyone else playing. He struck a conversation with me that has never really ended and I’ve appreciated his willingness to be honest and curious with me about the world after all this time. I trust his perspective of me. 

I can’t get those words out of my head. 

I’d been lamenting my struggle with the way my confidence feels it’s perceived sometimes. I can’t quite get a good read on how people are taking my words and I feel very humble on the inside, just earnest and direct about what I do and don’t know, and I’m not afraid to make mistakes if that open and transparent process helps normalize the growth process. 

Yet, sometimes people do seem to feel threatened by my unwavering personality and it stings. It’s where I’ve been manipulated many a time - that darned value system of mine that places the growth of others before my own, confidently. 

My buddy catches me. He sees me. He knows how willing I am to let my greatness go unseen and pushes me to make sure I share it with the world. 

I’m in an uprooting phase in my life. I’ve been here before. Frankly, I think all of life is grief and transition. 

But something feels different this time. Like my entire worldview is turning on its head. More like a world tilting on its axis a full 360 degrees. I have my core and I’m learning to trust it. I have great instincts. I almost said good - they’re great. I don’t trust them enough  

After several - I mean S-E-V-E-R-A-L - hard fucking blows the past few years, I’m finally settling into the reality that maybe I really am a leader. 

I hate it. I hate the idea of leadership, though I understand it’s necessity in a world that’s just not ready for horizontal relationships and equity. I’ve been fighting it since I can remember. 

I’d call my dad a hypocrite in front of his martial arts classes when he’d be - you guessed it - a hypocrite. I’d be reprimanded. I’d gather my youth group friends in one room to get them all talking and learning about each other’s very different lives. I’d be the glue that held them together, it felt like. I’d sit in the lounge of my sophomore floor and as an assigned campus ministry coordinator, intentionally make myself available for friendship and talking about anything, in earnest. I was praised as radical, a leader of leaders. Not just a leader - an example of how to lead. I dropped out. Whenever I hit the stage, I could feel all energy on me. I was told I had an ability to do that that was admirable. I resented it because I felt one dimensional and it burnt me out. In management positions, I’ve sought to even out the power, uplifting and helping people see their capable selves, not at all unlike me. I’ve been praised and then relied on for outputting more leadership and other times, been mistrusted for being a genuine person with no hidden agenda. 

There are more days that I can feel how very not ready the world is for people like me, yet in the quiet moments when no one’s watching, people will engage me.

I never could quite make out what it was I felt people wanted with me. I show up in earnest to the spaces I’m in, I’m awkward but consistently there, I listen as much as I speak, and I care without feeling the need to be showy about it. In fact quite the opposite. I hate when people can see my good deeds. I just want to do a deed out of responsibility and kindness and to motivate others to keep doing the same. I do not desire the attention or Nobel Prize for it, in earnest. I would resent an award, honestly. My reward is in feeling human. 

Nevertheless, when I speak, people listen. Perhaps it’s because I’ve studied leadership and was birthed into an environment in martial arts that built me into the four tenants my father had pinned up on the wall. 

Patience. Respect. Modesty. Honesty. 

I am blatantly offended when people do not exude nor work on these qualities in themselves. They are what makes a good human and a good leader. 

Spend more than 10 minutes with me and you’ll hear me passionately rant about some leader somewhere I resent for sucking at their role. 

I carry myself with authority. I’m starting to know what that means now. 

Because I resent this reality so, yet see it all the same, I’m with the loners in every room I’m in. Occasionally I find myself stumbling into the popular kids table because oops, someone read me incorrectly and liked my vibe, but I cannot count how many “…you saw that, right?” conversations I’ve had with all us weirdos that see everything. We stay quiet because we’re wise and we’re read as too sweet to harm a fly in an infantile way, too ignorant to notice or perhaps too stupid in an ableist way, or too above it all to care, or even worse, too disruptive to the nauseating fog in the room. Everything that’s going wrong that no one wants to talk about? That’s us. 

We’re the weirdos on the bleachers watching everyone else play. Bet that when we do play, it’ll be one hell of a game. An underdog’s game.

These people? They’re my people. 

We don’t have a community. Not really. We’re too disillusioned to stick it out. When you see and albeit live the cycle of ever-changing cool kids and their popularity contests, you kind of get sick of it. I’m sad to report that it doesn’t necessarily change with age either. But, us weirdos and loners? We get more jaded but wise. We know when and where we’re needed, but it’s lonely in the meantime. 

I want to do life next to my people. I’ve been telling y’all how much I want to stick up for you because that shit ain’t right for quite some time. I’m tired of doing it in hiding. 

That is to say, I ain’t fucking with no fake fools. 

I’ll have you if you’ll have me and even if we don’t cross paths, I’ve got your back and I’m speaking up for your need to hold fair space. 

Why I'm Leaving Leftist Communities

If you reference back deep into this blog some 10+ years ago, you'll see my wrestlings with literal God that upon some hindsight perspective, were also wrestlings with capitalism and the conservative values I was being expected to have but kept falling short in being able to produce for my Christian circle of influence. 

Back then, I was 19/20/21 years old and contemplating leaving the Church. My journeys in Worship Leadership school (a made-up degree but one that can, scarily enough, be used) showed me behind-the-scenes into what ministry is actually like. My theology and Bible classes started feeling so very hollow and it was things like "feminist and African American theology" being thrown around like elective/optional pieces of historical literature to pontificate around when considering what we were to believe. It was hypocritical professors that sucked at their jobs, and ones that were good at ministry but felt the loneliness and pressure of big corporate Church to shut up. It was the inherent misogyny I found in my faith and the way it made my trauma responses and mental health worse. 

But most importantly, it was the revelation that I was the arbiter of my own truth and an oh so powerful and lovely human being, capable of anything I set my mind to creating in this world. I began to recognize my obstacles as no longer metaphorical entities to shadowbox, or even my own imperfections as a human. I started to see the system for what it is and started realizing that to fight for the world I wanted to be a part of, I had to dig at roots that existed in realities spoken by real humans. 

I became very passionate about arts and activism and turned my love for music towards a means for representation as a queer person, a sometimes woman-identifying person, a genderfluid person, a trauma survivor, and many other intersections I exist at, as well as a platform for speaking out about injustices occurring to other marginalized folks. I met some cool people and I can confidently say my sense of the world was deeply formed in all those years. 

But then I started going through some real shit (or rather realizing I had been going through it), and the more I dug, the more I realized that surrounding myself with people that claim leftist values does not make me any safer than I was back in my church days. 

I had a pastor once I was quite close to. His whole family was strange. As a 15 year-old, I didn't understand what it meant when his brother, the worship pastor, would speak inappropriately about his daughter, or how absurd it was that his father and mother survived a cheating episode and wanted to be held up as a gold standard of relationship, or how uncomfortable it was for my pastor to speak about "women's bodies" as something he appreciated with a value no 15 year-old AFAB person should have been privy to hearing about. His son assaulted someone several years ago and the family apologized to the victim's family as their means of accountability. I had heard rumors about the son practicing beastiality but my pastor's concerns about my then boyfriend's sexuality was more important. 

I spent time around kids in my teenage years that verbally claimed women as their wives prior to pursuing them. Some of them became domestic ab*sers, some of them became unsafe partners, some of them were horrible friends, and I'm certain there are things I don't even know about to this day. 

On campus, there were reports of assault happening and several people shared their experiences with racism with me. One peer called me out once and we sought resolution together. It was precisely because people felt comfortable holding me accountable and sharing shit with me that I realized we had way bigger fish to fry and multiply. It was way way bigger than my own ignorance. 

But aside from the meaningful experiences I had one-on-one, no one said or did anything. Things have come out about personnel years later. They're in a frenzied PR move to play to visual accountability and pull diversity ploys and I can't help but think about these years in my life as not all that different from the leftist circles I've been spending my time in these last few years. 

Things have come out about community members in so many of these circles. And each time that has happened, I have been absolutely shocked, so often now that I'm not even shocked anymore. Yet, prior to my lack of shock, it was the reality that there was no religious doctrine to expect would be used as an excuse. There was no apparent culture of protecting these kinds of people. It has been abhorrently offensive to me each and every time, and I hope and pray each time that the people surrounding these type of folks do the right accountability work. We rarely, if ever, do. In fact, I've seen more folks in leftist circles consistently make questionable choices even more than I have in my former church circles. I never could quite put my finger on it but now I've started to investigate my sense of neoliberalism. 

I think leftist culture prides itself on a sense of high moral values, so above and beyond, unthinkably incapable of harm. Leftist culture does not practice accountability - it practices posturing. Leftist culture does not invite uncomfortable conversations. It pontificates around the room to the leftist with the highest social clout or loudest voice, considers their wokeness, and builds decisions about future movement around a sense of neoliberal leadership. That is to say, leftist culture enables fascism by playing capitalist leadership games, willing to co-opt the ever living fuck out of the blood, sweat, and tears the rest of us put into our daily fight, all to increase their clout lest they be the next call-out victim. We daily folk are easy targets for neoliberals - we speak incorrectly sometimes, we contain multitudes and embrace our inconsistencies and complexities, we practice accountability as the hard work it actually is and to each other's faces, but we don't hold degrees or doctorates in Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, Communications, or win the pain Olympics to satisfy the neoliberal gaze in becoming a Savior every time. 

I am leaving leftist spaces because it hurts 50,000 times worse to be spoken over about your own goddamn experience because someone has a degree or non-profit position in your neighborhood or a neoliberal value to prove to god knows who, instead of spoken with about your experiences. I do not fuck with energy that makes assumptions or educated guesses without taking the time to know at a human level. I do not fuck with energy that creates unsafe social environments where psychological warfare is instituted for the purposes of direct or indirect silencing, done in the name of any type of justice. 

It is accountability practice to seek wisdom together as a collective, to make space for individual expression in relation to one another, to dig at the roots of all of our problems, and to free ourselves together in this fucked up world. I am not interested in false safety that cannot even recognize itself, and I am not interested in fighting for the right to be in power over others. 

I've witnessed it before and been victim to it time and time again. Hell, I’ve even espoused that shit myself without even realizing what I was doing because it sounded correct.

In church circles, we (the good ones) at least held an understanding that we are in it together and that all our bullshit can be handled together, too. There's something to be said about the way spiritual communities, when held together in good faith, operate. 

I am only interested in real ass motherfuckers trying to build a real ass world. I am still a leftist and you'll still see me around. My values just don't define me anymore, nor does my community. I do. 

If we can't see each other through the lens of our shared humanity, I'm not interested, no matter how bad you want me to believe. I'm really good at breaking my faith at this point. 

We say real recognize real for a reason. The horizon is ours.