Reflections on Pride

It's Juuuuuune. Gay month. 

Pride Month is always a love/hate relationship for me. With corporate hands reaching into our pot, I worry they're diluting us into dollar signs. And they are. Just like everyone else. 

But, it still gets me thinking about the whole being gay thing. It's like a fun little check-in, like a "Hey, I'm still gay. How'd we get here?" 

The first few years of Pride felt as important as they might ever feel to me. They were a way to feel seen and feel like maybe I did matter and should be included and celebrated in humanity's embrace. I was bisexual identifying at the time and it really felt like a great way to claim my "B." (Shout-out to all you bisexual baddies). 

As I've embraced my intersections of lesbianism, genderfluidity, and polyamorous orientation, I suppose you could say Pride feels a lot more complex for me. 

Those are all intersections that if you know, you know. Queer people are the best at understanding. We're kind of all the same but so vastly different, and that's what makes us us. 

But I guess I just wanted to do that yearly Pride reflecting again. I really haven't shared it online in quite some time and it feels right this year. 

 

It's interesting considering all my time identifying as bisexual. I was, like, obnoxiously bisexual. Down for the cause, loud and proud as hell about it, wanting to be seen. And those were all SUCH valid ways to be. I'm so proud of myself for those years. But I am simply sapphic as all hell and there's nothing more to it. 

I still maintain, like, an adjacent bicuriousity about men. As in, like, sometimes one of them will catch me off guard and I think... might smash? A little? I truly don't know what that's all about but it's in me somewhere. I know that I do not enjoy sex with men, so the curiosity is satiated. But... it lingers a bit sometimes? It's curious! 

But the first time I kissed an AFAB person, it was over. The Lord made me a lesbian right then and there. I will take the softness of a sapphic every day a million times over the harshness of a cis-identifying man. (And in case you're wondering if trans femmes are sapphics, lady dick ain't the same as your crusty man's). 

I identify, like, 60% masculine but find myself so very unattracted to masculinity. There has been nothing more empowering in my queer journey than to embrace being a man hating lesbian. God, the power of living a life centered around sapphic energy muahahaha. The matriarch lives within and around me. 

I've had some good experiences and some bad experiences with sapphics but overall, I'd say we're pretty amazing. We're much quicker to listen, cease judgement, resort to conflict resolution, and hold the world and those we love with greater tenderness than I've ever seen any man do. Statistically, we also have the best sex, and I suspect the aforementioned qualities all have something to do with that. 

I was recently discussing queerness with a friend and she asked, "I've been asking my friends - where are all the lesbians? And they told me they're all in their burrows being cozy." 

Ain't that the truth. 

Even when we're sweaty on the dance floor, or Uhauling it across country, we're domestic at heart. It's like a reclaimed version of what the patriarchy expects of us. It's true matriarchy. The hearth that keeps all of life cozy and safe. We've got the softest and safest hearts. 

The thought of telling a lesbian she is wrong or nasty for loving women/sapphics is the entirety of the world's problems summed up in an evil thought. HAVE YOU KISSED A WOMAN'S LIPS? You'd see the future, understand rocket science suddenly, become a linguist and a poet, and heal through past lives if you did. Men being unchanged in this way by women tells me all I need to know about how they receive women. (And yes, I say receive. Bow down before us.) They don't receive women. They siphon the celestial energy they feel from them and seek to repurpose it for their own gain. To kiss a sapphic is to be truly changed for the better. Baby, we're your upgrade in this universe and the next. 

And what to fall in love with us? Boy, you're in for your TV to start turning color again. The old you was black and white. Binary even. Incapable of seeing limitless possibilities. You are magnetized to the earth in sapphic love. Plants start sprouting in places of your soul you did not know existed. Healthy bacteria, fungus. Your immune system is upgraded. Your celestial being is right in karmic harmony. The world lets go of you a little bit. You breathe through nostrils you never had before. Hell, you breathe colors. The world tilts a little and changes.  

So stop fooling around and make us the heads of your nuclear families (looking at you, Indiana).

And on the parts of my queer journey that involve my gender and polyamory:

I used to say that I didn't think I could be with cis women because I didn't think they would understand that I'm not always a dyke. Sometimes I feel like a man, sometimes I feel bigender, sometimes I feel gender fuckery (as in, I'm whatever you don't want me to be that day), and most of the time, a child could decide my gender for me and I'd be happy with that. But I was wrong: Lesbians get me. Way more than I anticipated they could. Being sapphic includes trans men and I think that's really freaking cool. It's an honor to be embraced in my genderfluidity as a masculine identifying person. Pfft, lesbians think sapphic masculinity is hot. And it is. And we are. Tender but strong in all the ways a cis man never could be. We pave the way for a new masculinity even. Always have, always will. 

As for my polyamory these days, I'm not really practicing. I had such a terrible mindfuck of an experience prior that I've needed some years to lay off the stuff. My therapist tells me that seasoned polyamorists often land in a comfortable place of monogam-ish because we are worn out from all the drama of group dynamics. And lord, are we. 

I think there's a real beauty to abundance in love. Good lord, I'm deeply romantic. I could live off romance alone. The thought of sharing romance in abundance and multiple dynamics excites me and gets me out of bed to pursue relationships. But the reality of making that happen? Ha, that's slim to none, baby. People are messsssyyyyy. Better to have one healthy relationship than a few that are falling apart. But I won't give the stuff up completely. Who knows? Maybe there really are enough people to make it happen in this world and lifetime. I hope so. 

I'm solo these days and in my career girlie era. But never gayer. And prepared for my life to change one day as a polyamorist lesbian. I'm very excited to keep exploring dynamics in my life with time. Nothing will stop me from being gay, I can assure you of that, dear reader. I happily make being gay my entire personality. *Lizzie McGuire cartoon voice* Deal with it!

As always, do gay things. Be gay all the time, not just in June. Fuck corporate fascists, get down with the fags. We've always been here and always will be. Deal with it! 

 

 

Creativity

I sat down recently to make yet another attempt at being creative and damn the Lexapro. Goddamn the Lexapro. 

I even did some light research on how to navigate creativity when you're emotionally blunted on anti-depressants and the best I could come up with was doing things that are low-stakes and accepting that your creativity has shifted. 

But GIRL--my creativity has LEFT THE BUILDING. 

When I went through my divorce, I deeply struggled to find a medium that could encapsulate all of my feelings into a creative project. Thus, one never happened. Just little bits here and there. I thought that was situational but it turns out it's not. Maybe creativity is complex. 

The other day, the best I could do was to work on an adult coloring book page. It felt trite at first but as I tried to accept the process, I realized that my creativity right now is inspired by mundane, every day, rote, routine stuff. And Lexapro has been necessary for helping with that. Pivotal even. I've needed routine to rework my life for many years now. 

But things are starting to come together in my life and I have the entirety of the world to process, I always do. What am I to do with my need to creatively process when I can't freely access it when I want to? It's devastating. 

But, for the sake of ensuring my anti-depressants keep me okay while the world burns right now, this is my attempt at breaking the monotony. I'm trying to feel inspired again. 

 

The world - it is indeed on fire. I'm an existentialist; I've always known that. But the reality, the grasping at the future, the harsh truths, the singe of truth into my skin, my bone marrow, and its full revelation in my ancestral DNA as a whitey in America... it's not woe is me. It's woe is us. Always has been. This shit is ancestral. I've known that in my studies of generational trauma. But the reality, the undoing of it all... the rich islands of hell of it all... the classism of it all... the status quo of it all... the blind ignorance and willful ignorance of it all... the refusal to bear witness of it all... These are the things that keep me up at night. 

And somewhere in it all, I have to hold my head up, go to work, and do it all over again. Everything feels curated; it's a great place to be for a dissociative person, the picking apart of reality on a mass scale. 

The liberal in me is waning. Has been for some time. But identity politics aren't working, they're not sustainable. I want to find the shared humanity in all of us, not the identity that erases the complexity of the human. 

There are times when I feel like I'm screaming into a void. OUR HUMANITY IS RIGHT HERE, LOOK NO FURTHER. 

I simply don't know how to articulate something that is perhaps not meant to be articulated through the lens of Western philosophy. I cannot make an argument for an intuitive knowledge that we have with each other and with the trees and with animals and with the world. That's the humanist in me. Thwarting that process is the reason the world is topsy turvy. 

Ancient wisdom doesn't need to posture. Hell, it doesn't even need words. Ritual, myth, symbol, consistency, safety, community, collective spirit, unity. I get what One Love means now. If you know, you know. 

How the fuck do I explain that to another white person? Our ancestors made damn sure we don't know what One Love means. Fuck em. 

 

When I think of myself as a multimedia artist, I think about trying to answer that question through art. That answer is the answer to damn near everything I need to know in life. It all permeates the personal, and that's white supremacy babyyyyy. 

But how do I as a healer find expression for this, for my own sanity, not just the sanity of others? I don't fucking know. 

All I know is that listening to music lately has been the answer somewhere in there.  

I'm 32 Going on 33 Now

What... a thing to say. 

I mean it makes sense. The math adds up. 

But that means this blog is... 17 going on 18 years old.

...you know what? There are much more unbelievable things going on in the world now than when I was 15. HA. 

At any rate, I don't get on social media much any more. I've found a way to protect my privacy and hold myself to a healthier standard that is less oversharing, more vulnerability with my loved ones. 

I have some dope ass friends. It's actually ridiculous how fulfilling it can be when you're willing to curate your boundaries and a circle that can support them. 

I wanted to pop in and offer an update. It's been a few years? My mind tells me I need an outlet and I certainly love the idea of washing away a little mystery (JUST a little) about my life, and then I shall go back into hiding I suppose muahahaha. 

Honestly, nothing's changed as far as how I function in my day-to-day. Still processing the entirety of the world, my trauma, and my aspirations. I have my best revelations when I'm sitting in bed and staring at the wall. 

I'm quite a homebody these days. I'm very regrettably back in Indiana/Indianapolis until I can get my finances back to where I'd like them to be. I'm doing okay - learning about my goals as a single-income person has been a journey but a good one. It's empowering and forces me to truly dig at what MY priorities are (and to continue examining my privileges etc). I don't think I have them completely sorted out yet but I'm getting damn near close. 

On the flip side, I have purchased the insides of what I'd like in my future living situation but just need the space. I've really set out to not lose my independence/adulthood as I've adjusted to living with others the last few years. Pretty proud of myself. 

Being a good ass psychologist has been my major focus. I've been working with autistic kiddos for quite awhile and while the field is not my end goal, I can't even describe how much these little beans teach me about therapy every single day. I'm also surrounded by people that are the most caring people I've ever met, prioritize their own growth, and seek to make the world a better place by being themselves. That's what I want to do in the world, too. 

I've really been thinking lately about how I intend to navigate the world as a leftist having left leftist spaces (left...there, I said it again). I am absolutely more of a leftist than I could have ever imagined since I've removed myself from those spaces that commune around shared leftist values - I just focus on embodying them, not telling them. And I've gotten some pretty damn awesome results, I must say. I'm not just posting about how much I care about something, I'm showing people. Quite honestly, I think people listen better through your actions anyways. Not to mention, I've been taking this time for communal solitude in tending to myself and checking in on my how my values inform how I show up for myself as well. My intersections matter too, dammit. 

In community, though, I've learned that I just am not the personality to help people work through any type of ego-reaching, posturing, or lack of accountability issues. That's DEFINITELY a group worth sharing space with if you have the kahonas and patience for it. I simply do not. I believe there's an extreme trigger there for me as well - just NOT a healthy space for me to be in. I'd rather spend my time (and I'm more effective as a leftist) around people with hearts of gold that want to do right by people but need to examine their biases. I'm your guy if you need help in that way, let's gooooooooooo. Gotta be willing to be honest and earnest about it all, though. Not easy to do. 

I do wonder if this will change for me at all in the future as I have to consider the different types of clientele I'll be serving. What does it mean to show up for a fellow leftist that won't examine their own biases or practice true accountability because it looks like failure in front of their peers? I don't know that answer. Yet? Who knows. Obviously this doesn't mean EVERY leftist yada yada yada but it does mean there is a cultural problem and I believe leftism also has the answers that underlie why that is, but that's for another day. (I can already feel the fellow leftists waiting for the intellectual answer - remember, I'm not your guy for this problem even if I can speak your language. We wield it differently). 

As I move forward in my life, I will summarize the unpleasant parts I'm moving through. I lost my baby kitty and greatest life companion Greta in April, am not on speaking terms with any of my family members, and am processing another breakup. BUT, and HUGE BUT, those are all actually good things this time around? I've loved so very much, I'm grieving, but I'm prioritizing me in this era of my life, no holds barred. 

One of my therapy goals in moving back home was to get to the root of why I can assert boundaries but not maintain them when pressed against. I now have my answers and they're extremely unpleasant. But I had a kitty to walk through the trauma and lessons and joy of my life with me, and a girlfriend that traveled me all over the world (pretty literally) and loved me better than anyone has. What a treat and a joy my life is, even when endings and grief occur. I'm so lucky. 

I'm really kind of doing this life thing on my own right now for the first real real real time. I've got my loved ones and a breakup doesn't stop someone from being in my corner (or I in theirs). Dykes don't work that way. 

Anyways, I'm very loved, I'm very exhausted, I'm learning, I'm stepping in to more of me, and I'm almost 33.  

 

Abracadabra

Right now, I am in Texas seeing my girlfriend. These weeks off in my life always provide a respite from my very, very full-time life. Working full-time and pursuing a degree full-time while healing from deep trauma in EMDR therapy and trying to have a semblance of a life outside all of that is pretty exhausting, I must admit. I heal and gain great clarity on these weeks. Maggie is very good to me. :)

We got caught up on Lady Gaga's new business and watched the Abracadabra video. I am now becoming a Gaga Stan. Something very, very, very deep and guttural found words in me through her art. 

I heard someone explain her new song as spell for getting through these dark times. I want to get up on stage and scream with her. 

Let me talk to you all about something. 

Y'all know my life has been a fucking mess. But let me talk about what happened after the mess happened. 

I dissociate as a trauma response, and do it quite often in my daily life. That means I feel very foggy headed and have trouble grounding myself into my present. My body and mind do everything in their power not to be here, and I am learning the reasons for that as we speak in therapy. It's excruciating. But alas, after the mess of it all, I was very seriously on the verge of being hospitalized. My body was running out of resources to cope with and there is only so much resilience one person can maintain in their body before crashing out. Two summers ago, I was horrified at the idea of finding myself passing out from exhaustion, non-verbal on my floor, dissociating to high heavens. Dissociation is a really fucking scary experience, especially when it's that level of intense. 

So I moved back to Indiana, for the temporary time being as I finish my degree.
I'm embarrassed by it. I fucking hate being here with every fiber of my fucking being.

When I moved back, I was in the middle of being off my anti-depressants and very quickly realized I needed to get back on them. As these massive shifts in my life were happening, I was learning about Gaza. When my sister came to help me load up in Columbus, she caught me dissociating and in explaining to her what was happening to me, she realized how bad it really was for me. I remember driving from Columbus to Indiana with my sister in a Uhaul, dumping on her about my life and the intense heaviness of having to move back home while two sentences later crying about Palestine. 

The world, and my world, felt completely ripped wide open. I've fought varying levels of depression since I've been back (though this time is much, much different than being here before). Even if I wanted to help the world around me in the capacity I once used to, I didn't have the resources. Learning about Gaza changed everything I understand about the future of things, both personal and systemic. 

In the long and short of it, where I felt powerless to help (as did many others), I saw kids dancing on rubble and singing. I had absolutely no excuse not to do the same in my life and country, though completely different situations. (And of course, may I acknowledge that even in my life's implosion, some of what I experience is an era of my life, not my every day. I see and acknowledge those for whom that is the case).

At the end of my wits and strength, I had no choice but to choose positivity. Sinking any further than I already was was simply not an option. If I want to effect change in the world, I must remain and I must find a way to thrive. There is no waiting around on getting people that don't care to care about what's going on in the world. There is only dancing. 

As the world falls apart, we have an enormous opportunity to innovate and to make the world into what we want it to be. If Palestinians can find their humanity when it is wholly unrecognized, we are privileged to wrestle through ours. Don't you for one fucking second give up on that. 

We need to be clear on what we want. Maybe we don't have that. I know it's bleak. I don't care, loves - Keep growing, expanding, and learning. Break down every barrier and bias you have within you. Dismantle the capitalism from within so that the capitalism on the outside matches the conditions. 

We are not fighting for rights and pleading to a system that will not care. We are creating new paradigms and ways of being by piecing together the fallen pieces. The world feels shaken and split in two because we (ESPECIALLY white people) are gaining clarity - genuine, authentic, clear clarity - on what capitalism actually is and how white and genocidal it is. Colonial settlerism is not a thing of the past, it is now and it is the future. Everything traces back to the system of whiteness hoarding identity while violently taking from others - I mean fucking everything, every branch of every 'ism.

If I were to give any advice, any advice at all to any of my white friends right now -- 

Stop listening to me.
Go read a queer, black person's book. About damn near anything. I have no recommendations, it's not about my thoughts. Go read. Learn to listen.
From my experience in social justice spaces, they are the people that stay when everyone else leaves. They are the backbone of this country and the world's progress. Consider this: The people most excluded by the system are the most qualified to critique it.
Then, and only then, can you begin to see why this American discomfort is not new, only expanded and in plain sight once again. 

If you're feeling like you don't know what to do, stop asking yourself that. Start creating. Start failing, and start creating. And if you've already been doing that, keep doing it. We fucking need you, you brilliant son-of-a-bitch. 

We cannot stop

We cannot stop

We cannot stop

We cannot stop

We cannot stop

If Lady Gaga, through her fibromyalgia, can throw herself around on stage while casting a spell for the times, so fucking can you. If Palestinians can dance on their decimated cities, you don't get an excuse.

Get up and DANCE. Claim joy. Do not leave it on the backs of people that will be/already are forced to fight your fight for you. Get the fuck up and dance. You are wanted on the floor. We built this shit built by fucking brick. We did. They didn't. Now dance.

Yo

I'm feeling slightly lighter lately, so here's an update?

I honestly thought I was gonna wait until a few more things were lined up in my life before I made another check-in like this. I've been a reallllll slut for privacy in this part of my life. It's SUCH a vibe, I'm so here for it. 

Anyways, I'm finishing out the last year of my undergraduate degree while getting my life back together in Indiana. I fucking hate being here so goddamn much and I'm sorry to my friends that have to hear me say that all the time. But I truly have continued to come to terms with the misery/sense of depression I get from being here. I've never felt like I fit in here - that's always been the lingering feeling. 

At any rate, I work with some awesome people that love autistic kiddos and it has given my sense of purpose and praxis so much focus. I wanted to move back home to focus on my career by getting through school and was NOT anticipating I'd be working in the field already. It's a beautiful ray of hope I didn't expect but I'm grateful for. 

Like I said, I'm not in leftist spaces anymore (for right now) because I'm over all the bullshit and practicing community with my co-workers is an unexpected but so so great development in my values. I've really been trying to embody my values instead of talking about them the past few years, while that has simultaneously meant showing up for MYSELF and being as available as I can be to others. I'm learning that I don't have to try more than I already try -- people trust me because I'm a real, ever-growing person, and that's all there is to it. That's the magic and creativity of life I guess. 

I'm already bored talking about this and as much as I adore conversations about life I also am so exhausted by them so like whatever. I'm T-I-R-E-D trying to inspire. I just wanna fuckin' exist. So like, life, or, whateverrrrrrr. 

Oh, I'm also still polyamorous but not really practicing and doing intense trauma healing in therapy. An average day for me.

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.   

Goodbye Facebook

I said goodbye to Facebook today. It feels like a momentous grief is being pulled from my shoulders. 

So I’ll resign to sharing my thoughts on here as I see fit. 

I’ve been writing on here since I was like 15 or something? Like half my life already. 

What a wild fucking ride it’s always been. 

It seems I return here when some demon is exorcising itself from my body. That feels revelatory and meaningful to me. But the real truth is that I’m always doing that  because of the world we live in. Capitalism begets constant healing. 

And I’m not tearing myself to shreds anymore. Just expressing. 

So that’s cool. 

I don’t really know what else to say but I’m not as put together as I seem and also I am. So there’s that. 

Welcome to my cluuuub, welcome to my cluuuub, welcome Squidward welcome Squidward welcome Squidward welcome Squidward welcome Squidward! 

I Am Thinking I’m Going to be Okay

 “Candy” by Machine Gun Kelly 

Something is shifting in the air today. I don’t know if I have words for it? 

I am letting go of all the expectations I’ve been putting on myself to have everything figured out and to be put together lately. I only know like a handful of things and I am far from put together. My self awareness is perhaps my problem sometimes haha. I am too self conscious. 

I’m on antidepressants and I almost blacked out on them this morning. Still worked a little, though. The dogs were nice to be around. 

I guess I’m just saying that I’m tired of holding onto everything. I want to be held. I want to release my grip and just lay back into life. I’m tired of fighting it. I’m tired of being exhausted by that fight. I don’t want to just be a fighter anymore. I do that and I’m very good at it. But I just want to live again. Hell, even to survive. I want to create a safe environment for me to do what I need to do, survival or thriving. I am doing what I can and what I want to do, and if I’m not, I will figure out what needs to change. I always do. I just wanna dance until then. It helps my brains to get there anyways. 

No more trying. Just resting and living again.

“I’m in my head again. I took more medicine. Ripped up the parts of my heart and my chest again.”

I Am, and That's Enough

"Doll Parts" by Hole

Today, I am somehow managing to experience hope in my healing. 

I am feeling a depression lingering over my head like a dark cloud. I am feeling a fight against lots of negative self talk, and I am feeling a fight for maintaining the life I want to keep leading. 

I have worked so so very hard for everything I have become in life. And fighting to keep a hold on that in the midst of a terrible depression is even harder than I even could have predicted. 

I know that on the other side of this is me, fierce, not to be fucked with, SAFE, sane, and healthier than I've ever been. But that felt like me just some 7 months ago. Here we are again. 

And because it feels repetitious, I have these blog posts to look back on, and those moments to remember, and they are coming to me in full bodily form. I am remembering what it feels like to have control over my life again. It is excruciatingly hard. It feels terribly lonely sometimes. I feel like I'm losing my mind and I depersonalize something fierce sometimes. I worry what others will think of the life I want to create. I worry I won't find the people I need in it. 

But then I always somehow manage to. I always, and I do mean always, somehow find myself picking myself back up again and finding the answers. Always. Every single time. I always do. I always do. I always do. I always do. I always do. 

That always doing makes room for me to trust myself, and my future self, and my present self, and hell, even my past self that led me to today. I love them, and they love me, and I love the future me, and they also love me, and us. There's so much self love to be had. 

It's extremely hard these days. That self love. I can't even describe it. I'm not certain I feel it most days. I feel a lot of self hate. And I suppose it's partly because for things to get better sometimes, they have to get worse first. I am drawing up to my surface all the things I've come to hate about myself, and not allowing it to remain. 

It is HARD. It's comfortable not trusting myself and it's comfortable hating parts of myself that don't deserve it. I'd rather just not think about it some days. But it always finds me, and because I am not settling for anything less than self love in all areas of me and my life, it scares me. 

"GASP! There is a part of myself I do not yet love! Welllllll, we must fix this!"

And it is HARD. So so so very hard. But again, out of instinct, sheer force of will, spite, fight, and my always doing, I manage to make it through to myself. Even if it's a step out of line or a step in a weird direction. It's a step, and at least I am stepping, not sitting still, forever wallowing, and isolating. I am getting better and learning to love myself in depression. I am worthy of love even when I'm depressed. 

I love you, little Martina. You matter, to me, to your loved ones, and to the world. You are found, held, present, and so so so very important and loved. I love you so very much and hope you know and remember this. You are so very special to me, there is no one like you, and you are uniquely found in me because.... I AM you! :)

"I am
doll eyes
doll mouth
doll legs"

I Miss You

 Listen to The Night We Met, the Micky cover. Lord Huron's version isn't painful enough for this post. 

Today is a force myself out of bed day. Everything in me desires to glue itself to my bed, cry all day, and dissociate from all the overwhelm. 

It is my 2nd day off and my days off always catch up to me. I am getting bad again. 

I'm having trouble getting enough sleep, I'm struggling to eat sufficiently, and I'm trying to distract myself from my feelings. 

The distraction is nice because I certainly can't wallow in them. 

But goddamn, it's been 5 weeks and so much of the pain is just the same. I've gleaned so much wisdom over this time, but the grief is still there. 

I miss my partner something fierce, something awful, something dreadful that makes me roll around in bed feeling incredibly and overwhelmingly itchy. It's like I want them here with me cuddling but they are 5 weeks gone. 

And to go from talking all day everyday to hearing not a peep for 5 weeks feels like hell. It will only get worse from here on out, and I am not certain how to cope with that. I honestly don't know if I can, my body keeps telling me. But I must. 

I hate having lost a love of my life, and in an unfair way. I am here lately consumed with so many feelings I can't quite make sense of. And I suppose it's the reality of knowing that when I make sense of them, I am letting go. 

God, I hate letting go. 

"I had all of you, most of you, some, and now none of you
Take me back to the night we met
I don't know what I'm supposed to do
Haunted by the ghost of you
Take me back to the night we met"

Meow Indeed

If you are going to read this blog, I am going to request you listen to "Genesis" by Deftones. 
I am going to start including a song with my blog posts. 
You must get connected with the music in my head if you are going to hang here. 
Or not, because I wrote this post in silence, then listened to this song. 

I'm going to try this thing here, where I visit you more often, dear old blog. 
I tend to make predictions about what kind of self care routine I intend to practice. Something about this feels like setting intention to revisit ye olde form of writing. 
I am told I am good at writing, and I believe people. I am. 
It feels like wrestling with the gods this time. 

I am in a mental health space I haven't been in years. Since I started this blog actually. Oh wow. 
I fucking hate when I fall into weird things like that and extract the meaningfulness. I don't want to feel spiritual anymore, but I swear I am far too good at this shit, the finding meaning shit. 

The meaning of this return shall be to enter the next layer of healing and move this blog into greater places of love for myself, like I suppose it's always been trying to do in its own way. 

This time is different -
I am not alone. 
I am in therapy. 
I am sharing with friends. 
I know that I am loved. 

I am struggling like before, and this time, I have already lost so much. 
Last time, I was in the midst of wrestling with all I was about to lose. 

I am going to be candid this time. Not for the purpose of oversharing, but for the purpose of documentation. 

I am returning to these artful places of creation lately and honestly, it's scared me a little bit because I keep remembering what kind of head spaces I was in last time I got this attached to my art. But now, I am loving this part of myself, forcing my Positive Self Talk into those places. I have understood the reason I create. It is to survive and find dwelling places for my pain. It is all I know how to do, in the most exorcising way anyways. 

I no longer find it purposeful to allow people into my pain for no reason. I am not sharing my pain to inspire people anymore. I am sharing my art. Allow my pain to live and breathe, for me. Here we go. 

CANDID TIME, A COLLECTION OF SCENES FROM MY LIFE, 2021

As per my past blog posts, I moved this year. Home is Columbus, Ohio now. I like it here a whole lot. I love leaving it just to come back and remember where my home is. I live in a small two room apartment, and I have lived here in many iterations for 9 months. Wow. It's my small human child now. 
I love this apartment so much. It has 5 giant windows that feel so spacious and I have put so very much work into my bedroom nook. This space I am writing in - my nook - is the home piece for me. I throw my clothes into a pile on the floor that sits about as high as my bed, and lay down, look out my barred window, and the world is quiet again. I can hear myself breathing. I look around at pictures of my friends and family and the meaningful things I have placed here, and I am home. Just removed enough from former home to be my own place, just close enough to be reminded of where I come from. 

I moved here on account of my past longterm partner of 8 years. I uprooted my entire sense of life and very important therapy to be here for them. We broke up in the first 3 months. There is something about being confined to a 2 room apartment in a brand new city and revisiting the same issues once again that lends itself to the end of things. We were so ecstatic to be here, too. Now our old nook is my nook, reclaimed and redecorated. My cat sits with me and misses her old parent but longs for my return home each day, and we cuddle in bed when I get home. I made the decision to move forward in my life without my nesting partner as an extension of the therapy I uprooted for them - the ultimate irony. Go to therapy, exorcise your demons, and they just might be the ones sitting next to you. I say this in the kindest way to myself - truly, what did I expect to happen? I am far too good at taking therapy seriously to let it do anything other than transform me. So here we are. I feel quite over my partner 6 months down the pipeline. It was a long time coming and I went through many days of bad depression over the months, and now I am just ready for my divorce to get moving in the direction it needs to. It's just funny how all that time ended in a breath, but I am glad it did. I am so glad. 

Because, 
it made room for me to meet someone spectacular. I am polyamorous, so there is no necessity in partner hopping. But when unsafety exits your life, safety has room to enter it. There was a moment of overlap there for a month in this transition and it's funny the way, like I said, therapy was always going to change me. I put too much of myself into that work I uprooted - it followed me here in the form of the pussy willow branches I let sit above my nook, the way they sat, bloomed already, in my therapist's office. I met this person on a whim, on those fucking dating apps. God, they are truly awful. Now I am inclined to put a little more faith in them, but I'm so jaded, I'd like to call it pure luck. I waited on myself to match them and that feels so true to the entirety of our relationship. We both were so patient with each other, so loving, so caring, so gentle, and so healing for one another. It was a true, pure love I pined about so much in this very blog over the years, covered all the sappy songs to, and I found myself as a romantic in this relationship. I used to hold so much silly shame for being as highly romantic a person as I am. I want it all - all the sappy movie moments, something soft and sweet given and received in consistency, the swell of love exchanged beyond the butterflies and into the real. This is what we had, and it was a type of beautiful I could not possibly capture in words (I don't think - I am seeking them). How ever I got so lucky, I do not know, and I am inclined to think it really was fate. I am finding no explanations lately for why something so pure came into my life and I am, oddly enough, finding some meaning in the ideas of intuition and that nonsensical shit I stopped believing in years ago. What is true love but if not magic, though, says the romantic in me. I believe, more than I ever have before. And I have found myself once again outside the shame. I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS PERSON. It's a sheer beauty my heart can carry the weight of it these days, weeks after the breakup occurring on pure circumstance. It is a love for an only-time-will-tell series of future moments and in this moment of my life, I am focusing on what the fuck else I want to squeeze out of life. I have no other choice, or the depression in the loss would drown me.

Amidst this circumstance, I am also healing in a rage I do not have it in me to yet express here. In more ways than one, I am ending a cycle of pain in my life. My body is helping heal my mind, and I am tending to my mind, my inner child, and my heart. It is an ugly process, but healing like this never is pretty. I am so very tired of being unsafe, even on account of unlucky circumstance, and my body agrees. I am running the roulette wheel back in my favor, all bets fed to me by the dealer. I am bending the game in my favor, forever. My trauma is healing, forever. 

Prior to the breakup, I also lost my stepfather to divorce, on account of his doing something stupid and unsafe as well. I have given up on men, and it appears I will hold no more father figures in my life. I can't say I'm entirely surprised this is my lot in life. It sucks, but if men be not able to hold space for me, I be not able to hold space for them either. That loss sent me into a panic for a week after and I am settling on how peaceful it is to have his nonsense, if all he ever intended was true nonsense, out of the way. My family is a small as it has ever been, haven shrunk each year since my parents divorced, and it cannot get any smaller until it absolutely must. I guess I could say I'm content in knowing what I have the rest of my life. I lost many in-laws to my own divorce and if two is my magical number, then two I shall embrace. I hate him for it, leaving a gaping emotional hole in my family, but go on, git, if you're gonna needs be got. I've no time for bullshit, and especially these days. He was another cog in the machine. 

Great concern has been expressed about me lately, and I have been understanding. But it is truly different this time around. I am more in touch with my feelings - I am physically full body crying now, full body laughing, full body feeling my anger. I am a lived emo song, full of angst and the swell of full emotion. I have big feelings, and I am no longer ashamed of who I am. In depression, that tends towards days of wallowing. In my anxiety, that tends towards rumination. The two combined are like quick sand to get out of sometimes, but I always do. That prolonging of the struggle has drastically slowed down over the years and I am catching these patterns weeks, sometimes even days in. I cannot stop the flow of depression and rumination that follow such a great loss, or series of losses. I can only tend to them, suture the wounds if you will. 

I am finding myself in the midst of it. I know now what I will not settle for, nor tolerate. I will not accept anything less than what I deserve, in every relationship in my life, in every area of my life, even when I am struggling. I have learned more about boundaries than I ever have in my life this year, on a sheer necessity for choice of drowning or floating. I chose to float, and here I am, setting and living my boundaries as a form of muscle memory at this point. I am living who I've always wanted to be because I had no other choice. Perhaps, just perhaps, I am not so grateful I was made to feel unsafe but I am at least finding some sense of gratitude in the certainty of having known unsafety was not sustainable or possible for me. I am grateful I learned to let people show me who they are, and to believe them. I am believing them nowadays. 

I went on a terrible date last night. She talked over me and had terribly racist things to say about the arts scene I so love, full of the audacity to then ask me to text her. I told her I needed to go home and feed my cat. My cat is more important than her, and I know this now about all the fuckers of the world. I owe you nothing - no amount of my time, energy, or even my adorable nature, and certainly no invitation to come see my cat. I am only willing to share myself with those worthy of being shared with. I am cute, I am funny, I am sexy as hell, I am talented, I am charming, I am loving, I am real, I am compassionate, I am bold, I am romantic, I am snarky, I am of no tolerance for anything less in return. 

My cat agrees. My poor baby has a UTI and her meowing is grating on my ears as it reminds me I can barely take care of myself somedays, let alone this beautiful creature. I am glued to my bed sometimes, staring at the ceiling, dissociating, caught in a rumination cycle, sometimes the grief a feeling of shock, sometimes my eyes welled in tears, my body draining the pain of the whole in my chest, little by little, a lot by a lot. She is going to the vet next week. I am getting out of bed for her. We are getting better together. And I will be okay. I am finding my hope, in myself, for my cat, for my nook, for my apartment, for the steps out my door, for the seat in my car, for all the movements that take me where I need to be, for all the motions I am able to make to meet my needs, for self care, for self love, for self life. And I am going to be nothing but dramatic about it, because that is who I am. 

My roommate said, "Meow indeed." And I have to agree. 

"I reject both sides of what I'm being told.
I've seen right through now, I watch how wild it gets.
I finally achieve balance.
Approaching a delayed rebirth.
I'm positive there's no sense to what I'm being sold.
Yet here I go, I watch how wild we get.
Oh, can you taste your life balanced?
How will you spend your time reborn?
Climbing out of the ashes.
Turning time inside out.
We're miles beyond the sound.
We'll start again, taste a lifestyle that never gets old."

Merry Fuggin' Christmas

It's Christmas 2021. 
I've been so angsty and moody and mopey all day. 
And then I remembered that's how I always get every year this day. 
The existentialism hits me in a way that leads me to lay down somewhere a dissociate to the heavens. 

I thought about my father for like 2 seconds today. Fuck that guy. This is progress. I could truly care less about him this year. What a wonderful feeling, truly. 

But perhaps it is because I am so overcome with everything else this year, I don't even have time to devote to thinking about him (this is not true but it objectively feels so). 

I am going through a divorce, I am going through another gut-wrenching breakup,  I am mourning the loss of my stepfather to divorce, I am in a town by myself with just my cat and my roommate, and I did have to work today and although it was probably a good thing, I fucking hate capitalism. 

Christmas is just another day of the year to get through. I am knowing that like I've never known it before. 

Everything feels awfully shallow and empty on Christmas anyways. I'm ready to let it go. Time to move on. 

Hallelujah, (New) Jersey

I am in a bit of an anxious, obsessive spiral, but this time feels very different. 

I am healing and letting go of old habitual patterns of thought, and my mind is trying to keep up. And it is. 

And here I sit in bed, pondering why I’ve ever held the weight of the world on my shoulders and been so hard on myself. 

I can and am letting go of all that hasn’t worked for me. And now it’s only me and me, and as scary as that feels sometimes, I am not alone, I am supported, I am safe, and I am capable. What a sweet truth to know now. 

I am capable. I am strong in ways that don’t always have to be resilient and avoidant. I am me. I kind of love that. 

Here’s to who I am becoming and creating myself to be. All power and glory and praise to me these days. Hallelujah. 

Friday, July 23, 2021

I keep pinning down days recently that have depth of meaning. 
There's a few of them. 
But today, there is something too personal to share here, but I never want to forget the way I woke up and felt today. 
And I think I never will. 

I am 28. 
I am in Ohio, downtown Columbus. 
I am in my reclaimed cute ass apartment, rolling around in bed and grumbling in happiness. 
I am walking into my living room and realizing it's mine. 
I am toasting up some french toast bagels and pouring myself a small cup of black tea. 
I am sitting on this ugly brown couch, kicking my feet up, and watching the smoke billowing from my tea.
I am watching the sky move as the clouds inch their way across the very blue skyline. 
I am smiling, and smiling, and smiling. 
Bruce is trying to impede upon my morning glories but he will not. 
I am listening to a friend's long, story form voice message and replying to her. 
I am texting a friend about how wonderful my life is now and offering mutual encouragement. 
I am being invited deeper into the city and its arts and activism by a friend. 
I am beaming. 
I am okay. 
I am here. 
Finally. 

All this dreaming is becoming a vision, the visage outside my 5 giant ass windows in downtown Columbus. The only thing I am certain of is the uncertainty, and how much I love my tea and bagels and the smoke billowing and the feeling of my smile across my face. 

Sense

My therapist and I have been talking about self care through the senses, as a sensory input. 

Why is that so amazing? 

Perhaps it’s the sensation of knowing that someone is actively aware, caring, and helping me build a world I wanna experience through my senses, when they have been so impeded upon. 

Ain’t that sweet?