20DaysofJune

28❤️🎈

I owe a lot to the kid who first started expressing himself on this site. When I first joined tumblr I was in the darkest place of my life. I had just turned 18, was rejected from every college I applied to, had lost a D2 college basketball scholarship due to over-recruiting (foreshadowing how that life path would ultimately end 3 years later) and the two friends I had left in the world had turned their backs on me. Still today, I feel like I started adulthood from rock bottom. Everything I had worked for, 10 thousand+ hours and a childhood full of sacrificed coming of age memories in exchange for a fulfilling basketball career, a 100+lb weight loss, my dedication education, my desperation for friendships and relationships, all of it had seemingly amounted to nothing. My life had come to a screeching hault and I needed somewhere to put all of that pain.

June 20, 2011 was a weird day. To tell you the truth I don’t remember much about it. All I remember is that gut feeling of weird. You’re supposed to feel optimistic about being 18 but I wasn’t. The thought of growing older felt existentially dreadful and empty. I had seen nothing but pain generationally and I saw myself headed for the emotional slaughter just like those before me. Love felt shallow and materialistic, friendship felt cliquey and political, and career goals felt like a lifetime of perusing money and material gain, wondering why these things never seemed to quench the yearning in my human soul, just like my father.

But I had to go to college (lol) that’s just what you’re “supposed” to do…right? (In 2011 anyway.) But alongside college came only other experience I credit as a source that gave me the tools to create the man I love being now.

I had heard about tumblr socially, I didn’t know what it was and at that time neither did tumblr. It was pictures and tags, memes, really it was an open forum. Eventually the message became clear. Tell who you are, show who you are, what speaks to you, what music, what do you desire, what are your dreams, who’s your type, your favorite characters, your influences, express YOU. And share those parts with others, and take parts in return. Become equally influenced and influential.

20DaysOfJune became my tumblr name at that point. I didn’t know much, I wasn’t in the mood to be Fucking creative. I was never good at making up social media names anyway. Plus, I was sure that my cringe online presence that I couldn’t keep at bay even in the MySpace era had landed me in this lonely place anyway. I was clearly in the middle of what I know now was a depressive episode. Something that happens more often than I’d like to admit, and a voice I often hear but twice as often, ignore. I just knew it was day Fucking 1. It was my 18th birthday and I had to rebuild my entire life even though I wasn’t exactly excited about it. And I leaned on Tumblr to learn how to find out what I found special about and to help me be patient with that process.

Tumblr is where I went to be okay, to be myself free of judgement, to make like minded friends that understood my humor, to tell horrible crude jokes that would probably get me cancelled (that I still refer to as my best material), and to finally give me somewhere I felt like I fit. My confidence was born here.

The truth is, life didn’t get easier from here. In fact, it got harder, it got more complicated, I was broken 1000 times more and 1000 times harder than I was on that day in 2011, It’s been quite the transformative journey. But what I had with me each time since was my new inner voice, 20DaysOfJune. His wit, his charm, his wisdom, his patience, his empathy, his need for rest, his thirst for adventure through art or travel, his ability to understand that the human experience of pain isn’t personal if he can be so palpably undersold through the lyrics of his favorite songs. He’s my higher self. He’s not circumstantial, made up of all of life’s happenings. His existence is bigger than a resumé. He is ancestral, he needs me. I feel like I connected with him here in a weird way.

The truth is I’m not forthcoming with a lot of things I’m working on personally or work wise today. I think there’s some sort of trauma response I have from this time. Like I can jinx it. Or lose it all. Or end up back at rock bottom, In a way I’m always battling imposter syndrome. Like every time I figure out who I am, I’m someone else. Or every time I’m pursuing a specific aspect of media, something else is always nagging me, turning my head. I’m capable of a lot of things, so it may seem like I’m not doing much, but really I’m just doing 6-7 different skills slowly, simultaneously. Yes, I hate it too, but that’s how my fucking brain works. (🙃) But I can honestly say that I’m optimistic now and not feel like I’m bullshitting myself. All of the fruits adult Me depends on for soul level nourishment, purpose and that will make my wildest dreams were seeds I planted here, not on the basketball court and not in the biology lab.