Thinking Outloud, Speaking To My Self

They say actions speak louder than words. But what of actions and what of words when your mind tarries beyond your limits? What of action and what of words when your feelings don’t align with what comes out of your mouth or what you do? I struggle very hard with accountability. With rectifying all my broken relationships, with weighing what degree was within my control and what degree was out of my control. And within that struggle of thought my mind begins to tangle and weave and grow cloudy, much like kudzu vines overtaking a bank on the side of the road.

Pre-this year my mind had a road, and the mental kudzu was growing, but I was in a vehicle, driving along. The kudzu only fancied my gaze every so often. I could still drive, bring people in the car, and share the road with other cars. The music that often plays in my head had a rhythmic shuffle, as if myself and my friends were taking turns with the song game on my car’s stereo. But this year, things have changed.

The kudzu overtook the road a few yards farther than I could see, like the vines of Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors. Its overgrowth so sudden that the road servicemen hadn’t had the time to try and cut it back, nor had I even the time to see it before driving my car straight into its labyrinth. The car of course stopped as the vines were too thick and tangled to allow it to move.

My ex-boyfriend, my friends, and my family all felt like they were “in the car with me” at the beginning of this year. When the kudzu took away my ability to drive, I started walking. But as I walked the kudzu just kept growing, and every step felt like I was trekking through a thick layer of snow or deep into a jungle. The music from the car now becoming a faint din before falling away completely. To enjoy music while I trekked now meant re-creating the lyrics and melodies through my own broken train of thought. I turn around every so often, only to see less and less people and more and more kudzu.

Above me: kudzu. Below me: kudzu. To my left and right: kudzu. Sheer panic kicks in as a look around and see no one. It’s just me, alone in my own mental forest of kudzu. It wraps itself around me, my legs grow tired, and I finally just stop moving. I lie there, immobile, like an invalid, humming hymnals and my favourite songs while tears pour down my face. Where is everybody?

I’m not responsible for the kudzu. The car, yes. The music, yes. But the kudzu is a mental weed along the road, an alien species that slowly creeps until it renders you hostage and immobile. Eventually the servicemen come and they cut down some of the kudzu. But everything is different now. My car no longer works due to the pressure and weight the vines created around it, not to mention it’s a yonder’s way back on a road that I must move forward on. The people and relationships I value and hold most dear are all scattered.

As I continue to walk down this road, the kudzu still spills over the asphalt. The servicemen are more attentive, and prune what they can with the tools they have, but the experience is much different. No longer is the kudzu a passing image in the periphery. Instead its presence is foreboding; it’s the main landscape. Left and right the kudzu still keeps growing, albeit slower, and I’m constantly reminded of the feeling of being suspended and immobile in kudzu. That reminder sends shivers down my back and brings tears to my eyes as I limp along the road. I miss the car, and the people in it. In my head I play the blame game, and run through my memories over and over again.

“If I had paid more attention to the kudzu,” “If I had stopped the car sooner and turned around,” “If I…” But then I’ll have another thought and shake myself and go “NO, shut up Drew, there’s nothing you could have done to prevent the kudzu, keep walking.” But then see I go back and forth and back and forth with this thought loop. Then I ask myself, “Why do you keep thinking about this?” to which I answer “I feel alone, I miss my car and steady music and those I’ve known. I miss my ex, I miss my family, I miss feeling happy.”

It feels like a cruel joke. My mind throws itself into the kudzu, leaves me stranded to myself, and then when I finally get it “pruned” with some psychotherapy and the trial runs of medication, I’m still left with the kudzu - much more noticeable than when I was in the car driving by it. Of my relationships - some are now like cars speeding by me while I walk through the pain, others behind me on separate walks, and the ones that do tarry with me on my walk or the new ones I’ve tried to make all get overshadowed by the kudzu and the constant reminders of pain that come with the kudzu.

It’s one thing to have a mental disorder, to have chemicals screwed up in your brain. But it’s a whole other thing when that disorder takes a wrecking ball to everything you love. When the kudzu ends the car ride and almost ends you. When you have to deal with the trauma it inflicted while still having the disorder as your constant reminder of said trauma. The worst feeling is knowing it would be easier if you had a stronger support system, one that could excuse your madness and come back loving you even harder. I thought I had that, but when the kudzu overwhelmed my ability to even walk, most of my support system let go. “It’s too painful.”

It’s so hard to find stability and longevity when everything constantly seems to shift and change. It’s so hard to find peace when you’ve felt like you’re in a battle zone most of your life. When all the situational factors and triggers and traumas and depressions meet the hardwired depressions and manias it all just becomes so tangled. If I blame myself for the loss of relationships, it’s depressing and agonizing because it was within my control. If I blame bipolar, it’s even more depressing and agonizing because it was outside of my control. If it’s a mixture of both, then it’s somewhere between depressing and agonizing and more depressing and agonizing - great lot in life that is.

               Americans are sleeping. They lie deep in an anesthetised state, tailored to them by their phones, apps, and gross obsession with money and materialistic vices. Americans lie sleeping, dreaming of this zero-sum game between the two major American political parties, fed the fodder of media networks like MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, ABC, and the likes. These media networks are run by six major corporations: General Electric, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS. These corporations are run by a handful of affluent shareholders whose sole purpose is to incur the most amount of profit as possible. They do that by selling ads, and so to keep their viewers engaged with the screen they create a narrative, specifically tailored for your worldview, specifically tailored to keep you asleep. These shareholders expand their power and influence well beyond these media corporations. They expand them into all aspects of the American corporate economy including real estate, banking, retail and manufacturing. They seek to maximise profit, and they thus take their power and wealth and influence the law-making body of America to ensure that they have laws written in their favour. Laws to lower their taxes and safety regulations. Laws to dissuade worker’s movements. They create faux “debate” between Republicans and Democrats as they quietly pass massive amounts of bipartisan disasters onto the American economy and our geopolitical empire.  

               Every time I see commentary on the morality of our country, or how this is because of a lack of God or something this Democrat did, etc, I get frustrated. That is the façade they have sold the American people. This false sense of “civil war,” this hyper-partisanship and fundamentalism. Rather than turn our eyes to the real enemies, these shareholders and wealthy oligarchs who are directly responsible for our positions in life today, we turn our sleeping eyes to each other and chew each other apart like it even matters. We believe these lies that have been spoon-fed to us most of our lives. We’ve been trained to put stock into reducing our worth as human beings, reducing our responsibility and our achievements, reducing our right to ask for more, and instead to surrender power. Surrender power to the corporations, to the government they own, and to this mythical being in the sky. Surrender our power and our voices. And at the end of the day, we suffer, but many Americans are so fast asleep they can’t even realise that they can have something better, that they can be awake and fight for something better.

               Here’s something no one wants you to know: you are God. You are a part of the human consciousness that compiles together with every single universal experience to create a “God force.” Within you is boundless amounts of power and realities and potential. You have enough within you to move mountains and walk on water. You alone are the executioner of your actions, of change. You sew the seeds and can change the hearts and minds. The actions you do on this Earth are yours, they are a reflection on you, and only you. Corporations don’t want you to get this. Parents don’t want their children to get this. The societal institutions that we’ve been raised in, that have taught us how to act and function don’t want you to get this. Because that takes away their power, that threatens their way of life. That’s what makes a statement like “I am God” powerful. It is a declaration of your understanding of the universe, it is revolutionary to the established way. Jesus Christ understood this, taking on the Jewish establishment of his day. He knew the power and potential of this mindset. Mohammad got this. So did the Buddha, and Confucius, and Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. They all understood that power comes from within. It is not given to you from someone of something, it is something you make.

               Most of what you know is just a series of thoughts created by other realities. What your parents taught you growing up is merely a cultivated lens of information passed down through generations, parroting the ones before them. But because they’re your parents, you’re more susceptible to their lens. And then they teach you about the religious doctrine that says you must listen to your parents, thus solidifying whatever the originator of that information wanted you to believe. If we want to get serious about power, about bettering our lives, we must get serious about information. There is only one kind of information that brings about power: original thought. Everyone has this little voice in their head when they read or listen to anything that guides whether they follow that information. It’s what causes people to eat shellfish or wear multi-blend fabrics but quote Leviticus about homosexuality. It is the “natural moral filter” of your brain that sifts through information. That is your power, use it. Be your own curator of truth, don’t rely on anyone else. Don’t just assume that these media outlets are honest actors. Ask what the motivation of this information is, and how does that motivation serve society. Be your own beacon of power.

               Years of our broken educational system, broken via the same policies that enrich shareholder wealth and the oligarchy, have created the largest mass of American idiots in American history. After the revolutionary periods of the Civil Rights era, the corporate elite sought to smoke out once and for all calls for change. The Eugene Debs that have existed throughout history. The Jesuses and the Gandhis and the MLKs. They waged a war on drugs, vilifying substances that woke Americans up like psychedelics. They offered the Boomers positions in corporate America, a promise of wealth and security. And thus, the generation sold out and the elite wrote laws into place to massively give away huge swaths of wealth and power to a small few while Americans bled out. They then wrote our education system, to belittle and depress the future generations, to ensure they could not adequately revolt as the Boomers did. And to ensure they would be good little consumers and buy useless crap in our economy. They stripped them of opportunity and then increased prisons to account for the increase in crimes of despair, crimes they created by limiting people’s power and writing new laws. They have been slowly crippling this economy, only wanting it to succeed for their immediate gratification, not caring what will happen when they’re gone. As a result, the youth, one of the largest and potentially politically devastating classes of America is one of the least participative, least awake groups in American history. They then use their media narratives to smear these groups, and besmirch them and call them lazy, and entitled, and that it’s their fault for their current plight, turning us against each other. Meanwhile, those who have systemically benefited remain silent, like useless imps.

Relationships are hard. They take work and a constant dedication to be the most fruitful and fulfilling. They also can be hard because of the learning curve. You have to learn how to be synergistic with another person. Sometimes its easier than others, some relationships work because they both are the same personality, other times it’s the old axiom “opposites attract,” it just depends on the people and circumstances, and it’s just a matter of working on that synergy that already exists and building from it. Things like communication become vitally important in this process and a lot of couples have stumbled as a result.

 Just because something is hard, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Arguably, you should, as the pay off will be much more rewarding. That goes with everything in life. The more work you put into something, the better the outcome. For instance, take my boyfriend. He is a guitarist. If he puts in one hour a day, he can come up with something semi-presentable. You can at least hear the notes, maybe just not the right timing. But if he spends two hours a day, the music starts to become more refined. The more he practices, the better the song sounds. This is by no accident. He’s building muscle memory and a natural smoothness as he practices more. Things start becoming second nature. He’s no longer thinking about every single note being plucked out, he’s just doing it. This allows him to put more of his attention somewhere else, and the cycle continues. Constantly he’s being able to handle more. The same can be said for a relationship. You want to find yourself doing things by second nature and being able to divert your attention elsewhere.

 Love is not hard. In fact, I think it is very easy to love someone (as it should be). It goes into that whole thing about love conquers all. It is kind of true because it is so easy to throw yourself into love. A relationship is birthed out of love, but it ends up becoming a sort of protector of the love it was birthed from. That is to say that the relationship protects your love with another individual, as it is so easy to fall into. They work together. So, the more you put into the relationship, the stronger and safer the love is. Whereas it is not necessarily true the other way around. Just because you love someone a lot, doesn’t ensure that your relationship will be strong, or serve its purpose.

 Being in a relationship can be an amazing experience, but you must make sure that you are wiling to put in the work it takes. If you’re not ready to do so, that is not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that you should not get into a relationship, as it would not be fair to that other person. At the same, don’t conflate confusion or lack of understanding with apathy. There are plenty people, including my boyfriend, who want to put in the work, but don’t necessarily know hot to, or stumbles through it. These types of relationships just require a higher level of communication and maintenance until such time that you are on par with each other.

I still remember that fateful day,

When they came to take you away,

My world went from colour to grey,

Helpless, I even tried to pray.

  You left me alone to myself,

My heart was shot, so was my health,

The world still was, but I was its infidel,

Finding nothing to believe in, no sense of self.

  Scared, scared you called for help,

I sat in the chair and said “Welp,”

He waited and waited, trouble he smelt,

All I could do was say fucking “Welp.”

  You’re still scared, so scared,

You still leave me all alone,

I remember that fateful day,

The last memory I have of being with you.

Connect. Disconnect. Reload. Help…

No service. Out of range. Out of date. Out of print.

You’re up, I’m down; I’m down, you’re up.

I miss you; I love you; I want you.

Good morning, good night….

  Hello?      Hello?      Drowning in silence.

Help. Compute. I’m sorry.

Left. Delivered. Seen. Opened. Read.

What’s going on in your head today?

  Breathe, calm, steady, relax.

You’re lagging, you’re breaking up.

No speed, no quality, shit technology.

Technology is stupid. I can’t take this virtual prison.

Give me you, in the flesh, not these pixels of poison.

  No voice cutting out, no word left unheard,

Just raw in the flesh–

Flesh. Our flesh together, touching.

Our lips together. Our passion true.

Give me you, in the flesh,

And then burn the technology to the ground.

Fuck the capitalists, I’m losing reality.

They have slain me. Goodbye.

In this day and age, it seems like life never stops. We are never not busy. Well, this is true for me too, a teenager in high school with a job, theatre, and AP/Honours Classes. Somehow, I found myself designing and building a whole musical set myself, partaking in a copious amount of new things and birthing a relationship with an amazing human being. That with the culmination of classes already dedicated to writing, I neglected this blog. That ends now. I need to get back into the groove of writing.

So, I guess I should start by catching you up on me. I have encountered new levels of spirituality through divine measures. I have found love with a boy who makes me feel like myself and makes me feel appreciated and happy and comfy. I landed my first lead in my school’s winter musical and I stage-managed for the spring. I’ve fostered several close relationships and unlocked more of my potential than I ever thought humanly possible. I brought new tiers of happiness and peace in my life.

War is a poison that infests the well of humanity, It is a weapon of man over nature.

War is a symptom of power, It is an institution funded by capitalism, Funded by greed, by religion, by ‘otherism.’

War brings destruction, chaos, and grief, It does not help, it does not solve, War does not bring democracy, It brings autocracy and oligarchy.

War is not patient, it is not kind, It envies, it boasts, and it is proud, It dishonours others, it is self-seeking,

War is easily angered, it keeps all records of ‘wrong,’ It delights in evil and rejoices in lies, It never protects, always suspects, always doubts, and always destroys,

War always fails, It never, ever, brings about a better world, how can it? Better never comes from destruction, Better never comes from a mushroom cloud, From slaughtering thousands of civilians.

The United States is no saviour, It has not made the world a better place, It has only masked corruption, And propagates false freedom.

In search of companionship, or affection, or love, we often find ourselves looking down a bottle or laying on the bed of some sleazy motel. We find ourselves up at night staring at the vulgar messages sent to us about our body, and about the most intimate details of us. The shame that comes with the realisation of our situation is grave, it’s powerful. Feeling this shame, this sense of immorality, makes me want to curl up into a ball and cry. Cry because deep down I know I do not need the situations that I put myself in. I lie to myself, blaming my bodily needs, but deep down, deep down there is an argument, a tug on my conscience. I try to suppress it, I try to reason with it, and I try to forget it. There real thing that I desire is companionship.

Throughout my life, I have always felt alone. When I was younger, and I mean primary school young, I had a couple of friends that were my neighbours and we would have sleepovers. But, as I progressed through junior high, I quickly lost the remanence of any real connecting friends. My sexuality and my gender made it hard for me to relate to males. And my outward appearance and my physical sex made it hard for me to have substantiated female friends. The feelings of confusion and mistrust in myself left me at odds with those around me. While at school I could have “friends” and talk and mingle, I was alone at home. My mother, basically operating as a single mother, had to provide for my sister and myself and she worked. My sister and I never got the chance to connect like siblings ought to, as she faced extreme trauma throughout her childhood, feeling the need to protect me, but not accompany me. At home, it is the long hours of watching TV, and reading books and doing homework that occupies most of my time. When I got to high school, I began to enjoy more social interaction, but still, not in the confines outside of school.

In ninth grade, I joined the marching band at my school. It was gruelling and at the end of the year, I did quit. I didn’t really make friends like others did because once again I found myself in a place unaccepted for who I was, as well as still feeling confused about who I was. High school though was easier, it was more embracing of my character and my spirit. In tenth grade, I joined the drama club, one of the best decisions of my life. It was there that I was accepted, and there that I developed more meaningful relationships. Still, those relationships did not exceed the interactions of rehearsals and class. I still am left alone to myself.

The desire for a significant other, for a boyfriend, for me, has always been profound. The feeling of having someone know the most intimate details about me is something that I crave. To be able to share myself with someone in the most intimate ways, who loves me and cares for me, is something I’ve desperately sought for a long time. Even a friend would be something of a substitute to quench my feelings of solitary and loneliness. So, I often find myself trying to purge myself of such wishes, having no luck with getting a boyfriend. I try to purge the wishes through meaningless exchanges on the internet and vague threats of hookups. I leave my body vulnerable to the people I speak to, and I feel shame when it’s over.