Finally, Having Less Fu*ks To Give…

“Feelings rarely equate to reality” is a phrase I’ve found repeatedly true in my life. But damn, as I get older, I’ve also realized they’re impossible to ignore as I experience them more palpably than ever. Or as I become more conscious of them now that I numb out (slightly) less than in my embattled & detached youth. Can anyone relate?

A couple of months ago I felt God nudge me to attend a trauma processing retreat called Deep Waters , it involved a weekend of “ experiential workshops” where feelings that were trapped in my innards were seemingly rattled loose after a whole lifetime of brewing underneath the surface of my consciousness – repressed and anesthetized by addictions. Honestly,  I don’t entirely know what to fucking do with them now. They’re acutely painful and uncomfortably present . (Like a tender, bulgy pimple on your nose, or several – eww, just thought of Dr. Pimple Popper👃)  And much to my ego’s chagrin, they didn’t reveal themselves with decorum and composure . Because my  shadow (that part of my unconscious mind that I repress); albeit for a moment, was exposed  – my frantic and instinctual attempts to achieve security and comfort and to protect my inner world  from collapsing are futile grasps for control . There’s a part of me within that runs on autopilot, devising & scheming to protect me from harm by attempting to anticipate every future occurrence  of my life in order to avoid problems. Or CONFLICT. It’s constantly trying to fashion this image to the outside world that I’m all put together. Well, it’s exhausting and I’m calling it out for its inefficacy. “I’m fine” is the automated response that blurts out of my mouth when I am asked the standard formality “ How are you?” I suspect I’m not the only one. Well, I will honestly state that lately there have been many moments when “I’m not fine”. Far from…

For the past few months , I’ve felt a deep restlessness  gnawing at my soul , a fluctuating undercurrent of overwhelm and despair that subtly yet  outwardly manifest as continual fidgeting of my extremities whilst internally anxiety colludes with worry to embed tension within my chest and hijack my brain to produce an unrelenting & exhausting speedway of racing thoughts .   Through a conscious concentrated effort, I occasionally engage my underutilized diaphragm, allowing  my constricted gut to expand as it longs for air as my chest’s shallow programmed gasps don’t usually collect enough oxygen to flow through my blood back down to my lungs & wherever else it needs to go . I just know my anxiety eventually lessens and the trapped air in my typically bloated belly are released when I breathe from my stomach. In other words, breaking wind  = flow of energy. That’s good in my book. (Even better sans odor.😁)

It’s been a minute friends, over 4 full years actually since I last blogged. Since the previous time I posted  in 2020, the world we live in – well, as Mr. Styles croons with melancholy: it’s not the same as it was.  (My pop sensibilities & attunement to the pulse of what’s currently relevant in the musical landscape have diminished with the intricacies of more time spent adulting, hence there will be fewer musical references – at least newer ones. Although I must say even if I lived under a rock a Taylor Swift tune is impossible to avoid nowadays. They even played antihero at church earlier this year after I had just finally relinquished the stronghold that an edm dance mix of another of her (older but new to me) songs  had on my mind -all from mindlessly clicking on a YouTube newsclip of her at a Superbowl afterparty.  “And I said, Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone, I’ll be waiting, all is that’s left to do is run🎵…” aggghhh, no stop, get out Tay Tay! Ok, can’t say I entirely minded that earworm taking up mental real estate-for the first 24 hours. Some things I’m powerless over, I acknowledge the Swiftie-ness of the times & am moving on… Given this blog post title, perhaps I’m channeling old school Dua Lipa and her “IDGAF” sentiment. I’m envious (and perhaps a bit more honest) and will admit I still have a few left to give. Zero = #lifegoals.

Like all of us, on some levels  I’m still dealing with the mental and emotional aftermath of the shit storm that initiated in 2020. Collectively, our world went all “Stranger Things” & got turned into The Upside Down. Last year I let my  domain name and site hosting expire, it was financially tight the last few years so I figured why spend monthly fees on conserving a website that had become obsolete to me? I hadn’t been in the mood to sit down and write about much of anything, to post about my personal life that wouldn’t be read by many either way- I mean we live in a 10 second reel- dominated world, right? Who’s got the time or attention span to read blogs anymore? #Squirrel🐿 My posts would just disappear into the vast expanse of the online world, further tucked away into oblivion by  AI algorithms that don’t approve of certain keywords within my text. (Yea I’m talking to you Chat GPT – ill hash out my beef with you another day) The disappearance of my site was a metaphor to what had been subtly happening to me the last few years. After making progress in my recovery and slowly starting to find my own voice within the world through avenues such as writing , I was thrusted several steps back.  I felt like I was silenced again as apathy reclaimed its settlement into my heart. I regretted my decision once I saw the site gone. It took me 3 months to restore it after going back and forth with the server team as they unearthed it before it went into the great beyond of cyberspace.

Like you perhaps, during and post pandemic my physical , emotional and spiritual health all took a nosedive for many reasons.  I was already struggling with chronic autoimmune issues, which were exacerbated by being stressed beyond belief working for a hospital during the height of the pandemic – eventually I was left no (logical) choice but to quit my job as I was  treated like a leper after being there for over 10 years. All for standing up for myself and refusing to give up sovereignty  over my body and  allowing them to mandate the introduction of experimental injections into my body. I observed firsthand how ineffective for C-VID prevention and reinfection they were amongst my healthcare worker colleagues – we were all privy to receive them several months before the general public. I wasn’t about to place my already fragile health at higher risk after the lack of transparency and turning of the blind eye amongst administration to the adverse side effects it caused several co-workers, not to mention the intimidation and psychological warfare (best way I can describe it) from daily email messages coming from corporate pushing people to comply for months. Many did out of fear of losing their jobs.

That’s a heavy subject that I’ll surely speak of more in the future with the sensitivity it deserves without shame or judgement towards anyone. We all did the best we could with the information we had on hand at the time amongst the chaos , confusion and fear we were bombarded with. (No matter your “walk of life”) I have some  insight and perspective that perhaps you may not have received if your only source of information was the mainstream media outlets at the time.  A lot of shit went down that most of the general public was and still isn’t aware of during that crazy period. Like the scary amount of censorship that occurred. Heck this post would have been removed for daring to express opposing views to the mainstream narrative, it happened within my social media accounts. Free speech went out the window.

I had a unique vantage point working within our broken healthcare system and also being plugged in with the alternative medicine community for some time beforehand, as I had initiated a journey to heal cumulative issues that traditional western health care had failed to address. I know what some of you may be thinking now – especially if it’s your first time in here, is this a “ conspiracy theory” blog? If you can manage to stick with me , be opened minded, and fight your ego’s natural cognitive dissonance to what may be new information for you; I’ll share patterns that I recognized over time and let you be the judge. Not for my benefit, for the health of you and your loved ones. What happened a few years ago is only a foreshadowing of more to come… pinning this topic for now. Let me ease myself back into the blogosphere instead of coming in with guns ablazing…😅🔫

Like you perhaps, I felt a great sense of loss during that time. Besides loss of good health , a longstanding job and work relationships,  I also lost some personal friendships. My once hidden, deep seated fear of abandonment and rejection  led me to cling on too tightly to  friendships that had already fizzled out all while undermining my worth. My inability to express my feelings in healthy ways often came out sideways, usually in the form of passive-aggressiveness, conflict avoidance, detachment and isolation which in turn contributed to the straining of other worthwhile relationships in my life. In hindsight, some of the losses were necessary for my growth, career included.  I made a difficult decision (over ten years in the making)  to completely sever ties with my mother – the most toxic relationship in my life up to that point after years of praying and trying to fix our relationship without any accountability or effort on her behalf. (It takes two to tango) It was painful, I felt God patiently but consistently lead me towards that separation, so I could grow to be my own man not weighed down by his mommy’s inability to let go of the image of me still as a child . I trusted her to him, that he may pursue her in order to soften and heal her wounded heart and show her that she has a heavenly father that loves her deeply. That he is her true savior, I couldn’t be that for her anymore, it was too exhausting and detrimental for my life, nor was it ever meant to be that way. I’ve touched upon enmeshment and emotional incest and the effects on a child’s development in past writings, perhaps those subjects will resurface.

 I feel like a brown eyed version of Paul Atreides right now, nearly blinded being caught up in a sandstorm of emotions swirling around me : confusion, sadness, compassion, resistance, resentment , indifference,frustration, impotency, powerlessness, RAAAAAAAGE . Like WHAAAAAATTTTTTTT THE FUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW?????!!!!!!

Yelling while accessing my diaphragm really helps me to process anger…

Over the course of the past few years the fragile veneer that my ego had constructed throughout a lifetime has begun to crack. Anger, resentment, self-loathing, and a plethora of underhanded & manipulative fears have come out of pandora’s box, and I can’t seem to stuff them back in as much as I want to. They feel like foreign invaders in a land  formerly known as my numb heart. I have no choice but to call them out one by one as the distorters of reality that they are, one avenue is through writing. So, I’m at it  again by necessity, not by vocation. I guess there’s always a choice, I still occasionally revert and succumb again to the cruel & painful yet  familiar  taskmasters of vices & addictions which could eventually lead me to lose my sanity entirely. ( For my new readers, addiction is a frequent theme in my posts of yore)  I’ve felt like I’ve been on the brink of losing my mind a few times in the past years.

Welcoming my 40s whilst being single has hit harder than I anticipated. The waves and depth of loneliness and anguish about where I fit in the world , what the plan for my life is, the un-comfortability of facing my own mortality,  and the pain of realizing how the  survival mechanisms I developed in my childhood in order feel safe no longer serve me as an adult. (i.e. pleasing others without regard for my own needs) Stuffing my own feelings and not expressing them  in order to not upset others only led to self-sabotage & to slowly kill myself. Before my rational mind  would have thought of it as “woo woo”, but now my experiences have led me to believe in the association of suppressed emotions manifesting as physical symptoms & disease in our bodies  (Book recommends if you battle chronic illness: Feelings Buried Alive Never Die or the Body Keeps Score)

Previously naïve to it, I’ve been fearful of revealing all of the feelings that reside within : emotions I used to consider “unacceptable” or “negative”- but perhaps a re-framing is necessary – the sensations of tightness, constriction, breathlessness, heaviness they produce in my body are  too much to bear at times. However, they are part of the human experience and I’ve struggled to accept that I too have them: anger, rage, irritation, resentment, fear, disappointment, anxiety, sadness, overwhelm, restlessness, weariness, heart-brokenness and at times hopelessness. I can have strong faith during certain seasons or areas of my life and in others I’m saddened to admit that I simply doubt God’s goodness towards me despite what he’s done in my life. I feel shame that at times my actions indicate that I don’t believe he exists or that what his son did on the cross matters to me. Or because I don’t “feel him” always there, my fluctuating feelings sometimes lead me to think he’s forgotten about me. I intend to write more often, sharing my deeper feelings more openly with you as I continue learning how to identify and express my emotions in healthier ways. In my experience, most men , we were not taught that.

The truth is even when I previously wrote on my blog, I may have been transparent, but not vulnerable. There’s a difference apparently. Sometimes  my posts  were so overedited and polished to a tee that they almost felt scripted to me. I think an unconscious fear of worrying what others thought about me, my beliefs, or how I wrote sucked the fun out of my past writing efforts. I was angry and frustrated that I’ve been rewriting this re-introductory  post for over two months now, constantly scrapping my rough drafts and starting over since my feelings and general sense of direction changed every time I mustered enough time & focus to sit and write. More than ever, I feel self-doubt ,indecisiveness  and perfectionism plague me, –  I want to just release everything I’m feeling with abandon and be completely raw. I’m afraid of swinging the pendulum entirely in the opposite direction and becoming a fucking dick.  Again, feelings don’t always =reality.

Winding down, a fresh insight from the aforementioned trauma processing retreat has helped me place things in a crude but true perspective: I have two choices, either way I’m potentially fucked.

a) I can remain silent, continue playing small ,playing it safe, living a mundane, mediocre life of perceived functionality and composed demeanor to the outside world while medicating my self-hatred and anger with sexually compulsive behaviors, food (yea that’s a newer one), work-aholism, binge TV watching, exercise or general busyness – continually delaying God’s plans for my life until I wake up one day and I’m an old man whose life has passed him by with no established career, family, or legacy. Then the pain of regret – which I already experience. My fear of being alone would be realized; having pushed everyone who loved me away because of the toxic shame and feeling of unworthiness I was unable to relinquish-  all because I lived a life too concerned about what others thought about me instead of  learning to love myself and live according to the truth of who God says I am. Not based on what I’m feeling on a particular day.

b) On the other hand, I can rise up, use my voice, and heed the call of the leader I was born to be. As aching, awkward and uncomfortable as it may feel at times — the truth is, the moments I’ve had conflict with others have yet to kill me. (Wreck me for a while, sometimes yea) Instead of attempting to numb out those uncomfortable feelings I can finally process them on the daily and let them flow through, freeing up space for others like peace, acceptance, and JOY! Will I still be maligned, rejected,  abandoned or get hurt by others in the future, well you betcha! Could I wind up alone in this instance also? Yes, again, potentially fucked too in this scenario. Yet, it would be on my terms, with courage, integrity, and aliveness!(No longer sleepwalking through life) It would be connected with God, with Jesus by the hand leading me, who ultimately is the only one who can satiate the deep longings of my heart that no human can. Having that, I’ll never feel truly alone. Not only would I grow to love myself more with this option, but I suspect I’ll be able to radiate that love outwardly to others and receive back in abundance.

This may get messier before it gets better (Can’t promise there won’t be future f-bombs which I rather relished this time around) but I’m going to allow myself to accept life on life’s terms and be a perfectly, imperfect human. Self-love is not the same as selfishness. I owe it to myself,  this is for my satisfaction, but if sharing can be of added benefit to you; even better. I often need to be reminded, all the trials I experience in life (you as well) aren’t usually just for my own gain.

Hey sleepwalker,

when the mountain comes back to life,

it doesn't come from without,

it comes from within..