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White Supremacy is a Death Cult

I hesitated on posting this. I worried mostly about getting me and my loved ones doxxed if this post gained any traction out in these digital streets. The news about Ahmaud Arbery was just trickling in when I originally put this down and of course, COVID-19. So I put it down.

Then Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were murdered by cops.

I will take the hit.

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Quarantine Thoughts

And as you can see, I am not dead.

I’m going to be real with you. Keeping up with everything that the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown at us these past couple of months has been absolutey exhausting and not conducive for my particular brand of creativity. Work has had constant changes because they are pretty much doing a lot of things on the fly (this is what happens when you outsource much of your workforce to overseas partners ), and while I am thankful that I haven’t been fired or furloughed and that my job is already work from home, there is a level of mental exhaustion at work at trying to pretend things are even close to normal. I don’t want to tear myself away from my Twitter feed even though it is also an exhaust to my mental as well. Try to find relief and get the news at the same time isn’t really happening.

I am demoralized, I am depressed, I am more affected by this than what I want to believe I am. I worry that my fiance may have had it back in December (either that or the flu), and I could’ve been exposed. My smoker’s cough came back with a vengeance and I haven’t smoked since late December/early January. My fiance also ended up, months after being sick, being diagnosed with strep, and I went and got a strep test and didn’t have strep. I’m trying to figure out when to wear a mask, should I be wearing gloves even though I’m going to have to change them damn near every time I touch something, and also we just moved across the parking lot to a bigger unit and should we wipe everything down whenever it comes into the house and oh my God, I actually wish even more so now that I had somewhere to go because this routine of waking up, working, playing video games, going to sleep is fucking with me heavy.

(I hate routines but I keep routines.)

And like some of you, because my work has shifted from talking to people on a phone all day (thank God) to talking to people via email and chat (oh God), I have some time to sit with myself and it’s unpleasant. Man, a lot of unpleasant feelings have popped up again. I’m a terrible friend (because I don’t want to be vulnerable and appear needy), should I be living my best bad bitch life (have I ever even been a bad bitch?) and not coupled up and being subjected to such a subservient role as being a (future) wife for one of these unappreciative ass males; am I wasting what little potential I have left; oh my God, why do I feel so empty inside and keep trying to fill the space with buying shit and booze because I don’t have weed available and the booze isn’t doing it for me in the way I want; what can I do to get the approval of people that I will probably never meet (absolutely nothing); where did my life go?

I just keep feeling all this terrible shit and haven’t been coping with it because I don’t have the fight in me right now to really cope. I cope all the fucking time, I’m tired of coping. I want to go rage. I want to feel this shit and fight it and yell and strangle it and burn some shit down and fire off and release, can I please get a fucking release from this shit? And when I am done raging I want to go spend the rest of my days surrounded by water and earth so that all this fire and air can calm the fuck down, feel something and be at some fucking peace.

I let out a deep sigh and that wasn’t good enough. The stir crazy has sunk in.

Feature photo from Thiago Miranda, follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thfotodesign/

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Guilt and Shame Are A One-Two (One-Two) Punch

Stop sacrificing because feeling like you need to, for the validity of chossing the mature thing. The survival thing. The “adult” thing [sic].

Iron Lion Jackson

As we are prone to do, a good friend and I were having a conversation about my various neuroses. He told me that I am carrying a lot of guilt and shame that I needed to let go of.

Of course, he was right. I just wasn’t sure of what I felt guilty about (or maybe I forgot, I mean, I did smoke weed for six years).

Today, after chucking up the deuces to another crappy situation, and I struggled with my fiancé to justify why I should leave it, it dawned on me what I felt guilty about.

I felt guilty about wanting something else for myself, and that something else is this writing life. I should be making my bloodline proud and going after “a good job” with benefits, weekends off and PTO and this passion is something I should do on the side.

The problem with me is that when I have a job, I give it as much as I can (I won’t lie and say 100%, but at best I give a good 95%) and giving as much as I can leaves me feeling quite drained, devoid of the mental and even spiritual energy that I need to write. If I don’t have life in me, how can I give life to my characters?

And I feel guilty for that. I feel shame at my perception that I’ve let people down because I was supposed to be “the one.” Those are expectations I put on myself however. My parents and surviving grandparents will tell you that they’re extremely proud that I made it through college. My siblings will say similar things. Yet I feel shame when I quit a job, or guilt for just wanting to stay at home, develop a good, solid routine, and write for a couple of hours a day while taking care of my domicile.

I feel guilty and ashamed that I don’t want to constantly chase money. Money is the means to an end. The end can be comfort, a vacation, a new house, rose gold dining plates, a sex doll, whatever. I can’t help but feel like people think that money is the end though.

Yet, I know how I feel working at places that don’t move me and I’m tired of it.

Part of the master plan for 2019 involves me moving past this guilt and shame, especially since I’ve identified it (or remembered what it was).

In conclusion, guilt and shame are a hell of a set of feelings to experience, because in the end, especially if you’re anything like me, they will leave you in a vicious cycle, and I know all about vicious cycles. As my friend recently reminded me, I am living for myself and myself only and there is no need for me to make myself a “martyr for what”. That’s just going to leave me stuck, and I’m not trying to be stuck.

Peace.