Aside From

Today was one of those days, the ones that serve as a reminder that I am not and will not ever truly be a gorja. Not even if at this point in the game, I decided to give up on all the spiritual progress I have made. It was a reminder that even after we shuffle off of this mortal coil, its all a matter of shifting from one tangible foot to another.

This, this moment has been 30 years in the making, and you can’t convince me otherwise.

“I don’t like it. You mean…we have to be good all our lives???”

Two lives, completely unbeknownst of the other. Two hearts, two minds, two completely separate stories converge like the wild trails Robert Frost spoke of all those years ago, as if he had this underscored knowledge of what it meant to be living our own dialect of wild and suddenly the words spoken throughout space and time called out to one another and clenched the individual layers together.

I finally believe “The Road Not Taken” wasn’t to be taken at face value. It was meant to be a symbolic representation for different aspects of our life, because within every choice we make there is a path we don’t take; a “truth” or “reality” we opt out of.

I didn’t intend for this post to take this route, therefore I suppose that in this moment, you or I could say there was a road not taken and a direction I veered towards instead of swerving.

Ins and outs, ups and downs, but perhaps neither or either are here or there…

So, let’s get to the meat of the matter. The heart of the darkness, shall we?

Say….you are you and I am me, and we are both miniature versions of ourselves still marinating and ruminating in the smallest versions of ourselves that are yet to come. Say one day, before we can even fathom the existence of each other, we have the same yet seperate experience. Let’s go further to say that thirty years from now our experiences reconvene towards each other like two undercurrents in the ocean slamming together to form a giant groove of a wave in all of this madness.

Black IS white. Up IS down. Left IS right, and you and I are all, both, either and neither…

Oh my love, please don’t cry, please don’t be so wounded. Please understand that when we take our last breath, it’s just a terrifying phase. It’s the change in key to a song that we all know deep within our hearts, but gets caught in our throats when we try to hum the chorus. I’m scared too, but isn’t that the beauty in it? The fear? The lack of understanding?

The fear is the beauty. It’s a color made in vibrant strokes of red, black, blue, and gold. It’s that gets caught in our living throats as it transpires from this version of live to the next.

Isn’t it?

Shawn Ryan

This article has been rolling around in my head for months, but I finally feel like I have built up enough scar tissue to release them in a manner that properly conveys my feelings.

You died. You took your own life. You hung yourself, Shawn. You hung yourself and altered everything in all of our lives in the worst possible way.

YOU FUCKING HUNG YOURSELF. YOU. HUNG. YOURSELF. We couldn’t find you, and you were missing for over a week, and the whole goddamn time…the whole goddamn time…you were RIGHT THERE. On the property. We were absolute petrified with worry and fear and we were coordinating search parties and fliers, and then….

….and then….

Then…..

I knew you were gone. I knew it. I didn’t want to speak it, I didn’t want to think it, but the Romani in me knew you had left us. Even as I was coordinating with your sister where to look and what to bring in case we found you, I knew you were gone. I felt like a charlatan, telling your sister how to set up a search grid and what supplies to bring in case you were found alive, because my soul knew that yours was no longer in your body. The morning she called me to tell me your body had been found, I awoke to the sound of a voice telling me that you were gone, but you weren’t far. Not an hour later the phone rang and I knew the purpose for the call….

I screamed. I wept. I wailed. I sank into the sickly acidic pile of grief, as we all did. Grief has many faces, each as unique as the person who now carries this dark passenger on their back. The face of my grief rises and sinks like the tides of the ocean on a moonless night. In the months that have passed, I have learned to compartmentalize the sorrow. It’s only natural, and a coping mechanism that works best for me, but there are times when it rises to meet me and I allow it to overtake me, for just a little while.

Your loss has been amplified by excruciating caveats. We were kept apart our entire lives because the people who were supposed to protect us and keep us all together were derelict in their duties. I spent my entire life unaware of your existence, until you found me on social media. I almost deleted you, thinking you were another male creeper come to darken the doorstep of my social media.

You were….a light in the dark. You were me, in male form. You were my blood and instantly there was no question we were kindred. So far away, yet just a state away…

We had plans, Shawn. We had fucking plans. You were supposed to come here, and stay with me for a while and we were gonna get deep into the roots of our family tree and get to know each other in person the way cousins are meant to, and have each others back, and make up for all the lost years. We were going to cook together, get drunk together, have bonfires and dance the night away the way our ancestors used to. I was teaching you Romani, and you were teaching me about our gifts.

None of it ever happened, and I get to live with the ghost of you and the nights that never came to pass.

We had you cremated. I have a vial of your ashes that I move around in my apartment, and sometimes as I drift off to to sleep I will hold them in my hand and talk to you. Besides our conversations, it’s all I will ever have of you. I can’t ever call you or text you again. I will never hear your voice again, and I will never get to hug you, cousin.

I’ve been begging for you to come around, to speak to me, to do something that shows me you are here with me, show me that you are with our ancestors.

On All Hallows Eve, I went to the woods to look for you. I sat on the shores of the lake and wept for you, and only now do I realize that for a couple of hours, I was a very stereotypical urban legend; a grief stricken witch who walked the shores of a lake mourning the loss of a loved one. Deep in the beauty of nature, I let the ugly tears take hold of me and I begged for you to speak to me. I begged for you to tell me why, why you took your own life. I sat in the sylvan silence of solitude and tried to quell the screams that resonated from within my heart. I want to be there again, now, because even in my throbbing grief I felt some sliver of peace as I sat there and talked to you.

In my life, blood relatives have always been one perpetual disappointment after the next, and I had given up hope that there was anyone that shared my DNA that would ever be…. like me.

Maybe this is why loosing you has hurt so fucking badly. You were a solid blood link and proof that sometimes, no matter how sharp the wolf like claws of family that rip us to shreds may be, the black sheep will eventually circle back to one another.

The night they found you I collapsed on the floor in tears. I felt as if I just needed to let the burden of worry and grief overtake me for just a moment, just…a moment. I remember listening to our band, drinking wine, and working on some long forgotten art project. I sat there for hours playing the same five songs over and over again, working until I could no longer see through the onslaught of tears.

Grief perplexes me. I thought once I had my moment of weakness and acknowledgment of feelings, I could pick up and keep going like nothing had ever happened, because that is how I have always functioned, but the moment turned to hours, then days, weeks…

Months have passed now, and I still grieve you. This grief is visceral, just as your life and death was. Just like death, there is no cure for the pain we all feel over your loss.

I have a feeling you know how much you are missed, and that every day we think of you are. Romani or not, we all understand that THIS is how those who are left behind keep the dead alive. It was too soon, too much, and too brutal. Sometimes, I can hear your voice sliding into situations, almost as realistic as music filtering in and out. You are still here, if I can just tune in, in the most silent of spaces, in the most inverted of crevices of time…

I will always reach out for you, and one day, our hands will finally grip each others through the cosmic dust.

?

A. Question. We learn how to form them in grade school. How do you…what is…why…is there…? They seem to be nothing more than an essential part of the English language, but unbeknownst to our fragile child brain, these innocuous monosyllabic words will some day become the whispering words that will haunt our brains like a violent poltergeist.

There are always going to be questions that we can’t seem to muster the gumption to ask, and there will always be questions that we don’t WANT to ask.

“There’s a menace in my bed, can you see his silhouette, can you see his silhouette, can you see his silhouette?”

As an adult, I have learned that sometimes it’s never a good idea to ask questions, no matter how much the unspoken words smolder in your lungs. These clenched lips spilling over with unspoken questions can burn straight down to your feet, smoldering like the liquid lava they have slowly become. They stick in your brain, making you feel incomplete and at times incoherent.

“Oh, you make me feel so weak….”

Oh! But…! WAIT! You just wait, because there are going to be slivery moments, where I can breathe as well as the next coherent soul, and I will burst through the self imposed barriers I have set forth for myself as a psychological check point, like a victorious underdog who is convinced in their righteousness. (LiE)

There’s a fire in my head, but let’s be honest, there will ALWAYS be a fire in me because the fire is ME. It is my longing. It is my desire. It is my strength, my love, and my discord. Oh, but these questions…they scald me like hot water on my tongue and I swallow them down, mostly because I know…there is no point in asking them. To ask is to lose, and I have lost enough. I refuse to lose you, even though I will never be able to begin and finish what would be the most precious adventure to ever embark on.

“I try to refrain, but there’s a fire in my brain…”

How do you feel about me? What is going on with you? Why do you treat me like this? Is there anything more here? Do you love me? Do you want me?

I love you and I always have, from the moment I first laid eyes on you. I knew I wanted you and I had to have you, and that was never a lie. There will never be anyone else in this lifetime that I will love more, and I will never want anyone else the way I want you.

“Don’t forget me, don’t forget me, I wouldn’t leave you if you let me. You told me when you met me you were gonna get me…”

Like Falling Water

Have you ever felt like your heart is burning the candle both ends and the wax is all over your hands in a hopeless puddle?

(You are out of your continental mind.)

There is this portion of yourself that thinks, nay; BELIEVES you are clever enough to hold out, play your cards right, and fill in the missing lyrics to a song that in the recesses of your mind you know you really don’t know the words to…but you tell yourself otherwise with soothing sweet lies. I know you know them by heart, even if you have never voiced them or laid claim to them specifically.

“I can learn.”

“I just need a few complimentary notes to catch the woeful tune on their lips and in their hearts.”

“I AM the only one. The BETTER and MOST OBVIOUS choice.”

Hey, love. This current is killing you, and you are so stuck upstream in the mud that you can’t even see the falling water that is catapulting past you and all around you. You are the eye in the miserable hurricane of your own heart. Will this become your steadfast reality? Who can know such things?

The only thing that you seem to be well versed in is the song of your own misfortune, and the only time you can find yourself naked is within the glass wall of a liquor bottle.

(I love it when I cry, I’m sick that way.)

What IS this…bloomingly dark sense of knee-jerk reactions we eke out and deal to those around us? Why do we seem to enjoy pushing the light from the dank rooms that are clad in peeling wallpaper and lead paint? Why can we not embrace the growth? The light? The love? Are we doomed to sink into the placid swamp of discontent?

(Fight your way out of this one.)

Maybe…maybe it’s not your love that is meant to save their day. Maybe you shouldn’t have to be anyone’s savior but yourself. Maybe you know this..but you simply haven’t processed it…but until you do, you are doomed to suffer by the hands of your own heart.

Night Voids

I…can’t seem to remember my dreams lately, and I don’t like it. I know it’s just a phase because I have experienced this waking amnesia in the past, but nonetheless it perturbs me. I have always been able to remember my nightly adventures in great detail, sometimes for days at a time. I’ve always dreamed in such vivacity that oftentimes I will awake still in pain, or processing the onslaught of emotions in a sort of reverse dark room process where the colors fade away instead of developing.

My dreams have always meant so much to me. They have always been a precious invaluable cornerstone of who I am. They are a result of the slow shifting cogs that is the world around me, a way to process the waking world and interpret the vicious onslaught of life. My dreams have always been the afterword and preface for my story. I process them, analyze them, and try to extract any meanings or advice they might be trying to offer me.

As of late, all I can recall are flashes of color and…feelings of feelings. It’s like waking up and missing a piece of myself, like when you walk out the door with that nagging feeling that you are forgetting something important. It’s a pervasive feeling that resurfaces throughout the day at the strangest and most mundane moments. I feel that I am missing parts of an important conversation that will come in handy at some point. Life is hard enough at the moment, the last thing I need is a lack of spiritual comfort.

The Native Americans placed an immense amount of importance in dreams. Like myself, they believed that dreams were an extension of themselves and reality, like an invisible arm that could reach out and grasp truths that couldn’t be seen or understood in the waking world. From a very young age, I realized that one of the ways I was different from my peers is that my dreams would sometimes come true, and they were rarely, if ever, just a jumbled yarn of nonsense. It was another awkward foot hold in the fence that I would soon come to straddle between this sterilized reality and the ever waning connection that man has with the earth.

Like the Native Americans, I spent a lot of time studying dream interpretation and then applying what I learned to my dreams as a way to better understand my psyche. Dreams are never just one thing or the other. The logical, college educated part of me knows that as human beings, we MUST dream. It’s part of how our brain rests, heals, and washes the day away. Dreams occur when our brain reaches that sweet goldie lock zone known as the REM cycle. (rapid eye movement) Typically speaking, once we sink into that lovely layer, our body releases chemicals that keep us from acting out our dreams and our brain gets to work doing what it needs to do. But I digress, or progress, whichever…

I think it’s stress. I know I haven’t been sleeping well. The interior and exterior pressures are feeling like a house in the midst of a hurricane whose windows need to be opened to equalize the pressure. There’s a lot of heartache, a lot of frustration, a lot of water treading. I awoke this morning feeling bereft of both physical and emotional rest.

It’s going to get better. I know this for several reasons. First and foremost, because my inner voice who has never been wrong assures me of this. Secondly, because I refuse to accept otherwise. Thirdly, because the first two reasons are all I need.

Survival vs. Thrival

Picture it if you can:

It’s 1950 ish. America is riding the waves from the dark days of the 1940s. Post war, the economy is booming and everything is coming up like patriotic daisies. Sure, there are going to be a shit ton of problems like scary ol communism, the civil rights movement, and the Korean war, but guess what?

Economically speaking, our grandparents were living THE LIFE. The one that Millennial’s and generation X’ers have heard about their entire lives. I’m sure you know the one I’m talking about already…the life where you could get married, buy a house, raise a family, take said family on multiple vacations, send your son (and maybe your daughter) off to college, and then retire after pulling yourself up by your bootstraps at a job you worked at for 30 years. You were aptly rewarded for your lifelong service to a company, by collecting retirement as you spent your twilight with your spouse on the porch drinking sweet tea and spoiling those grandkids.

Retirement was the great Valhalla of their generation, and our parents and grandparents passed on those lovely empty promises to us. The reality of working hard and thriving has since burned away to a nonsensical myth, and the adults of today’s society are rebelling against the old standards because they are no longer relevant or rewarding. We have learned that companies see people as matchstick men, eager to burn through them and throw away.

So we go to college and have to take out student loans because our parents couldn’t afford to save for our education. Straight out the gate, we are already at a 100,000K disadvantage. So maybe you move to another city and get a job where the payrate is substantially less than what is considered a living wage. You are overworked and underpaid. You are poor, but not quite poor enough to qualify for government assistance. Every month, you decide which bill(s) can be skipped so you can go out to eat a couple times a month, or afford an oil change for your car that has only another year or two left before the massive repair bills commence.

You want to start a family, but you can’t afford one, because you can barely take care of yourself and that mini herb garden you started a few months ago has already died because you come home from work each day mentally and physically drained. Home by 6, leftovers for dinner, binge a little netflix, scroll through the book of faces, bed by 9 or 10.

Wash, rinse, cry in the shower, repeat.

This ain’t thriving. This is survival, and it’s a fucking JOKE. It’s bullshit. Day by day, our sense of self is eroded away until we are a paper mâché husk of ourselves comprised of accrued debt we will never pay off in our lifetime, and useless knowledge that only serves within the hours of your work shift. You can’t get ahead. You can’t retire. You can’t save money. You can however, work until you die with just enough money to get by. Unless of course, you get sick, a pandemic spreads, or one too many financial emergencies happen, then your 1.73 checking account becomes a negative 250.00 and now you can’t even just GET BY.

You might as well light the paper that your Bachelor’s degree is printed on fire.

So here we are, in our 30s still renting an apartment, driving a car that was first on the market when George Bush was president, avoiding the 1-800 numbers because you have no idea when you can make a payment for anything and frankly you have given up because the reality is, you just don’t care anymore. You’re going through the human motions that our parents promised would be the path to success.

Are you done yet??? Are you done accepting this lackluster life that has given you far less than you had hoped for?

“Get up from your chairs. Go to the window. Open it. Stick out your head and yell. And keep yelling. First you’ve got to get mad. When you’re mad enough we’ll figure out what to do. Stick your head out and yell, ’I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.’ ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.’ ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.’ -Howard Beale, The movie Network, 1980

We are rebelling! Millenials are forcefully changing the way we work. We are tired of surviving and not thriving. We will not be disposable indentured servants any longer. We will not subject ourselves to toxic work environments working jobs we hate any longer. There is no glory in 40 plus hours a week. There is a big beautiful world out there and that kind of life is not the only way.

A Triad Lost

The buildings are crumbling and eventually, so must we all.

Downtown Alexandria has lost another fire breather. Our very own local maverick,  a dark horse with a sharp tongue who at the end of the day, wanted to see our downtown flourish as it once did.  Shannon Nolan was neither only a good man or just a bad man; but simply a man who in his own way, railed against the establishment. In doing so, he found himself at the heart of the Downtown Revitalization Effort. He, like so many others, saw the downtown area for the smoldering coals it was and said “Let’s light this bitch up.” Shannon, with a hand full of others, was a local businessman who poured his blood sweat and tears into the smoking trenches of this town, and his liquor infused breath of red fire was Finnegan’s Wake. 

The only pub in this town for nearly two decades, Shannon was instrumental in coaxing the coals of downtown back to life. He was boisterously vocal in his opinions of how things should be done, which garnered him quite the charred reputation. Whether you loved him, hated him, distrusted him, or something in between, boil it all down and the truth remains he fought tooth and nail as a small business owner to remain the proprietor of a local establishment that ebbed and flowed, just as a campfire does in the middle of the woods on a dark starless night. He never let the fire burn out, perhaps even letting it consume him at times, but only those closest to him would know his truth.

The time came when Shannon passed the torch to Melissa Scarborough. If Shannon was a chamber in the beating heart of downtown, Melissa was the hands that were always nearby to ensure CPR would be administered when needed so when she purchased the pub, the torch was passed unto her. 

Even the most fearsome and mighty of dragons must lie down to sleep.

Melissa my dear, you have the fire now.

Before Shannon, another fire breather of a different color was extinguished. Our very own Charles “The Rev” Ward.  With his colorful and dancing blue fire, his choice of fire starter was his camera. He was everywhere all the time, meandering the streets of downtown to catch our little lives in the blink of a shutter’s eye. With his long silver ponytail modestly pulled back and a camera bag on his hip, his point of interest was usually the coffee shop. He was a blues man, a man who advocated for all to be treated fairly and a foot soldier of the art scene. He shrunk our little town by way of photography all the while expanding it in the very same manner.

Who will carry his torch? I cannot speculate.

If there was an event of any kind where the local revelers would gather, you can bet Rev would eventually emerge with his camera to capture it all from his own perspective then cast it out into the smokey tendrils of social media, ensuring the fire would remain stoked. I can only imagine what treasures are imprinted somewhere on his camera that remain unseen…the sunsets of so many days past, the blurred images of the passerby who moved too fast past his shutter, or the streetlights set against the backdrop of 4th street on a summer night outside the coffee shop. 

Things will never be the same without you, Rev. You saw the raw potential and beauty in our downtown and brought it to life, straight from your eyes to your fingertips as you clicked your way from pillar to post. Your fire and your legacy is your art and your love for downtown, and all the wiley characters that inhabited its streets. 

What is a downtown without a haven for the artists, the skaters, the odd fellows and the businessmen to all gather alongside each other? Another fire breather, perhaps the oldest of them all, gathered the wood for the fire to be lit, and when it was only just a single flame, he kept it lit. Jeff Phillips, owner of Tamp and Grind Coffee shop. I remember Jeff when I was a barista at Books a Million over ten years ago around 2006. He rode his bike everywhere, no matter how many miles and no matter the weather, and this seemingly innocuous activity became his hallmark that others would join in. I remember when he was mulling over the idea of buying a coffee shop, and we would discuss it over the roar of coffee grounds being ground. I told him I thought it would be a great idea.

He took a chance, a hot gamble that most of us would never entertain the thought of, and that gamble paid off with such exponential greatness that it changed our town forever. Tamp and Grind, like the pub, was and still is an institution. It is the original everlasting flame that Jeff molded and forged like a clay pot in a kiln. When there was nothing else downtown, there was the coffee shop. It was the prelude to a promising evening, a stopping point in the midst of a journey, and a nightcap for patrons in the wee hours of the morning. He welcomed all within those walls, and to this day it remains a place of bold beauty. Jeff created a veritable oasis for the creative fires to rage and beget more creativity for those who sought it out. That was his gift, and his lush green fire still burns true to this day. Amanda, just as your husband did, you wield this fire now, and you wield it well.

Shannon. Rev. Jeff. These three men came from such varying walks of life, living their lives as perfectly imperfect souls do, but all came together without even realizing it to change thousands of lives. They were a bit of a triad, these men. Within the walls of their establishments, new friends were made, old friends reconnected, lovers found and lost, and stories escaped betwixt liquor and coffee tinted lips. The Rev was there to capture the vivacity of it all.

Go downtown. Grab a drink or two, and order yourself something to eat at The Tasting Room of Cenla, aka, Melissa’s place, aka, the pub. Just like Shannon, she’s always there, either behind the bar or sitting in her spot.  Afterwards, go grab yourself a latte from Tamp and Grind. Amanda will probably be there to greet you with a smile that crinkles all the way up to her eyes.  While you are there check out some local art, and know that because of these three men, the fires of downtown are safely burning in the hands of the next generation of fire breathers. 

Modern Guilt

There is a certain amount of guilt that I feel, and I feel guilt for feeling…guilt.

A circular and perpetual streak of green self abhorrence, I suppose.

I feel guilt because I have a good job. A nice home. My health. A few good friends. A dependable vehicle. Paid bills….you get the idea. I am a modern 21st century woman living on my own, working for my pay, doing and going as I damn well please, and yet I feel…

I feel….

UN. HAPPY.

Boy what an ungrateful, selfish, self absorbed bitch I must be; to be so unhappy yet I have what most people in an undeveloped country… hell! THIS country would spill the dark red blood from their own carteroid artery to experience. How rude of me. There must be something wrong with me, right? Right?? Tell me, please, there is something wrong with me, because if I am defective, then that would be a much easier pill to choke on.

I feel like a clean white bone with a string wrapped tightly around it; Beautiful in its own way, yet confined in a way that no human was meant to become. I feel as if the majority of humanity has conceded ourselves for certain comforts and sacrificed an important portion of ourselves for an animal that is still an animal, just of a different name. A more…tame and educated child of the socialized mechanism of our society that was borne into existence by the conjured concepts of necessity and desire.

Our more primeval ancestors might be perturbed at our lack of freedoms that we have imposed upon ourselves in the name of progress and evolution. Imagine the wild gypsy woman who roams the countryside, her glorious existence only so recent as a couple of hundred years ago. Her hair is unkept, her feet usually bare, and her clothes are handmade from patches of found fabric, yet she has music in heart and stars in her eyes. She knows the weather without an app, and she never goes hungry because the earth she reveres and respects so much ALWAYS provides in one form or another. She spends her nights dancing around the campfires, singing songs that are now as lost to the winds of time as her bloodline has become. She has no money because it serves no purpose, and she has no billers to call and collect upon her except for those that she must settle up with within her soul.

This is a woman who is shrieking within me to be let out. She is being held behind the bars that are comprised of a paycheck, a light bill, cable TV and mass produced clothes. The floor is built from the belief that this is how life should be, and we should work work work work work WORK! WORK until you DIE. Perhaps, if you work hard enough, smart enough, have the right friends or the right words slyly slide from your lips, you might find yourself cozied up in the privilege of old aged senility that is snugly wrapped up with a pension and a mediocre home filled with mediocre things and a head that is filled with mediocre memories of a life that you have chided yourself into believing that has been the very best you could have been the honored recipient of.

….I don’t want it. But I do, but I don’t.

But I DO….but I…DON’T.

I (she) wants to roam. (I) She wants to meander through the rivers, creeks, and streams. Hug the trees, and search for the history that man has left scattered throughout the ages. I(She) wants to trade the weather channel for the skies above and the earth below. (I) She wants to trade the hot black asphalt for the hot white sands of the beach. I (She) don’t want to be anchored to a monitor day in and day out from 8am to 5pm Monday through Friday. Droll isn’t a word I like to utter when I am in the process of describing my days on this earth.

I feel bad for wanting something that isn’t within the confines of what the 21st century has defined as (normal). I feel guilty for not feeling content to shut the lid of my own cage like everyone else.

What have we become? Modern monsters sliding through the corridor of self imposed modern guilt, super imposed upon a chalkboard that we drag ours nails across, I suppose.

Late Night Hellfire and Comets

It’s hard to be alone with your thoughts at night. These are the last lingering moments of the day, and this is how you end it, with the sound of the ceiling fan continuously turning and thumping rhythmically, the air conditioner stretching out in one long continuous exhale, and you- the loudest sound of all.

Your brain.

It’s a million mile per hour, white hot fire wrapped up in a category five hurricane crested by molasses lava, but on the outside there is the serenity of the darkness, and you are surrounded by the bed you lay in. It’s usually the most comfortable bed in the world, or maybe it’s not, but either way tonight the lay just feels…unsatisfying. Unfulfilling.

Try as you might, there is no long term answer in sight and the short term solutions only seem to bring it all crashing back down on you in full force. The only answer, which is the worst answer it seems, is to lean into it. Look the yawning void in the face. Allow yourself to be suctioned into the black void of madness.

Don’t forget to leave radioactive breadcrumbs so you can find your way out……

You teeter betwixt the moments of forgiveness and the moments of bitter anger, and both are a million miles from what you want to feel. You want to feel happy. You want to feel nothing. You want to feel normal.

Anything but this. This monster is what you have been actively avoiding your entire life and it seems as if this demon that has its hooks in you is trying to burrow in as deep as possible, perhaps to make up for lost time. The dialogue inside your head seems manic in nature and you find yourself questioning every interaction you ever had with them because you simply cannot grasp the concept of the carcass that has been laid at your feet.

To be genuine in a world surrounded by chicanery is a special kind of hell, but there isn’t a solution, because your DNA is simply ingrained with concepts that most people do not understand, and there is no changing your DNA. There are no modifications or downgrades or upgrades…there just is you.

Tigers and immutable stripes, indeed…

So carry on, you fiery comet of a soul. Keep flaming through the sky, passing by the stars that you overshadow with your vivacity. Know that…you’re going to change the world around you. Probably not the entire world but, the world closest in your trajectory. Lean into that yawning void of anguish and black abyss of pain, because these are the moments where growth is happening, and the growth hurts like hell but the outcome will be a thing of marvel.

One day, the pain you are feeling will become immortalized in your hall of remembrance, and you will come to realize your worth because you have paid dearly for every. Bloody. Fucking. Ounce of it. So clean your knives and put them away; now is the time for peace, not war.

Find your peace. End the war raging inside you, if you can.

A Winter.

We are coming upon my favorite time of year, the endless winter nights. This is the only time of the year when I feel truly alive, when I can find a dark sense of solace. Ah but, sometimes…sometimes it backfires, and I can feel this sinister depression rising to meet me, ever so slyly, and yet somehow I welcome it.

Long for it.

Thrive upon it.

There is something about these dark cold nights that spark a blackish fire from a place within me that howls with a primal echo, and this howl is so deeply connected to the earth that the mere sound of it can cause the dark grey clouds to move along. Everything becomes red and black, and the skeleton trees are so jarringly beautiful. The fog swirls with secrets of our ancestral past and all I want is to be lost in the fog in a never ending forest.

When I was a child, I started having dreams of being lost in a forest of white birch trees that were stripped to the branches. The trees were a pure white, smudged and dotted with the eyes of mother earth. This dream, while sometimes a delicious sinister nightmare, has followed me into adulthood. I believe that this is indeed a primal imprinted memory from centuries past, but I also understand that my beliefs don’t really matter much, except to me.

I am what I am; and I am Romani. I am the abstract culmination of thousands of years of my bloodline. I am the remnants of Kings and Queens; of peasants and criminals. I carry the fire of love and ferocity of strength that has grown to intense heights with each generation.

I am not for those who want either a Hera or a Hestia; I am a Persephone, and I understand the joys of heaven and the depths of hell, and the importance of both. The howling, faceless monsters in our nightmares are just as important as the sweet nothings a lover whispers in your ear, and there are no rules as to which might invoke the other, only the caveats that each person constructs to define what lines separate the other.