TW: Substance abuse, depression, suicide, and so, so, so much stupidity
tl;dr - I sum up my life from my first non-religious spiritual experience to “ok, fuck this, I’m all in”. I probably don’t acknowledge it enough, but I do acknowledge how privileged I am to be able to go all in. Most of my gratitude goes towards that.
Maybe this will work. Lord knows journaling hasn’t really stuck, no matter how much I try to affirm myself into oblivion that it’s necessary and preferred. I don’t promise the below is true, or accurate - just that I felt comfortable writing it down when I did, even if I didn’t ;)
So, I’m 41 at this point in this life. I come from a household that was either deeply religious or religiously casual depending on which parent you were dealing with. Dad believes UFOs might be a thing. Mom’s nickname was Jesus Jr. She was the type that looking back, you see a lot of good in her wake, and a lot of harm, but you know both came from a place of self-less love but blind devotion to a Heavenly Father who didn’t die when she was 6 months old. Leaving her as the youngest of 7, with no sibling nearby in age, just after the depression ended. Her mother was now facing an open business loan to a bank. Yeah. Mom loved and did a lot of good with that love. She also left a lot of wounds. Working through her and how I feel has been moment by moment both in the recollection and in the changed perspectives.
I first got into ‘spirituality’ in North Carolina around the age of 21. I don’t even remember why. I was just shedding the last of the good boy persona. I was experimenting with drugs, had a live-in fiancee, and the works. But I remember I started meditating, burning incense, and using the Devil’s playing cards, Tarot. I quit smoking (pay attention). I reached out to a Wiccan friend who showed me some minor energy work by holding polished stones with my eyes closed and describing what I saw. I was pretty on point. Another friend showed me a book about chakras. I did a full body chakra meditation in a near-fugue one night. I vibrated so hard I thought I was going to rattle apart. I directed the energy through my feet and up and up and up and got stuck in my throat. I was sick for 3 weeks after. The fiancee and I broke up within a month later.
Oh boy did I break. Holy shit. In ways I can’t even fathom anymore, I broke. I’d given up everything to chase this and I FAILED (as far as I was concerned at the time). I lost my goddamn mind for at least a week. And Thank You to Emily who either for fun, or because she knew I was hurting, or hell, maybe she loved me. But she brought me around using all her feminine wiles in the process. I dyed my hair black, got a tattoo (forbidden at my family home) and I was Florida-bound less than a month later.
I ended up back in the same house with my family. New tattoo of the Grecian 5 elements and the heavens (see below), or not, spirituality wasn’t going to fly for long. Not under the same roof as Mom. So it died the way most things do; so quietly it was quickly forgotten.
Fast forward from 21 to 25, I have a son and I’m proving more and more to myself how much of a broken man I am while striving to be traditionally successful. I want with everything in me to be a good father, but it’s just as much of a mask as everything else, especially as much as me being a good corporate drone, I just don’t know it yet. But I do LOVE my son… it’s just, in my head, it’s more important that we have money coming in than me being around for every little thing - and oh boy doesn’t that sound familiar, Hi Dad.
More fast forwarding, my son’s mother and I broke up, my son now comes from a broken home and I break again. Not nearly in the same way, and not nearly as many cracks, but this one cuts DEEP. Before, I shattered, now, I’m shorn. We stayed living together because, through some convoluted-ass logic, it was better for my son to be in an environment with both of us. In some ways, it probably was, I just wasn’t considering that one day, we’d stop living together and it would probably hurt him. Also, I can safely say I was hoping things would rekindle at the time. The relationship made me miserable, she was physically and emotionally abusive, the family unit, however, made me happy. We did not rekindle. Five years later, on my mother’s deathbed, she accused me of giving up my life and using my son and an ex as an excuse. She wasn’t wrong. I asked my “baby-mamma” (hate that term) to move out… it did not go well. I had my first serious relationship in 5 years less than 3 weeks later. It lasted 10 years. 10 of the worst years of my life, not due to the relationship, and it’s probably at least 60% responsible for why I’m still alive.
So as you can see, I’ve been a pretty consistent failure to launch. I’ve bounced, I’ve jumped, I’ve leaped, I’ve glided, but I can’t just leave the ground consistently under my power. I mentioned my mother’s deathbed. Guess who ended up back home with a preemptively grieving alcoholic father, who was watching his healthy wife wither away at the speed of stage 4 leukemia and improperly treated Steven Johnson’s syndrome? This guy.
And oh what fun we had. Trying to get Dad sober, managing his depression and mine, and trying to feel safe having my son come visit under those conditions. Spoiler alert, I didn’t. Dad attempted suicide over 30 times (usually substance abuse of some form or another no matter how well I policed his meds and money) in 10 years. There seemed to be a few rather altruistic pill-abusers in the surrounding area. I got to be uncomfortably familiar with some of the first responders. I have NO IDEA how I wasn’t investigated. It isn’t comforting to hear a man covered in his blood proclaiming how innocent his son is. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t my son, he’s a good man and he tries to care for me", at 90 slurred words a minute, is not an upstanding character reference. Who knew?
Mom left a mess. Dad’s a mess, my older brother is caring for my younger brother (who’s his own thing) while managing his wife and 2 kids. The house, omfg, leaks everywhere, and not enough money to fix them. My girlfriend and I lasted through all of this. I have some idea how but it’s not really flattering to either party and there’s enough from this story to piece together who I am if you know me.
I broke again on the night I had to argue with police officers because Dad’s scared the neighbors. He had a drug interaction and thinks he’s at summer camp, playing war, and trying to convince the neighbors he’s got their backs, don’t worry. Dad’s a known veteran in the area, so it’s more worrying. I realize I’m alone. My father’s broken. My mother’s dead. My son’s just trying to survive and I barely fit that picture for him. My brothers are dealing with their lives. And honestly, if my girlfriend had any decent sense, she’d leave. My life is broken. I’m broken. This ship is steadily sinking no matter how many holes I plug. I’ve asked Dad multiple times to work out living with my older brother, only to be told, by my dad (more on that in a bit), that he can’t live with him.
Fast forward past COVID-19 as lockdown was a Tuesday in my life at that point. The house gets hit by a storm and the roof caves in. I manually bucketed water out of my living room for 8 hours by myself because my father’s in no physical shape to help. It’s the first thing I’ve persevered at in years. And I proved to myself, consciously, that willpower can be just wanting it badly enough. Since I lost my job in 2019, no before that, I just thought I didn’t have it. Luckily, just before the hurricane, we arranged a fall-back strategy with my older brother. Dad can just move in (surprise), I can stay a week max (wtf?).
Turns out Dad had been lying. He was always welcome to move in, he just didn’t want to and had been trying to keep my brother and I from talking about it. He succeeded. We work it out, and I had a place to live. I finally had room to breathe and people to watch my back and… I could finally just fall apart. So I did, as completely as I felt I could. Somewhere in there, I remembered my long abandoned dream of being more spiritual. My sister-in-law is into Human Design and Astrology… I could… I could meditate here. I could commit to a daily practice, and so long as I helped out and looked for work, be left alone.
That was October of 2022. I’ve been very seriously devoted to daily spiritual practices since. I do not have steady paying work, though I am open to work, and I do look for work. So all of my time is spent unbreaking, fixing, reforging my pieces into a new whole. I skipped a lot above, and I may not leave it up for long.
As I got deeper, more things fell away. I quit smoking again. More things were no longer for me, if they ever were. I said goodbye to my lover of the past 10 years. I was growing in a way where the foundation was in flexibility and she wanted more structure. For the first time in 10 years, we could not tap into the hallmark of our relationship up to that point, communication.
I’ve lived a LOT of life in my first 25 years, and next to none in the last 11.
I got into the meditation exercises for Quareia but ultimately felt led away from furthering it (very much a for now feeling with that). I’ve been doing Daoyin daily, with few exceptions, since December 2022. I’ve been eating according to a TCM body typing system since March 2023. I’ve been doing SR since early January 2024. I’ve been using subliminals since October 2023. I’ve been using fields since February 2024 (and am almost convinced I shifted to this timeline while seeking out some very specific things. Because my earlier forays into YouTube SHOULD HAVE pulled up Sapien Medicine).
I’m a newb in so many ways, but I’ve got a lot of life experience and part of what I left out was all the dabbling along the way between North Carolina and now.
Now, the name of this record. Act with wisdom, but act. It’s a quote from Guild Wars 2. And one I’m trying to learn to live by. I knew fear as a child but I tried to be fearless. I knew fear as an adult and I just tried to make sure it’s sources didn’t notice me. I found out, late in life, that I’m a fully-masking ADHD person. And as I kept breaking, masks kept breaking with me, and I kept deskilling. Life WAS getting harder, I wasn’t just imagining that. I wasn’t doing anything about it, but it was real. Sure I was reminiscing back to when I could “handle” and forcing myself through anyway, but I wasn’t trying to change it. The perfectionism associated with ADHD causes so much paralysis… I’m so fearful of wasting my time that I waste my time. So that’s what I’m trying to figure out. How to act with wisdom, but act.
Thanks for reading.
Currently working on:
- Energy sensitivity
- Energy Awareness Course
- Estimated completion: 5/30/24
- I’m energy sensitive (my own energy) thanks to the daily Daoyin and meditation. Aside from “guessing” with the crystals in NC and the chakra meditation, I’ve never had something similar. The daily practice gave me CASUAL energy sensitivity. I don’t have to tune in much to direct my awareness through my body and that has a feeling to it. But I want to be able to sense outer energies beyond “bad vibes”, and inner energies beyond “black” and “white”. I want more subtlety and discernment. So I grabbed Dream’s course on it and am working through it.
- Semen Retention
- Current streak: 57 days (3/27/24)
- Current goal: 1 year
- Next sanity check: 122 days
- Daoyin
- Current streak: 165 days (3/27/24)
- Current goal: 1 year
- Next sanity check: 244 days
- Meditation
- On hold/demand until further notice
- Energy Awareness Course
- Physical Health
- Daily exercise
- Current streak: 61 days (3/27/24)
- Current goal: 1 year
- Next sanity check: 122 days
- Daily exercise