faultline

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I have a crack in my surface where plates are shifting

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I began this article about three times in thirty different ways, so forgive me if it's disjointed. I have been thinking a lot about emotions this past week, trying to sort myself out. Although I write this at the moment listening to Isaria and Uniwhisp speaking about grief and boundaries, it started in my head over a week ago with the approach of September. I don't want to turn this into an apology post, but it might need to go there. I don't want to explain myself, but I am so afraid of where I am right now.

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Processing Emotions

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A rock has been sitting just between my ribs for days making it difficult to breathe. Tears and recriminations are never far away. I am going through grief this month, and it isn't pretty. Events that I thought I dealt with have come back to kick my ass, and my emotions are magnified because I am dealing with past patterns and trust issues in Steemit. In attempting to accept the lessons I have found in Steemit, I have been forced to deal with my past.

I have been living for years suppressing emotions and oblivious to whats in front of me.

This post, I didn't even want to show anyone. Everyone has a story maybe much worse than mine; we are all battling demons, real or imagined. We come here for light and love and laughter, not to be plagued with years of crap that traps us inside. I fear being open to ridicule. Even if people think I might be crazy quietly to themselves, they think it.

I don't want pity, or distance or sympathy. I've been told to just try to be positive, as if being positive might magically fix all of the broken links and lack of love. And really I don't want to expose myself to anyone. I just want the pain to go away.

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I need someone to listen

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Steemit dropped me into a world that is half fantasy and a could be reality, the world transformed, a fucking paradigm shift of magnetic world order in action, if we move forward with it.

Steemit has forced me into a huge learning curve that I wan't prepared for. I have been told by several people to 'be myself' among a community of strangers that don't know me, (read anxiety), with the unspoken sentiment that perhaps they feel I have not been doing exactly that. That I am fake. Maybe I don't even know myself. I am honest to a fault, but emotions are fluid, and what I feel from moment to moment is very much who I am.

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I feel like I've already burned bridges here

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My anxiety and grief has had me acting out since I've been here. Hell maybe other times I'm not even aware of. I acted in some not nice ways in chat and at the time I really didn't give a shit because competing for a scrap of attention with so many people stresses me out. It makes me do dumb things. For anyone I offended, I apologize. Struggling to be me and be true to my emotions has me saying a lot of things people don't understand. Anger is seldom understood at the level where the true emotion comes from.

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I love being here

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By the time I finish this article, it might be considered my one month in Steemit post. I feel the pressure of the should. I should write an upbeat post about how much I love Steemit, how much I have learned and how wonderful PAL is. And I do, I have, and it is. I love all of you in my own awkward way. I am addicted. I roll out of bed and come online, and keep coming back even when I feel that people must hate me and wish I would go away. I listen to music, because it helps me process. I have had many wonderful conversations, and many difficult ones.

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I need to learn how to accept

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But each day I struggle with the question of why I am here, what is my goal, where is my niche. I've gotten tons of ideas but I am afraid of not being able to accomplish them. Right now I can't even get through the day without.. I have cried more here in four days than I have in the last four years. When people tell me that everyone here loves me, I am sure they are deluded, or just saying that as part of the Steemit love fest.

I worry about committing to Steemit as a path because at the back of my mind is the question, how long will it be until I fuck up? How long until I no longer feel safe?

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Sometimes there is no appropriate outlet for what we feel

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Some days I feel so insecure I'll read into comments trying to figure out if a certain comment said to me was teasing or censure. I can go from fine to fragile in a split second. The self hate monologue is deep. I don't mean to be an asshole or an emotional freak show, but when I get triggered, I go there like a rocket. I forget other people might be just as fragile as I am. I speak my mind and tend to piss people off. And so it goes. It doesn't help to know you've all been there, because when I am in the moment, I go zombie apocalypse survival freak attack mode. yeah. All I can do is keep quoting that serenity prayer, but it really doesn't make it any better.

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The fight-flight response as a defense mechanism

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Even though I want people to like me, crave it at the deepest levels of my soul, a lot of the time I assume that they won't. That if they met me all of that acceptance would run dry. I wonder if I will feel that empty yawn of abandonment down the road when they stop acknowledging me. I can't seem to control my emotional destructive reaction and that flight-flight response. The one that gave me the impetus to travel the world on and off for twenty years, the one that saw me moving every 6-20 months since the age of 18 whenever my world caved in.

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A huge chunk of me just shut down and ceased to care.

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This is my life experience. On the outside I look like a normal boring average citizen. If I met me, I wouldn't bother to get to know me. But inside I am the freak, the hobo, the gypsy that no one quite trusts because I am of some alien culture. It might not happen today or tomorrow, but my fear is that one day I'll do something and all the doors I want to enter will slam shut and I won't be able to go back. Ever. I might even slam it myself because there's nothing left. I will pack up and move. I fight that urge a couple of times a year - just selling everything I own and going native nomadic. Cutting off all contact to everyone and everything. Because I don't know what else to do, because it's just another failure after so many.

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Why am I here?

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I can count on one hand the number of friends I could call in a crisis. And most of the time I really don't care because in general I really don't like many people. But I like the people here. And that's a problem because I care too much and I can't shut it off.

I think in a way that's why we are all here, connected. We care. We have something that looks at this broken world we live in, at the pain, at the greed and lies and destruction, and says, fuck this shit. We want a better way to live. It's difficult to believe and trust that it will last, that it wont all come crash down and leave us empty.

Yeah, that's scary. We are all working so hard here, and the idea that something could end that scares me, ya know? But at the same time, its learning. If we leave with one friend, it's one more than we had before.

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The sun will still rise in the morning

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Human nature is based on belief. I have a belief in the improbable possibility that other people, enclosed in their own isolated minds, can care about each other and the world around them despite all the fuck ups and betrayals that have been inflicted. I have a belief that goodness will prevail, that the sun will rise, that a wound can heal if shown the proper care, that people can change. And I have this belief despite everything in my past.

We have an amazing ability to heal, to regenerate our spirit when given hope. I am pulling out the thousands of nails embedded in my skin, knowing that the scars they leave will remind me that what I now know will constantly transform who I am in the future. I am searching for hope with a huge fucking mess on my doorstep and a sign on my forehead proclaiming:

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“Please be patient, work in progress.”

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My utmost thanks to @Uniwhisp, @Sammosk, @SirCork and @InquiringTimes, who all lent a listening ear, insight, and support on this article. I done it Sammo.

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if you enjoyed this poem
please check out my other work:

writing

on writing the superhero
london calling
torico's list
the dysfunctional friend

poetry

the art of fetch
aging
alchemy
birdsong
creation
hard candy
listen
liquid
mysteries of the art world

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^{all photos above torico, all rights reserved}