Pain Is Recycled As Gratitude

Did your country just get bombed? Did your parents just die? Did you just lose your job? Did you just get evicted? Did your car just get blown up out in a parking lot? Did your fiancée just cheat on you and then leave you, now treating you like you are a dirty, worthless disease? Did your partner just get in a fatal accident? Did you just lose a loved one after a long, slow, painful battle with a crippling disease? Are you having trouble coming up with enough money to pay only your rent, utilities and food? Did you just skip into your father’s room at age 8 only to find that “Daddy’s not waking up” because of a heart attack caused by a drug overdose…and then were forced into the foster care system to be looked after by someone you hate? Do you live in poverty and squalor, being harshly oppressed because of the gender you were born into? Have you ever been raped? Have you ever been ambushed, beat up, hospitalized and on top of that, wrongfully taken to court because you are a “dirty faggot”? Or worse, were you, at age 14, because of your sexuality, kidnapped by kids only a few years older than you, dragged out to a fencepost, beaten to a bloody pulp, and left for dead in the middle of Wyoming, wondering when your last breath may come…until it finally did?

We all complain a lot about where our lives are. We bitch that the apartment next to us does laundry at 10:30 at night and keeps us awake. We yell at our roommates for stopping our laundry while we’re gone, thus leaving our clothes soaked for hours. We look in the mirror and berate ourselves for our perceived physical imperfections. “I’m too fat; pregnant women shouldn’t be THIS fat” or “I have crooked teeth, and everyone will think I’m ugly if I show them when I smile” or “Really, God? AMPLE back hair?? You just felt like you should dole that out to a gay man living in this day in age?? Real cool, God, reeeeeal cool….” Insert your imperfections here.

We don’t stop and see that back hair and wet clothes aren’t travesties of the universe. They’re facts of life. They’re perceived pain. We don’t stop and take a breath, and take a look at the lives of those around us. We yell at our roommates without any thought to what his day may have been like. Did his mom just get killed? Did he just lose his job? Did he just get raped? We don’t know, and the key is because WE DON’T ASK. But how can we ask if we don’t even stop for even one second to think to ask?

I am grateful for those who love me. I am grateful for slow songs and easy driving in the cool night air. I am grateful for calm silence and the time it affords for introspection. I am grateful for my spirit and my ability to touch it, even when I’ve avoided it for some time. And I think I am most grateful for those who choose to forgive me. It takes a big person to forgive me, because I don’t usually forgive others, and I don’t always accept forgiveness. I know that it’s very difficult for me to forgive someone who I think should be forgiving me, and be clean about it. So I hereby give immense props to those who forgive me, especially when I’m being stubborn and not seeing the high road in it all. I’m immature and I speak many times before I think about the big picture. For the next little bit of my life, I’m going to be very immature, so please bear with me.

I was never a child. I turned from a happy, loving, abundant, powerful, vulnerable, free toddler to a scared, tense, paranoid, jaded, angry victim of a 5-year-old. I’ve finally once again experienced how it feels to really feel free, and I love it. And it’s time for me to push that 5-year-old through to align myself with the 23-year-old I am in this reality. So please bear with me as I grow my 5-year-old up during the next few months or years…it will be a journey.

Here’s a hats-off to everyone who has gone through the things in the first paragraph. I personally know at least one person for 9 of those 13 questions, and they are true survivors.

Here’s to envisioning and realizing a future where we aren’t living lives filled with hatred, despair, pain and war…

-Ryan

Relief Next To Me

Ah, getting that last blog out felt good...Having a virtual place to vent all my shit is nice, since I don't have that in "real life," and then I don't have to carry around my shit, who I'm really not, just all the stories I write in my head...Today has been AMAZING. Honestly, I'm too lazy to elaborate, but suffice it to say that I had a "fourgy" today with the earth and the sky and light, and it was supernaturally beautiful.

<3

I'm a bitch. I'm a sober fucking bitch.

I like to lie to myself, and to others (which is just dumb 'cause many can see through it) and say that when I get inebriated, I'm a bitch. And I can be that way because it's "acceptable" to be obnoxious when you're smashed. But reality is that I do it in sobriety and pretend it's still acceptable, because I masquerade it -- very lightly -- as confidence or power or deserved arrogance, and what it really is bitchiness, plain and simple. I've always been good at lying to and manipulating people, emotions, situations, words, thoughts, whatever it may be that I need to manipulate...
I've always been scared of being wrong and being imperfect. If I'm either of those, then I'll get hurt...I'll be beat...so I need to defend myself when I lose...I'm weak, physically, so there's no way I can defend myself physically from getting beat, but I'm amazingly intelligent! I'm superior to everyone in intelligence! So if I'm suddenly wrong or imperfect, I'll just manipulate words...I'll manipulate YOUR THOUGHTS so that I win, so that I'm right, so that I am the best, and I will have won the game and taken your mind away from hurting me for my imperfection. Double whammy! And now I'm even noticing I don't do it only in extreme circumstances to protect myself from pain...nor do I do it solely in situations where I consciously want to win something or beat someone, but I do it subconsciously...to my most loved ones...I'm just a bitch to them, with basically no purpose...just because it's now become my MO. I treat people with disrespect constantly because I am filled with lack. I feel soulless, so when I encounter others with soul, I must bring them down. I feel passionless, so when I encounter others with passion (which is basically everyone really...), I must bring them down...I feel hopeless, so when I encounter someone with hope, I feel a need to bring them down...I feel like I lack oneness with creativity and with talent and with value, so any time I feel like I'm not creating enough value, or using the talents I "should" have, I feel like hell and I feel like I have no purpose, and I question life and I mope, and I hate life, and then I need to bring down everyone around me. I feel a NEED to be a fucking cunt. And that's not even the harshest words for what I feel....I feel like I'm supposed to at that point bring hell to people's lives, and make them feel like complete shit, and disconnect from them and make them feel like they're not even worth my time or worth a look in the eyes, and definitely not worth any emotion, and I hate it, I fucking hate feeling like this and then having my mom come in the room and I don't even look her in the eyes and I'm short with her and I'm hell. Mr. Robot Ryan kicks in and it's time to be efficient, because that matters more than anything in the world....efficiency and my own self having fun, that's all that really matters in the world to me, above all else, based on my actions, and really, that's how it feels in my heart, and then I look at how I treat people and think "God, shouldn't I be better than this???" but I don't feel it often. I feel it now. I feel right now that I treat everyone else like pieces of shit...buried underneath dirt...that I would never want to be around...and it hurts...but much of the rest of the time, I don't feel anything about it, or else I just feel a fleeting moment of pain or sadness or actually anger at myself because of the way I feel making that decision and that action, but then I remember "Well, efficiency and myself are the only two things in this world that matter." God, I'm fucked up. And this is bitchy, maybe, but I want to make sure you all know this isn't a pity blog, it's simply me getting out all that I am.