What if I Killed Myself Today?

Do those of you who read this blog really know who you are? What you are capable of?
Do you have any understanding of the potential that the human mind carries? Have you ever thought about it? Or, are you like I often am, consumed with the daily bullshit that is our lives?

In a recent post I talked about a Black woman who actually had the nerve to ask me if I am Black, only because of how light my skin color is. That pissed me off to absolutely zero end, largely because I’ve spent my entire life being Black, alone.

I’ve never had Black cousins, or sisters, friends or family, I’ve always been “the only” one, and in this realization, something even more important occurred to me…why the fuck do I give a shit what she thinks  about my skin color?

Largely because I’m still in “I have something to prove” mode, which is a terrible way to live your life.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve spent so much of my time on this earth “thinking” about why bad shit happens, or how awful bad people are, that I really haven’t taken the chance to live.

I am without a doubt a Pacifist, but I am also a Philosopher, much like the members of my Tribe, I spend far too much time thinking about how to do better, instead of actually being…you know…better.

Largely because I’m so focused on what others do to, or say about me, that I forget that what other people think about me doesn’t fucking matter.

I used to be the kid who genuinely didn’t care what anyone thought about me, or whether or not people liked me, largely because I was surrounded by people that I didn’t actually like…even a little bit.

I hated the kids I went to school with in Calgary, they were mean, entitled, abusive, bully’s and they never once stopped to think about how their actions affected me, so in trying to be anything but them, I became one of them.

That’s probably why I spent so many years of my life wondering what it would be like if I had died…and then even more years trying to find ways to make that fantasy thought a reality. (To date I’ve tried to kill myself more than seven times…luckily for me…so far…they failed.)

Interesting how that works, that by fighting against what you don’t want to be, you actually become your enemy, and we never stop to ask ourselves why we do this. The answer is actually quite simple, we become our enemy in order to figure out how to defeat our enemy.

We become their friends, we play the political game, we try to find out what their weaknesses are, and before we are able to pull back, we realize we have become them. We have found something to love about our enemy, we find friendships in places we never expected, and then we become the bullies, the narcissistic abusive people who feed on the good vibes of others, and that is a terrible place to be.

For years I was the Secret Keeper, whenever any of the kids in our tribe were abused, I was also abused, it was a never ending cycle. I however, was the only one who had to remember, I was the only one who promised to remember the names of every man and woman who abused us.

This knowledge made me angry, bitter, and abusive largely because I couldn’t remember, I didn’t understand that I was not the only one being abused and raped…I just didn’t have anyone to talk to, while they had each other.

It was a frustrating cycle, that I am only beginning, with their help, to peel back and truly understand. However, I have to admit, that in trying to understand what it was I was experiencing, why the abusive men and women were always finding me, I too became the abuser.

Lashing out at my friends, my family, the person I love more than anything in the world – I became selfish and angry thinking only of myself, and justifiably so. When you are being abused your only focus is on “survival”, it’s only when the abuse ends that you can really look back and see and understand.

Hence the saying Hindsight is twenty-twenty, it’s absolutely twenty-twenty, forty-forty.

It is because we did not talk to each other, honestly, because we were taught to lie to each other and to the adults in our lives, that not a single one of us could admit that we were all Secret Keepers.

If any one of us had had the courage to say “hey, you aren’t alone,” then perhaps our lives would have been different, perhaps we would not have become abusive men and women, perhaps we would not have been angry and turned to drugs and alcohol to solve our problems.

Perhaps we would have been successful powerful and strong members of our communities, but then there is the other side of this “what if”, lesson.

What if everything we experienced as children, gave us the tools and ability to protect the next generation from experiencing what we’ve experienced? What if the Victims have now become the Soldiers, defending the innocent? What if those of us lost in the war, ignored and abused, are still alive because we have a purpose?

When we stopped to ask ourselves those questions, the answers were always “no,” “fuck no”, “no one cares” “no one loves us. It was easier to believe that, then to believe that perhaps the reason we were still alive, is because we actually do have a purpose, that the things we went through, rather than being a punishment for existing, were in fact the Universe’s way of showing us what we’re capable of experiencing.

That doesn’t mean that we do not still have the right to be angry at our Challengers, (pedophiles, rapists, bullies), it does not mean that we don’t have the right to feel slighted or offended that our childhoods were not the Leave it to Beaver  childhoods we grew up fantasizing about.

We absolutely have the right to feel angry and hurt, frustrated and sad that we were abused, while others were not. We absolutely have the power, and the need to genuinely be hurt that those who should have protected us, are in fact the same ones that took advantage of us.

Feel it, cry, hurt, heal, do it all over again – I’ve come to the conclusion personally, that trying to force myself to forgive is doing me nothing but irrevocable harm that I will not ever be able to sit right with. And I am okay to be in that place.

Being in the balance doesn’t mean forgiving those who abused you, it means being okay with the fact that it happened, that it still hurts, and that it might never ever go away. That’s exactly what it means to be human, to understand how to help others one first must hurt, to remember that hurt is one of the greatest lessons the Universe has to offer.

I can’t remember who said it, but someone said once that the moment you stop caring when you see a dead body, is the moment you’ve stopped caring about human life all together.

I never want to be the kind of person who stops caring about other humans, but I also don’t want to forget the anger, rage, pain and suffering that I’ve been through. Interestingly I can and do these days, feel all of these things, intensely. I look back at my past and I see the names of the men and the women who hurt my brothers and sisters of Krisya 13, and all I can truly think is…”yup, some of you sucked a lot back in those days…thank the God’s you grew the fuck up.” 

In other words, I remember what it feels like to be miserable, without actually feeling the need to sink back into those feelings of misery, I think that’s called Evolution, growing up, becoming a teacher…what the fuck ever.

I don’t know if I am explaining this correctly, but I do have a feeling that my former teacher “Swami” would agree with me and tell me that I finally got it.

Learning to remember what it felt like to be angry, to be hurt, to feel broken and abused is a skill, learning to do it without feeling that way again..is another skill.

Its how we learn to become emphatic, and some of us can do it without thinking about it, others however, those of us who feel as if we’re more sensitive, we take longer to realize that’s what we’re doing, and no matter what anyone else says..that’s okay too.

Sometimes we get so stuck in the memory of what happened, that we forget that  it’s just a memory, and it can’t hurt us any more…realizing that is the first lesson in learning to honor your past self.

Cherish who you were, a separate past version of yourself must be honored in the new improved, grown freshest version of who it is that you are working your way into being.

As Lindsey McKeon says there is a power in believing that you choose your own challenges, by learning to dissect your life into small easier to chew down on sections, you can learn what it is your purpose is and before you know it…the shit that used to make you feel like absolute crap, is the same stuff that teaches you everything you’ve ever needed or wanted or wished for…was already there.

At least that’s how I felt when I remembered being thirteen…I had a dream once that I told RZA he didn’t have the right to call himself a God, mind you this was in the 90s and I was a devout Catholic.

That is until RZA turned to me in my dreams and told me I was rude and had no right to ask him what gave him the right to call himself a God…he challenged me in that dream, to survive.

Thirty years later I’m looking at my life realizing that I did that, I survived everything the world had to throw at me, and rather than saying that with anger in this moment as I usually do, I realize I am saying it with awe.

In my dreams I challenged a God, who in turn challenged everything I thought I knew about myself, ripped me a part and taught me how to read my very own soul in ways I never thought possible.

Today for the first time in the new year of 2019, I’m not just feeling like someone who survived, I am feeling like someone whose life is about to take a far more light filled positive direction.

I know that there will be new challenges for me to face in this stage of my life, there will be new kinds of darkness and hell trying to sway my opinion of myself, and the things I want to accomplish in this world.

Life isn’t suddenly going to get perfect just because I realized I’m stronger than I thought, it’s just going to get new kinds of challenging, and hopefully by now I’ve learned enough to get out of this next stage of my life alive this time.

That is after all the purpose of the existence of humans…isn’t it?

That being said not all of us are searching for the same thing in the same order…I was trying to figure out why bad things kept happening to me…why it was that my life seemed to be so much harder than everyone else’s.

I realize now that’s largely because the one thing I wanted to learn more than anything in the world, was to be strong enough to survive whatever the world had to offer me.

It’s when we make tiny minuscule wishes like this, without even realizing it, that the Universe hears our most softly spoken desires, and that’s exactly how I remember it happening.

I wanted to be a writer, and I knew that if that was ever going to happen, I’d have to have an interesting life….I can honestly say if not interesting, it sure as hell was…long.

At some point Oprah once said that “anyone who has lived thirty-years or more on this earth, has a fascinating story to tell, even if if it’s a story woven in their dreams. It is in our power to shift our reality, to see the world in ways we need to see it, in order to survive whatever comes at us. ” 

I have been on this earth for 35 years, combined with all the men and women in my tribe, we have been on this earth a combined total of 13,000,904 years. That is a lot of collective experience, and a lot of knowledge…and a hell of a lot of stories, and as the Scribe of the Tribe, (ha ha ha) I get to be the one to compile these stories here, on this website. For you to read, listen to, learn from, experience…I get to attach my name to the story of every single member of the Tribe who posts a tale here.

That is quite the honor, because not only have I had the opportunity to learn from my friends, family and even my challengers, I get to become a part of their stories as well.

In whatever small insignificant way, large or otherwise, backwards, upside down and twisted around…my life has influenced the lives of every member of my tribe, much as their lives have influenced me.

My life matters, because for whatever reason, if they hadn’t done all those terrible things to me, I might be someone else…someone I like a lot less than I like the person writing this post…so if MY life matters, then perhaps your life matters too.

Fascinating what happens to the brain when you stop thinking about what life would be like if you were never born…and start thinking about what the world would be like if you had chosen to live.

That’s my power word for the year 2019…L I V E.

LOVE LIVE LIFE

INTENTIONS INDEPENDENCE INVINCIBILITY

VISUALIZATION VISION VALUED

EVOLUTION EXPERIENCE ENCOURAGING EVER LASTING

From here on out, I vow to live my life as if rather than wishing life were better, I was instead genuinely happy, for the fact that I am alive at all.

What will you be living for this year?

Leave your answers in the comments below, I’d love to learn from my sisters around the globe.

Sending all my love,

Siddha Lee Saint James