Last year was very difficult for me. Not career-wise. I’m doing what I want to be doing. What I need to be doing. Mentally it was brutally exhausting, and painfully eye-opening. I’m open to having my mind expanded, and shown new things, but to be show so much fear, racism, misogyny, and mental illness at the national level, all the way down to the cracks and crevices of my childhood, rocked me to my core. I feel like I have entered into a new stage of growing up, not just in age, but as a human being.
I will never be the same after last year. I know many folks think it was all business usual, but you are missing so very much. Some of it I was missing as well, so I can’t hold it against you, but some of it cannot be excused–ever. We will never be the same. The shit is broken. Maybe it always was. Either way, I can’t play the game anymore. No more denial. I don’t want to miss any more, I want to see it all–keep my eyes wide open, even if it hurts.
I can’t come home and not talk about all of it anymore. I can’t pretend. Put on my poker face, and shield you from everything in my head. I spent years coming home, leaving the darkness on the road. Spraying the blood out of the pickup truck bed before I drove up the driveway. So that you wouldn’t know. If I come home now, I’m going to bring it all home with me. I’m going to show you what the 1970s and 1980s created. Honestly, I don’t think you can handle it. We will never be the same after last year.
I’m not sad anymore. I’m enraged. I’m focused. With everything out in the open, its all too big to leave the city with, and venture out into the sticks. I’m going to stay here and do the work that needs to be done. There is no deep end. I have the integrity required. I have the follow-through. I have what it takes. I’m not messing around anymore, playing the game, and pretending. 2017 felt like I aged a decade. I will never be the same after last year.
