Look I may no longer beleive in the zombie from Jerusalem but I was raised with those fairy tales. Even if that were not the case every spring a television network pulls out Charlon Heston before we knew he was problematic and tells us he was Moses.

There is a golden calf in that movie, an idol. A symbol which the people celebrated and the god they were supposed to be worshiping brought wrath.  Because isnt that what we all crave in an onimpotent being … irrational anger?

One of the issues with going through life revisiting and suppressing the emotions we all feel is that because we are designed to feel them, and the conscious mind denies that, one will find a way to feel.  Our nature will find that way.

One of my ways to feel historically is masochism.  I mean, it is designed to make a person feel. It was one of those safe spaces which allowed me to let whatever was a trying to get out… out. I could yell safely, cry, laugh, feel exposed within a specific contained environment and because it was so specific that meant I gave myself permission to put all that stuff back in the box because after all no one can live like that all of the time right?

Except as I navigated the world after The Man and realized I was not one of a kind but one of many I realized yes Virginia people do live this way all of the time.  I thought that it would be a good idea to try living it all of the time. I mean I liked what I was doing, why not more of it? Seemed really logical at the time, now it seems like something different.

I have to admit that along this path I’ve changed, some by happenstance some by design.  Overall I am a better person, I am not unhappy that this version of me exists. She’s kind of awesome even if she still has some shit she needs to work though.   One of the changes is how I am wired to sensation and situation and that old phrase I use – a mind once stretched can never revert to its original form. It’s a mind not a vagina. Returning to a time before I knew what this life gives is not possible. Were I to develop amnesia tomorrow, the need is now a part of my composition and DNA.

I do ask myself what this is going to look like on the other end though. As I mentally proclaim victory on the defense mechanisms I have, one of them…what if…hangs in the back and doubles down. Knowing my history it is reasonable to ask these questions, yet I also understand that I cannot allow the asked question to prevent movement. forward.

My late teens and early 20s were spent out here on the streets being a savage. Savage me was chasing feelings, chasing the high, chasing love. Now her actions didn’t really deliver that, but she didn’t really know what was wrong with her behaviors and why it wasn’t giving the desired results. “Seasoned” me sees it better, after all she’s lived some and had all those psychology credits and can see the actions for what they were.

My 30s were spent trying to figure out how to have that experience I idolized, that family that relationship. That image which I don’t wholly accept because who I am – now that I know her better – is not that which society has explained I am supposed to be/desire. My 40s aren’t yet over, and they have been kinking my ass.

I clung to situations and people because in my mind I idolized the person I thought I could be once I got those things. If I could just figure out how to make that relationship work that happiness – one of those emotions I avoid feeling – would be there and well who doesn’t want to be happy?

I don’t.

I do not want to be happy.

I want to live a life where I experience all of my feelings without denying them. While that includes happiness it also includes all those other emotions that we as a people don’t necessarily like. I want to feel. That is the life I want. In that life are the things I am starved for which cause me to be malnourished. I could use a little less fear, I’m okay with letting some of that go, but only some. Fear is also a feeling so that has to stay too.

I think that is a part of why I am hesitant to imagine the specifics of this life the one I am headed towards. I see the problematic nature of that which I’ve idolized in the past and don’t want to continue this behavior. I am working on living a life of reality not one generated by my expectations. One of the things I am putting in place is reminding myself that to be in the moment in the reality is authentic and well I love me some authenticity. Some of these behaviors are rooted deep though, back to me in diapers deep.

In different news, I got an email tonight. I dropped the phone when I saw who the sender was. I am grateful that I invested in the case I did. I read the email and instinctively I took a photo right after reading it. I look absolutely ridiculous. I look absolutely amazing. Yes I look both and well, I am even blushing. I tried to wave it away saying to myself it was the reflection of my red shirt, but the heat on my face would not allow me to hold onto that lie. I tried it though.

The good news there, I mean other than I have this email which made me smile, is that I had a moment where I didn’t allow ME to lie to me. Forward.

Aphrodite Brown