Raptor Girls 004

The Spring 2011, that entire year my life had changed, some would argue for the worst. What was supposed to be a year of recognition of maturity ended up sucking me downward towards a world of shame and disappointment from all sides. Friends, Family, my girlfriend Kate, even teachers and strangers could read it on my face, I was going through some kind of undesirable portion of society in one of the worst ways possible and was not to be trusted to be brought on or promoted to anything of social status.

One night stands out in particular where Kate and I were experimenting with bath salts and whatever we ended up getting our hands on had to be one of the filthiest highs we had ever endured. We ended up at our friends Ethan and Markey’s to go party and we ended up being too high to actually enjoy anything. We crashed the party and the hosts still attempted to help us out and get us right for the night. All I remember was walking around the living room admiring their digs and privileges and yet all I could muster was my current baggage surrounding my lack. Other guests had surrounded while enjoying one another’s company as Kate and I sat on the couch wallowing in problems we ended up creating ourselves.

There is a place of testing in my family where I am to conform to similar trials and tests that my family attempts to instill and project from one generation on to the next, and somehow, in their heads, is the badge of privileges they want to adorn as badges of honor in the face of status and nepotism. But for my family they have come to expect and depend on me as a place of assumption for distrust and shame, it has become accustom for my mother father and sister to expect that anything I do in these trials is assumed wrong as an act of rebellion towards their authority or something personal. Its assumed that I do not understand right from wrong and am to be made an example of. To me, this is translated to me they are never wrong or that their complications are diminished in the face of how much of a mess every single little action I take in accomplishing any given trial, in my confidence, and in my own way, as a reason to be ashamed of myself.

I was once told by my mother and father that I can learn the easy way or the hard way, in my head either was going to be acceptable as long as I learned it in the end, which still holds true to this day. This, however, is looked down upon by the rest of the family as they advance one another towards some sort of grandiose accomplishment that is to be desired and upheld as the one true direction, and that any deviation attempted away from the whole is to be immediately put into question and even used against those that go against the grain. Those people are to be monitored and kept as far as possible from any privileges that could be interpreted as of use or misused in the face of nepotism, and that if it isn’t easy that it should not be undertook by the whole, and even understood by the whole.

When I went off to college to reconnect with my cultural background and gain knowledge and insight in what it could mean to adorn myself as a minority I found out really fast, that never being surrounded by Blacks, Latinos, and even other Asian people put me at a disadvantage, but it was also very evidential that in the paled face comparison of the advantages that my peers were given in a major city that the suburbs of Chicago gave opportunities to other people my age at much younger ages than were available from my small homogeneously white/caucasian hometown, and that I was just being tested on the Y-Axis of age and maturity that I was to step into and follow suit of my extremely privileged older cousins on my mothers side, but that there were several X-Axis privileges that I could visibly see and translate away from what I had once perceived as “cool kid privileges” and that what I once thought was an opportunity to do less and not try as hard was actually much more work to fend for yourself and maintain in the face of adversity. This opened up a whole door of understanding in white and black privileges that I had never known.

I was tested as I was pressured to partake in the party culture and lifestyle of a similar but perhaps even more visceral realm of competition that my prep counterparts used as privilege to gloat about over their value in society, and behind the closed doors I would be exposed to the reality of cheat codes and illicit activities that existed beyond the masks those same people would exploit. I would see first hand what I was missing, and how widely accepted things were that my parents let alone the rest of my family would want to pride themselves aloud in polite company. 

From 2010 to 2011 I would step through the gates of privileges beyond my understanding and exposed to several consequences I had never witnessed anyone from my family undertake and attempt to expose the lies I had been taught through my mothers small town education system and indoctrination.

While people don’t like to directly address their role in their own problems and contradictions I am an advocate with honesty and transparency with being honest to yourself. This has been, while yes, difficult to undertake, an extremely important tool in keeping myself accountable towards understanding the diversity of multitudes of actions I can enroll in to help.

I am learning while I learn better by studying and helping people with my actions, that not everyone is worthy of my help, and this has been a wake up call in learning the grey areas better in decision making and involvement with those who not only cannot help themselves, but simply won’t help themselves, in every detail of their capabilities, and that, while it is important to show people love and acceptance, if they won’t take you seriously when you go out of your way to explain and teach something, not to give, within that there is time you simply will not get back, and to go out of your way to justify it can cost the most, and that’s probably what hurts the most, I want to befriend someone in order to give a stronger connection between learning and teaching, but if the connection is weak or is one way, its okay to not sacrifice the best parts of yourself and your life to these kinds of people. This was a hard lesson those who were above me, while at times in my life I thought were extremely judgmental, were simply trying to teach me. I am privileged to have been surrounded by well rounded people, and I am both excited and proud of them for getting to the places they have accessed the privileges that they have today.

Its safe to say, once I surrounded myself with the people I looked up to I was slowly but surely invited to add into the conversation and build my vision. That being said it was an extremely treacherous path to trudge through in the somewhat dangerous, very sad and confusing haphazard ways I failed through. In an awful display of confidence I failed terribly in landing on my feet and fell from grace onto my girlfriend Kate’s very regretful lap as I attempted to make sense of the failures I had begun to project outward away from what was taught to me as the solutions, solutions such as, but not limited to, academic achievements and religious morality, and financial independence. Bless Kate’s heart, I had zero competence for a serious relationship, that, and between what I actually wanted in a healthy sex life, and the expectations, some of my peers were able to experience, and that bonding with them over the same things felt as if I was always lacking in what I actually had to show, versus what I wanted bragging rights to show off and that I was split and torn between two worlds, one foot in a secular world with very little competition and a truly abstract world of competition in the eccentric passion driven lifestyle of successful musical and entertaining artists. A loss in true development as an accepted well voiced actor and well liked comic and authenticity in the new age and spiritual communities, effectively unfair proclamations against professionals surrounding a good chunk of my aspirations, many of which were kept from me at a simple arms reach of my parents funding. Constantly being reinforced by my mother and father as extremely unnecessary and that if I truly wanted it I should get a job as a full time student, which, at the time, and some of it still makes little to no sense. This is what ended up sticking out as the difference between my sister’s passions and access, to mine, as she would never have to stick it out through half of the bullshit I would be made to have to reign in as the youngest child, and still doesn’t to this day. Which, I can lead a happier existence knowing she has no clue how to do any of the troubleshooting in the world or in life to half the things I will know and have had to reinforce in ways she claims to be able to articulate at a higher and more efficient, even more desirable way, to which justifies my parents love and nurturing and even the 75% to 25% inheritance my parents justify as a fair split in the face of my directionality of what is effective or smart/intelligent.

At any rate. These were extremely tedious and methodical ways and times towards attention to detail at that time in my life. And to endure that all at once was just about as ridiculous as it sounds, if not more, and to this day is one of the biggest reasons I have been ostracized within my family dynamics to even the mechanics of usefulness within the current model of control within the backstabbing and scamming my current enemies have pretended to understand about who, what, where, when and why.

In short, these people are fucking lazy and stupid and I am extremely grateful for getting put at a distance from their arrogance and awful behaviors, behaviors they deem to be superior to even an ounce of my potential in adversity. Its sad to see people I put effort into, I love, put one  another in danger due to spite, hypocrisy and attention seeking. I see their several acts and behaviors as toxic and ill repute for reform. They have very little say over my choices in life and I have chose not to enable their bad behavior to define me. Every boundary set that is crossed will me met with an echo of trouble, undoubtedly, at any degree to which will most likely be scaled to access.

At any rate, I was wrong, about a lot of things, and I didn’t get much if any help to face these problems and I faced them. It was hard, I didn’t like it, there were so many things that didn’t need to happen and I can’t undo them. People were hurt, I was hurt, and anyone in a place of power did nothing, or, make things worse and add insult to injury. People didn’t like me and I was to be made an example by anyone. It was awful and I took all of that bad and put it in my passions as a starving artist.

Somewhere, along the way, through the breakthroughs of my psychedelic journey I re aimed my sights away from the entertainment industry and repointed them towards becoming a historical figure, and that fame was great, but I wanted to go down in the history books. 

This had started between the summers of 2011 to 2012 when I would begin to experiment with LSA in the form of Hawaiian Baby Wood Rose seeds, while dressing my religious trauma and becoming familiar with the different path ways of some of the greats and their discourse that I would soon to grasp at some of their hand me downs in philosophies and ideologies.

By Winter of 2011, I had officially traded in my addiction from synthetic legal highs in for cannabis and dreadlocks. It was evident that there were things my friends were keeping me away from, opportunities that could have shown me security and plenty of wonderful moments to share with them and our families. It was clear to me that I was living two lives, my Chicago life of professional art and entertainment, and the home I left out of ambition and expectations between both, a sad and sorry emptiness that I was expected to fill and cover up myself. And don’t even get me started on my terrible relationship I wanted very little from in reciprocation in any of the right ways, but all of the greed of sexual lustful and freedom of what I just assumed my family, must have, at some point, wanted for me to use to take out ahead.

The bigger part of me wanted to prove that I could break alcoholism and drug use in my family as a negative connotation, and that the lifestyle I was to gain access to was not something I should be shamed for but accepted and eventually something to grow from and rely on. But the love I put there for my family and friends was often shamed and unappreciated at all. One after another arguments and proof of understanding was undermined as immaturity and absurdity. This has caused a huge rift between my family support and the access to stability and security over the past 15 years, they refuse to acknowledge the roles they have played and the lessons as problems they wanted me to solve as proof they knew what they were doing to justify their cruel and abusive behavior towards me and my dreams.

Conversations I was deliberately left out of, Invitations that were never made to events that people would have cherished had been gone without. I expect nothing from family and friends to this day but excuses and flashy copouts being propped up as “we-told-you-so’s” as those in these clubs are invited to remain in their dangerous environments they claim are to be recognized as control, when its evident whatever they’re anticipating will be met with cover-ups and lies.

Adversity set by rules they will set for others and never once hold themselves accountable to. Apparent evidence of their submission to their narcissistic self victimization. Hills they die on and refuse to acknowledge their own hand in said roles of acclimation. Learn from my example for these could be people you surround yourself with and simply miss the patterns or are blinded by the love-bombing they shroud their followers with to enable a leniency of privileges they do not deserve. Don’t let people drain you of your best moments and best lives. These people will ignore you. Its dangerous. The politics are stiff, and no one wants to be remembered being apart of any of it. There are so many wonderful opportunities and people in those places, focus your lives on those things instead, or whatever that may look like to be to you and people you care about. The destination to nirvana often is a foundation of testament and seeks out only those eqipped for its invitations, do not be tempted by others to stray from your journey, its for you, so take the L, take the hit, and keep moving along the path of least resistance. I promise you, fulfillment is an inevitability.