On 2025 & Second Chances

The Truth was out there. And I found it.

A lot has happened since I last wrote. Many things drafted up for posts lay Unpublished. I couldn’t piece it together or tidy it up, unable to think about what happened to me any longer, as I come to terms with the fact no one will truly understand, from the inside, what has happened to me.

People may notice the changes, but I don’t think there is any way I could communicate the feelings-whatever they are called-of a personal revolt and revolution that took place in my mind, amounting to answers I always sought.

Amounting, finally, to the truth of me.

In the search for Truth I lost a lot. Decades and decades. Being bullied, teased, ostracized, called names, scapegoated, manipulated. Jobs, financial security, guarantee of shelter and food, medical help—all incredible privileges I routinely and literally, could not afford. Having fallen short of understanding how to take care of myself on basic levels embedded pronounced feelings of worthlessness in me above any goodness, compounded by the innumerable ways my honesty was often twisted against me, in everything. Things I felt were an integral part of me were socially unacceptable: a bad friend, an obsessive mind, an anxious spirit at constant unrest.

Suffering because I was an “artist”, and not actually experiencing clinical impairment in my cognition, executive and adaptive functions affecting me everyday. Behaviours so utterly textbook I cannot believe people went along with it, choosing to say I was weird rather than asking if I was ok. No one thought to ask how it felt to be me, so it never crossed my mind. How could I possibly know?

I think back to my incredible meltdowns gone unwitnessed, many resulting in self harm. The uncontrollable rage seething from the depths of me as I was unable to cure me of myself, sucked the marrow from my spirit, year after bleak year. Dead end after dead end, furthering the descent into a cynicism defined by my quality of life that Therapists actually believed was a personal choice, and not a reflection of my life’s unmet needs and lack of accommodations to exist, with least harm done.

Then with my truth revealed, that I discovered from a lineage on both sides that survived significant traumas and mental health issues, 3 decades of life’s weight dropped on my head, short circuiting me. It’s going to take years to re-file it all. Or, as I am coming to think, what’s done is done. I am just me, and the past is over.

In not knowing my truth, retroactively it is like something was taken from me. I have this nebulous sense of loss I cant explain. Depending on the day, the emotions range about it. Every week I get a little bit better being integrated into the outside world, but as always, inside is spinning 10 times more than what anyone can see.

It is a mind fuck to realize that you are a part of history. That who you are is what research is based on, science, medical, societal, political concerns. I think for all my life I was divorced from that concept, despite the fact that we all are indeed researched for science in some way; that our actions and philosophies help define the medical, societal, the political all around us, in our differing ways.

It was always called selfishness, self absorption, or conceit that I suffered from. In the eyes of others I was unable, or at least struggling with, placing the right amount of empathy somewhere or understanding myself as part of a bigger picture. To get this now, far past the time where I can correct others’ judgements about me, gives me some sense of peace from this life of fracture.

This summer, it will be 5 full years from 2020—the summer where the search for my own X File was coming to a series end. In hindsight, it really feels like there was some planetary alignment that made everyone do exactly what they were supposed to, leading me to the greatest discovery of my life despite the cost. It’s probably the only time I would thank some for not taking the time to understand where I was coming from, and others for helping me in ways I never could have imagined.

2025 has opened on the shadow of my 40th Birthday, and what I consider the closing of the door to my past. That portion of my life is brutally painful because of how much about myself I didn’t know and possibly could not accept, because of that factor. It is like I am re-experiencing my childhood, adolescence, young adulthood all over when memories burst forth or flicker in the back of my mind.

Sometimes, I resent a question posed to me once by a health care professional:

Why would you want a diagnosis?

I let that old anger rush over me. At the time I felt like I had to defend a thesis, prove that wanting answers, a label, was warranted for all the suffering that 10 years of Therapy was not even able to touch. I couldn’t answer it then. But I can now.

Because I want the truth.

The Truth is what made me want to live.

After surviving so long as a shell of myself, I am coming back to what I always was and wanted to be:

An Artist.

An Analyst.

Whose only wish is to be left alone to create, in order to connect with everyone.