And So Hiding Is No Longer An Option

It has been a truly brutal few months for me. Back to back injuries, working through realizing I have Complex-PTSD, followed by metal poisoning that gradually manifested as full body nerve pain and took months to understand/ diagnosis.

I’m still healing, but I think I’ve finally turned a corner. I am tired but I have so much renewed clarity. Part of that clarity comes from realizing that the “quirks” I’ve spent my life trying to reconcile and hide and overcompensate for - are not actually things to fix.

I had a lot of resistance to identifying as “neurodivergent” — I thought it was just a western way of pathologizing difference.

But after doing some research, I realize it’s actually a way to deeply embrace how I’m wired and what I need. It’s a way to make meaning while I reject contorting myself into shapes that comply with a world that largely asks me to shut up and keep up; I’ve never been very good at either.

I think I’m probably on the spectrum and I think how I share and create art has always reflected that.

I will never post on social media consistently or prioritize becoming an influencer. As much as I would love to do it all myself I’m going to need support to grow my art in the way that I want to and in the meantime - I’m not going to get it perfect. I really want to create art that is accessible (captions, subtitles, text descriptions, audio versions of poems and essays etc) but the last few years I’ve tried to do all that work myself and it’s largely resulted in not sharing anything at all. I perceive all the ways that I’m “failing” this vision, while working on platforms that don’t even accommodate it, get overwhelmed, and settle on sharing nothing until I can “get it right”. It’s not sustainable. In the near term, I’m going to let myself off the hook with the hope to correct those gaps as I grow and get more support. I am one person and I’m not interested in performing perfection. If my work is not currently accessible to you - I hope to change that sooner rather than later.

When I start to outgrow art that I’ve made (even if I’m outgrowing it before I ever share it) I’m going to FEEL really complicated about it and it’s not something I can look past because that would be more convenient. So if I publish a book shortly after realizing I was in a cult while writing parts of it - I may mention the book a few times and disappear from the internet while I try to workout; how I ended up in a cult, how the contempt I experienced from said cult influenced my writing/ perspective, and how I can speak to what I learned without inflicting more harm. I’m going to do that WHILE ALSO sitting with the knowledge that this cult is hurting people and calling it “interdependence” and “community” and “liberation”- which is so much more offensive than if it was just a cult hurting people!

If you buy my book - please don’t join the cult that I thank in the acknowledgements! That space helped me but it also hurt me and I don’t think the former makes up for the later. If you’ve also left and are healing from this cult - I am right there with you. That was really devastating and disillusioning. It’s a lot to process and I don’t know how to pretend like I’m not actively struggling with it / processing it over a year later. I can’t move past it to try and market a book when I’m currently questioning everything that I’ve ever thought about anything. Particularly everything that I’ve ever thought about spirituality. I’m proud of so many of the poems in my book; but when I hold them in the context of the things that I’m realizing about why I sought safety in being “special,” or how I gravitated to a space that recreated the conditions of my traumatic childhood - then it feels like lying. I can’t skip past it without talking about it.

What’s in the way, is the way.

I am holding the tension between all of these things because that’s how my brain works and it’s not broken for working that way. I’ve spent so much of my life putting considerable amounts of energy towards trying to come off as “normal”, trying to come off as “chill”, trying to come off as “unbothered” - and until recently, when I discovered the concept of “masking”, I had no idea that was an optional way to spend my time and energy! I don’t actually need to join a cult that will teach me how to be ethereal and detached and invincible- I can just be messy and human.

I choose that.

Learning about autism/ being on the spectrum and the tendency to hyper focus on interests has also helped me recontextualize times in my past where hyper focusing was punished by loved ones/ friends/ community. This is especially true for me with music - for me, finding music was akin to discovering who I am. It was a life affirming, life changing, moment. Nobody else saw it that way!

That was pretty painful. I have so much trauma built up around being who I am, and sharing my thoughts, and sharing my art. I have ancestral trauma built up around being a truth teller.

Coming to terms with these things is helping me normalize just how hard it is for me to come out of hiding. I have tried several times only to race back to where I started. I keep trying though - and I think that makes a miracle.

I am still healing from all of the above, but I’m going to start sharing more art again. Because while I don’t believe that silence is necessarily violence (and I have a lot of compassion for everyone who is feeling frozen, and overwhelmed, and scared to say the wrong things, and drowning in the presence of what’s directly in front of them let alone what the world is up to) - I do believe that our voices hold great power. I do believe that our courage makes a difference. I do believe that our fears, and these very real stakes, give our courage meaning.

I think it’s time to be brave.

If you resonate with the work that I’m making please help me! Please help amplify/ share things while directing people to my website which a space that I built for all of my expression in its fullest glory. I’m going to increasingly move away from social media to create on my website because I hate social media. I want to connect with people but I don’t care for the algorithms, and the shadow banning, and the repercussions for not constantly posting like a fucking machine, and the random messages asking me to promote yoga pants. I have no interest in promoting fucking yoga pants.

Almost everything I have to say is “controversial” because unfortunately our world has made love controversial. Love is the truest danger to the status quo and I am always creating with the hope of giving love a voice and a commitment to doing that better, as I know better. I think that’s the best I could hope for and that my mistakes are a part of that process.

In the immediate future, I am moving towards creating more digital exhibits that hold multiple art forms on my website because I’m sick of shrinking myself to fit the parameters of social media spaces that are largely constructed to sell us things.

Later this week, I’ll be releasing a new digital exhibit that speaks to what’s happening in the world right now.

Join my mailing list - that’s the most reliable way to hear from me.

After the whole cult that promised to not be a cult experience, I feel even more compelled to say this: I have no interest in creating a cult of personality. I have no interest in perpetuating hierarchy which is a very patriarchal way of relating to each other! It would be such a fucking waste of time and I really mean it when I say that. If you feel inspired by what I’m doing/ creating - please, let it encourage you to do whatever your version of love is! It doesn’t need to look any particular way. It doesn’t need to be “perfect”. It doesn’t even need to be art!

Maybe it’s not “becoming your higher self” - maybe it’s just being true to the things that make your heart sing, or voicing the truths that make your knees shake. Maybe that’s enough.

If you don’t like what I’m doing and/or find my art to be too much/ triggering/ not enough/ unrefined/ whatever - that’s great too!

For me, when I find myself debating or viscerally reacting to the things another Artist is making - it’s usually a sign that it’s time to go make my own art. It’s usually a sign that the collaboration is complete - cause I think that’s what sharing art is; putting your expression out there so that others can learn from it, agree with it, debate it, hate it, and ultimately collaborate with it.

If you don’t like what I have to say or the art that I’m making - that’s honestly amazing!

Please go make your own.

Image of art on a box that reads “And So Hiding Is No Longer An Option”

This photo was taken in 2016 somewhere in Venice, CA