Starting a band and creating a whole new world…

I don’t want my heart to start feeling okay again because my mother makes these vague one time statements that she never intentionally hurt me and she loves me unconditionally and she would never lie to me and all this stuff. I need to let my heart break and not deny what most likely is and what cannot change. If this were a friend and not my mother there is nooo way that I could trust them at all ever again. It would have to be over. But it is my mother and like it or not my entire heart is build on having at least an okayness with her and that okayness is so precarious and there are so many wounds that will never get to be talked about. So do I let myself pretend that things are okay and whatever happened which I cannot deny was NOT okay was not something she intended? Do I just accept once again that since getting her to take responsibility for her unhealthy and hurtful and abusive behaviour is impossible I should just take her at her word that she didn’t mean any of it and once again be alone in the most hurtful things… and by the way, I’m really grrrr upset right now at the idea of people telling me to get therapy, because what I need way more than that is a stable, supportive social system, and therapy for me anyway without the real support of friendship can end up just being a downward spiral of despair, if I do not find someone that accepts me and understands me and makes me feel better, not worse, and that really takes hand-picking a therapist very carefully, I think. I just hate the idea that feels so socially acceptable of telling people who are going through a hard time that they need therapy when what they really need is a dog or a friend or more space for their soul to unfold. I need to feel less groundless before therapy even feels safe. Despite being taken in and cared about there are so many unknowns in my life and I still feel completely groundless and so I have not attended any of these support group meetings since I have gotten here. I am afraid they would trigger me ir overwhelm me right now which is what therapy can do… and I hate when people express this oppressive ‘concern’ like, I am concerned about you, you should get therapy, like they know what you need better than you do; and they are often probably just wanting to keep your situation out of sight, out of mind, so they might feel better about themselves.

My host said he talked to a doctor friend about me the other day and he brought up the idea of therapy but it didn’t feel oppressive like that. He understood that what I could use therapy for more than anything else is PTSD due to abuse trauma and that is affirming because I feel so often people want to treat me for the wrong thing. I need therapy to deal with PTSD and abuse but first I need to get myself as far away frommtbe sources of trauma as possible or even the idea of therapy for PTSD feels dangerous. I would like to try EDMR, and otger therapies that have the most rapid results for being effective. My host sent me an article that references Pennebaker’s work and said something about how writing things down (like the physical and emotional experience of the trauma) and sharing them with a therapist can accelerate results substantially. I kind of feel like being able to share my written words with someone or someones who can be with me mindfully in the process is essential to my healing. A therapy session is so much more effective when I can write feom my somatic experience before hand and then share it with another in mindfulness.

I just don’t know why a group of committed friends getting together to heal with each other and do healing processes with each other cannot be even so much more effective than therapy. Then you start to feel you need therapy ro deal with the alienation because getting such a group of folks together should be so easy, could be so empowering, wxciting even, healing together!!! — but when people gather that is so often what people need therapy *for*… what if my kind of people, those that I am attuned with, are those who want to always provide those around us with space for our feelings and everything we are to be welcome and who want to take healing processes into our own hands and create deep bonds of friendship in the process? There are lots of fun and healing kinds of freeing and healing processes that I am aware of that I would love to do with friends; but I want friends to be around so we can play with these things together. I’m a psych gerk too: don’t tell me I need therapy but I could play with psychological processes all day long. There is a lot of therapy I am quite effective at doing all on my own, it is just sooo helpful to have guidance and inspiration from others. I don’t see right now what therapeutic processes would be most helpful to me but with friends around we could discern that together…

I started reading a book called All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. It is inspiring so far and I think the main insight early in my reading is that climate change activism is not just about all the devastation that has begun to appear around us and zero net carbon emissions and things like that, it is about radically redefining our collective value systems, to prioritize not harming and truly caring for and nourishing each other and the earth. It is important to me to be part of communities that have these values; in community I will make shifts and come up with personal effective actions so much better than I can alone. But I want to see that folks are truly interested in theorising and modeling and putting into practice new ways of living with and relating to each other; I feel I have indelibly missed the mark as far as personally modeling the kinds of cultures and communities we might create but I don’t want to stop loving and trying to model within myself what I would like the world to be. I want to be inspired by the sorts of world and interpersonal transformation that is possible and I am in a place that, despite beginning to be around folks who care, it is all too easy to see alienation everywhere. I want to see deep synergystic exciting collaboration where everyone gets to be unabashedly themselves.

I am a weirdly simultaneously solitary and social creature but I want my social interactions to matter, to have purpose, to contribute something to the nourishment if my soul, to other souls, and to the earth. When I am with others I want there to be space for all of our feelings hurt n the space, for complete and total acceptance of each other as much as possible, and I know stuff gets in the way, but when all our feelings as terrifying as they may be are welcome, there is a sacredness to that, and I want to cultivate that. I have so much to say and express as evidenced by how many words I am sharing here and I want to channel that into some place where I might feel useful, like my expression is making a contribution to someone or something…

I know it is good to take things slowly: I have a friend here and another has reached out to me hoping we might meet up sometime. I am resistant due to my fear and groundlessness and depression but I want to commit to trying to connect with others when I discern they are good people and it is valuable. I don’t want to run away and hide just because I am entering a depressive state and the perfect community has not appeared before me yet and bits and pieces of connecting might make me feel lonely. We can repair the world and me my own heart little bits at a time, contribute just a little to another soul, and I hope that I can trust that, for now, that is enough. I do not know who I am so I don’t know what it will take to feel truly seen and heard and valued by others; what kind of feedback would nourish my soul? What might others see in me that I don’t see myself that might give me clarity on who I am meant to be? What does it feel like to hear the words, to look into the eyes that tell me I am loved and yes you are on the right path that the pain in my heart might begin to melt away?

I know what feels like an emptiness in me that yearns to be filled, to some extent. Sharing my outrageous and silly love of languages with others. Sharing my love of music with others. When I imagine playing guitar (with a dog around which is way too hard to think about right now) and some friends… that seems to lift me out if this depressive state, maybe, but I do not know if this is a space where I can explore that part of me. Maybe. I don’t know. If it is not than I certainly hope I am not here for six months, I need to start immersing myself innwhat I live, with others around me too.

What I feel like I really want to do is start a ‘band’ of some sort if you can call it that. It would be like starting a club or a place where everyone can hopefully feel they belong. No pressure to go out and perform or to write songs or anything but musical and linguistic and creative interest as a glue that binds us together in connection and friendship. And coming up with a band name and doing musical projects together, even just listening to and singing our favourite songs, would be fun. I want to feel this way with all sorts of people I might meet: find someone who is attuned with me and see if we can model between us ways of relating that might begin to change the world if the world came to model such things interpersonal dynamics on a larger scale. I want opportunities to express who I am as a leader and I want to foster and nourish the creativity and spirit of those who are in this with me, be open about all we might need and seek to support each other in our needs being met; ideally be there for each other through thick or thin, and express something musically and/or linguistically and creatively together that we might want to share. Writing screenplays or stage plays or fiction together, too. Be ourselves and let something evolve and I feel like for me what wants to come out of my soul can come out best when I am immersing myself in music. I don’t feel alive if I can’t feel the beat. The goal would be to be ourselves and have fun… and I feel like with music as a focus at least for me that is what will make sure (I think…) that I don’t lose myself. Being with someone who is compatible with me who has dreams around kusicality and creative expression and who wants to bring forth what is inside of them, and getting to feel like a leader if sorts who can help everyone have the best time, imagining the possibility of these things lifts the tendency towards depression. I love lits of things like biking and animals and swimming in the ocean and doing more of those things would help but it is a commitment to musicality I think that keeps me from despairing that I am wasting my whole entire life and it is in that kind of immersive space where I feel the best if friendships can be cultivated.

Right now, though, I have so much trauma to work through, and so much fear, that makes me feel that heart connections with others that nourish me and bring me peace might be impossible. It is hard in this kind of space to feel other hearts as really genuinely connecting with me. It is easy to feel the world will pull out from under my feet and I’ll drop down down down into a burning ring of fire, and I will be sll alone. Somehow feelings of abundance as far as connecting with others and dissolving my sense of alienation can be cultivated but there is something missing, and something missing within myself, that makes it harder to see what my social desires and needs might be. I have to be myself without shame if I am going to trust in the abundance and joy of connection with others and that is really hard right now. I have a tendency to see dearth, to notice all the ways alienation seems to be all around me, and to neglect the ways that live is all around, or to feel it’s not enough. I know the right kind of intimate conversation can happen that can make me feel this sense if immortality and peace and like ahhh I am not alone, where my life is going makes sense again. I know something has to shift within myself before I am open to having that experience with others and I don’t know what it is… I just feel good feeling like others want to be with me and soak up my energy and I don’t feel like the kind if person that anyone would want to do that with right now. The easiest way I can imagine is to be myself snd dedicate myself to musicality and somehow attract others who just want to be with me and play with me while engancing my creative process rather than obstructing it. Like a Forest Gump with a guitar except hopefully people stay a puttle linger than that. I want to be a teacher or learning coach; if someone wanted to be with me and let me help them learn stuff or give them confidence that they can achieve their dreams in six months, or something like that, I would be so happy. We could work on our goals together and in that I would maybe finally not feel alone. I don’t need a band to write music or perform but to tether me to my own heart and affirm that I am open to sharing my soul with friends; I kind of feel like if I want to advocate for world peace and climate action, my way is to start some kind of a ‘band’ that is more of a learning community that centers musicality and language and linguistic creativity because that is who I am and that is how I know myself. I can take leadership and anyone who wants to play can find a way to be themselves and play. I want to find someone I collaborate with really, really well, honestly, and I think finding that would keep me out if depression. I am lost socially unless there is collaboration going on and some kind of shared vision. When I am collaborating in a way where I feel like I am seen and we are working together in a way that flows with excitement I feel like I am being me.

And that seems to be where the climate movement us going, too: the idea that we all have a place and we all have unique contributions based on our uniqueness, and art is as important as policy. How do you get people excited about something that is so sad and scary and devastating? Model on smaller scales what the world could look like and the kind of joyful, nourishing collaboration that can happen if we put our minds and hearts together. I need to just let it roll past me that so many people do mot seem to have time to connect and collaborate in this culture, which makes me so sad; but when I build it, which means staying connected to my heart, to music and creative expression and my flower child soul, they will come, and it doesn’t matter how ling they stay — I am building a sort of festival camp where feiends can come and go as they please. A key point is, especially in my state of mind and body right now, I am super sensitive to rejection and to people not staying, but I am committed to letting people be who they are; and I know if I created inspiring reasons for folks to stay, they would, and feiends will show up where I bever expected them to be. I have to discover my leadership style too to discover how I do feiendship again. I think how I feel live is you want to spend time with me and collaborate synergystically and get inspired and I don’t know if that’s a live language but it works for me. I love connecting with people who are good at talking about their boubdaries and their needs and having conversations that matter to them; I love connecting with free spirits and flower children who don’t get offended by very much and around whom I can let my guard down and be myself. I have no idea how I am going to create such a community around me and I don’t know if I even believe in myself right now but sensing alienation everywhere is not the way to attract real friends and not trusting myself to sense when a connection is unhealthy and unlikely to contribute to my well-being does not help much either. I need friends I am attuned to, who I can naturally be more of my true self with, discernment as far as sensing which connections are healthy, resilience as far as not shaming myself or feeling abandoned when thibgs are rocky or people run away, and the authenticity that keeps me following my True North no matter what.