The Drive

It might make me unpopular, but I don’t care. Since things have started taking off, I have had people ask me how I am doing it, especially since I am chronically ill. I have dealt with people taking a look at the inside and wanting to be a part of it, supposing I just might be not only a nice person but a doormat.

And there is a difference in indulging in our weaknesses (we all have them), and in truly being oppressed. So, don’t throw me that shade.

I am talking about the drive, the shit that all of us have. It is individual, defining, different, and no one person out there is the same or has the same struggles.

The other day, someone said I liked to play the victim and I got angry. Why?

Even though I have done my damndest to control my temper (there is a difference between fire and rage), I have NEVER asked for help. When I have been down, I did not allow my down-ness to control me. I did not allow my poverty, abandonment, strife, struggles, fear, rage, feelings of inequality, crushing debt, being levied with emotional blackmail and conditional love, my gripping anxiety…none of it was going to stop me from reaching the place I wanted to get to.

This is THE factor. And this is where I might become ostracized, but y’all (all of us) need to toughen the fuck up! Not everything is a personal affront and even if it is, we all have the power to move past it. Because there are two truths in life (besides death and taxes) and one is that NO ONE makes you feel any specific way, and two is that YOU control yourself. YOU are the keeper of what comes out of your mouth, how you live your life and even if you succeed or fail.

We lived without electricity and a phone when I was kid. We had no heat in the winter except what was coming out of the oven door. I will never be rid of the taste of government cheese, or the fear I couldn’t have friends because they would laugh at me. I had no one and in the summer of my junior year, ran away to live with my drug dealer friends. No one came for me. From anywhere.

So I have NO problem walking away from people who are not loving, forgiving, who are judgmental, who hide behind religious zealotry. NONE.

But don’t let my sunny positivity fool you! I am nice to the core, empathetic. I want to love everyone and honor the hippie in my heart.

BUT I GOT here because I learned boundaries. I learned to tell people to knock shit off; I refused to be a party to manipulations, I rebuke being the receiver of lies.

I got to this sunny state and vaporized the dark cloud following me simply by cutting the cord on it. It floated away and let the sun shine on me for the first time in my life.

I got to this complete understanding of acceptance and love through receiving none of it. And I speak for the people struggling to let them know, I was there. I get it, and if you are hungry enough, you can get out.

You can learn a trade, a specialty, embrace your passions. You are possible.

No, I am not the same person who used to churn out drama. I won’t take responsibility for other people’s actions or words. And because you don’t know me, you might assume I am the same as it ever was. But you will see the cover of my book. I wear it. Open it up and read all about the differences that have occurred and then you will understand my road to get here was defined in the dark, by adapting the lone wolf mentality.

It is not that I decided my soul was yellow versus gray, it is that I figured out how to change the tint, that change starts on the inside.

I may plaster hopeful and inspiring messages all over the place, but inside I am quite secure of my place and who belongs in my life, as well as who doesn’t.