Nothing but Love

I’ve got a hang nail on both of my big toes. One goes a little deeper than the other so it subsequently hurts just a bit more. We watched project runway last night and I gave my self a little couch surgery to get rid of it. Appropriate antiseptic vodka and a bandaid really did the trick. The pain is still constant but subdued. Every step a little ache from both feet. Depending on where my head is at, I flinch step to step. But most of the time I forgot it’s there until a soft and subtle tap makes my soul temporarily leave my body.

I’ve been having conversations with friends about the state of the world. More specifically the state of living in America and California and the exorbitance of wealth is its ever widening disparity. The jobs we have to sustain us that constantly cut hours and keep you in the nebulous weekly allotment to legally keep healthcare from you. The idea that, in chasing my creative dream, I’ll never find financial stability. Not that I need it.  And you know what the more I think about it the more I realize that I can do this. This life of uncertainty and instability. My nourishment doesn’t come from money. It comes from the love I’m constantly surrounded by and my spontaneous curiosity. To take the day to liaise and wander and not worry. The present moment and all that.

I hate my day job. Every hour I spend there makes me feel like a worse version of myself. My coworkers know almost nothing about me and it feels good to keep that wall up despite me knowing it makes me worse. Being there reminds me of the years in my twenties where I would let my fathers voice insisting I get a degree in business instead of broadcasting and queer sexuality studies and how maybe then I wouldn’t have to be this version of me at a job that disrespects my presence, my time and my ability to be me. In time I remember that I’ve never met the version of me that took his advice. That found that financial stability at the cost of somebody else’s misfortune. Because let’s face it, this capitalist system only benefits those willing to step on the nose of the hundreds striving for the same. Kicking somebody down to build yourself up. A rising tide that raises a singular ship because they closed the port entrance on the way in. And to be honest, fuck that version of me. How could I exist that way? Ignorance and its blissful residue would have to go a long way to make that feel like any life worth living. But there it is. The gift of my cognizance and the gift of this struggle. To have become the person I have through all of this tumult and anguish and financial stress. I am privileged in so many ways socially, fiscally and ultimately every way I can think and even then I struggle. The struggle has made me. The rejection and the failure and the uncertainty. Ive become accustomed to the discomfort. And what a joy that gets to be. The built resiliency of the unknown and the adaptable nature to be able to pivot on a dime when necessary and, in this time, that is a day to day rotation.

Some days I feel the pain but most days I’m too busy languishing in my joy and the love of my community and my family to notice. What a fucking gift that is. Despite the hangnails of capitalistic expectation and the greed of the ego finding its spotlight to validate and justify a reason for wealth, in my small and nourished life, I feel nothing but love.