I Have Only To Reckon With My Own Soul

On January 1, 2020 I woke up inspired, renewed, and took a spontaneous trip to the desert. Just as I was about to enter through the windy mountainside where I’d be stuck for hours, a long trail of bumper to bumper cars stopped me at the base.

In a risky move in my 2005 VW Golf, I cut through the steep terrain, turned my car around, and drove the two hours right back home. On the first day of the year I spent 5 hours in the car “for no reason.” A friend of mine sent me the reminder that I was being redirected. I went with it.

A few days later I ventured back out and made it to my cabin. The plan was to work on my Annual Review, a tradition I have of reflecting on the year before and feeling into the year to come.

This process is typically exciting and creative, but this time it felt incredibly difficult, like something inside me was being tortured. Anger pulsed through my veins so I let it flow through my hands and onto the screen.

I’m giving some context to these words, though they need none, because it feels like I felt into the tone of the year on that first day. It’s been almost four months since I’ve looked at what I wrote, but this reminder echoing in my heart that what I see outside of me is within me pulled me back. There is this feeling that something inside of me, some mirrors of structures I no longer consent to, needs to die

So I pulled out those words I wrote in a fit of anger and anguish and decided that instead of letting them decay in a hard drive in a deep hole somewhere, that I should share them. Instead, maybe they will find their way to a waking soul. So here they are:

I don’t have to fight anymore.
I don’t have to prove myself to anyone.
I don’t have to explain myself.
I don’t have to try.
I don’t have to know.
I don’t have to speak.

I don’t have to.

I don’t have to care if you’re judging me.
I don’t have to care if you like me.
I don’t have to be nice.
I don’t have to be fair.
I don’t have to play by the rules.
I don’t owe anyone anything.
I don’t have to be anything for anyone else.

I have only to reckon with my own soul.

I can say what I want.
I can claim my freedom.
I can try if I want to.
I can share if I’m called.
I can change my mind.
I can have doubts.
I can be wrong.
I can be bad.
I can do whatever I want.
I can know some things.
I can reclaim my truth.
I can be lost.
I can be clear.
I can be me.

I can be me.

I can be complicated.
I can be out of control.
I can be angry.
I can be love.
I can be joyful.
I can be intense.
I can stand my ground.
I can back down.
I can give up the fight.

I can give up the fight.

I can choose love.
I can choose to stay silent.
I can stop judging.
I can start loving.
I can change my mind.
I can know nothing.
I can be everything.
I can be no thing.
I can give no fucks what you think of me.
I can let you hurt me.
I can let me hurt me.
I can reclaim my power.
I can share my wisdom.
I can connect to truth.
I can be all things.

I can be all things.

I can be a contradiction. 
I can choose my path.
I can be afraid.
I can be fearless.
I can be me.
I can be me.

I have only to reckon with my own soul. 

This year is a time for living outside the matrix. Not doing what they say I should, and not just The Man who Says but also The Counter Culture who Says, The Just Warriors who Say, The Causes I Believe In who Say, and everyone in between.

This is a time for breaking the rules, setting the house on fire, and running naked in the streets. It’s about laying, bare chest up, in the ocean while the sea is flat and surrendering as the storm comes through to toss my body in whatever way life chooses.

I am in control of so little, and I am in control of so much.

I have to allow it all to be torn down to learn these next lessons. I have to trust in something I have only tasted in lives past. I have to surrender to the journey in a way I have never done before. It means not knowing anything and claiming all my knowing. It means being a walking contradiction, being willing to be crucified, being willing to be canceled.

It doesn’t mean I will always be brave or that my heart won’t break when I’m misunderstood or I get it “wrong” publicly. It means some part of me has chosen to learn lessons outside of the scope of this reality. I know everything and nothing at once. This walking paradox feels better to me than everything that’s come before. It feels right for now. It feels where I need to journey. 

I am being pushed and pulled and pushed again. My face is being violently shoved up against sand. It’s in my gums and teeth, and it’s fucking uncomfortable. And then a wave washes me clean, and I am at peace once more. 

It does’t actually get easier. It gets different.
It doesn’t actually get better. It gets truer.
It doesn’t actually get clearer. It changes. 

And that’s ok.
And that’s OK.
And that’s OKAY.