There is no single answer to who I am, who I was, who I will become
To multiplicity...
THIS FALL has been a time of transformation. After a long 2023, I’m just now coming off the adrenaline that was launching two different social practice projects, having a litany of conversations to maintain and heal relationships, and working a job that ultimately was not the work that is best for my mental health. Though I completed the goals I had set out to achieve, this past year I’ve been in recovery: I spend most of my free time trying to figure out what lies beyond now that I’ve finished what I started.
Lately I’ve regained the courage to sit with my anxiety again. I’ve been living life, consciously, with Anxiety and Depression for as long as I can remember. I struggle to explain what it feels like to be ‘high-functioning’ to others, especially since I enjoy the experience of learning-through-doing and I’m consistently involved in multiple projects at once. And I actually finish things. My own emotions have created a pattern of coming in last place in relationship to ‘my work’ or ‘my job’. That’s not who I like to be- but it’s who I’ve had to be. Mostly for other people. Still, my mental experiences are a very deep part of me. It’s been going on for so long now, that I’ve recently learned that I have been positively diagnosed with Dysthymia: a slow burn depressive disorder. It’s not going anywhere, and neither am I.
This past week, I’ve been thinking about how I’ve related to my mental health conditions in relationship to my body. The first time that I could name my paralysis as anxiety was in September of 2017. I remember sitting in the ‘classroom’ in my independent study- An empty high school therapist conference room- and trying to do research for whatever online class I had convinced them to let me take so I wouldn’t have to take a random elective. The school’s yahoo browser kept feeding me news pop-ups about Trump’s nuclear threats to North Korea. 3 consecutive days later, I was looking them up myself, spiraling about when or if the threats would turn into action, perhaps if I would even know because where I live could potentially be vaporized. Because of the irrational behaviors of a senile and sun cancer pored white man. Eventually I snapped out of it, but the freeze of anxiety and its spiraling depths became more and more familiar and frequent to me through my senior year of high school and beyond.
It was not the first time that I felt it. This was only the time that I first attempted to put a name to the feeling, or was able to acknowledge that I was feeling...something bigger than me. Something that activated a deep ache in my legs and a boulder in my stomach. Entire class periods, meals, evenings, weekends, conversations, relationships; They would go by and my aching went unmoved. Sometimes deadlines would work to inspire action, but most times those would also float by. Coupled with developing vision problems, my mental health weighted on my sight like a haze. A subsurface and retrospective part of me wants to credit that most of what I experienced didn’t have a lasting impact, so it was okay that what I can remember is unclear. Maybe it is. I can’t remember either way.
Very few things were able to pierce the quiet storm of anxiety, and the larger looming system of depression. During this time when I can first note my experiences with noticing my mental health, I had just come out of a pivotal experience in San Francisco. Nothing felt as real as my time away, when I met my first Trans friends, and when I was able to think for myself without the pressure of who others needed me to be. The reality of my life, or rather what it could be like, and yet wasn't, was terrifying. If I stayed where I went to school, stayed normal, perhaps I might not have saw who I needed to be. What I was. Am. But I saw it, and it didn't fit with what had been laid out in front of me at the first ring suburban school my father's court order put me in. The Fall of my senior year of high school was when I knew that what I was experiencing, anxiety, was not sustainable or properly addressed. I could feel that I was not well and I don't think that I ever had been. This is an imprint of my body.
It's strange to think about first's, because none of my imprints will be my last. All of me, every piece is embossed into the next, sometimes fanning out into an array of shadows for anyone to see. Sometimes parts of me are ripped out of the fold when I don't want anyone to see them at all. And even still I’m always surprised at how much I don’t say, because a large amount of people don’t know that I struggle with my sense of self, because my artwork has created a story of me all on its own. It can be a pleasant surprise, but most times it is muddy in experience. I can’t quite figure out who I’m being perceived as, which is just as confusing and weird as trying to figure it out within.
My therapist and I are constantly mulling over the effects of intergenerational trauma on our bodies and minds. How something that happened to someone higher up in my ancestry might explain what I can feel but can’t explain why I’m feeling it. Or even why I intuitively know what to do in situations I’ve never experienced before. I might feel at home in an area of town we never visited growing up. Certain songs trigger musical frisson on a deeper listen. Certain people, certain jobs, narratives and sounds trigger a seemingly disproportion response, and it feels justified. It’s kinda the feeling of a biologically-timed internal oracle. There’s something else in the house.
In my immediate genetic family, many have decided to avoid talking about the past at any and all costs. For some, they avoid it in conversation to an extreme level. There might be a moment where someone accidentally divulges a story or two here or there, but those memories are quickly evaded and packed back away before they’re examined too closely. The paradox of that behavior is that because the family doesn’t talk about the past, that many are stuck in the tsunami of emotional consequences from that same past, and suffer greatly for it.
Within my chosen family, the past is held in equal regard to the present/future/afterlife…it has all been learned from and somewhat implemented. Relationships like these have created a deeper empathy for my genetic family in ways I previously didn’t care to do. I don’t feel close to them. But through tools like somatics I can understand. I can feel the fear of releasing everything unsaid. It’s become a bit of life-irony that things like quilting and music have led me to be more of myself, when I’ve recently discovered that my great-great paternal grandmother was a quilter, and my maternal ancestry has always had a knack for genre-bending music. Even if we try to avoid it, who we are rises to the surface within its right season of timing.
The takeaway as it relates to this story is that, as intergenerational trauma explains the un-explainable, this epigenetic phenomena might suggest that some parts of me are not even a choice- some parts of me were randomly selected (divinely selected?) before I was even an entity. Some parts of me are my great grandparent’s dreams, my aunties secrets, perhaps things experienced by an ancestor but never spoken aloud. There are parts of all of us that are unexplainable, unexploitable to what we might try to mold ourselves to be. I am all of those versions of ‘me’ too.
I’m not sure who I was, or who I will be. For the first time in my entire life I have been struggling to set overarching goals, to see the forest for the trees. I’m just seeing…a bunch of trees. I know what I care about and have built a strong value system around how I go about doing that. But where that might take me…I have no clue. And it’s been about four months now and I still haven’t made much progress. I could invest more into writing or music or risography or anything really. The only thing that feels right is to get up each day and do a little that I have to do (a small bit of gig work) and do a little that I want to do (make a print, read a book). Beyond that is beyond me! It definitely doesn’t scream “this is who I am!” But what does when you aren’t sure where to go and you have no map? At least, not one that has a planned out route. Or roads. Or a symbol key. Or in a language that you can understand clearly.
What I know for sure is that right now, I don't know which one of me I am. And I'm going to stop trying to ‘figure it out.’ The more I try to seek a singular answer the more I feel like an archeologist instead of a person experiencing life. I try to explain my work to others, and it just comes of as disorganized and fumbling more often than not, explaining the laundry list of a socially engaged art practice, because there is no singular method for the creative application of Care. Even better: I’m not a project. After trying to keep it together and ‘clean myself up’- I’m not going to do that anymore. I love being all over the place. I love listening to which creative impulses need water, and then watering them without attaching a judgement about using the damn water to nurture instead of drink. I can do everything, do something- nothing- and still be myself. I can be splintered and still. Be. myself.
There is no single answer to who I am. And it’s supposed to be that way.
Thank you all for your patience while I’ve been away from Substack. My return from Portugal has been tough on me and my morale around my work, especially with work about Black radical thought. I’m working through it and I’ve cut down my responsibilities by at least a third, which feels more sustainable for me to hold emotional space around the work that I really love to do, like writing.
I’ll be posting at least 2, if not 3 posts a month on here for the foreseeable future. I have several queued up already. My next piece is on the non-profit industrial complex, and I also have a few thoughts to share (finally) on Techno as well. I would also like to share my art work and relevant asks on here as it makes sense.
Two asks that I have currently are:
1) The community radio station that I run, Blue Moon Radio, is in need of $ support. If you’re a Detroiter- or maybe an internet friend- we would really appreciate your support on our new Patreon, or even just by tuning in on Saturday’s from 12 pm - 3 pm on our website. (Or you can come and visit me IRL at Moondog Cafe where we host it!)
2) I need your support! I’m trying to get used to asking for help again. As I’m in between jobs and looking for work, I’ve been doing gig work and it hasn’t been enough to keep up with my bills. I’ll be having a small, sliding-scale print sale on my Instagram stories on 12.17.24 to raise funds for rent. Shipping will be a bit extra if needed. I’ll also leave my venmo here if folks have space to help me hit make rent while I’m applying to all the jobs. <3
Until next time,
smc