What I Didn’t Know
Hello all,
Welcome back to our chaotic, beautiful, and messy shores. Thank you so much for taking your time and energy to sail these violent, rapid seas back here, to me this week. I hope you’re feeling healthy, happy, and peaceful. I, personally, don’t think I have ever been better than I have been the last few months. I’ve really just been living my life to the fullest lately…even in the most mundane moments of my days I have still been feeling the happiest. It has been sometime since I last shared/wrote a journal entry for us, and if you remember in our last journal, I hit a very rough creative block. Since hitting this block, I figured I would use the un-inspirational period as a moment of reflection…a moment to live, to love, to experience, to forgive, and even moments of remembering situations, seeing them from a different perspective, and coming to terms with it. I guess you could say that it feels like redemption more than anything… For our journal this week I’m going to be reflecting back on the year, as I’ve realized the things, the situations, and people I thought I was missing was just me force-feeding myself my own bullshit thoughts, fantasies, and whatever else that related to the thought of “if this was still my life today I’d be so much better”… until I realized the only thing I truly was missing was my own presence in myself.
In November of 2023 I moved out of my mom’s house…not by choice, there had been a flood downstairs and of course my bedroom is the only one on the first story. Packing up to move into my dad’s, I felt the anxiety beginning to pull over me as if I were a shore and it were the sea…with my emotions as big as a full moon controlling the waters to crash down rapid and violently… The relationship between my dad and I has always been a bit complicated, but once I moved in we seemed to have mended and patched up our differences on the surface. However, since I was the only one to move into my dads without my brothers, I felt this huge feeling of isolation…I though I had experienced loneliness before, but this was quite literally the most lonely I had ever felt. I can admit that I am the type of person who cannot function without a routine. Without one, I fall into this weird, crazy depression and it’s a struggle to pull myself out of it… and that’s exactly what was starting to happen.
I’ve always struggled with my faith, with my beliefs, my religion (even though I truly don’t identify myself with one), and with God…but during this time I was praying so hard to god to heal me…to help me find my purpose…to just give me the smallest drop of peace and happiness because truthfully, I was going fucking crazy mentally around this time and I could tell it wasn’t letting up anytime soon. One night at the end of December, I was laying in bed thinking and the next thing I knew I was swimming in a pool of tears. I’m not sure why, but I felt absolutely defeated this night. I sat up in bed and remember saying out loud, “God, I’m surrendering everything to you. These emotions, situations, and heartbreaks have grown too large for me to carry daily…I’m surrendering everything to you, God.” The next morning I woke up and like any typical person would do, the first thing I did was check my social media. I opened TikTok first and the first video that popped up was this woman explaining the power in surrendering to god…I know, it sounds cliche as fuck. But, she said something that felt like someone, or something, was placing my heart back into my chest. She said something along the lines of “When we go through periods of isolation and periods of loneliness, that is God pulling us aside to whisper into our hearts the things that silence needs to hear”. This absolutely struck me. I felt like the wires in my mind were starting to rewire themselves differently. I realized in this moment that I’ve prayed to God for everything under the sun…love, wealth, happiness…but I’ve never prayed to God to help me find my sense of self. I only ever asked him to bring me back the things i’ve missed, which is selfish.
What I thought I missed the most was the people who loved me in ways I would tell myself I would never be able to. However, I’ve realized that these people only loved a version of me…the version of me that was so desperate to be loved, and to love, that I lost sight of who I truly was. What’s interesting about this realization, is that I’ve never really had a sense of self… the only thing that has ever, and probably will ever connect each version of myself, is my poetry. So, I dug up every journal I’ve ever owned and spent all my free-time for about two months diving into pages of the person I’ve lost every part of. It felt like each time I would read new pages of old poetry, I would wake up the next morning with a new realization and an inch closer to remembering the person I truly am without the added outside noise. Also, this experience is what pushed this website to be born…
I know this journal has been very lengthy, but if you docked in our waters and dove into the waves of my words this week…I thank you endlessly from the absolute bottom of my heart. Surf back here next week to continue exploring our messy, chaotic, and beautiful shores…take care of yourselves.
With great love always,
M.H. John