Attachment is the root of all suffering.
I have been trying so very hard to get my life back on track since I moved to Arizona to heal cancer. Before that I had just given up for years. I smoked pot fasted and just cared about how I looked. Yes I took all kinds of supplements, but honestly its because feeling good made me look good. It’s a symbiotic relationship. I felt pretty shitty back then, smoking pot and zoning out on my anxiety pills was the best it got in those days. I just wanted to be left alone and that means I left myself alone and didn’t challenge myself to evolve much.
So for the past 5 years, I have been putting all my might into getting where I “should” be. I’m 41 and have never bought a car by myself. I have never bought a house. I have never worked a “real job” for more than a couple years. I’ve not accomplished anything by society standards to make me successful. I have unpaid college loans and never finished my degree. I’m the poster child for unsuccessful in the overt world.
When looking at my life from the outside I look like a complete failure. This is something my family has ensured and reminded me of my whole life. Anytime I had anything important in my life they have overtly and/or covertly sabotaged me. Even healing cancer they sabotaged me by putting the wrong information in front of me, poisoning my vitamins and supplements, and making my houses and apartments weapons of destruction. However, they could not steal healing from me all the way. It may have taken me longer and been more painful than necessary, but I did it. That is the biggest accomplishment of my life. It’s not something a lot of people can say they have done, especially without Any medical treatment or care. I took care of myself when I needed it the most because somehow I knew no one was going to treat me well or even fairly.
It’s really hard for me to accept that I have not earned being treated fairly by everything I have done my whole life. Or just by being human. However, I suppose this past year I have been trying to prove my worth to you all by being revolutionary. I want to prove I’m lovable and worthy of kindness. These are some of my root wounds because the world has followed the lead set by my family. I’ve never experienced kindness or fairness. It’s hard to admit because it makes me feel less than. How can I be a good person and have this experience and history? This is how my family was trying to break me once again. If there was no reward for being a good person they thought I would eventually give it up like a bad habbit.
Well, I didn’t give up my habit of being human, but I still have wounds to attend to from the life I have lived. The past 5 years I have been attached to getting “back on track”. But what if this is the track I’m supposed to be on? What if being revolutionary is another big theme of my life that is necessary, but will not get me anywhere in the overt world, much like healing cancer?
What if I complete this whole trip up to Washington and I still end up going home to Eugene, living in my car, and getting a mind numbing dead end job? I have been too attached to avoiding this outcome. It’s almost summer so at least it won’t be too cold. I don’t have too many Bill’s so I don’t need to make that much money. Why am I resisting the idea of continuing to be alone in the world. Being revolutionary has given me a purpose this past year that has kept me alive. I have a sense of community more than I ever have. I have connection more than I ever have, even though I don’t overtly communicate with anyone, well any human.
I need to cure my attachment to what I think my life should look like and what I deem as a successful revolution. Maybe my purpose was just to make you all think. I have to accept that as a viable option. I can’t be so attached to how I want this to turn out. Maybe what I view as a successful revolution isn’t. How does one judge and gauge a revolution?
Honestly I think back to the 1960s. Everything changed then and so quickly. Equal rights, free love, and the start of booming technology. I think we walked on the moon. Schools began to stop segregation. Shoot in the 1980s they finally changed the school zoning so public schools in Texas were mixed in races. Rather than one side of the tracks versus the other side. So maybe change wasnt as booming in the 1960s as I thought. Maybe it was just a slow roar in the background of society.
I can’t allow myself to be so attached to how quickly people are able to adjust to new information and embody it. If I keep getting so emotionally worked up about this revolution it’s going to negatively effect my health and happiness. I can’t live on a roller coaster of emotions. Humans aren’t meant to be emotionally ruled. We are meant to be creatures of logic.
I’m sorry I have been pushing you all to be on my timetable. The information I bring you all is life shattering and I am expecting you all to pick up the pieces and run with change maybe you all never intended to do. I’m sure this has not been predictable for you all in any way. My life is far from predictable so I can emphasize.
I accept that this trip up to Washington may leave me to go home to Oregon to the same life I left, completely unchanged or improved. I have to accept this because I have no control over anything really. All I can do is do my best in whatever ways I deem appropriate. However, that does not mean I am going to give up.
I came up here to reach the people in power in the war games. I have not done that yet because when I reach the people in power my Truman show changes instantly and drastically. The people in power don’t need time to think. They just do. And what they do may have no lasting effect on my life in Oregon, but I came up here with a mission and I’m going to complete it.
I may never have a life that I imagined in any way. Never in my life did I think I would live in my jeep, let alone with my two dogs. But maybe that is what I am supposed to do in this lifetime. I don’t know how this all ends. I can’t judge because I will never know everything. I’m so attached to getting back to the life I always thought I would have that I’m missing the opportunity to create a new life based on the truth. I have lived a lie my whole life. The life I thought I would have had been a lie designed to distract me and it’s still working. Everything has always been a lie and yet I’m in a hurry to get back to it. I’m in a hurry to get the truth out so I can go back to my lie. How can I get frustrated with you all for not wanting to face the truth, when I obviously don’t want to either?
“Uncertainty is the only certainty in life “. Jordan Peterson This will always be one of my favorite quotes. However I need to embrace it more. Sure I may collect facts and information about everything in an effort to feel more in control of my life. But you and me we are the same, everything is uncertain for us. No matter how much we want to admit it and hang on to what makes us feel more in control.
Surrender. I finally surrender. I may not know what I mean or represent in the war games, but the more I try to understand it the more out of control I feel. So I surrender. It’s up to the odds, the gods, and you all. I can’t be attached to the outcome. I can only be attached to the actions I choose to take.
Don’t get wrong I want a good life filled with so much more security and comfort than this. But the lie I was fed to strive after and call it my life is not for me. Yes, I would like clean clothes, a house/home, to not eat with my hands, a bed to sleep in, and a toothbrush that doesn’t get poisoned. However maybe I have been going about getting those things in all the wrong ways. I can never know unless I try.
So I surrender to whatever this is and whoever I am.
Love Always
Nicole D Graves