I realized I didn’t need to become everything in above & beyond capacity.
I just needed to become more of myself.
Now I’m just struggling to forgive myself for not being able to save everyone around me.
To swallow the anger & grief, to allow myself to inhale & settle the regret.
To be broken, sad, & a little rusted around the edges isn’t so bad, as long as I can still find joy.
I’m always grieving & I’m always angry about it. But I’m learning to let it rest & continue to move forward with something else that brings me joy.
To sit & just wallow in it is misery, & I refuse to die like that.
To be possessed by a joy for living, to face the unknown of existence with unflinching & graceful confidence, to be determined with resilience, patience, & gratitude for God’s Beauty.
It’s what makes life fun, interesting, & worth it.
• • •
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In most studies over the last 20 years, it was found that majority of unhoused folks who had an alcohol or drug abuse problem developed it *after* going homeless.
Because the reality is that having nowhere to go to sleep, cook, shower, relax... it’s torturous.
If you’re struggling with that on top of a health issue or no job or little to no possessions of your own, nobody to call, no family or friends who’ll come visit you... you don’t just “handle” that & come out okay.
Joan The Scammer said “that’s over, it’s cancelled” at a coffee machine once in a video & ‘cancel culture’ became a controversial societal concept 4 years later to the point that it’s been discussed in US Congress & people have written entire books about it.
The power...
My bad, Joanne*
Anyways, I find stuff like this fascinating, because I love tracing how ideas come into existence & become cultural norms or institutions in a society. It helps in fighting against harmful societal notions & practices.
The social ontology of cancel culture came from an IG comedian struggling to work an espresso machine.
The way people act ignorant about poverty like saying “They need to lower their spending” like poverty doesn’t mean deprivation & the fact that it comes from being paid poverty wages.
It’s basic math: you get paid below what’s necessary to live with adequate resources (aka deprivation), there’s little (which won’t pay out of poverty) or nothing to save.
The logical steps are few to think this through.
It’s why people fight for things like livable wage. The point of fighting to eradicate poverty isn’t to redefine it as “enough to survive,” but resource acquisition to improve quality of life & move beyond pure survival.
I’ll definitely come back to this a little later today, because it’s Friday & breaking down assumptions of “the Islamic permissibility” of wealth hoarding & exploitation by a wealthy ruling class as to be relevant to anything “Quranic” is going to make for a good pre-Juma’a post.
Okay, so I had a long day at work & I really want to do this topic justice because I’ve been waiting for someone to bring up the place of labor relations & class struggle in Islam, so I want to give it a decent bit of attention, which I’ll work on tonight & tomorrow IsA.
I know what’s it’s like to live in a constant state of being where you feel a deep pain that you are inadequate & undeserving of love, belonging, & happiness.
And I never want any of you to ever go through this pain alone.
I was born into poverty in a place in where sewage flooded the street & any animal from snakes to wild dogs surrounded the little hovels my mom & I lived in, alone.
I wasn’t born with any measure of luck in skilled talent, strength, smarts, or a supportive & well-off family.
For most of my life, it was just about survival, until we went homeless. And very, very few people stepped in to help us, which always came with strings attached.
I grew up angry, depressed, & untrusting of anyone or anything. I still carry that with me.