Mike M set me a link to a video. Mike always, always sends good stuff.
This one came with a warning-
"Are you able to view tiktok videos? If so, I will send you one that messed me up. I felt violated by it, and didn't even realize what it was talking about was a real thing."
I really should pay closer attention to warnings like that.
After I watched it and tried, and failed, to express what it did to me, Mike said, "I was wrecked that night. Violated. Someone had stolen shit from inside me that I couldn't even put into words."
https://www.tiktok.com/@shehryar.motivati43/video/7564122001309191455
I watched it. My jaw dropped. Mike watched it several more times. I ain't yet ready for that.
It was like the narrator split my skull open, scooped out my brain and explained every cell in it in excruciating detail.
My initial reaction was to cry and laugh. I wanted to run into the street yelling in celebration, inviting the world to join me and I wanted to get into the tiny closet under stairs at the office and bolt the door from the inside.
I wanted to go Jeremiah Johnson in the PNW and go to a TSO concert in Madison Square Garden.
I wanted to demand people come to me so I could say go away. I wanted people I could hug and tell them to never touch me.
I wanted to go on a wrecking spree and start building something.
In those few minutes, the narrator describes my life from the oldest memories I have until now.
Here, words succeed at failing in a spectacular fashion, or fail at succeeding in equally abysmal fashion. I have almost always found comfort, solace and healing in writing. Now, I have a better understanding of why. It is one place where the contradiction that is me can cleave, in both senses of the word to bring chaotic harmony to my existence.
Regardless.
Whether you who read this wish to believe or not, accept or not is irrelevant. What matters is someone who is not me, has ... well, it has brought me understanding and it has shown I am not the only person in the world like this.
Tribe.
I do not know everyone in this tribe, but simply knowing they exist is enough for now.
