... Then Maybe I Can Give It Back

 

 Part Deux

How do I look back at the loss of potential relationship with my relatives? How can I blame my deceased mother, searching for her own place in the world as a 10-year, post-last-child accident who was raised by her siblings, for leaning into it?  Moreover, how do I look at myself? How much was I leaning on the teenth percent to belong somewhere? I always thought I would find out my tribe someday, and then! Then I would finally belong. This world has not been kind to me, and I had TOTALLY identified with the ideologies of Red People, also being pushed around, marginalized -- not always out of existence, but always out of sight, out of mind, out of care. 

 

Silly me, the upstart that I am, I was going to change all that! I have an art degree, a vision, and just about to WILL my dream into existence. I just needed my studio. I had plans!  I have a whole tab on my shiftnext.space website dedicated to The Legacy Project, trying to bring a sense of mixed identity pride into the 23rd century. That was my vision. What is it now?

In the growing of new feathers (reference the Icarus post), I have found that who we THINK we are is at least, if not more, important than the biology in our veins. Partly nature, partly nurture, we are indeed a construct which, at one point in time, begins to show more of our own making. Which meant it was MY job now. I wanted to know, and now I know.  And you know what? There was a time for GRIEF and a time for SEARCHING. When it was time for the Cloak, I began with the number ONE.

 

I'm still exploring the craft of movement, and the physics of a human mind. I still have relationships with animals and places, and dream about Bear Spirit. I still talk to the sky, and the earth, and ask the trees questions. Recent interactions with people, some familiar and some not, have revealed to me just how much stock I have put in OTHER people putting stock in ME. It is a hard lesson that when someone becomes 18 and here, legally responsible, alas there is no magic wand that turns all you have learned and all your experiences into BING! healthy, happy, responsible choices. Those are muscles, emotional ones that take "time in the saddle" to develop properly. So it's okay if I go slow.

And I realize that, while people who have various body and chemical trauma residuals are inadequately equipped to navigate current systems, it is precisely because they are the ones least served by those systems that we are perhaps best poised to lead society into the future. The problem is that as Magic People, our Spells are only temporary, they can take all of our Concentration, and can only affect Willing Creatures who will allow themselves to be Touched.

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