Life doesn't come with trigger warnings

I left you hanging around this time last year in 2015. Since then, I've had to uproot my entire life multiple times, and have even moved across the country. My perception on life has been turned upside down multiple times, and I have both lost old friends, and gained new ones.

I'm not sure what to say. It feels like I want to say so much, like I have all of this pent up emotion and experiences that I want to cry out and share... but I can't just let out a primal scream, and flood your minds with the images, and the emotions of the things that have happened in the past few years. It doesn't work that way. I wish it did.

I'm a different person than when I last wrote here. It could be argued that every experience changes us... but this has been like a trial by fire. I've been burned more times than I can count, but I have always come out of it somehow. I can't explain the whys, or the hows, but it feels like my past is someone else's life. It feels distant, disconnected.

I find it hard to connect to the things and people that I used to connect to. Magic is still a part of my life, it's still important to me. It's a part of the fabric of reality, how could it not be important? Anubis and Sekhmet still walk with me, though their voices are more like whispers through static, than the rich clear tones I once heard. Fear blocks their voices. I have become like a cornered animal, always wondering when and where the next ambush will be set. I try to break free of this mindset, but I have yet to find how. Some days are worse than others. Some days I wonder if maybe I'm just insane. Other days I wonder if maybe it's the world that has changed, and not myself. I'm living in a constant state of inner conflict.

Maybe this is just how life is, and I didn't notice until recently? There was a time I was so bold, so fearless, and looking back, I know I'm not that person anymore. Can I be strong again? I don't know. I've seen so much darkness, so much suffering, pain, and corruption. It feels like in the past, I was strong for other people. I protected my friends.... but myself? Not so much. I thought I felt "old" then. I had no idea what the word meant. I still probably don't. By most people's standards I'm still young.

I don't model anymore. I had too many close calls, and touchy photographers trying to feel me up. In places that I should have been safe, I wasn't. Even within the arts, there is no much corruption now. I can't model for schools, without wondering if the coordinator who hired me, is also a human trafficker on the side, who wants to try to sell me to Middle Eastern Royalty. - This actually almost happened. I'm getting chills just writing about it. My heartbeat is erratic. I need to breathe, but breathing feels so hard sometimes. If the person who hired me had thought they could get away with it, I would have been in a bag. I have no question about that.

This is the world we live in. It came as no surprise to me whatsoever when the news broke that Hollywood might have a rape and pedophile problem. Last time I tried to join a modeling agency, the coordinator wanted to "spend time with me alone, and enjoy some drinks"... yeah I know what that's code for.

So now I find myself having been so exposed to the darkness, that I'm having trouble finding light. It's like a campfire at the edge of reality that I'm desperately searching for. I keep looking for that flickering light, so I can reach for it, maybe sit for a moment and feel that warmth of hope again... but all around me people are caught up in their own pettyness, marionettes of the cackling shadows that move them to fear, and hate, when they should be asking questions and seeking knowledge. It's NEVER as simple as the narrative that you're being spoon-fed... and holding fast to lies when you should be seeking Truth, is the surest way to ruin.... and it's this knowledge too, which is a source of my sadness and ire. Gone are the days when people looked into the gray places to seek and find what was hidden... now they expect it to be handed to them, and have the folly to trust those who are more interested in money, and ratings, with having given them the truth!...And of course I'm referring to the media, the government, and any figures of authority that you allow to have power over your own thoughts. Watch how quickly things that were stated as truth one day, are refuted the next! ...and the masses smile and nod, and forget that their overlords ever were mistaken.

Perhaps I sound crazy here... but I'm starting to not care. I've watched so many people I thought were intelligent fall to the dogwhistle of hatred. Convinced now that there are enemies all around them, they push their agendas regardless of others that might be forsaken by them. Has it always been this way, but I was too blind to see it? Too naive? Why is it so hard now to find, and grasp the light that I feel I once carried within me?

Despite this dilemma, despite this cognitive dissonance I face within myself, and within the world, I continue to walk forward, and make sense of the world that I've found myself in. I feel like a stranger in a strange land, where no one is strong enough to ask the hard questions, or to face themselves in the light of their own shadow. It's a dark light, but it's real. Some days I wonder if everything else isn't. When things are too bright, it's impossible to see anything as it is. So in what dwells the Truth and in what dwells the Lie?

At what point do we become an adult, and leave behind the child?