I Wish I Had Listened

Yesterday was 4/20.
If you don't know about it, it's marijuana day.
Supposedly there are 420 'chemicals' in marijuana.
I use chemicals loosely because they aren't man-made.
More like cannabinoids. 
Supposedly, we have cannabinoid receptors in our brains.

Although I take breaks from time to time, 
and often smoking pot gets me feeling very anxious.
It didn't get me in those feelings, years ago...

Anyway, when it was illegal in Canada,
there were big rallies on Parliament hill. 
It was legal to smoke it, in that place, at 4:20pm.
Everyone lit up all at once. 
Imagine hundreds of people, and the smoke cloud alone
being enough to get you high.

So now you know, if you didn't already.

The government taxes marijuana. 
Effectively, they are drug dealers.

Still need a license to be able to sell it legally.
There are dealers who still have buyers, 
but going to the store is easier than waiting on dealers.
Also, you know that it's not cut with anything.

I've heard of pot being cut with fentanyl. 
Fentanyl is a very deadly drug.

Instead of taking those chances, easier to go to the store.

I forget what day it was, but it was in April
when someone I knew and I found the guy in the park
after he overdosed. He had 2 empty bottles of pills in his bag.
I saw the bottles when the paramedics came
and they were gathering his things.

The guy was still alive and in really bad shape. 
He wanted to roll over onto his back, 
but I let him just lean against my leg
so that he couldn't get onto his back
because he had been puking...

That's why we thought he'd just gotten sloshed, 
but I knew something was wrong
because it looked like he was barely hanging on.

I often wonder about the dude. 

And the other dude I came across another time.
It was when I was in the program at the soup kitchen. 
They have a free culinary program.
It's a good opportunity for those who take it seriously. 

I had a lot going on emotionally, 
so it was hard to focus on anything. 

Anyway, after the program ended, 
I had brought a joint and I was walking around
looking for a place to smoke it.

I ended up on the island, I think this was in April, too.
I remember the water levels being pretty high. 

So I was there and some random guy waved at me.
I waved back and he offered me some berries, 
we ate, smoked, and talked. 

He told me he had a bad fentanyl addiction
and one time he overdosed at a gas station
but the clerk of the gas station called EMS.
They obviously saved his life...
But I remember him telling me how angry he was that they did.

I guess he had a death wish. 
Living on the streets isn't the greatest.

There's a level of freedom, but...
Someone said to me:
"What's freedom when you have nowhere to go?"

Freedom from rent and bills. 
Freedom from problematic neighbors
(because you can go anywhere else).

Just a couple of examples.
It sucks when it's wet outside.
It sucks when it's freezing outside.
It sucks when people try to rob you...

There are a bunch of things that suck.
But there's a type of freedom.

It's kind of living off the grid, 
but you're still somewhat attached to the grid. 

Hard to explain what I mean by that.

There are a few places I used to "stay."
And there were some squatters I'd met.
I didn't stay with them for long, though.

Let's just say that I know I could manage, again, 
if I had to... Because I managed before.

I kept going to school, though,
until the police were looking for me...

Not because I was a criminal, but because I was a minor.
I was supposed to be in the custody of CAS.
Where I didn't want to be.

Most of the people I had met during that time are gone now.
They were much older than me.
I was 14 and most of them were already older than I am today.

I mostly stuck to alcohol, but I drank too much.
It's crazy to know that I've been sober now for 10 years.
I quit drinking shortly before my Grandmother passed away.

I still have dreams about her, but waking up to realize she died...
She was the closest person to me.

She stuck by me even at my worst.
I love her, I miss her.

Sometimes I struggle to process 'grief.'
So I don't tend to show it outwardly, 
even though a bunch of feelings swirling on the inside. 

In those videos I saw about cops interrogating people
and people commenting on how composed and reserved they are, 
not showing 'appropriate' emotions or any at all...

A lot of people just don't.
It doesn't mean they don't care.
It doesn't mean they don't feel anything...

Some don't... But what I was getting at
is that some people internalize everything, 
including their emotions.
Like so introverted that they just internalize it.
And it's usually an automatic reaction. 
Because whether they conditioned themselves to do it,
or were conditioned otherwise to do it, 
they'll do it.

I'm the kind of person who internalizes.
Blogging is me expressing myself. 

But just because I wouldn't be bawling hysterically
doesn't make me guilty of anything.

Internalizing, to me, is much better
than being accused of 'fake crying'
which has happened to me while I was actually crying.

Either way, I'd be accused of something
because people who express their feelings, grief, whatever...
Show it in ways that make sense to others
who express their feelings in the same way, 
the way that's 'expected.'

Like I've said many times before...
People are going to judge me no matter what.
No matter what I say, do, think, write, express, etc.
Doesn't make them right about me.
Just because we think something, doesn't make it true.

During my thought experiments,
I realized all the stupid little judgments I used to make
were mostly because I was around judgemental people.

After spending more time away from that, I felt better.

Recently I wrote a post about that with an example.
The post is called At Least By The Age Of 40.
Something like that.

I went on a bit of a rant (nothing new)
about how my ex was judging a little girl 
while we were at a kids' talent show.

A lot of our "judgments" are unnecessary.
Which I wish everyone knew.
All the unnecessary things being unnecessary...

Would make a lot of things better.
Or maybe that's a judgment.
Judging how things could be without any of that...

All I know is that 'freeing up' the part of the mind
that is fluent in judgments... 
Allows it to become fluent in other things, 
to think about other things.

That's another thing that changed a lot for me.
Giving myself new things to think about. 
Because it helped me see things in new ways.

Thinking the ways I used to think
wasn't doing anything for me.
I'll admit this: I'm good at standing in my own way.
I know how easy it is to do. 
I do it without even trying to do it.
So I know that others do it, too. 

"If it were so easy, everyone would be doing it."

What gets most people is thinking something is "too hard"
so they don't even "try" let alone KEEP "trying"
until they do learn it...

As little ones, just learning to walk, 
they keep trying until they learn. 
Then it became 'automatic.'
Well, thinking in the ways that we do...
That becomes automatic. 

UNTIL we actually see that one of the reasons
we're standing in our own way
is thinking the way we think.

It's been a long time, most of my life, 
feeling the way I felt, because I thought the way I thought.
Knowing how I used to be, I struggle with that.
Now that I'm not like that, anymore.

I read somewhere that a lot of people who see you in a type of way
will keep seeing you in that way.

They already have constructed a version of you, in their views.
Whether or not that's who you actually are, 
what they think and how they see you, 
determines who you are, to them.

Is it fair to have multiple versions of you?
Without being seen for who you are?
Only based on what people THINK
which doesn't make it TRUE.

That's been me, all my life. 
But there came a point where I had to stop
trying to get them to see who I am. 

If they only want to see me for how I was, 
they will. Nothing I can do about it.

But even if there was, would it be worth my time?
Would it be worth my time to try to prove a point?

There was someone I used to talk to
who had a way of making a point without making a point. 
He asked me questions about what we were talking about. 
The point was to get me to think deeper into it.

The answers I was giving after I thought about it, 
weren't for him, they were for me.
Which was how he was making the points.
Without making a point about making those points, 
because that was the actual point.

I miss those talks because I learned a lot from them.
I learned a lot from him. I miss the guy.

Anyway, I wish I had listened... Really listened. 
And not been stuck in my head so much.
A few years went by where I was mentally stuck, 
probably because I was emotionally stuck.

Which is a lot to do with brooding. 
Which is one of the things that isn't necessary.
Just one of those automatic things.

I wasted so much time brooding on stuff. 
Maybe because I'd attached some importance to it.
Or else it wouldn't have mattered to me
as much as it did. 

All brooding does is just get the rut deeper and deeper
until it gets pretty hard to get out of it. 
I know because it took me years to get out of it.
Due to daily brooding.