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How Weed & Mistrust Lead Me to Some Kind of Truth

celinajoan94

Maybe this is just the ranting of a girl who recently started smoking weed again. Maybe every person who smokes weed and comes to this very conclusion is not just some girl or some guy who smokes weed and says unconventional things. Maybe these things, what I'm about to share, is actually just the truth? After all, truth must be subjective if the reality of our life boils down to what we believe our life is.


"Belief creates the actual fact."

- unknown


I have spent most of my time between the ages of 10 and 28 being very cautious with my beliefs (I had to in order to survive). I have, however, always been curious about the path of truth and questioned my own. The path of truth, as I have come to know it, is really the path of freedom. I have been obsessed with freedom my whole life, not religious freedom, not financial freedom, not romantic freedom. What I mean is the kind of freedom that liberates one from the mental constraints society has conditioned us to believe about our lives, about what it is, and how we should live it.


This is the kind of freedom that makes people who have found comfort in conformity, uncomfortable. This kind of freedom has gotten many people killed in this crazy system created by few (and for some reason, we keep following it...). This is the kind of freedom bad people will scare you away from believing.


I am not completely free yet, though I have been focusing my efforts in that direction. And even when I'm not trudging that path, the information "just comes to me" and I can't unsee it. I can't not analyze it, consider it, think it through, or play out the scenarios. And for the most part, I am unable to deny what I mentally "discover" (more like tune into, like a radio station tuning into a certain frequency transporting information like a song). I'm unable to deny what I learn because I'm able to make logical sense of it. I am able to provide myself evidence about this "discovery" and mentally compare and contrast it to situations, thoughts, and feelings I have experienced in the past.


So what does this all have to do with mistrust?


Romantic relationships have always felt daunting to me. I have never perceived a romantic relationship with a man as a good thing. I have so many reasons for this, but for this particular blog, I will not get into it as I do not see the value in doing so.


Yet, I am biologically wired for connection. And as a heterosexual woman, I want a healthy, happy, committed, romantic connection with a man. Perhaps you can get a sense for my dilemma.


One of the reasons why I struggle in forming healthy connections, especially with men, is because I do not trust men to meet my needs. I have become hyper independent and developed avoidant attachment styles because of it. I also remember having a difficult time controlling my anger as a child (realizing the destructive nature of my childhood, I can valid that anger). That anger became my coping mechanism. For a long time, most things I experienced that weren't ideal or favorable, lead to me feeling angry and to acting on that anger (the acting on it is important and comes into play in the story I am about to tell you).


I struggle to form healthy connections, including romantic relationships, because I still do not trust people, especially men, to meet my needs as an adult. I do not trust men to provide the need of safety to me. Whether that be safety to express myself openly and honestly without being punished because of how it makes them feel, or the safety to go through my process without perceiving me as, "too much". And unfortunately, I can look into my past and provide evidence that these fears are valid. This makes the fear difficult to overcome logically.


I have always been a person who exercises introspection. I have not always been a person who vocalizes every reflection as I don't think many would be able to keep up with my thoughts and changing perspectives.


The older I get, the more I reflect on myself. And the more I realize, the more I reflect.


I recently experienced myself experiencing the feelings of mistrust toward someone I really like and am trying to form a healthy connection with. Neither of us have had a proper standard in which to follow when it comes to a healthy romantic partnership. But as humans do, we crave connection. And we see each other; we value a lot of qualities in the other; hence, why we are in this situation.


When we experience trauma at a young age, we stop maturing. It is as if some part of us gets frozen in time. Based on the self analyzing I have done, that makes perfect sense. If a wound isn't treated properly it will stay a wound and maybe even get infected. The wound needs to be tended to in order to become a scar. And once it is a scar, it needs to be accepted; we have to accept that the skin there will always be "discolored" and wont feel like the rest of the skin on our body. That does not mean the scar is a "bad" thing as so many have been lead to believe. It simply means it is part of our story.


Which leads me to the conflict that lead me to some truth.


The experience of mistrust I mentioned earlier had me wide awake at 2:00 am. I laid in my bed and starting having thoughts of mistrust. Thinking about what could be happening, what could have happened, and what I would need to do about it if it did. I felt myself almost wanting my thoughts to be true, simply so I could say I was right and could leave the relationship as if I were somehow victorious in doing so.


However, I realized these thoughts were just thoughts, even if they were true it wouldn't matter; not in the grand scheme of things. But narrowing in on the experience, it all felt like it mattered (and of course it does) because I was experiencing it, I was feeling it.


Caught between intense feelings of a core wound activation and my desire to learn how to trust again, I contemplated packing my one hitter to slow my mind down. I judged myself for this (hyper independence and fear of what some stranger would think of me leaning on weed). I decided I had to give into one thing or the other: lay here and fester and not ease my mind with weed, or accept that people take ibuprofen when they have a head ache. Around 3:00 am, I laid in my hammock and took a puff of gastropop.


Looking over my balcony, the heavy contrast between the green canopies harshly lit by city streets and the pitch black sky waiting for dusk was a beautiful scene to stare at while I sifted through the files of my mind. I was caught between what I was feeling, who I consciously wanted to be in that moment, and the quality of life I want to experience going forward. I welcomed each thought and emotion, one at a time, to have the spotlight so I could understand their presence and the role they played in what I was experiencing within myself. My thought process went something like this:


"I'm angry. I'm angry because I don't want to have to numb myself (because I learned to believe that being calm is being numb) in order to get what I want (a romantic relationship). Weed helps me detach from my emotions so I can see them. I know I am not my thoughts, nor my feelings; I experience feelings and I have thoughts. But feeling is why we live. I don't want to constantly have to analyze myself in order to get what I want. I don't want to have to numb myself or be calm in order to have a healthy relationship...I want to act on my emotions. I want to act on my mistrust."


I paused then as the words fell out of my mouth.


"I want to act on my mistrust."


Then I remembered that we stop maturing when we experience trauma as a child. I then remembered hearing and reading about how growing, healing, and being mature are not easy things to accomplish. Being mature is a choice we have to make, over and over again. We can, at any point in our lives, make a choice that is not so mature. That doesn't mean we've "had a set back"; it just means we made a choice. And I needed to make a choice in that moment.


There is a part of me that is constantly judging me. And it hurts me so much that I judge other people. And judging other people perpetuates self judgement for me. This makes me very angry. It makes me angry because it hurts. It is a never ending cycle. And even thinking about breaking out of this cycle now makes my throat close up and my eyes get watery.


There is part of me that does not want to let go of what I logically understand. This logical understanding has kept me safe, or at least what I have come to understand as safety. But having a glimpse of the other side (being calm and experiencing the things I want to experience) has made me realize that although there is comfort and safety in the familiar, it is sometimes that comfort that kills us (sometimes even literally).


I had to choose in that moment what I was going to do and who I was going to be, not because anyone was putting a time limit on my decision or giving me an ultimatum. But because the quality of my reality depended on it.


And that is so hard to accept when the teenager in me is still angry and wants comfort and safety in the familiar (running away, pushing away, isolating).


Because the reality of relationships is this: they are not safe. Safety is an illusion fed to us by a system who has enslaved our minds and tricked us into giving up freedom in exchange for 'safety'. And it bleeds into every aspect of modern humanity.


There is a good chance I will get hurt. There is a good chance I could be the one inflicting pain. Just because I am loyal and do everything according to the book does not guarantee a perfect experience in a relationship. And honestly, it doesn't have to and that's the level of maturity I'm after. That's the level of self-love I am after.


But is it possible?


I think it is.

I think what is impossible is avoiding pain.


So I chose. I chose not to decide. I chose not to do anything about how I felt. I even chose not to share that thought process with my partner because it's my truth and I would rather show him what I discovered.


Because so much of my life was "bad" and I felt alone, I convinced myself that people entered relationships because relationships must be "all good". That means there is everything wrong with me and that's why they never worked for me. But relationships are just like anything else in life. That is a reality I was missing. The reality that people choose to be in relationships because in some form they want it, not because it is all good, all of the time.


Bringing forward the understanding of the role fractals play in the universe, I asked myself, is life not something we choose everyday because in some form we want it? Not because it is all good, all of the time? And then I thought about The Great Spirit, the architect who made all there is. Didn't it do so because in some way it wanted to? Not because it is all good, all of the time? Cant painful experiences (like the one I just described) enlighten people? Yes. But pain can't be present if all things are all good, all of the time (you can argue perspective, but it simply further validates the point).


I think the universe and life in general is somehow both complex and extremely simple, constantly repeating itself on different scales, in different plains of existence: macro and micro (fractals). The same way bacteria and viruses do their thing inside our bodies, we do our thing on the earth. The same way we do our thing on the earth, the earth does her thing in the solar system. The same way the earth does her thing in the solar system, the solar system does its thing in the milky way galaxy, so on and so forth as far as and beyond what humans understand.


The point is that everything is in perfect working order, but we don't always get what we want. Because sometimes what we want is a reflection of what we have not yet outgrown (you decide for yourself what that is and when it is true for you). Nothing is ever going to be all good, all of the time. I am never going to be all good, all of the time. But the answer is in the air. Sometimes all it takes is a little weed, a hammock, and a big sky to tap into the frequency I both want and am intimidated by.


Communication is key, but not everything needs to be a discussion. Not every emotion needs to be acted upon. But if the time comes for me to make a decision, I will. And I'll know what to do because I chose to be present through what I needed to see and understand. And I'll be proud of myself because I took my time and was true to my being while pushing to grow, even when it was difficult to do so.


-Celina Joan




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