No Divinity Excluded
Background Noise
“In moments like this, normally I would post a quote from a story I’ve written or a scenario that I’d form a story around. I’ve been dealing with depression very heavily lately. Heavier than I ever have before and it’s taking its toll. But out of the bad, sometimes good things form, and I manifest it through art. I’m not spouting some random soliloquy about how I’m improving. That can numb the intentions of acknowledging depression or anxiety.
…This picture here, is a final product, followed by a “before and after” technical edit in the following slides. I took it thinking much less about it at the time, but revisited it to edit because I figured it’s a good representation of how my brain feels: I have a bigger picture I’m trying to see but there’s overactivity; Clutter in my brain. Pathways of thoughts, that bloom into more thoughts. Sometimes it’s dark and obscure, others, it’s hyperactive and overstimulating…
It feels like only seconds go by after looking at this, but you might get caught up and realize you’ve looked at this for 2 minutes, maybe more. The bigger picture becomes fragmented, and I know it’s there but I’m so distracted by the other thoughts. Every damn time. Then I realize that I woke up at 5 am, or maybe I’ve been up 24+ hours at a time. But that’s back to my point. I can turn my pain into art sometimes. I’ll be okay, I always am.
Idk. More art analysis when the Suns up. 💕”
• • •
[Trigger Warning]
If you’ve looked at other portfolio entries prior to this (“Fever Dream Academy”, “Hey Are U Ok?”), you’ve seen me make references to a near-death experience that I’ve had. This photo was taken just after my doctor’s appointment. This was around the time of my incident, and while I remember what I was feeling, it didn’t register to me exactly what happened until a year later. This is significant enough that I felt it necessary to explain how it ties in with my experience, which I will be going into detail about here. The Triggering topics include death, drugs, vomit, and generally unpleasant descriptions. The detailed sections will be colored as such.
November’s have been notoriously rough and trying for me, since the death of my grandfather, who passed from complications with colon cancer. The Thanksgiving of 2017, was the first time that I ever saw him in a state of disinterest in food. He stayed in his room, and I went up to visit him. He idly expressed how sick the idea of eating was to him. A piece of my soul felt like it cracked off because, in my experience, he was always the first to get a plate and enjoy every bite. That following December, our family learned that he only had weeks to live. Within two weeks, he passed away, and life was not a real thing to me, for quite a while.
I started drinking a bit heavier, which became a habit whenever things were idle and uninteresting – that became my frequent perception.
November 2018, I just felt dead. I was struggling with getting to know my gender identity which had become the forefront of my life rather than just idle thoughts about “what-ifs” and dismissing uncomfortable memories of being bullied in my childhood years regarding how masculine I “should” be. Alcoholism and Toxic Masculinity were on the menu that year.
November of 2019, was the month I officially began transitioning hormonally, so huge strides were being taken until Covid and lockdown began. The months leading up to the next year were marked with discrimination, constant badgering, death threats, and more depression.
In November of 2020, I maintained my job as an essential worker for both a home improvement store and a healthcare call center, but I was unable to manage a sleep schedule. I couldn’t even sleep. I was dealing with a stalker who was a former deacon at churches who stayed watching my social media and knew where I worked, as well as beginning to unpack a lot of unhealed traumas. I was literally getting maybe 3-4 hours of sleep a night. Not just one or two nights every two weeks, this was a nightly/daily occurrence. I was given prescription medicines to help me fall asleep and some of them which I tried, were meant to help keep me sleep for a longer duration. I won’t say their names, as I don’t want to passively aid anyone else attempting this intentionally. I worked Black Friday, not sleeping from the early mornings of Thanksgiving day, into the night of my shift. When I finished my shift, I just wanted to go home and sleep. The sleep meds alone weren’t helping, but I remembered how Benadryl helped me actually fall sleep.
So I took Benadryl with my prescribed stuff, out of desperation. No, I didn’t ask about the safety of doing so. Nonetheless, I did get what I felt was the best sleep of my life. I didn’t even dream. I remember seeing all black, and the marathon of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was playing on my TV. I woke up on my back, the same position I fell asleep in. It felt like I sunk into the bed, like I was a solid piece of metal. I moved my eyes which were hurting like f@#k, even the TV in my dimmed room was too bright. I sat up, and it felt like I hadn’t used my body in months, and I felt a dry scratchy texture in my throat. I went to the bathroom, and it felt like I had the combination of a hangover and the flu.
When I got to the bathroom, the lights felt as bright as huge light setups used on movie sets, and my skin was dry. I saw dried fluid in the corners of my mouth, and it felt like I maybe vomited in my sleep. It felt and tasted like that. When I got back to my bed, not much was there, but my confirmation bias was strong at this time. I had this sinking feeling that I tend to get when I’m snapped back into the present moment in an unsettling way, realizing what happened. I wrote a journal entry, and left it at that, until almost exactly a year later, when I got into a car accident and various memories throughout my life resurfaced, including the night I’m talking about.
There are a few more Novembers after this occurence, that I’ll be elaborating on.
November of 2021 was when I got into my car accident, a week after graduating college. That triggered memories as far back as the first car accident I was in around six years old, and even before that. I experienced a spiritual awakening and rekindled my interest in the subject of Kundalini Yoga, which led to my Kundalini “resurgence”*. So a lot of unhealed wounds and traumas came up to heal, and it felt like I was going through an experience of revisiting before I pass on. There were many synchronicities that I wasn’t intentionally looking for that further reinforced this belief at the time.
During the early days of my healing journey, I struggled with the process of allowing my body to relax and allow myself to feel these sensations. Things are now much better, though to this day I still experience mild sensations and synchronicities regarding the feelings of passing onto the next life or suspecting being in a coma. I’m less afraid of them than I was, and I’ve transmuted the awareness of my mortality as a source of purpose amid the bleakness that our society can present.
• • •
The original unedited image was not nearly as vibrant. So I made the leaves into a representation of how my brain and thought process feels, and how I picture it as I make new connections and let old ones die off.
