Man, this has got me trippin now. What am I afraid of, really? I guess I'm not so much afraid anymore and I don't get anywhere near as upset about this shit as I used to. I used to almost rage and panic frequently. Now I guess I'm more about staring the monsters down and daring them to spook me than fearing them. This is one abyss that can give as good as it gets wrt staring back into me.
I'm not sure yet, but I think this takes less energy and has the potential to be a whole lot more fun.
When I started looking into drug policy reform, I didn't know it would lead me back to those sadistic lunatics that I thought I'd left in the dark and dusty corner of the early `80's part of my mind. I only knew that it spooked me and outraged me and I wanted to do something about it, if only to muck rake and get people pissed off enough to slip and say what they really think. Hey, find something you're good at and ya stick with it, eh? Sorry. Really.... anyway
But knowing now how much influence Program affiliated people really have on all of our lives and how hidden right out in the open it has always been and how much shit I've eaten over the years simply because I fucking see shit that people around me don't see or won't see..... that pisses me off more than almost anything. The only thing I can think of right now that pisses me off more than that is how insidiously and how successfully these mindfuckers come between us and our children. See, I'd made peace w/ my dad--I guess you could say we met halfway and shook hands--and I'd written off my mom, resigned myself to probably never really belonging among my family and determined never to let any of that bullshit come between me and my kids, NO! They had one good thing out of me. I may not be rich or particularly tightly wrapped all the time. In fact I sometimes have a hard time getting along with myself. But the one thing I could give them was to never let that shit come between us. But I didn't see em coming, in large part because of all that shit eatin. Everybody told me that was paranoid shit right there, thinking things like Peer Counseling, Citizens On Patrol and DARE were more frightening than just stupid.
And just now it hit me, the simplified, stripped down to the very most basic conundrum. If I tell my kids everything they want to know about whatever they want to know about, then they have to deal with the vile slander and evil lies that attend kids who did rehab instead of highschool. That's a lot to ask of a kid, isn't it? I mean, I sort of think I understand now why people like my grandfather may have europeanized their names and turned catholic. But if I don't tell my kids the truth about the serious shit, then we're just not really being real with each other, are we? It's a double bind, there is no right answer, it's the perfect mindfuck.
And as I stare into the abyss and it keeps giving as good as it gets (kickin' my fuckin' ass here lately some days) I find that them who scream the loudest and get the most bent out of shape about denying the damage and the influence are the more scared and less hopeful among us. All that contrived 'positivity' ::puke:: is worse than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It's a whole lot more like ... like reaming some kid a new asshole, not because you're mad at him, but just because that's what you have to do and you assume everybody's in on the deception--we're just humoring the lunatics, right?--and then discovering that the poor little kid is not fucking capable of saying this or changing that or any other damned act of volition we're all demanding of him. The poor fucker is catatonic and what I just did was take part in making him so and didn't even see it.... and how many other times did I think we were all pretending to save our asses--that if it got really serious someone would call no mas--when really I had used all the power of influence God or the Fates or the Tao or whatever have given me to fucking break some soul. And how breaking it is, friends, when everyone around you, everyone you love and who loves you, denies what we see.
