JMikePatt

Sometimes the hardest thing to admit is that you’ve been running on a tank full of someone else’s gas. For a long time, I was looking for women to tell me I was okay, mostly because I never felt like I was "good enough" for the men who were supposed to matter. It’s a hell of a thing to realize you’ve been carrying around a mirror that doesn't even show you. It just shows the ghosts and the failures of the people who came before you. I’m starting to see that all that fear I had wasn't just a weight. It was a teacher. It taught me how to survive when things got loud and messy. But the circle is closing now. I’m finding out that who I was is exactly who I’m supposed to be, and I don't need a permission slip from the past to get there. I’m standing where my parents stood, facing the same kind of choices they had to make. It’s the kind of walk you have to take by yourself, but for the first time, it doesn't feel lonely. It just feels quiet. The past is finally star...

We spend our whole lives being handed a script. From the moment we step into a classroom, we are trained to read to retain, not read to research. We are taught to memorize the thoughts of other men, adopt their definitions, and wear the specific glasses they lock onto our heads. They call it education, but it is really just the process of domestication. It is the machine building compliance. Once you are trained to accept a pre-packaged narrative, you become the perfect consumer for the modern salesman. These salesmen stand on the global stage with titles like world leader, celebrity, or corporate executive. We look at them and see power, but if you look closer, they aren't leaders at all. They are just the highly rewarded managers of the illusion. They are pulling the levers and speaking into the microphones provided by the people who wrote the blueprint, using tailored terminology to funnel our energy and our wealth straight up to the top of the pyramid. The biggest trick the mac...

I spent a lot of time trying to look like what everyone else wanted. I thought if I just played the part well enough, I would finally get noticed. But then the one person I actually wanted to notice me just looked away. When that light goes off, you realize you do not even know who you are without the mask. So you put it back on just to survive and get some sleep. It is exhausting to dance for people, and it is just as bad to fall into the total dark when they stop looking. That is why I like the grey. The grey is my area to play and think. In the light, you have to perform, and in the dark, you just crash. But the grey is neutral. It is the place where you can look at your life and figure things out without all the heavy feelings getting in the way. Going to sleep is the hardest part because that is when the darkness tries to grab you. It is a game of who catches who off guard. If you embrace it first, then you get to lead the dance. If you let it catch you, then it leads, and that hu...

 

It took me losing my heart and soul to realize that I was not who I thought I was. The past couple of years have been a straight-up beating my ass, but they taught me a big lesson: no matter how much pain I am in, I have to keep growing. Growing pains never stop. They really don't. And the hardest pill to swallow? The hurt I went through was brought on by me. There is no one else to blame. I had a choice, and I made the best choice I could at the time with the knowledge I had. Every single day, I have another choice to make. I might not know if it’s right or wrong at the time, but at least I’m making it, and I have to learn from it. I’m not really sure how to say this right, but if I wronged or hurt anyone in my past, or even right now, I am truly sorry. The loss I experienced was life-changing. Honestly? It was the exact kick in the balls that I needed. I was hiding from everything for the past couple of years. I shut down. But now, I am engaging again, even if someone calls me ou...

10 years ago today, at 10:30 am, was the last time that I smoked a cigarette. Little did I know it would change my life the way it did. The majority would say it was for the better, and I do agree, but when a mind and body are used to something, and we stop it, it creates a change that we are not aware of until many years later. That habit was what kept me level-headed, and now maintaining that type of mentality is not easy. I have never craved a cigarette since. Now I have to work on something else to keep me level-headed, and I am not one to try big pharma, as those, too, are not good for a person. It is time to go with what God and Mother Nature provide us to maintain both physical and mental health. 

I spent some time today looking at charts of how colorblind people see the world because a parent of mine is colorblind. They have always told me that purple is just blue to them. When you look at the actual science of it, you see they are not just making it up. Their eyes literally do not pick up the red that makes purple what it is. It made me realize that we spend so much of our lives trying to get people to see exactly what we see, but that is physically impossible. We are created equal, but we are most definitely not the same. We all walk around in these vessels that have different DNA and different ways of processing the world. I used to be so concerned with the style and the image of my vessel that I became a prisoner of my own mind. We tell people not to judge a book by its cover, but we do it every single day. We look at the outside and think we know the soul inside. But the truth is, the vessel is just the container. The real stuff is the interpersonal DNA and the mindset tha...