Hey steemies!

If you are here for the photos and pleasant trips that might get a little unsettled by offensive language...EXIT NOW just for this post, it's going to be a big juicy disappointment and I don't want to tarnish your opinion of me or make your eyes scream. I like to advocate staying true to ourselves and this one comes from a dark place but still a part of my story , I have a strong duality that drives my thinking behind my writing and photography and would still like to share because strangely there is an audience for the beast that dwells within. I promise to not make it a habit and do my best to keep it clean on my travel posts. In the future, if you see shadybug in the tittle, just run. xox

There was no entries to my plankton party so I decided to distribute the prize pool to newcomers with a nice introduction post 1 steem at a time until I have given all 21, there is 11 left. I have been taking screen shots if anyone want to know the recipients.

This is where it degenerates

Have you ever read a statement somewhere that resonated so deeply it summarized your entire life in one sentence? Made you want to share part of your darkest, deepest inner thoughts or perception of the world, what shaped your creativity. This I read a few minutes ago and for the first time I guess it inspired me to write about it but it's not all going to be pretty but it ends well so don't worry or jump to conclusions until the end (if you can even make it there in the first place). One thing I can guaranty you, my creativity stems from what seems like a demonic space, my own mind. What in actual fuck right? How do flowers and butterflies crawl out of a tormented spirit? Reality is, the more creative the art ... probably an even more mentally fucked up artist behind it.

Where does my darkness come from? Stick with me here, I have to go thru the boring details to understand the story.

I never had a chance, I was potentially born with or developed as a baby an auto-immune disorder and life threatening allergies to soya/soybeans, that is in everything from cereal, children snacks, natural & artificial additives and coloring , animal and farmed fish feed, most medicines, building materials, cleaning supplies etc... I wont bore you with where it's found, it hides under over 80 different names and it's in more stuff than peanuts (it's also in the same family as peanuts so the reactions are similar). I do my hardest to avoid it but it's virtually impossible. With exposure symptoms include STRESS, neuro-toxicity, high blood pressure then a sudden drop that continue until my heart slowly stops because my body isn't getting enough oxygen from my swollen airways and is shutting down. When your body knows it's dying, it panics and a sense of overwhelming doom just looms in as I fight hard to not "go to sleep" yet to this day, I still don't know why I fight the urge to just let go.

What is auto-immune? For those of you who don't know, long story short, my immune system fights my organs, my red blood cells along with whatever the hell it want as if my own body was a virus. Sometimes, just in case I forget who's the boss and stray away from a clean diet or get exposed to my small enough of my allergen that may not trigger anaphylaxis but will make my immune system slowly attack an organ until it begins to fail, like my liver episode at 19 years old... by slow I mean like 6 hours later sometimes other it seems like a slow drain for weeks like the last year has been and then it starts to get better again. All of these things are related and not treatable aside from doing what they can during an emergency situation until I stabilize if I can get there, they do their thing and inject me with a series of equally dangerous potent cocktails that make my heart feel like it wants to blow up (adrenaline & steroids at the same time with a hefty dose of benadryl to spice things up) and just like a fart in the wind, the immediately life threatening part goes away after a few hours of treatment and I get to live another day...so far at least, it's still a gamble but one thing for sure, without it in critical situations, I don't stand a chance at all and most likely just drift to eternal sleep.

With that being said, my brain is an organ...you do the math, that's where stress and anxiety comes in and I am powerless to do anything about it as it is in big part biological. As it gets attacked aka neuro-toxic, it wants to die, meaning I want to die. All thru out my life, that aspect traumatizes me each time, especially as a child not knowing what is wrong with me or be able to explain it to the people raising me that just didn't give a shit, I was always just something my parents got stuck with. Part of it, I don't think they knew of the illness specifically, just refused to follow medical advice to take me to an allergy specialist and have a test. Very little is even understood about auto-immune disorders and often are diagnosed as something else for quite some time, they also didn't care enough to find out but instead physically and mentally abused me for "breathing to loud" when my airways would swell up or punish me for being annoying and over dramatic unpleasant bastard child when I was stressed because of the neuro toxicity the food was causing yet they were feeding me my kryptonite on a daily basis and the direct cause of the things they disliked yet too fucking stubborn to listen to what I was telling them and so quick to dismiss for their own convenience. Keep in mind, the illness most likely started before I even had my first birthday when apparently I was found blue and unresponsive in my crib so I was told.

Every time I tried to reach out paralyzed in physical pain and the fear brought on by the biological stress the disease was causing multiplied with the fear of not understanding what was happening to me and met with hatred and contempt when trying to communicate anything, I learned to just be quiet and come what may just to avoid a beating or punishment. I started being suicidal at around 7 years old and used to wait for oncoming traffic so I could jump in front of a vehicle to get hit or going to the "big knife" kitchen drawer sitting there with a knife pointed at my stomach looking for the courage to push it in. I never wanted to be here, I never wanted to be born. How did I come to understand these twisted concepts so young? My friend got hit by a car and died just before I turned 5 and that's the only dead person I knew at the time therefore that's how you can die. Wouldn't they notice you think...why yes of course, I was always pretty blunt about it they just never believed me. Rambles from a stupid annoying mouthy child and are most likely still in complete denial about it, it's probably for the best now anyway.

My coping mechanism became escaping reality to a book, I was reading 500 page novels in 5th grade and teaching those with learning disabilities in lower grades during lunches because back then, there was no specialized program to help them, they were just thrown to the wolves and left behind while the rest of the class moved on. It was really unfair and they deserved better, I could somewhat relate to how much being powerless of your circumstances can really suck, just like them, I felt thrown to the wolves. I learned young that I was on my own and most likely would never have anyone to turn to but myself...ever. Somehow, I found doing small unnoticed good deeds to those who truly deserved it helped me to not become entirely numb emotionally and lose faith in humanity because when no one else gave two shits about their fate they were so grateful that someone cared enough to try to teach them in a way they understood. I learned to numb myself from everything happening at home and ignore as much of it as I could but I also shut down and kept everything bottled up, not really sure what was normal and what wasn't with no one to really ask to sort thru this stuff.

It kept hope alive, that maybe someday it would be my turn, someone might care enough to save me rather than just look away. That day came, I went to school with visible marks on my body one time too many for them to believe I was just a clumsy child. They tried questioning me several times before but terrified of the beatings I would get if my parents ever caught wind of this my strategy was deny deny deny. The naive child in me wast still clinging to the pipe dream that my family could someday grow to love me if I did enough nice things for them, I tried telling them but they failed to understand I meant every word.

I knew what the school principal was trying to do but I wasn't convinced it was going to work plus I had no trust in any adult for obvious reasons. I blamed it on my friend, she got in a lot of shit so I came clean and got a pretty bad beating for lying, the irony is I was lying to cover their fucking asses from getting social services all up in our biz and them loosing the other children they did love in the process ... the fucking logic of grown ass people baffles me to this day. Moving on, I went to school even more bruised up and terrified, the school definitely noticed some really fucked up shit was going down and they certainly weren't buying the clumsy kid bullshit anymore and I had never felt so betrayed by my own family at that moment so I spilled the beans, all of it, that was it, I fucking had enough of their shit, done with the beatings, done with the bullying, done with the tormenting and constant false accusations to justify the punishments handed out of what was probably their own unhappiness that ravaged them inside but refuse to deal with like normal adults. I was probably 10 when I got taken away.

To this day, I'm not even sure my parents are all that aware of wtf went down, their story to everyone else is I called them, are they that oblivious to their own fucked up behavior along with poisoning their child almost to death feeding me soya everyday, my kryptonite, and too self-absorbed busy blaming me for every one of their problems to even see it or do they legitimately have no idea that the school called the authorities. I still have the physical scars that started the whole thing, staring back at me as an everyday reminder. The twisted reality is the only reason I'm still alive is because I chose to fight when I wanted to die every day, I still don't fully understand why.

Obviously things continued to degenerate until it made me a bitter and toxic individual to reflect the environments I was dragged thru, maybe that's a story for later, maybe not. When I was 19, I had the smart idea to have chicken Mcnuggets but apparently my immune system wasn't having it and it attacked my liver hardcore until my blood was all toxic and my liver started to fail. What I thought was just the old fashion Mcpuke was actually the Mcdeath knocking on my door. 6 hours later almost dead in my bathroom and I didn't even know it, by the grace of god, I somehow was conscious enough to know something really bad was happening inside of me even tho I never shouldn't have been with the amount of toxins they found in my blood and a pain so excruciating all over my body, especially my back and my skin. The fact that I was puking blood and green shit the entire 6 hours and it was only getting worse mixed in with the never ending massive nosebleeds like I used to get in trouble for as a child that wouldn't stop was a bit of a giveaway, nothing really made much sense at the time. The whole thing was fucking horrific to say the least...Can you say panic attack?

I called a cab with my healthcare info card in my hand, I entered the hospital headed to the triage nurse paler than a ghost and she said "oh my poor darling you look terrible!" and I answered with every ounce of breath I could find and whispered "I really don't feel good"(she was my friend's mom so we knew each other already) and that was it. That's all I remember from that encounter. I had collapsed on the floor in front of the desk as soon as those words left my mouth ... Those were almost my last words ever spoken. Then I woke up? Sorta? but not really. here is the fucked up epiphany I needed. My heart was no longer beating and I was unresponsive, I was also staring at myself on that bed, standing next to the doctor that was trying to save me, I was screaming at him to let me die, I never wanted to live, but he kept ignoring me like he couldn't hear me even if I tried to scream louder. I was legitimately pissed at him and I wanted him to stop. Please let me go I cried.

I don't know how much time went by in real life, maybe less than 5 minutes, seemed like an eternity where I was, almost like time didn't really exist. I saw my efforts were in vein so I stopped but then I saw the distressed look on the doctors face and the nurses assisting and how hard they were trying to save me, almost like they genuinely cared whether I lived or die, I never felt that before in my life. I was at a cross roads, maybe the most important decision I ever made in my life, do I take my chance and finally be done, no more pain, no more torment, no more anything...just the thought was liberating already and made me at ease. Leaving also meant that the doctor, those nurses and the student on his first critical call backtripping in the background would probably go home in pain, disappointed in themselves for not being able to save such a young person. Then the doctor screamed out something really explicit in the heat of the moment that they normally wouldn't as time to bring me back was getting critical with every passing minute. I had to make a decision and fast, I chose to stay no matter how badly I wanted to go, even knowing the terrifying pain from my failing liver that awaited my return.

Not really knowing what to do, still unsure of what is causing all of this and they don't have time to figure it out until I'm well hum...alive again, maybe with a miracle a big dose of epinephrine might jump start my heart again as it is used in various critical situation. Turns out that is part of the antidote for the unknown anaphilaxis (the allergies) that I had and kinda shocked the immune system out of it's funk that started this whole thing. At least I was stable enough for some tests, they never determined the actual cause of the events, they weren't even sure themselves what happened only what was currently critical and necessary for a possible recovery or a liver transplant depending on the next few hours.

I told the doctor it's because I chose to come back and went on to explain my epiphany and he laughed "my poor child, your brain went thru some traumatic things and ran out of oxygen, it's normal to have hallucinations". Except I repeated to him word for word that comment with all the cursing and the room went silent. He knew he was right in a sense but I also just kinda proved him wrong but he recognized that even tho he couldn't understand scientifically , it was too distinct to brush off as hallucinations. According to him when he blurted that out, there was no way shape or form that my brain could have registered that information in the state I was in yet admitted that he indeed said it, still trying to wrap his brain around any of it.

I ended up mostly recovering with my own liver, it took a really long time overall. I had some time to spend with all the nurses until I was well enough to be discharged by the hospital , they used to come visit during their lunch break or if they were walking by, after or before their shifts plus I had to be under constant observation so one of them was always there, we got to talk quite a bit afterwards. I hardly had time to notice that none of my relatives were there at all. Turns out many of the nurses recognized me even tho my mother had changed my name since, she was was a nurse when I was an infant. Than she got a job offer in a different town and they really wanted her but she almost backed out after finding me blue in my crib so they allowed me to live in residence with her. These nurses lived there at the time and they used to fight over who would look after me while my mother went to work because they all thought I was so darn cute, plus the only baby to ever live there. I never really knew. All this time, there was some strange bond linking us. Who knew we would be reunited, I chose to come back for them, I didn't understand why suddenly felt like I had to come back, I did after hearing that story... they actually did genuinely care. To them, I was their miracle recovery story, to me, they were the miracle I needed to get the strength to come back to the pain for a while longer.

It took a few more years of moral degeneracy and bitterness for me to see past my own bullshit with the family situation to truly get it, at least enough to see clearly that I was clinging to the wrong dream. My family was never meant for me, maybe just to teach me to be mindful of how my decisions impact others around me so I could learn to finish my time on earth in a gentler way, reminding me not to get stuck and miss all the small details that make the bigger picture, to teach me to let go. I was always under the impression, if my family couldn't love me, how could anyone else? I always hated myself, for no good reason, probably because I was made to believe so by those around me. Just like I had proven the impossible to that doctor, they had proven the impossible to me, even if they don't know it today how meaningful that moment was to my life and still is.

I always had a deep connection with nature with it being my childhood refuge and the only place I consistently felt safe during turbulent times, photography became meditative for me. Surrounded by all this life no matter how small, it's so mesmerizing. How is it that I have come to value and notice them all, even the gross ones, why can't I value my own? I've come to terms that part of me will never fully disappear no matter how hard I try, but I have learned to take it one day at a time and convince my brain to stop thinking that way for another day, it's just trying to trick me. Is it biological? Is it PTSD? maybe both? It doesn't really matter in the end @silvergingerman loves me enough for the both of us on the days where I'm unable to, the same safety I felt with the nurses.

My biggest epiphanies, spiritual growth and learning to accept myself came from my darkest hour. As humans, we tend to ignore our demons, our darkness, hoping it might eventually go away but they will scream louder to get noticed just like I was initially doing to that doctor as... is my ghost self appropriate here for a lack of a better term? I have learned to embrace my darkness and use it as a tool of growth and wisdom, an opportunity for perspective or to take a step back and re-asses. When I do photography, it's meditation, reconnecting with life. When I write, it's me learning to express myself after too long of numbing everything to survive, it's liberating. When I write my travel post, it's so I can never forget the things worth living for, even when things appear hopeless, I have a visual reminder of who I am at peace and want to go back to that state regardless of the external chaos or my own brain where my thoughts perpetually bounce around like a fucking kangaroo on adrenaline jumping on a trampoline in a padded room, good or bad like some weird fucked up mental entanglement that somehow works like a symphony. Maybe not all, some of my best pictures and stories no matter how cheery they sound might come from unspoken dark periods or reflections, simply trying to rationalize difficult thoughts since I still struggle expressing myself verbally contrary to popular belief, at least not this deep into my abyss.

As far as my relatives, I still speak to the ones that live in Alberta because they didn't really know being across the country and they are very nice, the rest of them, well I just let go. I'm not mad or bitter anymore but I have no time or energy for fuckeries and I chose to just live my life in peace making a beautiful mosaic with my broken pieces. They never showed me much dignity or displayed adding quality to my life so I just mostly became indifferent and moved on, well I just stopped trying really, they never made the effort to continue either. That somehow was also liberating It's not how I had imagine it would go down but it did. It would be a lie if I said I don't think about them but to go back in time, I would do the same thing again, to continue down the previous path led nowhere healthy for anybody, best to just start fresh rather then perpetuate the status quo until it consumed my spirit fully.

Being reminded of my mortality on a regular enough basis, I have learned it's not how long the life is, how ever long or short the future might bring for me but the journey while I am here and how that time was spent that matters. We can't control everything in life but we can control how we react to them. As far as the reading I did to escape is probably the reason I was able to pick up English as a second language on my own so easily combined with the fact that my foster parents were English, I had to at least learn to verbally understand it since my teens.

The statement I saw that brought on this degeneracy was "The bravest thing I ever did was continue my life when I wanted to die and nobody really knows."

I feel like I should just delete this and not post but I wasted to much time on this post to turn back so here it is anyway.