Religious hurt, ministry burnout and all in between set to 5sos5 // Prologue: You don’t go to parties
I realise this is a rather strange thing to do, what I’m doing. I realise most listeners to songs don’t apply them to the things that I do. But I went through a lot, and this album is like none I’ve heard before: it celebrates and laments and everything in between the power of simple human connection and I won’t lie: it changed my life. It gave me back the pieces and tools to take my life back from a rogue machine of parts that was sucking me dry yet I couldn’t find head or tail of nor differentiate it from the hand that was feeding me, keeping me alive. In some ways, I owe it nothing: the $19.99 I fully paid on my debit card to iTunes that probably gave the four dear humans who created this album maybe a dollar each. In some ways I owe it everything. And so this letter is for you, the strange conglomeration of fandom and random humans I’ve connected to and who don’t know my face or my real name but I enjoy baring my whole heart to. It’s the mark of an artist I suppose. It’s the early symptoms of the fever dreams that allow practical neighbours with my childhood to come up with the visceral imagery that makes up these masterpieces: four voices, and a handful of instruments. I don’t have something nearly as brand-new and original, but this is my voice. And this is how YDGTP gave back my life.
Picture this: it’s 5am. Somewhere, certainly not where I am, but it might as well be when I’m far too tired for 10, 11pm when I’m barely over 20. I’m feeling stuck, overwhelmed, unable to go home, clock off, head to bed. I’d say I’m on my couch but that’s an optimistic statement to assume I have the ability to make it to something soft to lay down my head. I don’t even own a couch.
I’m supposedly somewhere that’s home to me, but if I had any sense in my head I’d kick me out. Out to where? I have no idea.
I wouldn’t even admit it to myself then, but I knew somewhere that I was happiest when I got up before the sun. 5am, after seven to eight hours of sleep. Maybe more, when I’m so tired and drained. In the early hours of the morning (and I feel like I’m betraying this song by saying it) before the world has risen with its expectations, if I can get my life together then, I’m prepared for when I have to interact and feel their energy. I’m also prepared to get my needs met, which they obviously aren’t, or I wouldn’t still be here now.
How am I feeling? Don’t get me started on that. I’m starving, empty, longing for something I haven’t felt satiated in for quite a while. Longing for a bygone time that wasn’t any good, because if I could go back now I could do better with the information I have now. And yet, the world is moving past, the people from that era drifting further and further away. Whatever it is I’m holding my breath for, is starting to feel like I’m waiting at an intersection where the gaps between the cars are getting smaller and smaller and each time I see one I could maybe go in I don’t. I wish I had gone in the previous one, because it was much safer compared to this. That’s basically what my life’s like. I’ve got the last five years running out my mouth. Won’t you relive it with me? Won’t you fix them with me?
Because I still think about the times we were heavy. It sucked, but at least there was connection, something that I’ve run completely dry on now. Racehorse tripping on the dirt that you’ve got on me. I never felt included, loved, but sometimes being insulted is just as good as it means I’m part of the gang. They don’t do that anymore: is it because I’m too fragile now, or because they’ve moved on from me? Vulture circling above of what’s left of me. Because I’m a carcass in the hot sun, at least that’s how I feel. Slowly, not slowly at all actually, rotting.
We go stupid every night, and it was meant to be fun. But.
What a tragedy. Because I’m still here in the darkness, back where we started. It set everyone else up to move on, why can’t I? Everyone else goes home and goes to bed and doesn’t suffer the consequences of the night disabling them forever, going back to the start again and again and re-living it and changing what they’d do because I know better now than I did then, time ticking by me and getting more and more behind. I can’t help the fact that I’m behaving the way that I am.
You make me a heartless monster.
So set this to a fun beat and go dance. Everyone I ever knew is standing in my house. (Are they real, or are they ghosts of people I feel like I failed, when I was never given the resources to be everything they needed?) Maybe I’ll be alright, maybe I’ll be able to put together whatever makes me feel better, maybe, maybe, I said as I invited them, filling up my heart again and again with relational one-night stands and superficial connection just to feel the high for a little while, it’s kept me going for decades. Kept me moving so I can forget that I had it the way I liked it once and I never appreciated it, I didn’t know that I had to. I didn’t know how much it meant until I lost it. I thought I was just fielding distractions, fatal attractions, but maybe the only attraction that was fatal was the one to the world of ableism and the solutions that they said worked for them when I know I need more connection than this superficial world, even one that says they worship something else, lives for something more, can offer. I wonder who I’m looking for.
But you got out. You don’t go to parties anymore.
It’s easier to get manic than depressed sometimes, maybe because I’m already depressed and I learned from young to act like I’m not feeling it. To think of others, think of ways I can help, prioritise hope and isn’t this what I’m doing here? Working towards solutions, why oh why did it go so badly? So I focus on the ideas, I let them stack up in my brain like a tap that’s running at full blast into a tiny plastic cup and when it drowns me just for a little while I get high and life is exciting and come up with good ideas of the world I imagine could be where I’m not alone, up in the clouds I’m not the only one dreaming of this dream. All my friends are up on mars. We’ve been travelling. It’s such a simple explanation and so exciting and it’s exactly how I should be feeling when I’m pouring myself out into something I care so much about, something centred on helping people, as if in a divinely inspired book we have all the solutions for all the world when we read it through a lens of science and adaptive management that constantly re-evaluates the fruits of what we’re doing and doesn’t let silly traditions that sap our energy get in our way. Shoot for mars. Why, oh why, does no one else stand with me here? Why am I still longing for that kind of teamwork, belonging, purpose?
So I lost my limit. It’s hard to find it when I’m so perpetually starved for the thing I need, that I try to make sure everyone around me gets. I’m dumb and I’m passionate. I care. And what’s the sacrifice of one person in the scheme of things? It’s not an accident. I was the one who took my foot up off the brake. Another lonely night.
It’s easier to put a smile on my face and go through the motions to this happy beat, yearning, pouring out the passion and love I wish I received on others.
Fill it with the best country drum solo I ever heard.
And remember where I am. Longing for connection. Where are you? Where is the one who I’m looking for?
But I know. You don’t go to parties anymore.
And that’s why I need to leave.
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help siraj rebuild! 🏡
while it's extremely important to help palestinians escape the current conditions in gaza, we have to do it with faith that the people of palestine will return to their homeland and rebuild. some have already taken up the difficult task of being the first to rebuild. i've had the pleasure of befriending siraj @siraj2024, whose goal is to rebuild his home in a safer location in gaza. his home was destroyed by the idf at the beginning of the war, and the 5 members of his family — including 3 young children — have been forced to relocate over and over. siraj's family recently raised enough money to relocate from the dangerous situation they were in, but for the time being they are still living out of makeshift tents. their current goal is $20 000 CAD for building supplies. i cannot overstate how important it is to help provide this young family with a cool and stable shelter; temperatures in gaza are extremely hot in august (around 40°C/100°F) and there is very little potable water available in the strip. with this new home, siraj can keep his sweet children safe now, and, one day soon, provide shelter to his extended family when they make their return.
siraj and his family are currently hoping to raise $20 000 CAD for basic building materials for an initial building, which will eventually be extended into a real house and home. even a small donation will go a long way toward helping.
the family's fundraiser has been vetted by @el-shab-hussein (x) and @nabulsi (x), among others.
there are currently two raffles going on through which you can support siraj — one for a collector's edition of madeleine l'engle's wrinkle in time quintet and one for a custom art commission!
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