December 2020

I’m one of those people that fits in everywhere and nowhere. I've floated around from group to group, scene to scene, workplace to workplace and city to city, yet I’ve never quite found my place in the world. I’ve compromised myself in small and big ways so I could adhere to the shifting status quo of the various collectives I've engaged with, and sometimes I feel a little bit sick with myself afterwards and there are times I wished I’d stayed more true to myself. There are also times I didn't speak up when I wish I had. Though when I do, it rarely seems to go well. There are a lot of unspoken rules within our familial and societal systems that we’re pushed into adhering to, and stepping out of that can be really difficult and alienating. Yet it can also be deeply satisfying and stoke a fire inside.

But I say this from a place of privilege, because I live in a country that has basic freedoms (for non-Indigenous people). There are a lot of places in the world where speaking up gets you in jail for 25 year (like China) or murdered (like Berta Caceres, a human rights activist in Honduras who fought against corporate mega dams). I lived for a time in China and once I had made some sincere friendships, I realized that whatever I said or did could potentially impact my friends in a profoundly negative way - yet most likely have very little repercussions for me as a Western foreigner. So I really didn’t want to do anything too radical in the end. And that’s how they control their population, even from abroad: by threatening friends and family members of those who challenge the system. Former beauty queen and activist Anastasia Lin, who now lives in Canada, has had to deal with the repercussions of speaking out against the Chinese government and has had her family in China harassed.

But then coming back the many freedoms we enjoy in places like Canada aka Turtle Island, which still isn't true freedom, yet way more than most in the world - I do feel that we have a duty to use those freedoms to their full advantage, for our own personal emancipation and for the emancipation of others who aren’t able to speak for themselves. No one is truly free until everyone is free. And we have a lot of work to do. So when I wake up at 3:30 am tossing and turning and feeling alone and wondering why I can’t find a clean little slot to fit in, I remember that I’m laying under soft warm blankets with a full belly, punk rock records in the cupboards and I can walk down the street safely and no bombs fell around me last night. There haven’t been any mass shootings around here anywhere, I have access to medical care, my body is fully intact and I’m not in an abusive relationship. I’m not part of a religion that forces me to stay in a toxic relationship. I’m a female and I have been able to attend school, choose who I want to marry and even though it sometimes socially ostracizes me, I've been able to speak up about social and environmental issues, bullying, sexual harassment and tell bosses, snotty co-workers and random people I meet in the world to go fuck themselves and I’m not in jail. I participate in many grassroots direct actions and my life is not at risk for it.

The thing is, there have been times when I have been suddenly and arbitrarily accepted into a scene or a workplace and it felt totally gross and uncomfortable. I think it’s because the acceptance was always based on something very superficial. One time I fell in love with a boy from Portland and he fell in love with me and he was in a popular band and had a lot of friends in the punk scene and suddenly I had piles of people wanting to be my friend on MySpace, treating me differently out at live shows and inviting me out to various parties, all because of who I was dating. I was exactly the same person I was a month before I was dating him, but now everyone liked me more somehow? Or in the film industry: once I had established myself, people would want to associate with me just because of my perceived status, or because they wanted to use me as a stepping stone to get in to the industry. People I hardly knew would take selfies with me and put them on their Facebook profiles and it was really weird. What I do for a living, who I’m dating or how many celebrities I’ve smeared glue all over and painted up has nothing to do with who I am as a person.  We live in a society that cares way too much about status and strategic friendships.

And I also have to say that I’m pretty sick and tired of seeing people who are from various ostensibly rebellious scenes like punk, metal, goth etc., who dress and act like they’re outside of the mainstream, who spent their youth listening to bands like Black Flag and SNFU and Skinny Puppy; and then proceed to get into some corporate job, kiss corporate ass, and betray their co-workers and employees in order to maintain their own financial and social privilege. I’ve seen far too much of that and it’s totally deceiving: you meet someone who’s all tattooed and has a rebellious persona and then you get to know them and they behave no differently than the the forces that we were supposedly rebelling against in our youth. Are the Gen X’ers going to become just as hypocritical as the Baby Boomers and their ‘love generation’, who sold out on all of their principles and dragged the world further into materialism and corporate totalitarianism? Looking around me, it seems so.

Anyway, I think about freedom a lot and what that means to me. I do understand why we often conform. We’re social creatures and more important than having a warm bed, full belly and various amenities is the need to belong and the need to connect. I’ve tried to go off completely on my own many times and it’s suicidally painful. We need to find ways to get along and work with each other, yet we also need to be strong in who we are as individuals and be standing up for the greater good of humanity from a place of love and compassion for ourselves and others. And maybe we need to be a little bit punk about it because there are a lot of people who will take advantage of the kindness of others and there’s a lot of fake ass bullshit in the world and we have to be able to sift through it all.

Now that I’m in my 40’s, I have more solid friendships that aren’t based on cliquey scenes and don’t require me to compromise myself in any way and that’s awesome. Part of that involved getting over wanting to have friends that were around the same age as me or who have the same interests. The people I have in my life are of all different ages and some of my friends are so completely different than me, though they have certain qualities that are important to me: they’re good communicators and they keep in touch, they're emotionally sensitive, intelligent and insightful and they’re totally unique in their own ways. We can have little disagreements or feel completely different about a subject yet not let that affect the friendship in any way. There’s also a fairly equal amount of give and take with gifts, sharing of our personal lives and supporting each other emotionally (sometimes one person is being more supportive if the other is going through crisis but it generally feels balanced) .

I’ve had a lot of friendships that were horribly toxic and soul sucking and little by little I’ve painfully let go of the ones that left me feeling crappy about myself or uncertain of where I stood with that person. It’s hard to let go of a friend when you’ve been through a lot together, have mutual friends and have a lot of fun together; and sometimes I opt for distancing myself from people and having strong boundaries rather than a total excision. And there are a few people in my life where I know I’m over-giving to them, but I recognize that they are in a very compromised place or dealing with extreme trauma so I’ll still extend myself sometimes. But that’s only possible to maintain because I have so many other friendships that are fulfilling.

I can write this now in retrospect with some wisdom and distance, but leaving a social scene behind is as painful as a romantic breakup, if not more so, and sometimes I still pine for the glory days of endless fun and partying, but that kind of lifestyle just isn’t sustainable.

Anyway, this is going on a big tangent and I guess I’m just coming back to a place where I’m like well it’s okay to be alone, it’s okay to be single, it’s okay not to have kids, and its okay to still be figuring out who the fuck I am. Being a human is strange and fucked up even if you come from a place or relative privilege. And without having fully explored my own traumas and my own insecurities and finding a place of inner strength and conviction, it’s hard for me to truly be there for others or lift others in the world up.

Today is the Winter Solstice. It’s raining outside and I keep the heat off at night so my fingers are getting cold typing this. On my mind these past few days as I’m reflecting on the year past and the year to come are those in need and those who are suffering. I’m thinking about Nunavut and other First Nations communities across these lands. So many communities lack basic human rights and infrastructure and have such high rates of overdoses and suicide.

I think about so many Indigenous activists throughout the world whose lives are at risk as they stand up for their communities and for the land. I think about the old growth getting logged on Vancouver Island and other parts of BC. It’s a lot. It’s too much. It has to stop. But it’s not stopping.