Spend Less Time Patting Yourself On The Back

Here’s an email I woke up to this morning:

As someone that serves in this community, i would like to invite you to please spend less time patting yourself on the back and more time helping people make things work.

Praying for a softening of your heart honey 🙂

I think it’s a good time to set the record straight on how exactly I feel about myself.

Let’s start in 1979 when I was 7.

I distinctly remember playing “Bring back that lovin’ feeling” on my 45 record player. It was all I could think to try to keep my dad from walking out the door. It didn’t work. He left.

You can tell me all you want about how a parent leaving has nothing to do with the kids. But that’s just Santa Claus-level bullshit to make us all feel better. OF COURSE, dads left in droves in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s because of the kids… and all the other pressure they felt at the time.

“Fight Club” was written for people my age. It was our actual hero’s journey… way more fucked up than the Star Wars hero’s journey they promised us. We were left abandoned and alone because our parents weren’t up to the task of being parents.

I have hated myself ever since.

And on top of that, I have tried to find a way into acceptance and approval of dad figures my entire life. The lessons I’ve learned along the way are to be strong, isolated, and independent. Dads HATE that. They want you to be submissive, loyal, and obedient.

I will never be loved by dads because dads don’t love people like me.

My shield of anger says: “Good! Fuck them! I don’t need them anyway.” It’s just a defense mechanism that allows me to survive. The only thing I want is to be loved and accepted. It’s so weak and pathetic. It makes me hate myself even more.

My self-hatred has burrowed itself into the deepest recesses of my mind, body, and spirit. It is like an AI-driven spiral hole digger that runs deeper and deeper into my being. It never shuts off, only drills. It is constantly drilling.

Do I hate talking about myself? Fuck yeah, I do.

Because you see, not only do I hate myself, I hate most of you, too. I hate most people in the world. I took the abandonment of my father and placed it on the entire world. I mostly hate humanity for how it has betrayed and abandoned its people and ecosystems that need protection the most.

I don’t want to tell you these stories. I don’t like or respect most of you. You remind me of this family of fat doves that try to land on our bird feeder on our second-story porch. They are fat and stupid. They smash into the window. They fall off the ledge. They mostly just stare at the food from the wire 10 feet away. Too scared and stupid to figure out how to get the free food sitting right in front of them. I sometimes wish that hawk would just swoop in and put them out of their miserable lives.

My personal mission statement is this: I suck at what I do, but everyone else sucks more.

I mean, honestly, what is holding up your suicide? How do you justify all the consumption, slavery, murder, and war that is propagated in your name? How do you walk around like nothing’s happening? I’m in awe of your blind ignorance. I wish I could be like you. I really do.

The only thing that keeps me barely able to live with myself is my work of giving. I don’t know how you guys do it.

But I am a total piece of shit too. I’ve booked two flights. One to California. One to Italy. I don’t need to go to either of those places. I just want to go. How much toxic gas am I going to be spewing into the environment because Sage wants to hop on an airplane for fun?

All I want to do is spend time with my family and do my work. I would be completely happy writing these things in a personal journal and never letting them see the light of day. I write this stuff for myself. Not you.

Do I feel embarrassed and ashamed talking about the work I do? You bet I do. But that’s the only thing I can consistently think to do as a form of activism. I will not murder people over this cause. I will not suicide myself over this cause. However, either action would be fully justified. This is an entirely atrocious fucked up situation, and I can’t believe any of us are just sitting here watching it unfold… like stupid, fat doves.

I am taking my first LSAT tomorrow (and yes, I am embarrassed to tell you that) because going to law school for civil rights law is my latest idea for sticking it to the man. THEY WILL HEAR ME ON THIS ISSUE!

I also use these stories for fundraising. The stories are what allows any of this work to happen.

I am a garish, loud, obnoxious, embarrassing asshole. I assure you no one hates me more than I hate myself. But these stories are all I can think to do to push this cause ahead. We, as a society, are majorly fucking up with the way we are treating these American citizens. We are all to blame for this. We propagate the American stranglehold of oppression and colonization of our own people and countless people all over the world. We are ALL to blame for the terrible hand of American cruelty.

I can’t tell you enough: I hate myself, and I wish I could disappear. But I am going to be this big dick asshole online and keep talking about American homelessness until everyone has a place to live in their own country.

About an hour after I got that first email, that person followed up and wrote this email:

I dont mean to insult you in any way :).

Love goes farther in the end. Perhaps if we work together.

In the meantime we will love our people 🙂

You didn’t insult me at all. You just reminded me of who I believe myself to be. It’s good to remember those things. Because the answer to hatred, whether towards yourself or ANY OTHER HUMAN BEING, is love, kindness, forgiveness, and radical acceptance. With more hatred comes more love—every time.

We are all screwed up, and we’re all just doing the best we can. That’s the only lesson we are trying to be taught with our time on Earth. That is what this mess is all about.

I’m sorry. I’m trying to be better.

I love you. I’m just sad. Anger is how I deal with it.

Sage