I was fifteen years old.
It was 2 o'clock a.m.
Like usual, I had insomnia.
The rest of the house was asleep.
As a method of coping,
I had been cutting myself for years by then
and at this point no one knew what to do with me.
My only friend lived in another state.
I was lucky to see her once a year.
I was different.
I had painted my walls dark blue
with violent light blue splashes
flung across them.
I listened to Sarah McLaughlin on repeat.
I was so sensitive that I felt my connection with all life.
I felt the cruelty of unconsciousness in the world
and the damage it was doing,
but could not directly name it yet as the monster I was up against.
I dreamed of what it was like to die.
By that point I had figured out every way I could kill myself
if I ever made the choice.
I was living a double life.
I did not relate to anyone.
I had no sense of belonging.
I felt like I lived my life behind a prison of glass,
where I could see out
and no one could see in.
It was like being in my own personal hell.
The sense of aloneness was so thick,
it crushed its way through my bone marrow.
The emptiness and absence in that feeling
was like a poison.
I needed to get out of it
or I needed to get it out of me.
I was alone in the silence of the house that night.
I took out my pen and I wrote,
because there was no other way to bleed myself of that feeling,
save cutting, which I was determined to stop.
I wrote about this isolated hell inside myself.
Where is Teal?
A plea as simple as bleeding,
to be free of the warm veins forged for survival.
Where directions are lost,
obscured by wind and sting set,
pulled relentlessly from the earth.
No longer stable and turning black.
Is it the prison of it that shapes you the most,
or the shapelessness of your keepers?
Reality is scarcely a fossil here,
where the chemical blood smeared on forearm and thigh,
it brings out the best in us.
Bravery's way of finding us where mercy would not.
And honors taste,
heavy on a bit and lip that will never speak of this again.
I am the only soul here,
the only thing living besides molten that flows in slow spitting rivers,
breathed in by nostril and pore.
A living cadaver and skin like wax that never melts.
As cold as the idea of this being not where I belong
or what I deserve has become,
the path of devastation leads you in circles they say.
Back to the same iron,
the same brand the same vision every way you see it,
you are a slave.
But the tears don't come beyond the thousand degree heat
and the way it scarcely felt now when it burns me.
Against what bone still unfragmented
and what flesh still untorn,
fear is a rising tide.
The only thing I fear is fear itself.
It is the only thing telling me
life is not like this for any soul but mine.
But any love they drip to me
will fall like blood in the end.
No way to take it in,
once it's outside you.
The defining moments of your life
rarely announced themselves loudly.
It's more like you look back over time and see them
as the day it all began.
This was the day that cemented my vision
for Humanity as a tribe.
I dreamed that there would be a day where no one on earth
would know what that level of aloneness felt like.
I imagined a community of people
where if you felt like this at 2 o'clock a.m,
there would be someone awake on the other side of the world
who could be with you.
This was really the day that Teal Tribe was born.
Some years ago,
this vision actualized.
A community began to form.
Mostly of people who met through my work,
who could be there for each other
as a worldwide intentional community.
I wanted it to be a place for people to belong.
A safe place.
A place to get support from one another with the task of awakening.
I wanted this to be group with the collective goal of awakening.
And the collective vision of unity.
In the beginning,
I thought I would gift this community to the world
and walk on to the next creation.
I had no plans to govern or lead this group.
I surely never considered joining it.
The idea of merging with my own creation never occurred to me.
I figured I would exist outside the group.
The tribe, after all,
had taken on a life of its own.
Today I challenged myself
to name what I think about and how I feel about the tribe.
What came up with throbbing sincerity was belonging.
Instead of keep my thoughts about the tribe to myself,
I'm going to share them with you in the form of a letter.
Dear tribe,
we expand until we are seamless.
Spiritual growth is a thing that never ends.
"Let you know your freedom first by oppression", It says.
Let you know bliss by suffering.
Let you know infinity,
by the confines of your own perishable temporary human self.
And know me by first knowing yourself.
It is only by being broken down
that you can be rebuilt again.
Many years ago in the prison of my own isolated hell,
I came to desire belonging,
but I did not know it yet.
After hating this world,
I found the strength enough to love this world,
and so I committed to it.
I wanted for others,
what I had always wanted for myself.
I began to talk not knowing if anyone would listen,
but you did.
I offered a way of connecting with each other,
not knowing if anyone would want to,
but you did.
My voice like a beacon, called you forth from the woodwork
and together we formed a community,
a home away from home.
In the beginning I was so used to not belonging,
that it never occurred to me,
that it would be my home too that I was building.
I never considered that this tribe would be my own.
Looking around me,
I can see that most of us did not fit in anywhere.
But sometimes the people who never fit in,
fit in perfectly with each other.
And just like that, we did.
I often joke that this Tribe is the real vision
of the island of misfit toys.
I can't speak for you,
but I can speak for myself when I say,
that I have never felt such a sense of belonging anywhere.
And even at 2 o'clock a.m. I know you'll be there.
Scattered across the globe,
we are nonetheless connected with one another.
I can feel the invisible web that connects us,
like a light grid across the surface of the earth.
This sense of connection, belonging and mutual purpose
is something that people cannot live without.
When these needs are not met,
we break, we fall apart, we ache,
we become numb and we eventually hurt each other.
Because of the connection we give each other
and because of this sense of belonging,
I know that we will not break,
we will not fall apart, or ache,
or become numb or intentionally,
we will not fall apart, or ache,
or become numb,
or intentionally hurt another living being.
Even though it seems like I rose to this position in this life alone,
what you may not remember,
is that long before this life you put me here.
This purpose to awaken and by doing so awake in the world,
is one that we all share.
We play different roles in this collective awakening,
but let us never forget
that without each and every one of us playing our unique role,
the picture could not be complete.
You put me at the head of this movement
like a figurehead of a ship.
It is a position that I love
and that I was born for.
But never forget that without you,
this ship including its figurehead,
would be dead in the water.
Looking at you I do not see a follower.
What I see when I look at you, is my family.
What I see when I look at you is my place to belong.
When I feel discouraged,
you are my motivation.
When I feel lonely,
you are my connection to this world.
Because of you I am not alone any longer.
You have taken up the reins
and begun the creation of our vision within the world.
My 15 year old self has realized her dream.
One can never pay back
the actualization of a dream.
It is too large a gift.
And still I pray to give you,
over the course of my lifetime,
a fraction of what you have given me.
I love you with all of me.
I will never be lost to you,
no matter what happens to this temporal body.
I will stay with you which is where I belong.
And just like my voice once called us together,
your voice will be the one that calls me back home.
And so,
when change comes to us,
I want us to step through to possibility
and think of each skin we've shed,
as a birth into curiosity.
And somewhere find the strength enough to love this world,
amidst the painful grip of it.
And when awakening comes to us,
I want us to meet in immortality
and think of each tear we've spilled,
as a birth and risibility.
And somewhere find the courage enough to see the beauty in this world
amidst the senseless cruelty of it.
And when life comes to us,
I want us to watch it with curiosity
and think of each day we've spent as a birth into possibility
and somewhere find the purity enough to help this world
amidst the cracking structure of it.
And when death comes,
I want us to return to risibility.
And think of each time we've smiled as a birth into immortality
and somewhere find the love enough to hold this world
amidst the mournful forfeit of it.
I represent all of us.
I represent the tribe.
And like a tidal wave,
I felt you lived beneath me and carry me to the stage.
I want you to know that this will be the final thought I have
before every performance I give for the rest of my life.
And I am proud to represent us.
Love always,
your Teal.