Faith De Young
Stories (13/0)
No Title
What Rejection Gave Me In childhood, I believe it is with great temerity and impulsivity that we look at the expanse of the world and claim, “This is what I want, This is what I deserve, This is who I will become.” It is not until we face the dark folds of life that we start to doubt this gesture of blind innocence. We contrive ways to make “sense,” to strategize, our legitimacy as human beings, as roles to play in some great archaic game. We are constantly undervaluing the truth that bleakness can be rhythmically blessed, timed, and executed for our greatest good. How I mean this to be true is the words on this paper did not exist out of coincidence, the childhood wounds did not bleed out of pure ruthlessness, the callous ending of each spiritual loss did not achieve nothing. The suffering is not without its own gifts. The suffering is indeed the gift after all. And this is not to say that one must suffer eternal damnation in order to identify a human experience. I am simply applying the concept that coincidence really has no bearing on our current reality despite the constant jumble of random encounters throughout our everyday experiences that we surreptitiously ignore until of course we have nothing left to focus on. The arid landscape that is our mind is a beautiful place to release our subconscious fears and maladaptions onto as it is the one true state of being. It says I am fully here to experience everything and anything and I hold no great bearing unto myself and I hold no great bearing unto others as I once thought I did. I can be used as a tool for the higher good, I can easily be used as a tool for the lower evil as well. It is a relative experience that holds very little bearing as I will come back into this world again and again and again and I will have lifetimes of deceit, joy, exultation, insomnia, degradation and more to mold myself into. There are only moments that I join together, I expand together or disband together at my leisure. If I am wrong writing this, I am not really wrong. Nothing can be proven or disproven as my time is not measured in accuracy of receiving information. My time is measured by a rhythmic microcosm of human evolution, experienced through the bodily senses I was born with. Can I achieve accuracy? Perhaps, but it is not in my opinion, a noble pursuit. There is always someone out there to prove what is wrong, what is right, what is seemingly pertinent to the living and what is seemingly irrelevant in the scheme of things. As I write this I am aware of all the misgivings of interpretation that can be perceived from my own beliefs. It is really up to me to add importance to those interpretations or not. Rejection is a heavenly example of distinctive possibility. Oh no, that love was not meant for you because this love was. Oh no, that house on the hill was not meant for you because this building is better for your need for inspiration. Sometimes the things, people, places, dreams, details that we place weight onto are really meant to mostly serve as an example. Are really only meant to serve as something to bounce off of until reality aligns with ideals. Hence suffering is the necessity to creation. It is not required at all times or even (for most people) for very long, but it is an acquired facet of life that is necessary to create a new thing. This is true in childbirth, this is true in killing the animal in order to feast, this true in killing the parts of yourself that created expectations that you were never actually meant to meet. So what is it to lose? What is it to lose rapidly and then all at once? What does it all stand for if it even has value enough to stand? Rejection is a powerful interspersing of both disconnection and realignment. It is a mother bear setting a cub loose after being unwilling to foster it. What must the bear decide? Does it give up and languish in its own demise? Perhaps. It could do that, and stop moving and stop eating and eventually be snapped up by some predatory creature. But most likely it revises its tactics. Its evolution is so abstract that despite the rejection it has received in existing, its instincts become hyper utilized in order to survive. This of course does not mean that the baby bear always survives, but neither do the baby bears that are taken care of and taught. There is no conceivable “rightness” in order to succeed at life. It is really just shot after shot after shot in the dark sometimes to no avail. But that doesn’t stop the bear from being the bear. That doesn’t stop its potential of growing into a fierce, irrefutably terrifying animal. The perspective of rejection is often a loss. Taking a loss or a hit, but isn't it more remarkable when the baby bear, all alone and abandoned, survives? Survives and remains. There is no right way to proceed into the black fold, into the bleak limitations we were born into. There is only exist until you cannot anymore. And then exist again, and again, and again. Nothing is as important as realizing fate is a tricky dynamic of acceptance and resolute determination. Fate is not some frilly adventure, only in an effort to make life as simple and calm as possible. Real experience cannot be gained without challenge. Real challenge cannot be overcome without willingness to assert self over challenge. My rejection story isn’t about one person, one lost love, one lost home. My rejection story is a part of me as if I could uncurl my fingertips and show you the map on my palm. It is me. Most of the time people don’t “deserve” rejection as some moral failing. Most of the time people experience rejection in order to exercise great power of self actualization. Who are you when you have nothing or no one? Who are you if everyone is always on your side and you have never proven your grit to anything or anyone? Who is the question you will always be left with. It is not a determination of moral failing if you experience less rejection, it is a mere determination that you have yet to experience the full weight of you on your shoulders. The bear can either follow its intuition and live or it can fumble and die but either way it is still a bear. It means nothing to be rejected just as it means nothing to be accepted. If we die alone how can we fear living alone? How can we fear our own thoughts and actions more than those around us? The common example used for why humans are sociably reliant creatures is the fact that it has helped us survive throughout centuries. But what about the people who died because of who they were connected to? What about the people who died from suffering daily from being put in a box of societal pressure? What is it to live if one does not experience true self expression? What then is survival if your body exists but your mind is broken?
By Faith De Young3 years ago in Motivation
Empathic Ability, Not Rare Just Necessary
In any activity, whether bungee jumping or singing karaoke at the bar, there is a swift desire to excel. There is an immense opportunity of enlightenment behind screaming your head off as you whisk away your bodily vessel into the great unknown. The rush of completing a task of epic proportions such as these is the reason people continue to do so. There is within us lying dormant, a creeping sensation that life is steeped in endless decay, endless boredom. There is this sense that without the adventure, the cave crawling, the endless summer, there will only be bleak existential ideation at the hope that someone ends it swiftly and with a bang.
By Faith De Young3 years ago in Psyche
The Hobby of Life
How to explain plant magic and its effect on me? How to explain the beauty I see in all of the greenery? The expanse of the wild fern, the litter of tree limbs after a great storm. I often look to the Earth for my inspiration for what is inside. I often find that the plants speak more truth than I see from people in church pews. Their whispers of patience, of growth, of human connection to the planet. I look to them for the answers I cannot reach in myself. I ask how the rose is so beautifully formed in order to become a symbol of love. I work in the dirt, I work in the sun. I live for the plants, I live for the earthworms doing their due diligence. They provide for us, despite being fodder for the fish in the water. In this I embrace what the Earth gives, is also what it takes away. I am shown that in order for a bloom to thrive, sometimes it must be cut back to the root. Sometimes it must start all over again in order to provide the beauty we barely notice on our way to work.
By Faith De Young3 years ago in Earth
All My Angels
All my angels whispered to me in the dawn of life, “It is time, child.” And it was. It was time to admit to myself what I already knew. It was time to admit that I had been taken advantage of by the man that was supposed to be my dad. It was obvious to me from how I held my body. As if a great challenge, it was a horror to look in the mirror. This was the burden I had carried for more than 20 years. The burden that I was scarred, bruised from head to toe, so very little to offer the big, wide world.
By Faith De Young3 years ago in Confessions
What the Water Gave Me
Here on this day, the February sky lit by dying sunlight, a Honu, a turtle emerges onto the coastline. It is beautiful in its rarity. It holds mass and moves slowly through the dispassionate sea. She looks friendly but I know better than to approach an animal that is endangered. She has traversed miles just to get here in one piece. As the sun wanes, the beach laps at her feet trying to pull her back into the deep. She is strong though, that shell so impenetrable. I stare in awe as she wiggles her entire expanse onto the rough sandy beach. Finally, ever so subtly, she drifts into peaceful sleep, into bliss. I can learn a lot from a turtle like this.
By Faith De Young3 years ago in Motivation
The Why to Writing
When I think of great writers I think of the way they capture words to explore worlds that I previously thought only revolved in my head. They are able to use these tiny observations to show the reader their own vulnerabilities. Most writers I’ve met or known write because they have to. They have to encapsulate the imagery, the violence, and fragility of our everyday life, and that’s what I love. I love being able to read a verse of poetry and know that it stems from somewhere vital, like a vein I can see. It is very vulnerable, very revealing when reading a prose about longing, or pain, or joy. There are these moments of reverie that don’t belong to the reader, but can alter the reader's perspective and that is the beauty of writing. It is meeting someone you’ll never know in real life. It is seeing someone through the lens of ink and artwork. It lends a hand without having to be asked, and I think my love for reading has always stemmed from feeling that I could understand people, I could listen to a story and understand that struggle and triumph sometimes look the same. It is a beautiful thing that I hold dear, a talent I have honed over the entire course of my life. I’m only 24 but I feel like I see and hear and know so much about people just from reading stories about other people, and that’s the beauty. The realization that we are all connected on some field and that being a person is not always the short story we hope for. There are no happy endings, in my opinion, just happy lessons, and the lesson of writing is my favorite of all. It encapsulates the need of human connection without having to state the desperate feelings of loneliness we all experience. It is truly a gift that I cannot live without and I wonder sometimes what the point would be if I couldn’t exude my experiences onto a page and speak.
By Faith De Young3 years ago in Poets
I Spy With My Third Eye
The energy surrounding Gemini: grounding relief for the usually hyperactive, dreams coming true, acerbic abilities, passions being released. Normally a sign with anxious tendencies, there is a pressure to perform multiple tasks. This season is crucial for future advantage, legacy even. Something powerful is rippling the surface, it is more than air this time, it is something that has evolved, something that is conceptual in nature and powerful with the proper effort divulged.
By Faith De Young3 years ago in Poets
Faith, As A Mustard Seed
If you had asked me when I was 16 who I loved most in the world, I would have said nothing. I would have repelled immediately from the question, like a dog who had been kicked too many times. I would have thought you were an idiot for thinking love existed.
By Faith De Young3 years ago in Families