[Voice]
I bless you with the gift of tongues which will enable you to speak with clarity and to teach by word and example those who are around you both near and far. They will recognize the truth and find peace and joy like you have in your own life.
I bless you to know and recognize the importance of your life on a day to day basis for there are those around you whom you may not recognize who look unto you for your example of truth, honesty, and good works.
I bless you to understand that which you choose to do will be an enlightenment to many. Through your understanding and knowledge from all sources of truth you will become a light on a hill. They will come unto you seeking knowledge of the good things of this earth.
Through your intellect you will be able to teach and bless lives in ways that will yet amaze you.
Excerpts from Laura Wilkinson's patriarchal blessing.
Being a voice is hard. SO hard. It was hard to not have a voice. To be afraid to speak up. To let others speak for me. Things changed when I decided to become vocal about my disorder. I had many leave comments on my blog telling me how important the 'rawness' of my posts was to them. And slowly, with the formation of my identity, my clarity came. Originally I thought this talked about my #twitterstake and #ldsconf involvement.
Then I became a mental health activist. And then I started getting messages from people who wanted to speak but could not out of fear. Who thanked me for saying things they could not, or for generating the conversations they felt needed to happen.
And then I entered the political scene.
And of course people disagree with me. I don't expect them to agree with me, that was never the point. See, at some point, something challenged my way of thinking. Something 'opened' my way of thinking. Not open my eyes to what was wrong, but opened my thinking pathways to allow me to make informed decisions, to access correct information from both sides of the lines and form my own opinion, and someone else could read that SAME information, and end up at a different conclusion based on their world view. And that excites me!
And while I do make public some of my political opinion, most of what I put I use to challenge my readers. To spark intelligent conversation. To discuss. And ultimately, most of what I put on facebook is to allow other non informed people to read 200+ comments of informed information from both sides and make their own decisions.
And this went well for a long time. I finally started adopting titles: Feminist. Left leaning. Socialist. (or Libertarian depending on the day). Mormon, Utahn. This massive intersection I managed to make work and keep consistent and friendly with each other. I had amassed hundreds of people who I termed my "silent readers" The ones who would never say anything, but click like on many comments and go talk about the points on their own pages. Others would send me messages thanking me for talking about issues and request I do some research into other topics and have a discussion on my page.
I had my fair share of trolls for sure. And I definitely tried to moderate my discussions against character attacks. And yeah, we had people who mistook blunt criticism as personal attacks. And then there were those who tried to use logic and would rant like a child when their logic flaws were pointed out.
But something went wrong.
People started character attacking *me* People would demean and dismiss HUNDREDS of hours of research on particular topics. They would explain that because I hadn't been on the planet as long as them. That because I hadn't traveled as much as them. They would act like I was duped, stupid, tricked. They would act like I was 4 passing along "bandwagon" information. And in the world of privilege, yeah, the person with the experience should never be spoken over, but those without the experience are still listened to IN CONTEXT to the extend of their experience. And I'm pretty sure the majority of those who resorted to such tactics in order to discredit me had only their personal limited experience, when my methods of research are done in an attempt to avoid confirmation bias. Meaning that I spend extra care to select articles and studies outside my circles and from a viewpoint that attempts to disprove what I think I know.
With my BPD still completely intact, these comments, these messages, these attacks taking place on many forms of communication, were shredding me to pieces. No longer, from my perspective, did people care about finding truth, but defining truth and discrediting my attempts.
And I became angry. It was subtle at first. My posts started shifting into "why I hate conservatives" posts. They turned into "why I'm anti - pro life", "why I hate utah". They weren't "why this is a better way to live" posts. They were "why you all suck and I hate you all" posts.
A couple people noticed. They struck a chord but I couldn't quite place it. I got angrier which in turn caused other people to become angrier. I was called evil, anti mormon, libtard. I was told I was just on board the hype train. (PSA: I HAVE BPD. THIS MEANS IF THE HYPE TRAIN GOES AGAINST EVERYONE WHO IS PHYSICALLY AROUND ME, I'M NOT ACTUALLY ON A HYPE TRAIN BECAUSE ITS A SCARY PLACE TO BE /psa)
And at some point I snapped against someone who I used to be close to. I broke one of my rules and character attacked in a public place. I had a minor faith crisis as many people were using culturally accepted doctrine (stuff like saturday's warrior or mormon culture) and not actual doctrine to counter my points. (because you know, correcting someone on a quote used that was taken out of context makes me anti-mormon)
And I turned off facebook. I was so appalled by the stress, the anger, the frustration, my HATRED of the world around me for people being who they were that I just shut it off.
and then about 18 people messaged me via twitter, snapchat, texts and messages on my instagram, YELLING at me for blocking them. I was a mess. I was quite literally crying for 3 days for no reasons. Everything was suffering from this.
And so I am back. I have sufficiently calmed down and found the source of the problem. This is my apology for the hatred on your walls. This is me owning my own shit I caused. This is me trying to work back to the place of progress and productivity I feel I used to be in.
Will you let me come back and try again?
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