deep thoughts require immediate action.

So this morning I'm shuffling around like a zombie because, for the last two or three weeks, I've been having dreams so intense and so vivid that I wake up in the morning feeling hungover. (And they don't make any sense to me. For example, this morning before I woke up, I was dreaming about cleaning a toilet bowl but it wasn't really a toilet bowl, it was like a giant stone toilet bowl with rocks and little fish in it, and the fish were little flat flounder-looking things and they had awesome camouflage and they would swim up to the top of the water and take a giant gulp of air before returning to the floor of.. well, the toilet bowl-thing. I mean, really? I couldn't just dream about winning a million dollars or having sex with Johnny Depp?)

At any rate, I'm a part of this incredible project with an artist named Teafly (you can check her out here). She's interviewing and photographing 20 people in Bend that are part of the LGBTQ community or allies. So she's gotta come take photos of me and I'm finding that deep down inside, that makes me uncomfortable. Not because I don't want to be a part of the project visually or because I'm afraid of Joe Schmoe finding out that I'm a bisexual, but for one other, awful, awful reason.

I kind of think I'm fat.

Now, before you go on with your "the media is evil" or "you're obviously stupid" train of thought, let me finish. The thing I realized this morning (which is, really, a miracle considering that only the part of my brain controlling bodily movement is working properly) is that our brains work on two levels: the conscious and subconscious. Now, consciously, I love myself for everything I am. I don't think I'm "fat", I think I'm "out of shape." In whole, I try to identify myself with the Goddess, who had some chub on her anyway.

That's where the subconscious comes in. For whatever reason, I really bought into that media bullshit my whole life - fat people are wrong, fat people are bad, fat people don't deserve love, etc. There's this tiny, evil seed somewhere in my brain that continues to feed me these messages when I'm not paying attention, despite the fact that, consciously, I don't believe them or agree with them.

After a life-changing conversation with my best friend about race and racism (she's black and I'm white), she indirectly pointed out the same thing about racism. There are lots of things that people don't believe about race, but because the textbooks and the good old boys and the media are still feeding us white-privilege propaganda, people still say and do racist things all the time. I'm saying this because, via this conversation, I found out that I've said some pretty racist stuff to her over time. I wasn't trying to hurt her *consciously,* and I sure as hell didn't believe that she was any less than me, but there was some subconscious seed floating around that was feeding me the story that black people are less than white people.

Look, the point is, the only way to rectify the subconscious with the conscious is to start talking to people and looking at yourself. When a thought pattern is detrimental to you and those around you, take a serious look at it, despite how afraid you may be of it. Try as best you can to dig those seeds out of your brain; chances are, you didn't put them there yourself. We operate under these outrageously stupid constructs designed, mostly, by the small gang of older white men that have been running this country for so long. Skinny girls with big boobs, black people stuck behind the counters of fast food joints, Mexicans being taken back to Mexico, you know how it goes.

In my last post, I mentioned turning off the news for good. This is a good reason why. Now, Teafly is going to take my photo. And what am I going to do about it? Make every attempt to look at the situation as an opportunity to plant a seed that many of us struggle with our whole lives: the seed of complete self-acceptance and love. What are your seeds? Which ones do you need to get rid of? Which ones have you planted yourself?

Thanks for reading. :)