​Move.
 
Let it start with a slow twitch of a finger, if you must.  Let it start with you blinking at the sky, or the floor.  Take a breath and feel the weight of the air in your lungs.  Begin to feel all the places you are sore, tracing the outline of invisible bruises with your dry fingertips.  Just because the others can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.  Pain is one of the most personal things we will ever experience.  When nothing else is our any longer, pain still belongs to us.
 
Did they dim your shine?  Extinguish your spark?  Listen to me:
 
Just because they killed you doesn’t mean it’s over.
 
Now, read that again.
 
Just because they killed you does not mean that this is over.
 
You are not done, here.
 
It is time to get up from whatever thing it was that broke you. 
 
Get up, darling.  Walk toward something new.
 
Find yourself, then find your way to us. 
 
And if when you get here, it feels like home…
 
Then stay.
 
Just stay.

You know what I see?  I see people suffering for absurd reasons. 
 
If you can even get past the basics, the root things like health, wellness, food, shelter – if you can even get those things squared away, then there’s a whole other list of shit to deal with.  There’s the fact that the world is falling apart, crumbling beneath our feet and falling into a bottomless chasm; falling so far beneath us that we can’t even hear the pieces hit the ground.  As we dangle there, our fingertips cramping, slipping, the nails breaking, the blood bubbling up and making the surface slick – there’s nothing to think about other than how this is it.  This is all we amounted to.  We fear that this is all that became of us.  We are afraid that there will never be another failure or success; we’ll never get another shot.  We’re here at what looks an awful lot like the end, and suddenly everything just seems like such a waste.  People feel like this every day, even if it isn’t in the literal sense.  People are hanging from these ledges over the promise of a horror they can’t quite identify.  People can spend their entire lives feeling like this, and it is a world of nightmares trapped inside an individual.  A wasteland that stretches on forever behind a defensive smile.  There is no screaming; no poetry.  Just quiet little monsters telling you that there is no value in the way you suffer.
 
If you can find beauty in nothing else, it is your absolute right to find it in the way that you suffer; in the way that you hurt.  Do not let them take away this small victory.  Do not let them extinguish your art.
 
People -- and the tragedy of their uninformed judgment -- are often the source of the evil in this world.  People who don’t understand.  The ones who refuse to think.  Do not listen to them.  Do not let them belittle what good you can find in this place.  Do not let them take away whatever it is that keeps you going.  Don’t let them have the reason – whatever it may be – that you manage to defy the odds and drag yourself back up, time and time again. 
 
Do not let these motherfuckers extinguish your joy. 
 
It is yours, more than anything ever has been or ever will be.  Yours.  Full stop.  It does not have to be explained to others.  You do not owe anyone in this world a single thing; not your attention, not your adoration, not an explanation, and certainly not your heart.  It is not invalid just because strangers cannot see it, feel it, or comprehend it.  Save it for those who understand it.  Save it for the ones who hold whatever tiny sliver you may give them and cherish it.  The ones who would never let harm befall it.  Save it for the ones who make you smile and the family that you choose; not for the devastating number of them who will fail you in the end; the ones who have been failing you from the very beginning.
 
And when it’s time, if you need a place to go; if you need people who see you, see through you, see into you, and are still happy to stare at the moon with you.  If you understand that you don’t need anyone, but want a place to exist.  If you come looking for a tribe.  If you want to walk into the open arms of a new Family, then come find us.  Come join us.
 
​
Come home.

The end came and went, and no one said a word.
 
Everything gave way to beautiful decay, and then one day, it happened; something began to grow.
 
You’ve been to terribly patient, my darlings.  So perfect, and now, well…
 
It’s time to join the Family.  

This is a day drenched in blood and infamy; the beginning of the end of that hippie-dippy feeling of safety and understanding that was fostered through then 60’s.  Everything changed after the Manson Family killed those people; the world seemed a bit less light and a whole lot scarier.  Whether you see this as the anniversary of a tragedy, a misunderstanding, or an injustice, it was a time that mattered.  Whether you think it deserves attention or not, it was important.  Whether you miss him or wish him a long stay in hell, no one can argue that that particular nightmare – it CHANGED things.
 
And that’s one more thing it has in common with this moment right now.  It’s time to affect things, one way or another.  Baptized in blood or just born of collective madness and desperate need to create, today we move forward. 
 
I can think of no better day to start something beautiful, and no group of individuals I would rather have with me.
 
Rise, my Darlings. 
 
Rise, and become.