All Things Considered…
Consider this…your family as the best example of ultimate group think. Your friends as reflections of what you really want. Strangers you meet as part of your manifest destiny. Know that you are what you come from and I became a perfect product of my environment. How does groupthink affect your life? It surely plays a large role in my existence, not just my daily life.
Phenomenology, but in the familial unit. I have mentioned previously that I study relationship phenomena, specifically as it relates to people who say they love me. The brightest and best group that I use as an example and my guiding lights are all of my siblings. I am close to each of them in very distinct and unique ways, and there’s eight of us. Being the oldest has given me an insight I did not learn to appreciate until very recently. Watching them as they pursue their own careers, become successful, and build their own legacies, makes me proud to come from such a dynamic group of people. In the future, I will pen for each of them an ultimate love letter, but elucidation for them here and now will suffice for the moment.
How close are we to our family members? In addition to my siblings, I am also close to my parents and most of my aunts and uncles, of which there are 19. My family is large and in charge, and to my chagrin, I have concluded that families like mine are largely extinct. The holidays are definitely the greatest show on Earth, and I get to be a part of the madness. I have stories for days that will never see the light of day, simply because they are largely unrelatable.
We all are individuals, but we come from family units. My nuclear family taught me how to get things done without letting my emotions get in the way of the true desires of my heart. We have all been a part of a group in some shape, form or fashion, whether it be a school project, some group you got randomly tossed in during a college course, or in the workplace. Some do know exactly how their energy works, alone and in a group. Others are clueless…kinda like Cher Horowitz. If you missed the movie reference, look it up. You will be happy you did.
I love me and I love my life. My life is fascinating and I am full of awesomesauce. Note that just because I love myself like I do, and am confident in who I am, does not mean that I do not love other people. I am selflessly selfish, I love everybody and do my best to treat others fairly…unfortunately, that is not what I get in return. So, I let the negativity roll down me like April showers and this action keeps my May flowers blooming all year long. I have been called all kinds of names, been mocked and teased for most of my life…by children when I was a child, and now by passive-aggressive adults who do not know any better. But like my grandmother told me, “It’s not what people call you, it’s what you answer to that counts.”
I have struggled hopelessly in the past because I never experienced a woman like me with whom I could connect, and that was also from my peer group. These struggles began to manifest first and quite clearly in the relationships I build with masculine energy. A caveat, masculine energy comes from more than just a biological sex and transcends gender identification. In one seemingly random moment last September, a powerful masculine energy graced my presence and my life was changed forever. The time had come for me to turn to and tune into the connection I have with myself and to stop looking for completion from and in others.
I have always been very secure in how I make connections with others, both masculine and feminine, but I never took the time to connect with myself. At least not in the way I needed to. I let my anger and unresolved emotional trauma from both childhood and adulthood turn me into what I despise about the world, and I do not want to be that girl anymore. I am still processing at this very moment. I was broken emotionally and if the person I attempted to connect with had unresolved trauma or emotional baggage, it was double trouble for me as I reflected misdirected energy back to them, sometimes viciously.
Get Keia Allis’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
More often than not, it was very unintentional on my part, I literally was a ticking time bomb for people with trashy energy. Now, I have to force myself to keep my anger and baggage out of my body and aura to stop projecting me on to others. Despite that hurdle, I am fortunate to have created for myself a fantastic support system outside of my nuclear and extended family in the form of friends and pseudo-mentors. They all love me like family. In the strange southern city I ran off to as soon as the ink was dry on my high school diploma, I will always feel at home. Everybody should have a support system like mine; my friends and acquaintances have good hearts, strong faith, believe in community, and do what is necessary when the time comes, undeterred by circumstances. Danger? Ha! We laugh in the face of that.
Due to the way I connect with others, family, friends, and even strangers, I have to be very upfront and honest with people about my real feelings and true intentions. I can not sugar coat anything, so I try my best to be respectful. Which really means speak less and listen more. I offer people my full and clear transparency with all the love in my heart, at all times. If I strike up a conversation with someone who does not know themself or their purpose, the results are often very intriguing, as I treat people exactly how they treat me. My love is unconditionally fierce, and it is a lot to handle if you are unaccustomed to how love should really work. Trust and believe, I feel that silence is golden. I would rather be ignored than to be treated with feigned indifference. The truth is scary and most do not enjoy seeing themselves through my looking glass as it is brutally honest.
I look in my mirror, reflect quite often, and I still run from the truth from time to time. Running from my truth, the truth I see in those closest to me and those in my environment, is no longer conducive to my continued personal and professional development. Outrunning is now a moot point, because truth never hides and it never lies. Just like I can not. My life is a movie to the nth degree and what is true always finds me, love or otherwise, no matter how fast I run or where I try to hide. I have decided not to run from it anymore. Not running from my truth has caused me to switch up everything that I used to do, to include how I talk to myself and acceptance of how spiritual I truly am. I had to consider myself before considering other people, and I needed to love myself the way I want others to love me. The love from me must continue to flow like a river and even if Prince Charming never comes with my glass slipper, I already have everything I need.
I came to understand that my environment is everything. I had to become mindful of what I like, what I don’t like, and who I was spending my time with. I knew that something was missing from my life but I could never figure it out what it was. The answer I found was reflected to me by another person, and he was a stranger. I never had anybody see through me so clearly. I needed to know why as well as the who, what, where, when, and how. The global pandemic gave me a whole lot of time, space, and opportunity to figure out exactly what was missing from my life. I am fearless when it comes to finding what I am looking for and trapped in my dogged determination to find the answers I wanted, put my Earth’s axis on its side and I took every person in my orbit on a strange and terrifyingly wild ride. I literally drove myself into a bipolar, delusional manic tailspin as I could not escape my home, and I totally lost touch with reality for the better part of a month because I could not find the answers I knew I needed. On this quest for self-discovery, I got way more than I bargained for, but I did find all the answers. I knew at the very bottom of my heart that I was here for more than what I was doing. But the whole story is for another day in a different medium.
My answer to what was missing is that I did not see myself clearly and I was not expressing my emotions appropriately. I saw everything, pondered the inner workings of my own mind, and let myself feel it all…and I literally mean every single emotion. I picked up other people’s emotions as well, but only through their actions, not by the words coming out of their mouths. Human behavior is also a topic I research in depth. The way people treat me, the way they treat themselves, and how they treat others is downright horrific, in my overly educated opinion. I let others show me what they are about by how they treat me. More often than I care to admit, I get regarded with little to no concern, alienated disdain, and unsurprisingly some are very apathetic…but I am now my own karma personified. It makes me sad that this is the world I live in.
Over the past five years, ever since I lost my grandmother to COPD, I have made wild ass hypothetical suppositions and meticulously planned my entire life. With all the planning, I forgot to actually live my life in the process as I could not get over the grief and loss I felt. My anchor disappeared, but lucky for me I got a visit from an angel embodied in a sexy stranger and figured out how to free my mind and save myself from the mental anguish that still tries to overwhelm me. Now that I’m living out loud and finally sharing my story, I can remain balanced as to not trigger another episode accidentally. Sharing here is very therapeutic and is preparing me for the novel series that’s been on my brain for the better part of the last decade. The stories can and must come out, if I am to maintain some semblance of sanity.
The major key paired with all the answers I found is that I was not loving myself properly. The greatest love of all, the love of self, is one we have to figure out and discern for ourselves. My father who gave me my musical soul told me to listen to Prince and brush up on a foreign language. My very best friends encourage me to write as well as create. I might actually become that famous songwriter I keep dreaming about, as long as I keep my mind free. In the meantime, I say no to police…I do not police behavior, mine or that of others. I am not law enforcement. I do not smack children on the hand with rulers as I have none of my own…and I never will. It is not my responsibility to police the behaviors of intelligent and actualized adults, but I will learn from them.
My advice, treat people exactly how they treat you, the good, the bad, and the spurious sincerity, but with all the love you can muster. Faith the size of a mustard seed is what moves mountains, and nobody can do this alone. We all have lessons to learn and the authority I follow allows for complete freedom of expression. Total freedom, free from fetters, scruples, shackles and/or restraints. Take my pure-hearted kindness for weakness if you choose to…you probably will not like what comes out of my mouth. I’m from Philadelphia, we are not shy when it comes to expressing our feelings, and will tell you exactly where to shove it and how high it needs to go.
It is my ultimate desire that someone reads these words and decides to dig a little deeper to find out exactly what is on the other side of their own confirmation bias. Living a life full of love and acceptance is going great for me so far and I am quickly reaping the benefits of being my whole and true self with everybody I meet, instead of shrinking into the background like I used to. I still love being the wallflower, but she’s now the brightest one in the room. It’s golden over here, let me tell you.
