One of the hardest things to do in life is to get back up once you’ve been knocked down in a fight while knowing that no matter what you do, you cannot dodge or counter the second punch headed your way. For politics, as in life, one has to experience this first hand to understand what it truly means not to simply persevere, but to survive. For myself, I learned this the hard way by wasting years of my life attempting to fight for an apparition of a dream that was never there, taking punch after punch, living in the realm of politics and media while dying in reality. You simply cannot dodge every punch nor counter every attack thrown at you, especially the ones that you throw at yourself.
What I’m attempting to say is not easily explained as the dream I was so obsessed with chasing for years became a living nightmare of self-defeat. I was throwing the punches at myself without even realizing it as I could never succeed in getting back on my feet before another blow landed. I had turned against myself and began to believe in deceit, not knowing and then not caring to escape. It’s something akin to being apart of a circular firing squad that never stops to ask why the hell are we doing this before reloading and continuing to fire away.
I was trapped by this mentality for years and opened myself up to being exploited by those in whom I once called friends, colleagues and even family. You will pay a heavy price mentally, physically, financially and emotionally if you attempt to set your own bar for success so high that it is unachievable. Moreover, when you allow others to dictate to you what that bar of success may be, you end up defeating yourself by constantly falling short of that which is simply not achievable.
Unfortunately for me and the career path I had chosen pursuing politics and media, I simply refused to see this for what it was, and believed in what I wanted it to be. The dream was now a living nightmare in which I could not escape. I had turned what I was once passionate about into a job and then allowed others to play on that passion and exploit me for what I truly cared about. Even my faith wasn’t off limits for those who used it as a weapon against me knowing that I had failed to grasp the reality in which I had created. Yet, I do not ascribe blame to anyone else but myself for getting into this position.
In the end I have only myself to blame for allowing others to dictate to me what was worth fighting for as their political battles and lust for influence became my own. I was too busy working behind the scenes attempting to help that which was a lie that I lost sight of who I was as a person and what it was that I was even fighting for to begin with. I developed a sense of worthlessness from this daily exercise in monotony as I knew the work I was putting in behind the scenes would inevitably be stolen and then used by those in whom I had trusted as their own in order for them to better “enrich” themselves without them even bothering to acknowledge my existence.
After years of doing this I finally decided that I no longer needed to dodge the punches that were inevitably headed my way for the price of pursuing what was once my “dream” almost cost me my life. Luckily though, through this experience I’ve been able to reorient my life back to the things that truly matter. I’ve met good people along the way and I will never stop fighting for the truth and actual justice. The evil that exists in our world cannot be understood and to attempt to fight it at times feels useless, but what the past few years have taught me is that the good will always prevail.
I feel truly blessed as my faith in God has helped to pull me back from the abyss. I consider myself to have been saved both by God, my family and by the woman whom I consider my angel, my fiancé Ashe Schow. I know for a fact that without them I wouldn’t be here today.
The lesson here is ultimately summed up best in 2 Corinthians 4:18, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”