Forum Post: The Company of Friends: 1

There is something to be said for the company of friends. In my life's journey I have learned that often it will be the smallest and simplest steps that lead you towards your goal. If it means staying where I am and going to college, then this is where I need to be. I am a spiritual person, but I do not follow an organized religion or society.

I rely upon instinct and reading cards; I follow the signs. When I was twelve I took a road trip with my awesome mother all the way to Santa Cruz at USCA to study civil rights. It was the experience of a life time. Bits and pieces of this adventure have come back recently since coming home to oneness and true consciousness of my surroundings.

In 2004 I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. I was hospitalized a number of times, and put on a myriad of medications. How does isolation in a small room for believing you are not "sick" help anyone get better? How does murder, torture, instigation, or coercion cause someone to break down enough to conform to the lie fabricated and falsified by the institutions of America?

I am no longer diagnosed with schizophrenia, but I am still in a cycle of finding myself before I am brave enough to leave my tethered world. Sure, I may end up crazy like my mom. My mom crossed the line with 15 other protestors in Fort Benning Georgia. My mom taught peace to children in Palestine. My mother started our local Activist community in Shepherdstown. My mother is crazy because society has forgotten my mother's values. We are crazy because we live in a toxic society. One where buying and slave labor are our utopian dreams.

Drive on. Drive to nowhere. See yourself between the layers of what was and is to come. I refuse to live a million future lives as a slave to this. If only our prophets weren't still too far above us to reach. If only our values weren't so warped. If only more people had common sense. I rage on at this cage of modern existence. I dream of being heard.