Appreciative Of Being The Unwanted,"Bastard Child" - The Outcast.
Where Most People's Lives Have Been About Living, Mine Has Been Far More About Survival. Now it's Keisha's Time to Grow.
If you've read my autobiography 'The Sexual Philanthropist' you'll recall how at eight years old, overhearing my mother refer to me as the "bastard" unwanted child, the human instinct to survive somehow registered so profoundly that from then on dictated the course of my life ahead.
A certain stubbornness and will to survive, no matter what the odds against me were, somehow became a series of challenges that played like a TV game show, except this was real life, and I was in it to win, no matter what. I didn't like being beaten by any challenges along the way such as drug and alcohol misuse, suicide attempts, depression, drug and alcohol misuse, and latterly a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.
I was determined to smash everything life threw at me and prove everyone and everything said about me was wrong.
To this very day, I still recall my mother saying that I would never amount to anything in my life, and to all intents and purposes be the failure she said I would be. Did I fail myself along the way? Yes, I did on more occasions than I could ever possibly remember, and, at times while I was slow to learn the error of my ways, I eventually smashed every negative perception I had of myself that challenged all of those learned helplessness beliefs that harked back to those words of my mother, and to this very day remain embedded in my mind. The same words that, whenever I replay them motivate me to always become a better version of myself in every way possible.
Do I still fail? Yes, of course, I do because I will never be perfect, just like everyone else with their own traits and flaws because we don't live in a perfect world with perfect people and utopia this isn't. I believe the challenges we all face in life have meaning and purpose. That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger, it's been said, and through hard-won experience, I believe it. I am proud of my life regardless of all the flaws and failures as much as I am of my achievements which, had I taken to heart and not viewed as challenges to be accepted as vital components of my journey would have me dead, or severely mentally impaired, and beyond all possible help by now. A complete no-hoper who'd given up completely and way beyond reach any more.
So, when it comes to Keisha, her life is in many ways similar to the journey that took me to where I am today, and a much more worldly wiser person for it who some would say, perhaps, gives me something of a rose-tinted spectacles view of people and the sometimes misjudged expectations I have for always aiming to see the best, rather than the worst in them, and the strong belief that intrinsically, all people are actually good. It's just circumstances along the journey of life which cause people to behave in ways that aren't always going to be conducive to others.
In this great school of life, we never stop learning and every stop along the way either empowers or disables us from growing further, and always to a higher level of consciousness. This teaching/learning experience defines the true meaning of all relationships that have become somewhat lost in this materialistic world where friends are more likely to be defined by those we are encouraged to bond with in the false, peripatetic world of social media, rather than from the benefits of enjoying real relationships with those in-person people we engage with daily.
My relationship with Keisha isn't driven by marketing people, likes and followers, just a desire for two people who can share similar experiences from a coal face of real-life perspective that's diametrically opposed to the false-world god of social media, and as outcasts from marketing-driven normalities others are so easily drawn into when our lives could, perhaps, be viewed by most as anything less than normal, and only those who have experienced the harsher vicissitudes of life themselves would fully understand.
I guess the knowledge and experience Keisha and I share comes from life on the streets, and I mean this in the literal sense of homelessness, and everything that goes with a life the majority will never experience and, therefore, have little knowledge of, save from what can be learned through various media outlets.
Although the journey ahead will be, without fail, full of dead-ends, diversions, and starts and stops, Keisha, to her full credit is already leaps and bounds ahead of where she was only a few days back. The improvement in her physical and mental welfare is already way ahead of where it was a few days ago, and to her credit, she is now fully embracing a new sense of life and purpose that she couldn't think would be achievable in such a short space of time.
I'm happy that she is happy, and this in itself is rewarding enough. Right now I couldn't possibly ask for any more than being with someone who I see visibly grow as a person as each day passes and be so appreciative of it.
