Confession

Written By: Angel Hopson-Woods

Session 1:

What is the feeling when you know you aren’t living up to your potential?

What is the feeling when you start to realize that God is putting you in uncomfortable situations, places, and friendships that require you to rise out of complacency?

It is not regret; it is something deeper. Something ethereal and spiritual connecting you to your ancestral strength and roots. Calling out every time your insides scream with rage, your pockets burns with bills, and your stomach touches the corners of itself.

I have learned what it means to be a starving artist. To earn such a title, one must understand that:

“A little starvation, keeps a person sharp”, My father once told me.

Coincidentally, a diagnosis of anxiety and PTSD rids me of any appetite and keeps me alert, awake, and hyper-aware of the non-negotiable fact: Existence is Pain and Expectations Breed Disappointments.

I have begun to understand why some of us come into this world kicking and screaming at birth.

We are preparing for what is to come.

But I would be a liar if I did not admit I have come to accept life’s duality. Your forced to whether you like it or not and it will all but destroy you if you don’t wake up and find something worth your drive, effort, and passion.

Life is a roller coaster of healthy while morbid, otherworldly bliss followed by mind-melding tragedy, overflowing with opportunity one minute and suffering a devastating set back the next.

What is one to do? I recall pondering these things as a fresh eyed highschooler.

The answer I came up with then was: Buckle up, sit back, work hard, and stick to the plan. I was making it up along the way but kept the main task of surviving at the core.

Down the road, I told an academic advisor that I was a writer. She had known me for all of five minutes before saying “well, you could just write you a new life”.

I’ve been trying to shake those words out my ears ever since because of the intense, dreadful, mentally draining responsibility I thought that task would be.

However, from the time she said that, to the exact moment of where I am now, after everything that has happened to me, I should have listened more closely and realized what really happened in that brief moment.

There is not a manual to life or how it should go, and you can plan to the finest detail but ultimately whether you recognize a higher power or not, what happens to you and where it happens------ is not up to you.

It is completely equivocal and out of your hands.

That day I was given a cheat code. I was given my manual. I was given instructions on how to proceed and I did not head the warning. I had to, of course, learn the hard way.

It is beyond clear, that the headache I thought I was trying to avoid: the responsibility of a scribe; could have saved me from the many stages of grief and provided a journey filled with more peace than heartache.

If only I had listened.

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