Music from the 90's was the ambient noise of choice to cap the evening of a breakfast for dinner night at a friends house. I didn't think too much of the music at first but before long I was deep in thought of these memories that flooded in. Flood. Jars of Clay. Suddenly the gates opened and that rush of being 15, questioning religion, loathing my own generation, and dumped into a weekend long bible camp filled with teenagers overtook my memories.
I snap out of it.
Flash forward to the present and I'm learning to make paracord knots with a friend of mine. It was good food, good beer, and good times at their house that night. As always, I leave thinking about what a great niche I've gotten myself into...
That night I had another one of those "high school" dreams. They are almost always nightmares but tonight was different. The dream was very...human, corporeal, and real. The overall state of the dream felt like we were all adults but stuck in the bodies of our former selves. We were still our own individual personalities unique only to ourselves but we treated each other with so much more advancement. Yes there were still skirmishes, infatuations, and inner demons but it was met with the minds of adults. Maybe this was how high school actually was. Figuring out how to deal with problems like an adult while still trying to figure out who we were in our inexperienced youth.
Here we are now, 10 years later. Have we changed? No. I don't believe in change. You can't grow up a flower and turn into a butterfly. Instead we grow and become more of who we were meant to be. Maximizing ourselves to be our fullest potential, we grow into ourselves. Some people had all the right elements for growth...but never without their obstacles.
Me?
I grew up an ugly duckling: quiet, distant, and weird. Never thinking myself pretty, sexy, or cool enough to fit in with the crowd. I've had my bullies and my beatings; slammed into lockers and sucker punched in the gut. I let people walk all over me; pretend I never heard those harsh comments. Even from my own sister, who used words like a battle axe and knew exactly where to strike to bring me down the hardest. She never could keep me grounded though...But it still hurt. I've cried many nights grasping for strength that never seemed to come. Tears and time do heal the body and with it came an inner strength. I realize this now. As bad as they made me feel, they only ever really gave me a bad day and not ONCE did they ever make me feel bad about myself.
The only time I ever felt bad about myself was when I couldn't do something. Or wouldn't. I had my weak moments. I can handle beatings and public humiliation because that's just how passive I was and learned to just deal with it. But it still pains me to this day that I couldn't stand up for others. I've watched as friends were humiliated and bullied by fellow classmates who hardly knew them at all. The friends I knew so well would cower or cry and I would just stand there. Outwardly, I did nothing while a million things raged on inside my head and the perfect opportunity to do something slowly slipped away.
I have shaken those demons which is why I am pursuing this business dream of mine today. I have the strength and capacity to create something that can help others. It is my sole purpose to be an advocate for the metalsmiths of Grand Rapids and to help them become everything they want to be as an artist. First and foremost, this will be a place where they will be amongst fellow peers- all channeling down different paths ...but never alone.
I got your back.
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