De-Colonizing the Self

Nothing is exiled. Everything is Remembered.

---

Part of the Re-Framing Friction series

Each post in this series begins with a descent—
into the caverns of the self.
Then, a transmission.
Not to "grow" or to "expand" in the name of striving,
but to hold more of what is without flinching.
And finally, an invitation.
Not advice—
a threshold of choice.

---

I. The Descent

It’s dark.
Yes. That’s where transformation happens—
in the dark.
This is true for every other living thing.
So what would make it different for you?

And just like that, it went dark inside me.
All the lights went out.

I clawed through a once-familiar landscape,
reaching for light switches that no longer existed.
The darkness wasn’t comforting—it was suffocating.
It draped heavy across my chest,
collapsing my lungs one blood vessel at a time.

But I knew this weight.
It had visited me before.
Always dressed as Loneliness.
Always with the same monologue:

You are alone.
No one understands.
No one sees you.
No one ever will.
You will always be inexplicable, unseeable in your essence.

I pressed my hands to my ears.
But the sound lived inside the walls.

I scrambled.
I ran into every edge I could find,
screaming get out.
I was tired of this tale.
I knew it wasn’t real.

It’s not real.
It’s not real.
It’s not real.

Stop strangling me from my life.
From my people.
I want them back.
I want me back.

So I rammed my body again and again
into the wall of loneliness,
begging it to move.
Please move.
I needed to return to myself.

But the truth is—

In that moment,
I was wrapped in myself.
Loneliness was a part of me.

And still—
she felt like a threat.
She stood between me and the landscape I wanted to reclaim.
So I approached her,
as colonizers do:
as an obstacle.
Something to be annihilated,
so I could return to sovereignty.

And yet—
just as I prepared to strike,
something pulled at me.
A faint whisper, like the edge of a memory:

Remember. Re-member.

My blood responded,
whipping me back—
eons of colonizers whispering through the marrow:

“Shhh.
There’s nothing to see here.
Decimate her.
It is your right.
It is the only way to survive.”

Survive. Survive.
The echo filled the chamber.
A mandate.

But then—
the ground began to shake.
Loneliness looked back at me.
Not as monster, but as witness.

Her eyes pulsed the message:

I am of you. For you. By you.

And the ground curled beneath my feet,
whispering in the language of my ancestors—
those decimated in the name of sovereignty:

Remember.
Re-member.
You can never be free
inside skin that feels rotten.
That which you banish
will echo back as shame—
tainting the ground beneath you,
stripping trust from your steps,
casting threat where there is none.
What you exile
will become the face you fear.
Honor what stands before you.
Honor it,
and it will show you how it wants to move.

I saw it then.
In her eyes.

Loneliness had sheltered me
from the abyss of disconnection
when I could not bear the grief of being misunderstood.

She wove a cloak of fear and shame—
not as punishment,
but as an attempt to offer control
as a balm to helplessness.

If I believe I will never be understood,
then I always have two paths of protection:
a shield ("I know you're coming, so I brace myself"),
or a race ("If I am the cause, I can become the cure").

I lowered my weapons.
And I bowed.

Thank you, I whispered.
Thank you for wrapping me in protection
when my nervous system couldn’t bear the grief.
Thank you for wrapping me in meaning
when my mind had nothing to stand on.
You bore what I could not.
And now, I release you—
so that you, too, may know sovereignty.
So that you may make meaning in a new way.

And at my words,
her cloaks began to unravel.
The weight lifted.
She did not disappear—
she re-formed,
becoming the walls of the chamber itself.
Raw material of creation,
waiting to be shaped anew.

Then something rose.
Not a thought—
an embodiment.
Wings spread wide.
Eyes steady.

This chamber now holds your grief, it said,
because you met it with trust.
And trust now shapes its form.

---

II. The Transmission

We say we want to change—
our thoughts, our perspective, our “symptoms.”
But we often approach ourselves
with the logic of conquest.

We push against our inner walls with force.
When the block doesn’t move,
we blame our weakness.
Or worse—we turn our force inward.

We numb. We split.
We saturate with information.
We anesthetize.
We self-punish into obedience.

We forget to ask the parts we meet along the way:

How long have you stood guard?
What have you protected?
What have you sacrificed to hold this post?
What do you need from me now?

We treat our inner world
with the same colonizer logic
we rage against in the external one:

This land should look how I want it.
I own it.
My force will shape it.

No reverence.
No relationship.
No memory.

And so—
we erode trust in ourselves.
We displace ourselves from our bodies.
We restrict our agency
by binding the parts
we do not understand.

---

III. Nothing Is Exiled

Everything is remembered.
Nothing is exiled.

The climate advocates know—
every ecosystem yearns for wholeness.
Balance depends on integration.
Nothing lost.
Nothing wasted.

The social justice organizers know—
every human deserves dignity,
no matter their difference.
But do they extend that same wholeness
to the fractured parts within?

The animal rights advocates know—
every being is sacred.
But do they seek to weave that reverence inside?

Where do you fight for integration externally
that you still deny yourself internally?

Where do you offer the world
what you do not offer yourself?

In the natural world,
nothing is without use.
Every fallen branch.
Every decaying leaf.
Every predator and prey.

All have a place,
a function,
a sacred contribution to the whole.

Why would you be any different?

---

IV. The Invitation

There are deeply empathic souls
who feel the fire of the world.
They see the burn.
They live inside the burn.

And when they turn inward, they say:

“This is not the most important problem.
The world is burning.”

Yes.
The world is burning.
What you see is true.

But you are burning yourself to the ground
with the same tools as the oppressor.

You’ve become a microcosm
of internalized psychological colonization.

And this—
this internal dispossession—
is the holy ground
of a revolution you can truly master.

A revolution
that will change the shape of you.
And the shape of you
will change the fabric of the world.

Because yes—
our liberation is bound together.
But until you know what liberation tastes like
on your own lips—

we cannot drink it together.

---

If this piece resonated, feel free to share it, respond, or bring it into conversation.

Your friction is always welcome here.

---