It matters

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Someone believing in me: it matters.

Don't tell me that what other people think of me isn't important.

What other people think gets me evicted, costs me jobs, gets me beaten....

It matters.

I've been hated and ridiculed, beaten and raped. I've been terrorized and ostricized.

What other people think matters.

Well, faith matters, too.

I'm an agnostic. I can't avow a belief in either the existance or absence of god.

Faith is belief in things unseen.

Most of the physical world is unseen. We are very limited beings.

People are having faith in me.

Now, I haven't come close to "proving" my "worth."

The world I've operated in runs on the cocker spaniel philosophy: if you can't eat it or copulate with it, urinate on it.

I've been urinated on for decades.

I've struggled and tried and worked and beaten my head against walls and...

....and couldn't get out.

Well, it tears a person up, all that continuous abuse and neglect.

As hard as I try not to give up, I certainly have to struggle to keep faith with myself.

Now, there's close to a thousand dollars' worth of borrowed equipment in my living room.

I just got told--again--that my intelligence and enthusiasm are why it's sitting there.

Now, intelligence and enthusiasm are things unseen.

And the people showing faith in me haven't seen too much from me, yet.

But that faith matters.

Almost five decades of neglect, abuse and torment are melting from my shoulders, unknotting from my belly, unclenching my heart.

I can make it out of poverty now.

I can't do it: breaking my back in a factory, scrubbing toilets, wiping sick people's feces, vacuuming office carpets, collecting alluminum, selling produce from my garden....I know; I've tried for thirty years.

I can MAKE it OUT of poverty NOW!

So I won't HAVE to cower at ignorant landlords, cops, social workers.

So I won't HAVE to walk the hot or cold streets of this town, sick and weak.

So I won't HAVE to go to bed hungry and tired.

So I won't HAVE to live around dangerous, predatory people.

So I won't HAVE to smell of stale sweat and urine, when I can't groom myself on those streets.

I CAN MAKE IT OUT OF POVERTY NOW!

Faith matters!

And these people who've recognized me, who have supported and helped me, believed in me until I could believe in myself.

I can have decent shoes now. I can have TEETH now. I can have enough to eat and a safe place to live now.

I CAN HAVE FAITH NOW!

And I will never forget what their faith in me has done!

THANK you!

Oh, thank you so MUCH!

Independent producing: all layers of that.

Dignity. Creativity. Productivity.

I have faith.

And it MATTERS!