“Run, run, run, society says…Run, run, run, you’re less than human. Run, run, run, the weak must die… run, run, run, the strong must survive.” -Borderline Delusion.

“My goal is to make music a way for mental illness to speak for itself, so it’s not so shameful to have it.” -Lauren Rhodes

“Run”

Fiction. Based on a True Work on Healing the Inner Child.

By Mingjie Zhai

This journal entry is inspired by true events. Some of the characters, names, businesses, incidents, and certain locations and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Goodbye Los Angeles

Angelie did not know why she had to leave Roxy behind. She did all the paperwork but it came down to the fact that the flight had a layover and their policy is that service dogs are only allowed on direct flights, not layovers. “Excuse me for my rudeness, but this is a very stupid rule,” you tell them. All three attendants just shake their head. They did not make the rules, they just follow it, even if it does not make any sense. Cie la vie eh?

Perhaps all three looked at her as if she was a fraud. They don’t see disability.

“What does your service dog do?” One of them asked Angelie.

“She keeps me grounded in reality when I’m having a psychosis,” Angelie replies, “I have bipolar.”

And there it is. People don’t even understand what bipolar is, but it doesn’t matter anyway because there is some arbitrary rule that’s in the way of her treatment.  

Maybe it’s meant to teach her something. Perhaps it was because she had emailed the producer of Judge Judy and told her that Roxy would not be on the first flight to Germany since Roxy will be on the show mid December. Putting her through flying twice may be excruciating for an older dog. Perhaps it is God’s plan that Angelie keeps her word that she does not strain Foxy too much. She is comfortable where she is home.

Angelie is on the Norwegian airplane, flight 2023 and realizes whilst ascending and looking out of the window that there was a layer of the city that looked as if it had low resolution, like a picture that had some blur. Holy Spirit spoke to her. Whenever there is low resolution, it  means that angels are warring. Around the blur, the rest of Los Angeles city lights look sharpened. She thought about Colin James’ song, “Goodbye Los Angeles,” whilst she is leaving the city she has spent 30 years in.

Now you can see.

Paul the Apostle’s spirit says to her.

Angelie also remembers the lady on the subway in New York telling her a few years back, “It can’t hear you think. Only God can hear you think.”

On the Boeing 747, she is watching Ready Player One, and the activation starts for her now that the stronghold of the Red lifted. The first key is to work backwards, put the pedal to the metal.  

That was clue #2: “Retrace your steps, escape your past and the key of jade will be yours at last.” The word “last” is linked to the word “song.”

The last song Aaron sung to her was by the Lumineers, “Ho Hey.”

“Retrace your steps,” Angelie thought. She knew she had not given it her all when it came to doing the steps. It must be done first…to give honor and pay respects to her predecessors. She  must start from step 1 for both LA (Love Addicts) and DD (Drinker’s Den).

The last thing she read on the wall of her Drinker’s Den home group is, “Acceptance is the key to all my answers. Nothing happens in God’s universe by mistake. The key to my peace is to accept that person, place, thing, or situation exactly as it is.” Angelie remembers the training at Milestone that gave you 99% of God’s truth by accepting people exactly as they are, where they are, and loving them wherever they are.

“Escape your past,” by “a leap not taken” which is the last six steps of the sobriety program.

This morning Angelie cried because she journaled about what’s been happening recently. She had a call with Don about grant funding. After some back and forth, he asked the right question. “What’s missing?” He asked.

“What’s missing is the journaling itself,” she said, “We all need to start doing it if we are to become effective at building it.”

At the time, Angelie, Don and the rest of the Love Story Creative team haven’t a clue at how big this will really become one day. She could not fathom the scope of what Artist-Inspired Journaling will one day become like Drinker’s Den, like Love Addicts, like all the other recovery groups that work. When they are in flow, it is just about taking one step after another. “What’s in the way of getting these journals in the hands of people?” Don asked her. “Marketing,” she said.

She thought about Julian, who recently got into a motorcycle accident. That morning, she thought about meeting up with him first and then having him take her on his bike to church, but something stopped her in her tracks. It was integrity. She had told Aaron initially that she would go on a 40 day no intriguing, no dating, no relationship fast, similar to the one Bryan Reeves advocates–The “No sex, no dating, no hunting” diet, so we may get grounded on loving ourselves first. That way when we are in a relationship, we have some to offer rather than something to take from the other. We can’t give what we don’t have so Angelie heard time and time again. She must learn how to love herself before she can love another. She wants to build her mate up rather than tear her mate down. This is why she must do the self-work.

She also knew that that is the only way she and Aaron have a chance of working out. The way they were dating these past few weeks were a trainwreck. There were a lot of anxiety, projection, and fear-based actions taken. Most of it was on her. Well, more like 80% of it. She was pushing and pulling again, this time the polarity even more severe.

This is a progressive illness. She remembers the Big Book saying.

The first step into any recovery program is admission.

“We admitted we were powerless over_____ –that our lives have become unmanageable.”

It could be anything–gambling, sex, love, alcohol, cocaine, food, even killing. Angelie recalls having a conversation with her sponsor about serial killers. “It’s an addiction for them, the same way it is for us with alcohol. It just numbs whatever it is we have been putting off.”

Deal with what?

Deal with the pain, the hurt the wounds.

Deal with healing the inner child, crying with the wounded girl, and loving her, mothering, nurturing her.

“All I want you to do is take care of yourself,” Angelie’s dad told her whilst driving her to the airport. “If you can take care of yourself, then I’ll be more than happy.”

She’s serious about being in love with Aaron. While on the way to the airport, she was thinking of the way he was able to connect so deeply into her, to a point of feeling that their souls have touched. She had accepted him in that moment they connected—all of him. Even now, as she is journaling, she can smell his scent coming out of her pores. She belongs to Aaron now, despite telling him to choose another.

She remember the Apostle Paul’s sermon, “I mean to say this my brothers. This season’s a shortened one, and so all of those who do have wives should live as if they had none,” 1 Corinthians 7:29. In other words, put your eyes on God first. Angelie realizes that she is in the middle of the war. It’s an ancient war, just with new costumes and settings. The people she sees on YouTube are real people dealing with real problems that directly affect her and everybody else. Real allies and real enemies.

She has the power to go directly to source. Now that her God given gift she was born with has been activated, she must go all the way. She becomes even more activated now that she is away from the Red stronghold in Los Angeles. When that stronghold is lifted, she is even more powerful and effective through prayer, self-care, and recovery. Her first objective is to take her self-care and recovery seriously by working through the steps rigorously, thoroughly, and honestly. Work through it with integrity.

https://youtu.be/_VKOt_zPd00

“A hidden key: a [leap] (not) [taken],” she reads the clue. She remembers the activation codes. “not” is the lie. It is the absence. She remembers that regardless of the cameras, of what we call “Big Brother,” there is actually another set of eyes–spiritual eyes–who watches us, spiritual avatars, we the people, in the determination of which side we are battling from.

She remembers that everything in this matrix is one big artistic piece of canvas. Spiritual entities are watching her as well as government agencies. Her dad has been urging her to start getting into politics to fight for the right. God tells her that it is not yet time.

First, she must take on the Call here in Berlin. Like Paul the Apostle, it is a training of discerning the voice of God.

She remembers the last download from Pastor Jay at C3:

Where is the storm?

If the storm is out there, remain calm, and trust Jesus.

If the storm is within, pray and listen to God’s command, and take action.

He gave the example of Moses listening to God’s command of walking through the red sea. He first needed to take the leap of faith and go straight into the middle of the Red Sea for it to part.

Whilst watching Ready Player One, you realized that you are indeed an avatar in this matrix we call reality.

You remember Dr. Peterson’s advice:

“You’ve got to play as many games as possible, and as fair as possible, not just the one. A good player is someone who knows how to win not just the game but a set of games in a series.”

What are the rules?

The way of being is patience, kindness, does not envy, does not boast,

+, +, -, – = +

It is not self seeking.

-, – = +

It does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

-, + = –

It believes all things, bears all things, endures all things, hopes all things.

+, +, +, +  = +

What is the endgame?

Love

In verses 4-7, there is only one (not) in the [leap] (not) [taken]. You remember biochemistry. It is the protons that gravitates around the electron.

Water is H20, but it has one oxygen atom with a negative polarity attracting two positive charges and this movement is the dance between the feminine, masculine or ying/yang duality.

The (not) is important because this is the original sin, what we all came down to experience the collective fall. The evil is in the absence of love.

Even hate is love because hate is the impatience one has for the other to self-realize what the hater is insisting on the hated to catch up on.

That is why ignoring someone is more brutal than hating them. At least hate creates a reaction. Indifference, apathy, and ignorance is the absence of love.

During the Rubin Report between Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, you realized that in the conversation, Dr. Jordan Peterson has indeed read the 28 page meditative reflection on 12 Rules For Life Angelie has given him when she went to see him at his lecture in Portland:

She realizes that everything in God’s world happens exactly the way it is designed to be.

Angelie is meant to start in Berlin on her own first so the channel between her and the Holy Trinity in her can be strengthened. She must take directions now. The game has just escalated for her.

Berlin, Germany

She arrives to Berlin, first going straight to the man who hosts the apartments, forgetting to pick up her baggage. They wind up in the lost and found, and the host looks at her with a bit of disbelief and impatience, but controls it with a German disciplined nicety. Angelie realizes that she will be carrying her scatterbrained clumsiness in a country that has low tolerance for inefficiencies. She remembered her first date with Rylie, who had been living in Berlin for a few years tell her when she was half an hour late for their date, “You won’t like it in Berlin. Everybody is on time.” You had made the host wait whilst you were so eager to greet him that you had skipped picking up your bags. They would not allow you back in once you have stepped out of the gate even though the man who regulates that entrance just saw you step out. It’s these arbitrary rules that really becomes quite annoying.

The woman in charge of lost and found baggages asks Angelie for bag tags to retrieve her bags, but she doesn’t have them. A young German man rolls her bags in finally and rolls his eyes a bit. Idiot. American idiot…. was basically the verdict.

The German host happens to be a policeman. En route from Schönefeld Airport, they pass through another airport, Tegel, and a prison. “This is where you go when you are bad,” he says. Dry humor. They drive through the dark woods and into the “village” where she will be staying for the next two months. He made her nervous. Perhaps, it was the stereotype of Germans being racist, classist, and rigid. Honestly, Germany was the last place Angelie wanted to visit in Europe, but for some reason the call was to start here.

Upon arrival, when the host left after showing her the room, a deep feeling of sadness overwhelms her. She realizes how clean and orderly the apartment is. She has arrived. Alone. Ready to face her trauma wounds, apart from family, friends, and acquaintances. She has wifi connection so she’ll still be able to still meet with her Aussie sponsor and her sponsor from Los Angeles, and communicate with her Love Story colleagues. She’ll also get online therapy to get treated for her narcissism, something that was made obvious when the men who had fallen for her were kind enough to tell her the ugly truth about herself. She now see the patterns.

She starts playing the audiobook, “Will I Ever Be Good Enough?” by Karyl McBride, Ph.D. and starts crying. She feels her tightened chest loosen. The years of smoking cigarettes and meth, purging, cleaning, cleansing from her system. She cries for the sadness she now feels for what happened to her when she was younger.

It wasn’t your fault. You tell her.

It’s okay. I’m here now. I can take care of you.

Tears overwhelm. Feelings of hatred, hurt, gratitude, love, all mixed in. It feels both familiar and strange.

The first key is to work backwards.

Start from the beginning.

Who is Angelie?