Episode 6 | I AM BROKEN (Pt. 3) – Letters of Consciousness.

If you feel alone today, trust me… you are not alone, matter fact you are right where you need to be. 

Read my poetry book – Oceans Of Emotion

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

My name is Joey the Creative, and this is my letter of consciousness. Damage my love. Love has found me. She came like a dove, flooded my existence. Everywhere I looked, I was hurt. Love has found me. In the darkest hole, she locked my chains, burned me with her tongue. As we kissed, I saw my life flying like embers of a campfire. Love has found me. The day we met was the day my dreams turned to nightmares, but still, as a pig to the slaughter, I enjoyed every hour with her. Love has found me. Emotional pain has ended my life, but love will cut my throat like a knife. I shot my heart with the same gun. She murdered my family with Oh, Love has found me. She painted my blood on the streets, but I still kissed her lips. As beautiful love was, her darkness choked every breath out of my heart. Forever I will cry. Love has found me. Love has found me. Love found me. These words will I cry as I repeatedly have my heart punched out and shattered on the grounds of hate and despair. Love found me. But I never felt love. Am I dead? Please say yes. Please say I was killed and no one cared to bring flowers. Love has found a crime scene with no tape because I was not worth the investigation. Love never found me. Because my emotions committed suicide in my mother's womb. My eyes saw the sky and the moon. As I slowly, slowly died. This is my letter of consciousness.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Welcome to the Broken Minds Podcast, a space for the brokenhearted to realize that they are actually broken and walking this journey out with Jesus Christ. If you wish to support this podcast, please share this episode with your friends and your family. And download the podcast on your favorite podcasting platforms. Also, support us monetarily using the links down below. Lastly, get plugged into our local community here in the DMV, Broken Creatives, a place where we network, connect, and collaborate with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. Use the links down below to join the community today. My name is Mercy, and this is the Broken Minds Podcast. Enjoy!

SPEAKER_02 2:32

I wrote Damage My Love at a time where my heart was at war within itself. As a teenager dealing with grief, I never thought I'd make it past that season. So I poured my heart and my whole soul into my poetry. And I wrote many other poems just like this one. To be honest, I was too sheltered to smoke weed, do drugs, or drink my pain away. So my release was through poetry. And I could admit, my poetry is pretty grim. It is rather dark, painful, and thought-provoking. But this was the only way I had to cope with all that I was facing at the time. Damage my love is simply a conversation, an argument between me and my emotion of love. As a kid and even as a teen, I was so alone. That's how alone I was. The only way that I could reach out to anyone was to myself. So yes, my emotion of love became real to me. She was a person I created in my consciousness. And yes, we did speak. And yes, I did write poetry about her, and of all the ways she was destroying my life, but at the same time, I loved it. And that is exactly what this poem is about. Damage my love is me addressing to the world that I have finally found love. I have found love, but this love is killing me off slowly, and it's then it's venomous beyond toxic for me to endure. In this poem, my favorite part is Love has found me, but I never felt love. Am I dead? Please say yes. Please say I was killed and no one cared to bring flowers. Love has found a crime scene with no tape because I was not in worth the investigation. Love never found me. Because my emotions committed suicide in my mother's womb. My eyes saw the sky and the moon as I slowly, slowly died. These lines are so powerful because at the time of my life, I was dead. In essence, I was lifeless. My mental space was built into a prison cell, and I threw myself in that prison cell. I was absolute worthless. It was at a time in my life where tomorrow I didn't think about it. I didn't think about having another day. I had no aspirations in my life at all. It was at a time where truthfully I could say that I did not want to be alive. And not after what has happened. I wrote Damage My Love and many other poems like Damage My Love to cope with the grief of a family member passing away. And it wasn't just any old family member, it wasn't a distant cousin, it wasn't a distant uncle. It wasn't even somebody who wasn't my family, but we just called family. No, this person was special. This person was my only lifeline. My only reason to live. Why did the person so close to me have to leave so early in my life? This person was my mother. After that catalyst event happened, my brain exploded. There's no word in the English language to describe what happened to me. There's no there's the There's no description. And yes, maybe the psychiatrists and and all these people and the therapists, they have terms for this. Very much so. But as I'm even thinking about it right now, I cannot and this is not even on brand, on theme, like I could literally say my mind broke. There was no thought process that could that I could lean on and rely on. Because the only thought process that I had to lean on and rely on was my mother. Back then I I was in church. I was in church spaces, I was, you know, around church spaces, but I didn't fully give my life to Christ until I was 18. And that was four years after my mother passed away. So the space between the time that my mother passed away and the time that I gave my life to Christ. That limbo that we were talking about last episode, that space. I having this broken mind, and I didn't even know I had a broken mind. This is this is why I love this podcast. This is why I love doing this podcast, because it is for the purpose of helping people realize that they have a broken mind. Obviously, we are all broken. If you say you are not broken, you are lying because you are. You are broken. The journey comes when you realize it. That is an action step. Realize that you are broken, you are dealing with stress pains, you are dealing with all these things. It's to realize, realize saying that word, you can say it so quickly. Realize, realize, realize, realize, realize. You can say it very quickly, but the thing about it is that realize word is a lifetime journey. I am still realizing that I'm broken. There are things that I am still going through. I am still realizing that I am broken. That is the whole goal of Broken Minds Co. A Broken Minds podcast, is to realize that we are broken. So yeah, in that four-year span of time, I was in a limbo. I was in a l I my mind broke. And the way that I coped with all of this stuff is I wrote poetry. In the time of me writing poetry, I was dead. In essence, I was lifeless. My mental space was built into a prison cell, and I threw myself in that prison cell. So I want I want to explain a concept. And I'm gonna walk you through imagery, and I'm gonna try to paint a picture here as best as I can. I know a lot of people, their imagination is like vast, and I can I can say a few words and you guys can pick it up. But some people y'all need y'all y'all y'all need help, y'all need help. So I'm gonna walk you through this. So like I said, as a a a kid and a younger teen, in my mind, in my realm of consciousness, I I envisioned love, my emotion of love being a character in my life, a voice in my head. Something I talked to. I wrote poetry about. I wrote poetry too. To grasp this concept a little further, y'all know that movie Inside Out with all the emotions in the girl's head. That's probably the best way of picturing this. So you have my emotion of love, but there's also another figure in the story. Dealing with grief as a younger teen, I created an alter ego. Basically, somebody who I can hide behind, somebody who was strong when I was weak, somebody who was bold when I was skimpy, somebody who was the strongest person in the room. So when I was dealing with this grief and I my mind broke, I didn't have to deal with it. Outwardly presenting, publicly presenting, I can put this mask on myself and I can be like, hey Joey, go take this one for me. Be strong for me. And yeah, Joey originally was not my nickname. Originally, Joey was an alter ego that I created in my brain to cope with all the insecurities I was going through at that time. Now, after coming to Jesus and finding that freedom through Jesus Christ and all that stuff, I can now say Joey is just and strictly a nickname. Like today, you call me Joey, it's Joey. It's just a nickname, means nothing more to me. But at one point of my life, I separated the weak version of me for somebody who was a bit stronger. I said, Joe, Joseph, even you're too weak for this. You're a crybaby. You're not handling this grief well. Go take a step back. And Joey is gonna come in and he's gonna be bold. So I want you to picture this. Imagine a figure much like the Grim Reaper. And this figure is standing in a dark abyss that's filled with a haze like smoke. In this abyss, picture a spotlight shining down on a jail cell. And in that cell, picture that I am in that cell. That is the scene that I want to paint here. Now, if you do not have a strong imagination, then I can give you a clear image. I want you to search up on Google an album cover. This album cover is from an artist named NF. NF, right? Two letters, NF. And the album cover or the album is called Perception. If you go look at that album cover, you you you see what I'm trying to paint here, right? In the album cover, it's like a dark abyss, and there's like a jail cell, and there's like a shining light. That is the picture I'm trying to paint. But I want you to feel it. I want you to place yourself in the scene. I want you to say, Oh, there is darkness around me. And you are in this prison cell. It's cold, it's dark. You see this light shining from above, but you don't really know where it's coming from. And this haze is all around you. You just see it through the prison bars. It's just encompassing you. And this dark figure is outside the prison cell, and it's just walking around. It's very ominous, it's very big, it's tall, it's it's it's just and has keys. It's like it's not not like the keys that we have, you know, your your car key or your house key. No, it has these really old, ancient looking keys. Those long keys, you know those long keys. Those long, and he's dangling those keys along the prison bars. And you're here just in the fetal position. This is the scene that I want you to in in to envision. Back to the poem. So this is my favorite part. And it says, Love has found me, but I never felt love. Am I dead? Please say yes. Please say I was killed and no one cared to bring flowers. Love has found a crime scene with no tape because I was not worth the investigation. Love never found me because my emotions committed suicide in my mother's womb. My eyes saw the sky and the moon as I slowly, slowly died. So this is how I coped with my life. I created an alter ego. That alter ego, in a sense, killed me. And for many years, I lived through that alter ego. For example, I was so insecure back then. I was very insecure, I was very depressed back then. I when I say my mind broke, that like it's like that error for like that error sign when you get on like a website when the website doesn't work and it shows that error sign, it's that like I cannot conceptualize anything here. I can't think of anything. I can't I have no dreams, no wishes, no wants, no anything. I have no aspirations, nothing. I don't even want to like be here anymore. That's how deep and dark it was. And the way that I would utilize this alter ego to make me look strong and tough and and and powerful and all this different type of stuff is that I would present myself online as strong and tough and powerful, and I would be critically disrespectful, I would be unruly. My brain was at mental decay, and it was all due to my inability to process grief. Now, here's the thing: my mother was terribly sick all of my life, so here's background on her. Throughout my entire life, my mother had a brain tumor, so she had epileptic seizures. I want you guys to envision this. You are four years old, not even four. Let's say this happened. Let's say seven years old to be safe. You are seven years old. You're going to your dentist appointment, right? You're going to your dentist appointment. A dentist checkup, whatever it is, root canal, whatever it is, whatever seven-year-olds do at the dentist. I don't know. Teeth getting bubbled, teeth getting cleaned, fluoride. I'm not in that wheelhouse. I brush my teeth, I use Listerine, and I praise God. But you're seven years old, you go to the dentist's office, you have a dentist appointment. You're going with your mom. Your mom's taking you, right? Context, your mom's on disability, so you had to take a taxi here. Right. You go to the dentist's office, you're waiting in the waiting room. And you know, you're seven years old, so you know the waiting room has some toys and you know, some things, and you know, you're you're playing on that carpet. You you you know the carpet that's in every doc uh doctor's office, every dentist's office. You know the carpet, you know, with with all the roads on it and all the cars on it. You know the carpet. That's from our childhood. So you're playing on that carpet. The dentist calls you. You don't hear the dentist call you. So your mom, you know, come on now, we gotta go. So you're walking into the dentist's office, you know. You sit down, they lay you down. The appointment is flawless. It's it's great. You get your lollipop, whatever they give you. I don't know why they give you a lollipop after you know you just Went to never mind. Anyway, and then every single time that you would finish these appointments, you would go out to eat. If you could eat. Or maybe you watch the sibling go to the dentist. And then you could eat, but they couldn't eat. So from the dentist, we're walking. And you go to your favorite favorite restaurant. You're ordering food. And all of a sudden, you look up, you look down, you look around, you look down again, and you wonder why everyone's screaming and rushing around and panicking. Why? Because your mother just fell to the ground. That was my life. See, when you have someone in your life who has a brain tumor, who has epileptic seizures, like from from from an outsider perspective, from an outside looking in, it's kind of like, oh, you know, you know, all these TV shows and music videos or all these um these films, they would put the warning sign up, hey, the da-da-da, flashing lights, you know, epilectic seizures, da-da-da-da. Like, and and that's kind of your extent of the conversation. That's that's kind of the most that you interact with that world, you know, you know, because they put the warning up there for those who it applies to, and it really doesn't apply to you, so you kind of watch that warning, and it's kind of like, okay, whatever, cool. You skip ahead, so you see the music video that you really want to see from your favorite artist, and and and you kind of notice the flashing lights. Oh, okay, this would this would be kind of triggering to somebody who has you know that. But I understand it, I don't have that, so I don't have to worry about that. But for someone who actually had to it happened so many times. I'm gonna be honest, it happened so many times in my in preface this that story was a real story. Like, I I was the person who went to the dentist's office, I was the person as a seven-year-old kid who went to the dentist's office who went to get food, and then boom. I promise you, like, every single person in that restaurant, instead of helping my mother, they all of them were on the phone with 911. Like, every single person was on the phone with 911. There were literally three ambulance trucks that came to that site, three of them. Three of them and something that is very powerful, and I I'm just remembering right now. I was going through I was going through my mother's old stuff, um, cleaning out a portion of our house. And I found I found a flash drive. I found a flash drive on a um what looks to be something that you can hook onto a necklace, right? It's like a keychain type thing, right? And engraved on the back of the flash drive was a quote. Like she had this flash drive custom made, right? And it and basically it was a flash drive that she would wear on her neck. So in the event that she had a seizure, um, someone can take that flash drive and get all of her medical all that stuff, right? All the logistical stuff that it would need to, you know, go through the process of you know, going to the hospital, going to the ambulance, whatever, whatever, whatever. And of course, she had all of her personal medical files on that flash drive, but on the back of the flash drive, and I really want to see if I can find this thing, it's somewhere in this house. But in the back of that flash drive, it said, and this is a direct quote from her. She had this custom made. It said, In 30 seconds, I will be okay. Give me 30 seconds, and I will be okay. In 30 seconds, I will be okay. That's what it the on the back of the flash drive said. And that was very true. In 30 seconds, she would be okay, and this is the reason why I told you this. In 30 seconds, she will be okay. And as a seven-year-old kid, I understood that. I understood that so much, and it happens so frequently that I kind of got desensitized to it. Whenever it would happen, I wouldn't be affected. I wouldn't be the one crying, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be panicking, I wouldn't be because I'd know that in 30 seconds she'll be okay. At some point, I'm over here confused, like, why are you guys panicking? Like, like, you know, she's gonna seize at the mouth for like, you know, five seconds. Like, no, no, she's gonna seize at the mouth for a good 15 seconds. I ain't gonna lie, I ain't gonna lie, it was a little longer than five. She would seize at the mouth for like 15 seconds, like she would be shaking, like, you know, she would she would be the stereotypical, you know, seizure attack for a good straight 15 seconds, like 15 seconds, like just seizing at the mouth, shaking, all that stuff for that whole thing 15 seconds. After 15 seconds, she would slowly wean off of that and start slowly regaining consciousness. So she would start like mumbling, like we would ask her questions, like da da da da. She would mumble things, and then that'd be like 20 in 20 seconds at 25 seconds. She would be able to move round, and then finally, after 30 seconds, she would be able to sit up, and then obviously it would take like you know, she would probably sit on because she would be on the ground, she would fall over, so she would sit on the ground there for maybe a good five minutes to regain her strength to stand up. Yeah, sure. But no, her attacks would only be 30 seconds long. And really, like the meat, the the core of the attack would only be like 15 seconds long, and then after 15 seconds, she would regain consciousness. But here's the thing: it happens so much and so repetitively that it would it would happen like okay, once in a blue moon. Right? Once in a blue moon it would happen. But then it would happen more frequently, like once every two months, you know, and twice a month, and you know, once every couple of weeks, and then twice a week, you know, and then you know, maybe twice a day, you know, three times a day. And it became a slow progression up until the moment she died. This is how she died. She wouldn't regain consciousness. She had a seizure. Actually, no, not even that. She had a seizure, and then in the house for like a couple of days, she was in and out of consciousness, and she wouldn't fully regain her consciousness, and then slowly she just faded into that limbo of just not regaining her consciousness, and then she just lost her consciousness. So, yeah, that is the life of a child who grew up with a family member who had epileptic seizures, and even that is traumatizing enough. When I tell y'all, in that time period of my life, paranoia, all-time high. You literally have no idea when it would happen. There's there's no calculations, there's no combine the moon with the stars and then and you know, put the the you know, take the sundial out and you know draw a line in the sand and then wait 30 minutes for the sun to to to cast a shadow and draw another line and and pinpoint the distance between the lines to the lines to tell the time of day. There's there's nothing. I'm I'm I'm I'm being honest. There's nothing. There's no calculations, there's nothing. And my mother loved to be outside she was the Christian way of outside. She was outside, she loved going shopping. Specifically, she loved going to the Owings Mills Mall. There used to be a mall in Owings Mills, yeah. That's not, and that's a very local thing that I just said, but yeah, we used to go to the Owings Mills Mall all the time, and we would be outside walking, walking on sidewalks where there's concrete, walking on in the mall, walking everywhere, and you never know. And there's been a couple instances where she has had a seizure and fell on concrete. There's been instances where she has had a seizure and fell off high chairs in restaurants, and actually, in that restaurant of the story that I just gave you, she fell off of a high chair onto the ground. I think the restaurant we were at was Panera Bread, if I'm remembering that correctly. But she fell off of a high chair onto the ground. Paranoia. As a kid, I was paranoid. And even to this day, I'm I wouldn't say that I'm fully, fully there in terms of paranoia because I've matured over the years. But no. In moments where it's tense, I still have that you know, that angst, that paranoia of what's gonna happen next. But I I will be honest with you guys. My brain was at a mental decay, and it was all due to my inability to process grief. I did not know how to process grief. This is this is the main thing I want to get to you guys in this episode, and I really had to like tell a bit of my story so I can like address this. Processing grief is major. If you do not know how to properly internalize and and process and and share and open and be vulnerable about grief, you will forever, you will forever be its victim. You will forever be its victim. I wanna say this. Me going through that moment and I was a teenager, I was fourteen, fourteen, maybe fifteen, I don't know. I was fourteen. I truly have never processed grief like that in my life. I was ignorant about death. Because never in my life has anyone that close to me died. And yes, of course, you know, as a kid, I would, you know, go to funerals because people who were related and who are friends with my parents, you know, they would pass away. It's the circle of life. So, you know, I'm sure I've been to funerals in this time of my life before. I'm I'm sure that has happened before. But maybe in maybe I just thought in my mind that I just I was just going to church services. I don't know. I've never had a moment up until December 14th, 2016, that I went to a funeral and it hit me. It hit me that this is what death looks like. And from that time that my mother passed up until age eighteen, I gave my life to Christ when I was eighteen years old. That limbo period, that four-year span of life, I was in limbo. I was in the space in between. The never-ending spiral, the black hole of life, processing grief. Within those four years, I did attempt my life four times. One time per year, and I want to tell you, if you are processing grief right now, or if you know someone who is processing grief right now, I want to encourage you. It is hard. Does that sound very encouraging? No, but it's hard for a reason. That's the encouraging part. It's hard for a reason, it's difficult for a reason. There is a reason why processing grief is difficult, it is not pretty, it is not easy. Everyone goes through it differently. It is not a one-size-fits-all encouragement message here. It is everyone goes through this differently. How people express it, it's differently. How people feel it, it's differently. People might express it through anger. So when people are very angry at you and you know that they're processing grief, don't take that anger personally. The way that they are expressing grief right now is anger. It's anger. That is actually how I expressed my grief for a moment. When my mother passed, I don't know. Something shifted in me. I couldn't find a better way to explain it, other than God, you just murdered my mother. On one of these episodes. There's only about there's only six of these episodes, so if you go through all six of the episodes, you'll find the one that I'm talking about. But that recording, I recorded it. I recorded that poem, and the poem was called a l um a poem of my insanity. Right? A poem of my insanity. And I was basically talking about the pure essence of my suicidal nature. Of what I felt, what I was going through and dealing with. And at the end of that poem, I called God a murderer. I said you twisted murderer. How could you watch her die like that? Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is not what you expect. The fantasy land you imagine, the golden medal at the end of the race, the cheers and smiles from family members, and even the odd smell of birds and hot dogs eating the drill. Oh, it's a beautiful summer's day. Wake up in that dusty but great. God is good all the time. That's what they always used to say. Baby, did I reach the I can eat my pick up? We have to take that eat that's what I am. I'll spit up my words, like my heart. I'm hitting the god. I'm hanging around the street, like Christmas order, my soul. It's a hated mystery. Oh mystery. The hell that heart. I think it's hard in my lead. This is the hell that round me like a ball that we try to fall at the truck, like heartbreak, I might start by the white training. I think I was my feet. I've been unheading animal side, but absolutely my life force me. I freaked out I had absolutely no dark life. I was served my own inner darkness. You couldn't find it without the wicked art looking around my soul. I was out of my head with my heart in a live architect. I came to this reality. I was the devil's sleep.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

I would think it just by I need to get a lot of things. That is good all the time. That's what they always used to say.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

And this is why. So I didn't know much about. Let me put it this way. I did not have a relationship with God. So I only knew faith within a religious point of view. You know, this is our repetitive act of religiosity. And here's how I thought about it. I thought about it in the way where it's like, okay, we go to church, we do this, we go to church, we do this, we say these prayers, we go to church, we do these, we say these prayers, we give our offerings, we go to church, we do this. It was very much religiously done. I play drums, I serve, I do, I do all these different types of stuff. I just went on with life as life presented itself. I didn't really care to go any deeper than what I was doing religiously. So obviously, when something like this happens, you know, a close member of uh, you know, dies and passes away. Now it's like, okay, Lord, you know, I snap my fingers now, you know, all the the prayers that we were talking about in in church, and okay, now it's time to activate, you know. Okay, Lord, when when are you gonna activate? Okay, Lord, when are you gonna activate? Okay, Lord, when is going what's happening? Okay, Lord, what the crap? Okay, Lord, how um okay Lord. That's what I was feeling. And and I vividly remember praying out loud in front of my bed in my room. I was pacing around in my room. Within that time, I would sit on my bed, I would get up, I would pace around, sit on my bed, get up, pace around. And I vividly remember remember me saying, She shall live and she shall not die. She shall live and she shall not die. She shall live and she shall not die. Like that's what I vividly remember me saying over and over and over again. I would confess these words. And then she died. I was angry. I was angry at God for not saving her. Not only for not saving her, but I was angry at God for taking her from me. I was angry at God for taking her from me. So much so that I interpreted that as Lord, you killed her. Actually, it not even Lord, because Lord would be me submitting myself under God. God, you killed her. I didn't submit myself under under God to call him Lord until I was 18 years old. So God, you killed her. You murdered her. You know how many people were praying for my mother? For context, my father is a minister helping churches all around Maryland, and honestly the DMV, launch like a slew of probably 15 churches around Maryland, all at the same time, hundreds of people around the state praying for my mother. Hundreds of people, even connections around the world praying. So in my mind, God, you you killed her. You have thousand not thousands, yeah. You have hundreds of people knocking on your door about this, and you ignore my prayer, you ignore all these people's prayers. You killed her. There's no there's no other explanation. You murdered her. You ignored all of us. That's that's what I thought in my brain. I had to process that. There's a line in my favorite part of this poem, Damage My Love, that I I don't fully understand yet. I don't fully remember what was my thought process writing this, but I think I can give an a pretty accurate interpretation of it. The line is Because my emotions committed suicide in my mother's womb, my eyes saw the sky and the moon as I slowly, slowly died. The best way I can interpret this, it being seven years later, from me writing this poem. The best way I can interpret this is saying this. The moment my mother died was the moment I died. That was the moment I was alone. That was the moment where in my consciousness I created the alter ego Joey. And that was the moment that Joey committed suicide. Or that was the moment that Joey not only committed suicide as an alter ego and say life is useless, but Joey, my alter ego, attempted me to actually physically do it. Joey did it psychologically. Joey didn't care. Joey committed suicide psychologically. But it was that alternative ego that was tempting me physically in the physical realm. And that is what I warred with for four years. From the time that my mother passed away, November twenty-fifth, twenty sixteen, to the time we had the funeral, December fourteenth, twenty sixteen, to the time I gave my life to Christ. I warred with myself. When my mother died, that was the moment I threw myself in that prison cell and I threw away the key. In a sense, I locked myself within myself. And this is this is why I name this episode Letters of Consciousness. I want to start a new series. And honestly, a new adventure called Letters of Consciousness. To do a little reflecting. What is something that you would either say to your past self, your present self, or your future self? What is that letter of conscience? What is something that is beaming up in your consciousness right now? Like what is something that you're thinking about? What is something that you often think about? What is what is a returning thought that you often have about yourself? I believe if I had a time machine and if I could time travel to my past self, I would tell him to stop embodying another personality to cope with the pains of life. I'd tell him to forgive himself for not being present enough for his mother, even though he was as present as possible, but probably not to the level that he wanted it to be. So I collected all of the poems that I've written, poems that were fresh, written fresh after my mother passed away, so I can deal with the immediate grief, the immediate wave of sadness and depression. But also poems that I wrote later on. I collected all of those poems in the year of 2019, and I went on a website called WhatPad. And this website, it's kind of like it's a place where people can freely post their literary work, whether it be fan fiction, whether it be short stories, whether it be poetry, all this different type of stuff. So I posted this on that website, Oceans of Emotions, and funny enough, all of those poems, my account, it's it's still up. So I'm actually gonna link it down below in the description. So if you want to look at all of my original poems, like these poems are the very same pieces of literary work that have launched everything creative about me. Yes, the Lord Jesus Christ has fashioned me, informed me, and put in me my creativity, and he is the one who's pushing this and giving me the vision for it. Though we all start somewhere, and this collection of poems, oceans of emotions, is where all of this starts. It is the catalyst of me doing anything creative for any purpose, it is the catalyst. So if you want to read all of my original poems, I will say off the bat, trigger warning, trigger warning off the bat. But you can click down below in the description and read that. But I wrote this collection of poems, and it was a way for me to deal with my grief. So I want to pass this off to you. Yes, I am starting something new. I want to call it letters of consciousness. I wanna call this letters of consciousness. In every single episode of this podcast, in the intro of the podcast, I will have a letter of consciousness, whether it be from me, whether if you are even bold enough to send a submission to the podcast, and and share your letter of consciousness, whatever's on your heart, whether it be a song, a poem, just a word of encouragement. If you want to share a letter of consciousness, I'm gonna challenge you. I'm gonna challenge you to do this. What is your letter of consciousness? What would you say to your past self, to either your past, present, or future self? And honestly, if you are interested in engaging in this conversation with me, please, please record a voice message. Go on your phone. Both Android and Apple has a voice recorder, there's no excuses here, and most of you guys are artists anyway, so go to the studio. For those who are non-artists, go to your phone, get your voice recorder. For those of you who are artists, go to the studio, you know, set set some mood lights, you know. I'm saying, like get the vibe going. And I want you to record a letter of consciousness. What is on your brain right now? What are you thinking about? And I want you to send that to my email. My email is well, the company email is brokenmindsco at gmail.com. Again, brokenmindsco at gmail.com. And I would love to share your thoughts and your literary work and your song or whatever you want to present. I'd love to share that on the podcast. But I'm gonna wrap this podcast episode up by telling you the way I coped with my grief is I basically locked myself away. I locked myself away within myself. And this is why I want to call it letter of consciousness. L-O-K. Now, why Joey is it called L-O-K and not L-O-C-K? There's a very specific reason for that. L-O-K means something different for me. In my past, my brother, who's in the military, he created this group called LOK. And it was it stood for loyalty over clout. And instead of using the C to represent clout, he would use K. And the meaning for that I never got around to asking him or whatever. But all I know is that we would have this like online group called L O K. Like, he's a part of L O K. He's a part, she's a part of L O K. Oh, you have L O K in your Instagram bio. Oh, you have L O K. We would have this group called L O K. Loyalty over clout. A group that we're loyal over chasing a bag, over we're loyal over or chasing money, over chasing fame, fortune, social media, we're we're we're loyal to each other. So in essence, that's what Lok means to me. So bringing this back letters of consciousness. What is your letter what is my letter of consciousness? I want you to think about this. And I want you to challenge. I want it I want you to be challenged in this area. I want you to record something and send it to the email. I know I know things in this area, this topic is is very vulnerable, and I get that. Understand. Maybe your letter of consciousness is something that you don't really want to share. And hey, you can you can tell me. If you look down in the description of this podcast episode, I am linked in the description. You can click on my name, and it'll pull up my profile, and my phone number is literally right there. So if you want to text me your letter of consciousness and say, hey, well, of course, text me your name and that you are from the podcast. Don't just text me. But if you want to text me and say, hey, I don't feel comfortable sharing this on the podcast, but I'd love to share with you my letter of consciousness. I want you to do that. Share it with me. What is your letter of consciousness? So coming to the end of this episode, if you want to get further connected with everything going on, again, go in my bio or go in the my bio, that's crazy. Go in the description of this episode and view the links. There's so much stuff going on, hey. First of all, donate to the podcast, consider giving to the podcast to expand this mission, to expand this vision. This is way broader than a podcast, it is something larger than it. And let me explain. So this is a Christian production company. Broken Minds Co. is a Christian production company. We have a goal, an aspiration to launch podcasts, to launch media for one specific aim. To provide a space for the brokenhearted to realize that they are actually broken and walking this journey out with Jesus Christ. This is the mission, this is the vision, and the two we have two podcasts under us. Uncut Demeanor, hosted by Stephen Long, and On One Accord, hosted by Jewel Smith. Both these podcasts will be in the description below. So check that out. Support them also. Go listen to their podcasts. Go support go leave a review on all of these podcasts. Like share it with your friends. Share this one with your friends. Share this with your family. Support them also. Donate to their visions, donate to their mission. You are helping me help them. Help you help everyone. This has been a mission that God has given me. And for so long I've been ignoring this. I've been putting it aside. But now this is something I truly need to focus on. So yeah. All further information, you know where it's at. But for now, my name's Joey the Creative. I love you guys, and I'll see y'all in the next episode.