On romancing death

Heads up, this post turned into straight channeling from my soul. I’ve been writing in my ego the past few days because I’ve been hyperfixated on survival, which is my ego’s specialty. Thanks for helping me to survive, ego. This post gets a lot deeper though, and there is open discussion of death and brief mention of suicidality.

I did the right thing today, and I know this because I felt sick afterward.

I launched MOXIE CAFE.

The second I hit ‘Post’ on my first promo video to my 800-odd followers on TikTok, I felt sick. Irritable. Distracted. A sinking pit in my stomach.

It was so. damn. triggering.

It was triggering because for me, success is more triggering than failure.

And opening applications was a huge step.

Now I need to figure out how I’m going to promote this service to a following who’s mostly heard about my 5 songs on streaming services, my journey through becoming homeless a week ago, and whatever random thoughts and rants have bubbled up through my “I’m going to write and post every day no matter what” process.

It begs the question for me and I assume for others, “why would anyone sign up for this?”

I’m not doubting the value of what I have to offer. As a creative myself, the idea of weekly creative coworking sessions has an inherently high base appeal to it. As a creative, I would pay someone else for this service.

It’s more so a question of… well… vibes. If I were a creative looking for a small virtual cafe to join, I would want to join a collective that I resonated with personally.

As a disabled trans woman, I know I want to serve people who experience marginalization. That much is clear.

But it’s deeper than that.

For me, this reaches into the why of creation. I want to serve people who share a similar why.

I suppose the best way to start finding those people is to share my own why. And my why for creating is inextricable from my why for life itself.

Sharing my why feels more vulnerable than (I imagine) getting naked on the internet. It’s easier to bare my body than it is to bare my soul.

Like most of the rest of me, my why is unorthodox.

See, for most of my adult life, I have had a closer relationship with death than I have had with life. This has shaped my why more than anything else.

In many ways, I feel I have lost more than I have gained so far in this life. Loss is a form of death. Or, it often causes internal death.

Becoming disabled was a form of loss, and therefore death.

Deconstructing religion was a form of death.

I lost my family when I came out as trans. Death.

Gender transition was also a form of death. “He” wanted to die, so I let him.

In 2024, I lost my job, car, and house. Death.

I’m not saying these things to complain anymore. I used to. And I mean, like 2 days ago used to. I might again. I am beautifully contradictory, spontaneous, and untamable like that.

But I’ve become rather fond of death. I do believe in reincarnation to a degree, and I have died many, many times after many, many lifetimes. I am cosmically old, and my soul is in a sunset phase. I will stop reincarnating soon, when I am finally ready. Maybe a few more lifetimes, we’ll see. But this one feels more like a penultimate visit to my favorite places and my favorite people. On a soul level, I am here because being here (on Earth) is my heart’s pleasure. This isn’t really a business trip. Yes, there is the usual humaning to be done, but that’s nothing new. After all, I am a deeply human soul, and Earth is the place I have called home since my birth as a soul.

All of this to say, whenever death comes for me, I’m always ready. As for this lifetime, I have been ready to die for awhile now. Enough pain will do that to a body. At least, it did for mine.

I’ve had my fair share of wanting to end it for myself, but there is much less enjoyment in a gift when we are so greedy to take it, so I’ve decided not to do the reaper’s job for them. My time will come and it will be amazing.

You know the French call orgasm “the little death”? By implication, that makes death the great orgasm.

This is genuinely how I view it.

So this has become a long ramble about death, and I’d like to finally connect it to my why for life.

My why is pleasure. It is not life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is not intertwined with any sort of “should”.

I do not work toward a free world because I believe the world should be free. I work toward a free world because it is pleasurable to do so.

I do not create because I am obligated to or to fix a brokenness or solve a problem. I create because it is pleasurable to do so.

And I hope my discussion on death has provided context for this already, but pleasure and happiness are not the same to me.

Death can be a very unhappy experience. I am not a masochist — pain does not make me happy, nor does it make me orgasm.

And yet the deepest pain and the darkest deaths I have lived through have brought me to ever deepening experiences of pleasure.

I am not making this up. I mean physical pleasure, emotional pleasure, mental pleasure, spiritual pleasure, and yes, sexual pleasure.

Do you notice how I said I lived through death?

When we die, we don’t die. We are not the flowers growing in the garden. We are the garden itself from which flowers grow, blossom, wither, and die in season.

Shedding the fear of death makes it much easier to see how pleasurable dying can be. In fact, that shedding is the pleasure itself. ;)

This is my why. I am deeply pleasured by the dance of life and death.

I don’t expect most people to understand this, but those who do are the ones I know I’ll have the pleasure of working with someday.