A painful insight about epigenetics

and then a soothing walk (with pictures)

This morning I woke up very grumpy.

I tried to go to sleep a while longer and that helped a headache that was forming go away. But I woke up again and was still in a mood.

When I sat down at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, to do my morning pages, they kind of just wrote themselves, and by the end of them, I was crying. It connects to my entry yesterday—to the self-loathing that comes up within me when I don’t meet the expectations I set for myself.

I was surprised by the direction things took:

Oh, how the mind wishes to rebel this morning! Yesterday, my intention was to write my [substack] post in the morning. But instead I found myself distracted; even my pages yesterday were a smattering of distracted, weird swirls of thought.
This morning I am craving poetry.
This morning I am craving to read books of poems.
Maybe I’ll go back to that poetry book I was working on by Mary Oliver. [a book on writing poetry]
I crave to scald my mouth: punishment. Punishment for what? For being bad; for being worthless; for being so fucking predictable in patterns of failure.
If we can agree that a lot of whatever this rebellion inside of me is is my limbic system still doing its very best to throw a wrench into my intentions here; if we can agree that this anger is both pent up from the past and simply an agent of rebellion against positive change; if we can agree that all of this, all of these terrible, large, looming feelings are a product of a brain simply trying its very best to keep a pattern running—a pattern of failure and a pattern of worry and a pattern of self-loathing connected to generations of self loathing, then what does that mean about me, or today, or my goals, or this life?
1. It means that, as I remain conscious of what is happening, this too shall pass.
2. It means I am still doing a very fine job of disrupting the system here, of shifting the distribution pattern of my creative output.
3. It means that there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of self-loathing energy still in my system—amounts that don’t entirely make sense in the context of my actual past, or life. I feel confident that part of what I am contending w/ here is the epigenetic legacy of Dad and Grandpa Weed. This is not all mine. These are patterns of self-loathing I was born into, that have been transmitted to me. It’s like I can hear Great-Grandpa Harold’s words of scorn in my own ears: “Wendell, you’re a lazy piece of shit…” I am the byproduct of that abuse, of that legacy of father/son enmity, of chastisement for simply being oneself, and of father/son relational fracture.
Dad did a very good job of trying his best to heal some of this inter-generational wounding. However, I don’t think he and I have escaped this legacy entirely.
There is a profundity to what I am saying right now. I can feel these words soothing something inside of me as I write down these thoughts. This feeling of self-loathing, of being a piece of garbage, has multi-generational roots. It is not my story exactly. There is healing happening on my entire family line as I diligently and lovingly attempt to heal this in myself. I just started crying as I wrote those words. Wounds, longstanding and unnecessary, are being healed through these feeble efforts. Harold, Wendell, Dad, Dave [uncle on the other side of my family who took his own life]—I love you all.

It all felt very big as I took princess on a walk. And then nature soothed me. Here are some photos from my morning walk. Isn’t Tacoma so beautiful in the Spring? (I truly love it here so much.)

This is the Sequoia I commune with every morning as I feel my roots extend into the Earth (I am an actual gd hippy it’s fine)

Here’s the path I walk sometimes.

Here are some dandelions, one of Carlos’s favorite flowers. (They always remind me of him <3)

Here is some moss. I always try to touch moss when I pass it at least once on a walk. It has such a vibrant, visceral energy! Very few things feel so electric to my system as moss. (Again: goddam hippy!)

Flowers are pretty.

Princess Peach Mayorga-Weed the Third, in all her walking glory.

By the time I was done with my walk, I had lost my connection to the expansive feeling of insight I’d been sensing into in the pages above. But that’s all right. Healing comes just as much from feeling pain and having insight as it comes from self-soothing after the storm. And the important insights haven’t gone anywhere.

Finally, a few things have occurred to me today that feel like a “response” to my concerns of yesterday.

First, I am connected to this thingamabob that takes me genetic code and and compares it with current research about genetic traits. This was today’s:

So like many neurodivergent folks, I’m actually genetically predisposed to be more productive in the evenings than in the mornings. Like this result is based off my actual genetic code.

So why the hell am I getting myself all bent out of shape when my body is doing exactly what it feels best doing by waiting until the evening to post?

Also, It finally dawned on me that Carlos literally doesn’t get home from work any day before 9:15. I’ve been so set on doing this in the morning so that I’m done by the time he gets home. He’s spent WAY too many nights sitting at the TV with RuPaul ready to go, waiting for my Substacking ass to finish up.

But WHAT IF—now hear me out—WHAT IF instead of trying to get myself to do this in the mornings—which hasn’t been terribly successful because my fucking genes are like “Nope, bitch, not now—we are in our feelsies. Step off. Go be productive on your own time. And give me more coffee”—I instead plan to do it at a specific time in the evening, when I’m all alone anyway and when my body is predisposed to higher productivity, but before my beloved husband arrives home from work? Like say: 7:30pm?

Eureka!

All right kindreds, I better go Ru the day. Ru-minate. Skip to my Ru. Ru-ify.

May your evenings be merry and bright, and may you all find your genetically optimal productivity time and then orient yourself to it instead of kicking the shit out of yourself for not doing what you want to do at a different time than that genetically optimal time. Like me!

Much love,

Joshua