Lost and Found (The Accihte Project)

Several times in the last week I have heard people say the world is so different now, after Covid. That word in and of itself has become synonymous with massive confusion, for me. And I agree. Nothing is the same and never shall be again. When the pandemic came to Canada, it's like it brought with it a curse upon my entire life, moving across everything like a shadow of death. And in many ways, that's what it represented for me. It was a shadow of death and I passed through it, felt the bitter coldness of loss, upheaval, death and grief. My marriage died and along with it came a hell of a lot of negative things, but I somehow managed to survive it all, like some sort of gauntlet, testing my inner strength, pushing me beyond any limits I have previously known. It was a painful transition to go from one life to the next, but it was a means to an end. Survival. 

My creativity, as it has always done, remained a close companion to me and while I released myself from anything but the essentials, it took me a very long time to recover a sense of stability. I've always been looking for clues as to where I belong in this world. After studying sociology in university years ago, I learned with much resignation that the caste of society from which I come is considered to be the most disadvantaged in the grand scheme of first-world nations. In essence, the following complaint is a first-world complaint. So, given the state of the world as we know it (the genocide in Gaza, for example) I am still fortunate beyond measure, this much I know, but I still have moments where I feel this particular disadvantage bear down on me with the weight of a mountain. The disadvantage is growing up in a single-parent household. Being fatherless. This puts me in a sect of people who will not enjoy nor reap the benefits of having a father, let alone a Dad. I used to feel this as painfully as a burn on my skin when I was a school-aged child. I became afraid to tell my peers my father died, then it became the mantra which I repeated again and again at all special events where a father might come in handy. It became my story, year after year, until it sank deep into my bones and caused me to swim through seas of grief, day in and day out. 

The problem was my heart is the type that desires to achieve things. I am very goal-oriented, but I have always been without proper direction. I took my cue from my mother over the years, which proved to be a grave mistake, I have learned. She and I do not approach life the same way, She tends to look for the path of least resistance in all things, but I am different. I believe in hard work, dedication, showing up. Her methods do not jive with this kind of mentality but I practiced life the way I was raised to do, by the woman who raised me. There were gaps in my education, to put it mildly. Those gaps should have been filled by a father-figure, in a perfect world. I am not sure if you noticed this or not, but this world is far from perfect. We can only play the hand we are dealt. 

Since I walked away from a marriage that was proving to be a detriment to my well-being, I did that thing I always do and put myself dead last on my list of priorities until these last six or seven months. I justified my life choices by using all my extra energy and resources to win the approval of others and the reason why is because the alternative seemed too much to bear at the time. The alternative was facing my solitude. Admitting I am alone and there is no one out there who is going to save me. In time, I think everyone has to face that particular demon, but I delayed it as much as I could by enslaving myself to the needs of my mother and her partner. In the end, this was as much of a mistake as the last five or six years of my marriage. I realized I waste a lot of time hiding from certain realities and if I change one thing about myself henceforth, it will be that one particular thing. I don't want to be considered selfish, but I also know that if I don't start putting myself first, I will never have anyone else to blame but me. Living in my new place is like a fresh start for me. I get a lot of really good rest. The more I rest and reset my mind and my body, the more I realize how unwell I have been. How deranged. How exhausted. I see the little girl in me carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. I seek to remove that weight for her, even if I have to travel back in time to do so. 

So, as you may have noticed, I changed the name of this blog from Jo-Everlasting to The Accihte Project. The reason for this is because my project has grown to rather epic proportions if I consider every component. These components consist of memories of these last 47 years, steeped in many many difficult days, as well as all the artwork I have created over the last 20 years, and of course the soundscape component which fell under the banner of The Accihte Music Project. When I first set out to find where I belong in this world, I started by filming videos of myself talking while working in my art studio. I barely dared to speak out loud back then, having a very hard time finding my voice. But, I just kept talking. I talked and talked and talked and talked until I dug myself out of the metaphorical hole I was in, or perhaps grave is the better word. I know prior to making the discoveries regarding my family and our heritage these last few years, I felt like I was dying, like my spirit was drifting away. As much as I hide all the things I feel, I must have hid how desperate I was feeling from everyone because as soon as I slipped and fell into a state of mental illness, I lost all respect and love from everyone I know. This whole cellphone hacking incident has not made it any easier, let me tell you that much. It's like my entire life exploded and has now become something I do not recognize. I receive communications from an account on WhatsApp claiming to be Tom Morello, as recently as the last 24 hours, telling me they want me to die (want to see the screenshot?). This is on top of the many many texts I have received where I am being verbally assaulted over and over again and the ones behind it know exactly who they are and why they are behaving in such petty ways (sour grapes?). It's so absurd and I detest this so much because all this nonsense stems from misunderstanding regarding the state of someone's mental health let alone the long series of events that fell into place to cause me to be here, writing this. I have also sent off my vitriolic texts in response that are more awful than you would even believe, but my motives always stemmed from a certain premise: I knew something was very wrong with me when the pandemic arrived. I was sinking. I was drowning. There was nothing left within me to tether me to the earth and I started to drift inside my soul. In hindsight I see I received the gift of inspiration to dive into a creative endeavour with total abandon. This is something true artists desire and need to experience at least once in their lives, so I am grateful. But, the collateral damage has been intense and severe. I don't think this person who is telling me they want me to die realized I was not in any condition to be expected to deal with someone not only invading my privacy but expecting me to leave my entire life behind in order to fulfill their fantasy and expectations. Such a thing never ever entered my mind and in terms of manifestations, I consider myself to be a powerful creator but to this very moment I am not totally sure what I did wrong to end up in a situation where I am fighting over the internet with a bunch of people who have never spent five minutes with me in real life. I am confused by that. But I move forward in my project, nevertheless. I guess the price for the entirety of my project may end up being my life. So be it. I said I was committed to this completely and I meant it. It has already cost my most of my belongings, my marriage, my relationship with my friends and family and so on. But it has given me exactly what I asked for, which is the answer to the following questions; who am I and where do I belong? It turns out, I belong with my grandfather and hopefully that doesn't mean I am going to die, but if I do, I can rest assured that there are those who love me a great deal on the other side, including that father of mine, Michael Fraser Doughty. I think they will be happy to see me when the times comes

I may be the fool, the idiot, and whatever else you Swiss folks deem me to be, but I could not abandon myself and I did not abandon myself. I don't really care what I said to you when I was sick. I was sick and cannot be held responsible since it was the phone hacking situation which nearly pushed me over the edge, as it would anyone if they went through what I went through. That was a very wrong and unjust thing to do to me and that is a fact. As a result, compiled with everything else I was going through, it is obvious to me that I was very sick and had every reason to be defensive. Standing in the coldness of circumstance, being inert in the development within my own life gives me every reason to acknowledge my own breakdown. I look back and wonder how I managed to hold on for as long as I did. 

But all of that is behind me now. I am better now and feeling better every day. Rest is a vital component to the healing process and I've been getting lots of rest, peace, and quiet. 

It is this project that has provided the lifeline I have needed to find my way out of my own darkness. Though it feels like more of a dream than a reality, I know my grandfather reached out to me from somewhere outside the realms of this physical planet and I know I tapped into the spirit realm in a profound way. I know I figured out my gifts and my strengths. I figured out who I am and where I fit in, in this world. 

I have been uncertain about how to tell this next phase of my story but I am merging back into the vein of visual representation and I feel I can tell this story even more thoroughly through a series of paintings, which are in the works. I was encouraged, for lack of a better word, as I researched the Residential Schools in New Brunswick, Canada (where I am from) and was relieved to see there were children amongst the obviously Indigenous children, who resembled me and my family members, which only serves to solidify my suspicions; I am fairly certain my grandfather kept his identity as a man of possibly Maliseet descent a secret in order to save his children from the risk of being taken away and sent off to a Residential School. Let me clarify; I am not relieved these children appeared in these photos let alone the hundreds upon hundreds of dark-haired Native children, but it does provide another layer of proof to this story. They look like me. 

I felt lost because, in many ways, I am lost–and so is my entire family, but I am just not sure they realize that. The Accihte Project is a story of a lost tribe and I am a member of that tribe. I once was lost, but now I am found... 

And, as I found my way back home, it seems I lead an entire sea of children home too. That is the story I tell. And every passing day, I tell it with more and more certainty. 

The image I am sharing in this post is a watercolour portrait of a boy who appeared in one of the many photos of the children from the provincial Residential Schools. He stood out to me because he resembles my nephew. I can see elements of my family within his features and these things provide me with more and more clues that tie us to this region in a very mysterious way. The child in the painting is lost and seeking their way home. 

Post Script: 

By the way, to my kids: if you are reading this. If you were told I abandoned my step-father in his greatest hour of need, you need to know that is a lie designed to cover up a lot of other lies. I would like everyone in my family to stop and consider the ways in which a man who is at the head of the family can ruin a family with lies.