“What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life”
-Morpheus
It is truly amazing how much can change in what seems like such a relatively short period of time.
One of my closest friends remarked not long ago how happy she is to have known me over the past several years and see the kind of person I’ve become. I myself hardly recognize the person I once was. I went from being a conservative christian young man back (who was also very depressed for reasons at the time unknown) in let’s say 2016, to a socialist trans woman who lights a candle to Hecate every full moon in 2022. Pretty fitting that The Matrix: Resurrections also came out in 2022 as a convenient allegory for a very similar story in my own life.
The Matrix
In retrospect, it seems very fitting that the main protagonist of the Matrix saga shares the same deadname as me. Born into the Matrix, Mr. Anderson was brought up and programmed to be another cog in the machine of the world around in him. Conveniently conforming to societal norms and hierarchies. Despite his apparent success and integration into the world around him, he was never satisfied. Always he believed there was something more, that he was something more, and felt trapped like an animal in a maze. Just because some people can comfortably live their entire lives with the programming they were given doesn’t mean everyone can. The Matrix may have been cleverly crafted, but ultimately it could not hold back Neo’s pain and discomfort nor could it stop him from one day following the white rabbit.
My Matrix was a christian environment that told I was just a wretched sinner at the hands of an angry god. That I needed to do as god told me, follow ten simple rules, and put my belief in him above all else. That I needed to be a good little lamb unlike the evil wolves of the world around me who would one day burn in an eternal lake of fire and sulfur, and I needed to “save” as many strangers as possible before god brought divine apocalyptic judgement on the world.
Seriously, who the fuck thinks that’s okay to indoctrinate children with?
I was pretty damn good at fitting in, at following what I’d been programmed to do since birth. I was a good home-schooled little creationist boy, went to church on Sundays and faithfully tithed at each service, never swore, and remembered my bible verses. When I was of age I was accepted as a member into both churches my family attended over the years, pledging my faith, and I volunteered my talents to help spread the “good word”.
But yet, something always felt wrong.
Death
It started a bit in middle school and grew so much worse in high school. The depression, the pain, the emptiness clawing a black hole in my chest and leaving me to bleed out from my soul over and over again each day. The depression, and the nightmares, became more and more frequent.
I did the only thing I could think of to do: pray. I prayed that god would take away the darkness inside that felt like a pitch-black monster, all the “temptations”, all the incongruities between my physical body and how I knew it was supposed to be. I prayed that the strange gifts I’d had since as far back as I could remember would either somehow make sense in the realm of christianity or go away entirely. My prayers went unanswered.
As time went on, my depression worsened and I started to lose the will to keep going. Eventually, I lost the will to conform any longer, to stay a part of the Matrix. I gave up and stopped fighting, instead of trying to drive out the darkness inside I made peace with it. I accepted that what I knew about myself in my heart was true no matter what my faith or my upbringing, my programming, said it should be. Even though it was that day that my old self began to die, from that moment on I started to feel alive again. Just like Thomas Anderson effectively died the moment he took the red pill, so the old me died when I accepted the “darkness” within.
Resurrection
Just like it was initially hard for Neo to go from his life in the Matrix to life in the real world, it was difficult for me to transition both out of my prior environment and into the person I truly was. I went from a world that, while uncomfortable to live in, I was still very used to because of convenience and time to a world where many people who once claimed to love me unconditionally changed to love me very conditionally. A world where I had to become so much stronger than I already was just to survive. Transitioning sometimes really does feel like learning to walk again; your eyes hurt because you’ve never actually used them before.
No matter how hard you rip yourself out of the Matrix, it will still do all it can to pull you back in. Unfortunately, many people who are freed from it, whether to help save others or defend themselves, still have to plug back in and interact with it. When you jack back in to the simulation, there is always an Agent, an Architect, or an Analyst who tries to lull you back, playing the “long game” of trying to convince you that life in the real world isn’t worth it and you’ll be safe and secure if you give up resisting and go back to the certainty of their rules and control. Even though in reality if you go back then you truly die, because you’ll never be allowed to truly live again; take the blue pill and your story ends.
Epilogue
Sometimes the future looks bleak and uncertain, armies of people with minds as dull and insular as a robot try to hound you and drag you back to their rules and control. People who profess love and security but only want your power to drive their own designs while giving you hollow constructs and empty lives in return to keep you complacent.
But there is always hope. The Agents of the world don’t have the power they’d like you to believe they do. They can’t stop you from finding a new family that truly loves you unconditionally. They can’t stop you from feeling joy each morning when you wake up, look in the mirror, and see that your body looks more on the outside like it feels on the inside than it did yesterday. They can only take that joy and freedom away from you if you let them. Always take the red pill.
My name, is Amity.
“I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… you’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.”
-Neo
Thank you for loving who you are Amity. You have so much to offer and know that you are loved deeply ! Sending healing love and light always 💖🙏🏻