The map I never meant to draw

THE MAP I NEVER MEANT TO DRAW by Keith Neumann

Letting go of the past — it’s harsh. People say it like it’s a single action, a clean break, a moment where the heart suddenly grows tired of carrying the weight. But letting go is a process that doesn’t happen in the hands; and no, it’s not entirely all in the hips, it happens in the ribs. In the places no one sees. The Vibrations not many frequent, voluntarily especially.

Forgetting — no, not of heart or soul. It’s love, it’s a residue, from the energy another light expresses, one we incorporate into our very identity. I used to think forgetting meant abandoning something, meant completely throwing the imprint of it into a volcano, but most people just want to watch the world burn. Now I think it means understanding it so deeply, exponentially and almost a better comprehension of each others world, a paradox of the yours and mine, the parallel of universes that not all of us grip the reality of, forgetting the fantasy, releasing energy you have hijacked in order to associate what you think you know, and wiping the slate clean for the possibility of what we “could” know.

Forgetting that it no longer has to scream for your attention, beg me to take her breadcrumbs, that I must show my shine only when the darkness submerges my sanity, my inner calamity.

Remembering who I was before all this… who I was before it was hard to trust. Hard to see the difference between who hurt me and who I became because of it. As I am. My need to find the cause of it. Finally outgrew my patience I had for my own stagnation.

"Good things come to those who wait"

When laughter turns to… ah fuck, when you smile at chaos, but that isn’t you, that’s the little kid who’s, “smart for his age, who knows things they don’t teach, things they don’t know how to teach, like how to learn what you don’t know you need to know, unbeknownst to, that man in the mirror” — that feeling where the air swirls into different worlds and shapes the forever shifting dimensions of our perception, you know things won’t go back to what they were, before your rebellion to condition.

Memories come and go; some stay longer than others. The ones that dug deep, pretended they were slipping just to dig in their heels, scratching not the surface, but your idea of how a reaction holding on to a broken door, will twist the hinges on your inner vibrance, shatter the glass house you thought safety’s trust could never break, until it did.

You then wish you’d forget them, but they hang around like shadows cast by old streetlights. And yet, at last, there’s the happy one that lives forever. The one that reminds me that life hasn’t been all bruises and broken trust. That I’ve laughed, held people close, built moments that mattered.

Letting Go, never forgetting.

All I know about poetry is its honesty.

Maybe that’s why love scares me. It’s a mirror I can’t bullshit. It reflects the parts of that little kid, I still haven’t made peace with, and the ones I’m still trying to earn. So the pieces I lost that I never gave, con proceed to give me the peace I never received, from myself.

When you hear the kid, Don’t get rid of rules, don’t let them ridiculed, don’t be proud of your ignorance, and listen in.

When you and I make memories — that’s a legacy built, etched into centuries, from a seed to a tree. The realest blessing, the recipe. I never understood how something so intangible could feel more solid than the ground I stand on, wholesome than the beauty interprets for my nature.

The water that shapes it, fire for vibrance and the air to carry the seeds of opportunity of earth in every vision.. But that’s the thing about memory: it is a map, a blueprint, the escape plan. Not a map of where you’ve been — those coordinates don’t matter. It’s a map of who you’ve become because of what you lived. Every moment, every mistake, every time you stayed, every time you walked away — they all mark a point.

Connect enough of them over enough years, and it forms a pattern you can’t unsee, a constellation of your mind written in the stars, the destiny that begins, when you finally decide, to draw the line. That’s what this essay is. The outline of something I never meant to draw. When I look back, I can see it: a world built on one condition — unconditional love.

But even that phrase is misleading because unconditional love isn’t a switch you flip, or a vow you recite, or a promise someone else can grant you. It’s an inner revolution before any outer union can manifest and you get what you give Love shouldn’t be backwards. It shouldn’t be Evil. It can’t be love without growth — both personal and collective. Not growth in competition, but in collaboration. Not “I win and you lose,” but “we rise because we choose to.” With growth, love can be… well, spell it backwards. EVOL. The word looks strange the first time you really witness it.

Some people read it as “evil.” Those are the ones still living in a collusion — a world where love is conditional, transactional, fearful. A world where connection becomes a side hustle selling lessons, instead of a world building bridges.

But EVOL isn’t evil at all. It’s evolution.

The uncomfortable, necessary kind.

We need to see things for what they are.

The world needs a revelation — or maybe just for me to start a little rEVOLution.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing without knowing it. Turning every heartbreak, every loss, every memory into an internal compass. A North Star of your own. Charting something no one can see but everyone can feel: the difference between the person I was and the person I’m trying to become.

When I write, I’m not mapping geography; I’m mapping emotional weather.

Storm fronts from childhood.

Fault lines from betrayal.

Warm auras and authentic energy from the rare people who made me feel safe.

Clear skies from the days I remembered how to breathe.

How to be still.

That’s the thing about intangible maps, — they’re not visible but they’re undeniable.

They are what i like to call piece of the puzzle.

They are keys that unlock insight, to awareness.

You navigate by feel.

By intuition.

By knowing the difference between the place that broke you and the place that’s trying to heal you. I think about my younger self — the kid who learned too early that people can disappear, that love doesn’t always stay, that laughter isn’t always a promise.

I didn’t know it then, but he was drawing the first lines on the map.

Then came the versions of me that followed:

the one who tried to be tough,

the one who tried to be numb,

the one who tried to be everything except honest.

Each version added another mark. Another constellation of experiences. Another section of terrain I’d someday have to cross again. Letting go isn’t erasing the map. It’s redrawing it with better truth. It’s admitting that some memories stay because they taught you something. It’s recognising that pain keeps echoing because something inside you still wants to be heard. It’s understanding that love isn’t the easy part — it’s the part that transforms you if you let it. And that’s where Neumanity began. Not as a movement, not as a book, not as some grand concept. It began as a whisper. A personal rEVOLution.

A decision to stop treating love as a battlefield and start treating it as a blueprint. To stop seeing hurt as a verdict and start seeing it as a beginning. To stop expecting others to fill what I never learned to hold.

Neumanity isn’t about perfection.

It’s about direction.

It’s about recognising that the most important scroll of history we own is the one we draw inside ourselves — the one that tells us where we’ve been honest,

where we’ve been afraid, where we’ve loved bravely, and where we still need to grow.

It’s the map that teaches us how to let go, how to remember, how to forgive, and how to evolve into someone worthy of the peace they’re chasing.

I am still drawing mine.

Still redrawing it.

Still learning the difference between a memory that wounds

and a memory that guides.

Still learning how to love in a way that expands instead of contracts.

That comprehends instead of listens.

That feels first and acts accordingly.

That thinks and consciously considers.

And teaches genuinely instead of judging.

If love is a map, then letting go is the legend — the part that explains how everything works. The keys that tell you where the edges are. The guide that shows you what each symbol actually means.

And if EVOL is the evolution of love,

then Neumanity.

Is simply my way of choosing it.

Not as a destination.

But as a direction.

For the.way we move our energy, Is everything.

A map of the intangible — written in honesty,

drawn from pain,

held together by hope,

and lit from within by the possibility that who I’m becoming is worth the journey.