This one's for me.
A true, October fall in Colorado, the trees prepared to shed its leaves, now turned to gradients of yellows and greens, amber oranges to browns, standing and sitting, high on top of Lookout Mountain with one of my soulmates. Life escorted me through one HELL of a year. Overlooking the Denver skyline from 7,379 feet up there, I closed my eyes, inhaled the idea of peace and exhaled the reality of pain. Allowed the cool wind breeze to whisper lucid endings to me. Thought seriously about letting myself go in that instant. Lei had no idea that had we not left when we did, struggle as it was for me to ride passenger side down that mountain, she would have made it down without me. A bad trip indeed.
Concluded that October fall at the Hampton Inn and Suites, first time seeing each other in almost a year, since everything went down and just weeks before I almost allowed a man to disappear with all my shit for the second or third or fourth or fifth, lost count time, shit that he didn't even know he had. I lay beside and stared deep into the eyes of the great pretender he was. And had always been. Embraced the warmth of a presence we had no business feeling, eyes closed now as my once favorite hands caressed my face, light kisses met my forehead and softened my cheeks and lips as he apologized... and I believed him. I was pretending, too. We were both hurting, lost in our own respective ways. Both in pieces, but seemingly well assembled, together, in our final moment. Black roses, after all insert Saba, "Broken Girls", here*. Sex doesn't change a damn thing, nor a sorry or an "I love you", especially when they never really meant it in the first place. Reflecting on our final texts, the painful severance of a soul tie, and my message to her, I welcome those memories as a point of reference for who he was to me, a final rest in peace. On some real shit, it was the perfect ending. I didn’t see it then, but what a BEAUTIFUL woman became of me that night.
Life on autopilot, shit was neither good nor bad, I was kinda just here, a beautiful ruin. Chakras ALL fucked up. So, Tiffany told me to find a heavy rock, write on it everything I had been holding onto, and carry it with me as a physical reminder of my baggage everywhere I went, everything I did. I'd know when I was ready to release it all. I allowed my nail polish to chip during that time, too. Anyway, sat back against the wall talking with Nelly on her bed one afternoon, rock in my left sweat pant pocket as she shared with me that you can’t mix a true and a false and make it real, no matter what stories are told, what visuals are portrayed. Yet and still, we’ll try our hardest to see something that was all an illusion from the very start. Make someone feel deserving of us when they never really did deserve you in the first place. But you already knew that.
Take a deep breath in here now, as we’ll carefully select others to devour with our hurt along the way, because "anything tastes good when you're starving." And fuck em too, raw and reckless if you let em. Drink to forget, smoke until we’re numb. Succumb to our compulsions and impulses, there's no one to stop us but ourselves. Make promises we never intend to keep. Create a totally different life for ourselves that we don’t even recognize. Exhale here, now, at how unnerving it is, the extremes we'll go to and contortions we’ll make in and of our lives just to escape our realities. Just because you let it go and it returns, doesn't mean it's destined, especially when your rear view reference isn't a clear view. And how serious of a condition it is for us to fear and avoid pain and being alone completely, no matter the price. And how critical it is to our existence to face that pain and solitude head on. Ain't no shortcuts. Be careful. Be brave.
Moving forward, I gave MYSELF permission to be free now, free from my past, free from my present, free from what lies ahead, as I was reminded that you can’t heal in the same places you hurt. Never pretending to be this perfect or nice person (because I’m neither), the victim role had always seemed to suit me well, since my first heartbreak at the age of 14 after meeting my father for the first time. A year later at 15, lost my virginity to a false representative of a man I thought could be the love I so desperately felt I needed. Spiraled into and out of control again and again the next 15 years, literally half of my life been a whirlwind full of men I reaped and some I chose, trying to secure that shit. That of which I have come to find at 30 was in me this whole time. I needed myself before I ever needed anyone or anything else. You gotta love yourself, first, B.
“You also don’t have to villainize an individual who has wronged you, nor is it necessary to victimize yourself to learn life’s lessons, heal from heaven’s hurts.”
It took me 15 years to put those words together and fully comprehend that. And just because we ain’t taking yo black ass back, subscribing to, nor ride or dying for yo bullshit Black men, we are not your enemies. There is nothing broken here for you to fix. We can handle your truth. We are not the cocoons or the chrysalis by which a man changes, nor valleys for your need for validation or cradles for your insecurities, not avenues for your abandonment, not a space in time to occupy your loneliest hour, not the crutch on which you stand, not a figment of your imagination or fixture on your path toward awakening. But a human being, the backbone of the universe, your greatest ally, yes. I no longer allow you to be my Achilles' heel or my greatest oppressor. Grew quickly accustomed to walking miles in the shoes and shadows of the “strong black woman” schema, modeled by my single, independent as hell, beautiful, black mother, skin as smooth and deep as the purple sheets on which I'd cry myself to sleep, once upon a time. She's always said that no one ever did shit for her and she never needed anyone, raised 5 kids by herself. I watched her break as my awareness of inter- and trans-generational trauma increased, so I was OBLIGATED to shed that dead skin, be vulnerable and transparent, break those cycles.
Ended the year nursing my wounds, emotionally depleted. Just because I’m strong, doesn’t mean life doesn’t hurt. And deeply because I'm sensitive. But our wounds are where the light enters. I decided to reconcile with INNERstanding and rest in the reality that heaven and hell aren’t destinations to me, they are conditions, gifts of life. Sometimes heaven and hell are the people we welcome into our lives. The longer that I focus on living life a certain way as the only route to arrive somewhere else, the more I limit my ability to do something in the now, while I'm here. I’m learning the value of time and truth and renunciation, allowing it to enter my mind, dismantle and transform my thoughts and change my life. I know now that EVERYTHING IS TEMPORARY and yes, life is suffering. And we'd better get used to that, because life ain’t gon stop gifting you nothings.
With that, I detached completely from the ideas that suffering should be in silence and that our Higher Power just lets shit go down. Swift to suggest that God wouldn't have allowed something to happen if it was not "meant to be", we ignore the fact that we have free will. Sometimes God doesn’t have anything to do with the reality that we created. Yet and still, God, You're always there to usher me through every decision, every step of the way. I imagine Your tears falling down a face I've never seen, with cuts on those omnipotent hands, as my once broken pieces are put back together, every time. I promise to stop hurting You, now. Took inventory of the true meaning of speaking out and living in truth by not allowing others to project what they see as their truth onto what is mine. Throat chakra clear, I use my voice, now. You read these words, now. When nothing seems to phase me and I stop giving a fuck, I find that I cry my ancestor's tears, they'd been through worse. It's okay to cry, you know. The tears of my late great-grandmother, recalling my final moments and conversations with her, that day I braided her soft hair, nearly white as snow. I can still see the 98 year old depth of her wisdom in those glossy, purple eyes. Her spirit reminds me of my worth,
“...when will you stop settling for less, love?”
Never looking at what other people have and what everyone else around me is doing, I focus on inner-me, I mind my business these days. Flashback to May 2014, breaking down on the subway platform as I waited on the downtown 1 train from Harlem, my daily journey back to my apartment in Astoria, replaying the words Dr. Tartter emailed to me that morning, “...I think you will save yourself the anxiety and embarrassment if you accept the failure now and just stop trying to work.” I didn’t ask for her opinion, though. I use those words as motivation. I went from carrying around a rock covered in painful words and thoughts to healing stones and crystals, Lapis Lazuli and Chrysocolla accompany me now, along with the Clear Quartz I wear on the last remaining loc of my now-loose-again natural hair. Free at last. Skurted Walked across that New Orleans Theater stage, Master’s degree in hand with the highest honor (4.0, how I did that shit? God's work, not mine). Himalayan salt lamps and sage smudging to clear and cleanse the internal and external spaces I occupy as I learned my purpose here on and of this earth, discovered my assignment as a black woman, and the true meaning of womanhood. I'm not poised for domestication. A wanderer by nature, I can never stay still, I won't ever stop here. Get the strap.
We’ve all taken a beating, we’re all a bit bruised. We’re all burned by fires we didn’t start sometimes. We all find ourselves breaking bread with others and eating at tables that we didn’t set ourselves. And though I have limited control over the debilitating circumstances and vicissitudes of life, the time has come where the gumption to take control of my own life is required. Accountability. No matter where I came from, no matter where I thought I should be by now, no matter who did me wrong or told me some bullshit, no matter who wasn’t who they were supposed to or said they would be, no matter who was ready and who wasn’t, no matter if I was ready or not, no matter who didn’t do what they were supposed to do, no matter who didn't show up, no matter who sold me the dream I bought into, no matter whether I did what I shoulda, coulda, woulda done or not. No matter who I thought I was and who I ended up being.
I process everything from the inside, out, now. Asking constantly, what can I learn about myself, about being human, from what I am experiencing in this very moment? Heart cracked wide open, having lost myself time and time again, I surrender to the gifted present, find myself, and then find others who are lost. Full circle shit. That part is for you. All because I was once lost, too.
THIS, is 30.