Looking back.
I’m researching and writing again. Not with the same fire. Sometimes I’m afraid of my power. Sometimes I’m not sure I have any.
I’m in the process of finishing two books and starting a new one.
My last bòok release was a disaster. Two of my friends had to talk me out of my house.
I’m having anxiety and flashbacks to that day. I need someone to hold my hand.
Maybe, it’s mercy.
To stay,
I would have hardened.
Barely surviving.
My spirit is strong, leaving.
In the absence of rage
I’m hurt and ashamed.
My conscience is clear.
My heart is full
Of all the opportunities
I had to love strangers
Who embraced me, too.
For a moment.
Maybe this isn’t an end
but beginnings.
Hopefully, wisdom arrived
To turn me away
From abandoning and alienating myself
Because of some thing I’ve lost.
I, always, have, me-
We love destruction, sacrifice, people, baptisms, rebuilding, renamings and dedications
honoring our sacred.
Beginnings reveal us to ourselves.
Some beginnings are also
salvation.
I don’t know why I’m just getting stir crazy. All of my friends have already had a breakdown. Maybe because I’m an introvert. Maybe because I have more hobbies than the average bear. Maybe because my mental health meds are a nice cushion for life. About a week ago I woke up anxious. I wanted to do something, anything. I missed the family I created. I mean, we’ve all been real cautious. Which means there haven’t been any get-togethers or anything since this global pandemic was acknowledged.
I’m an artist, writer and performer. I’m not to into the performing, but I love seeing other poets perform. I love late night meals and conspiracy theories. I like history lessons at 3am in the morning. I like discussing solutions to oppression and racism. I like laughing until I’m exhausted. I like getting to know my people in and hearing their stories unedited for a trusted audience… So next time they perform a piece, a few of us will hear it on a deeper level. A few of us won’t internalize their words and search for ourselves… We’ll see each other deeper.
So, I called Keith, a man we call The Griot in poetry circles. He created this poetry space that has existed I think 3 decades. During the pandemic they even tried to make it virtual so people could still get their fix. Still, it was hard. We were afraid. Wearing masks. We were grateful to see each other, but we were also afraid.
Since we talk about everything, we couldn’t help but talk about who we knew that died of Covid. Yes, we discussed the conspiracy that too many deaths were attributed to Covid. Still, I don’t know how much we believed this. As we each gauged how to interact with each other. Some of us were so terrified we stayed to ourselves. Others, as always, were hugging and eating at different tables…
After that we didn’t get together any more. We didn’t talk about getting together. We, artists, aren’t big phone or even social media people. We all buried ourselves in each of our individual tribes. We focused on our loved ones who shared our household. We didn’t text. We didn’t do check ins. Someone would send a group text of a project and we would exchange supportive comments.
Then it happened. The cure was finally here. I hate needles. I remember Tuskegee, COINTELPRO and J. Marion Sims. I wanted to see how this cure would be received. Also, since I don’t like needles, I was going for the Johnson and Johnson version so I didn’t have to take two shots.
Weeks rolled by, precautions were removed and many of my loved ones returned to life as they knew it. They were vaccinated. They were travelling and celebrating the end of this… But then, the numbers of infected people started climbing again. We learned the vaccine was a cure like other vaccines that eradicated diseases. Vaccinated people, living their life like we weren’t in the middle of a global pandemic started getting sick too.
My city, whose economy centers tourism opened up to the world and said we didn’t have to wear masks if we were vaccinated. Now we’re a hot spot for Covid and a hot spot for vacation.
I still live like we did in the first months of Covid. I don’t hang out or go over people’s house. I wear a mask with everyone and everywhere. I stay to myself. I cringe when people coughed and weren’t wearing a mask. Sometime I gave them the look of death… IDGAF if you are vaccinated covered your nasty mouth. Haven’t you heard people can be carriers without symptoms? Haven’t you heard people are dying?
So I like I said, I called Keith, The Griot. I just wanted to sit with someone I loved. I was willing to wear a mask. I realized that at work I was seeing strangers every day in a mask and I hadn’t caught Covid. So I wondered why I couldn’t hang out with a friend. But now writing this, my friends are probably not doing Covid cleaning like my job. They aren’t wiping door nobs or sanitizing everything after they touch.
Doesn’t really matter, Keith wasn’t up for hanging out. In fact, he was in quarantine when I reached out. He noted, he’d been vaccinated but had still caught Covid. More importantly, he was still very ill and was still recovering. On top of that, his wife had tested negative but she was in quarantine as a precaution. He was so ill he couldn’t even text.
After he informed me he was waiting until this was all over, because things were not working out how he anticipated it kind of broke my spirit. I followed all the rules. I have hand sanitizer everywhere. I’ve started to think more about how I interact with the world. A friend posted that she washes all her grocery before putting them away. After I carry all my groceries up the stairs to my place, I celebrate actually putting them away before the ice cream melts. Now I’m expected to wash everything before I put it in a cabinet or in the fridge? I’m going to DIEEEE!!!!!
I started thinking about how I worked in grocery with gloves on and touched all sorts of things while putting up canned and jarred foods. I think about how sometimes weird things spilled in the cooler and probably poisoned the packaging on things… Then it felt like the world was closing in on me. Every where I went all I could see were germs. I’m a pretty upbeat person, so this negative perspective that we’re all capable of killing each other wore my spirit down.
I’m up at all times of the night. Tired of watching entire series… I didn’t actually start watching TV until like 2018. So streaming all these different shows made me feel lazy and like I was letting my life slip away. Isn’t there something I should be doing? I’d get up and pace all over thinking of things to do and then being to tired to do them. And then being angry at myself for not using all this time at home to get my life together. So I have to berate myself. It’s only right. Then I have to remember I am my own best friend and then I have to be nice and understanding.
So I treat my lazy ass to some ice cream, even though I’m lactose intolerant, I’ve gained back some of the weight I’ve lost… But then I soothe myself with promises of joining and going to the gym regularly once this pandemic is over. I avoid all mirrors. I wonder how something so delicious is not good for me. Then I make a mental not to buy pills to take before I eat dairy… I actually buy those pills but never take them because I don’t like taking pills. Then I find a lactose free ice cream. I haven’t tried it yet.
All this ice cream I’m eating reminds me of my editor, Claudia, who loves ice cream. She’s naturally slim and has to work out to gain weight. She use to eat a bowl of ice cream every night before bed. She’d call me to talk about whatever project we were working on and I’d hear enjoying that ice cream, and it’d piss me off. The word ice cream puts weight on me. Not to mention, no one enjoys anything like an artist. I mean we really love things and express it in “oohs” and “ahhs.” Don’t be in person, we’re a whole commercial for whatever we are in love with at the moment.
Anyway, I called Claudia, to see how she was doing. One of the things this pandemic has got me in the habit of doing is calling all my love ones who are not in the same city. I try to have a couple long conversations a week. Well I did initially. The problem is when I call, they are bummed about the pandemic too. In the beginning, I would cheer the extroverts I love up. I’d be telling jokes and giving all that bullshit new age advice… Now, I’m up on a ledge imagining I’m a ballerina. Up on my toes. Arms out. I’m looking over the edge and wondering if the shock of dropping will kill me before I have to feel the impact.
So now when my friends call as I’ve gotten them use to… I’m avoiding contact because I’m too sad to lift anyone’s spirit. I have a dark humor for folks I’m forced to see for survival… That’s work and the grocery store. OMG!!!! Walmart is using this pandemic to make us all volunteer cashiers when they aren’t punishing us for using cash. GAWD!!!! Cash is the devil now, but I’m broke. So I take out my allowance. Once it’s gone it’s gone.
Now when I was a kid allowance meant fun things, like movies and pizza with friends. Now, allowance is what I buy my basic necessities with. Yes, I’m poor. So I’m buying grocery with my allowance. I’m buying gas to drive to the job that makes sure they don’t give me enough hours to qualify for benefits. Yes, I’m looking for a job, but not aggressively. I mean, I’ve got all this stuff around my house to do that I’m not doing. I don’t have time to harass employers. What? Between my sleeping, moping and eating ice cream when should I look for work, huh?
So anyway, I wrote all this hoping you could relate. I wrote all this because my heart is heavy and I needed to release. I wrote all this because I’m too anxious and sad to cry.
Oh, let me not forget this… So Walmart has 15 checkout lanes, but only two or three cashiers. But here is the worst part, they have tons of self check outs but you can only use them if you are paying with a card. So I’m standing in line with my two or three items, behind eight families doing their grocery shopping for the month. Oh and another thing. One Walmart I went to a month ago outside of my area, didn’t have a single cashier. They only had self check out. There were disabled people and elderly people struggling to check their own selves out. I mean the staff was so light I asked what time they were closing. Now as a person who works retail, it’s crazy to get off work and then go work somewhere else…
See how I’m complaining… This is why I don’t talk to people. I wanted to use the self check out but I could’t because I had cash. Then I found a Walmart that only has self check out and it pissed me off. I should mention, I was doing my shopping for two weeks. So I had a lot of grocery and I had just got off work, then checked on a sick friend. All I wanted to do was have an actual cashier ring me up and bag all the stuff I purchased. On the positive side. Less hands to worry about infecting me with Covid because I don’t wash my groceries off.
Anyway, thank you for staying to the end of this long rant. My heart is still heavy but it’s a lot lighter than it was when I started this post.
I hope your family is well. I hope you are cooking really great food since you’re home anyway. I’ve been making some really good unhealthy shit. So yes, I prolly won’t get Covid, but diabetes and high blood pressure are seducing me with ice cream, microwave popcorn and dipping lobster in hot butter. I’m hungry… So I’m going to go.
Love is life. Live
Years ago, a client called saying he was terrified of his children. He believed they were planning to kill him. He described them as monsters and noted they were gritting their teeth at him… You could hear them laughing and playing in the background.
At the time, he was at home alone with his four children, all under 8 years old. He had a rare history of violent episodes. Usually with other adults. It was immediately decided, not to call the police because he’s a 6’5 dark-skinned muscular black man. Instead, a therapist played along with his delusion, convinced him to lock himself in a bedroom, as someone was on the way to “save him.” Meanwhile, every case manager on our team was literally rushing to his house.
I can’t remember if he had been off his meds. Or if something triggered the mental breakdown. To be clear, people without mental health challenges experience episodes. For instance, people with no history of mental health issues are struggling with this pandemic. Let me also point out, some people still have mental health crises on meds which is why all people with mental illness should be checking with a psychiatrist every three months at the least. Not to mention, eating grapefruits or drinking a little grapefruit juice each morning can reduce or completely stop your meds from working. Grapefruit is a powerful fruit. I digress.
I’m sharing all this to show how a mental health episode could make someone a stranger. On a normal day, this man is a dedicated father. He works two jobs and picks up odd jobs to take care of his children. He often has all his children with him. Naturally, he’s a very compassionate, funny, friendly, wise, protective, and helpful person. I’d even say he’s handsome and charming. He didn’t have his first serious mental breakdown until his late 20’s. At the time of this episode, he was in his late 30’s.
On top of taking care of his kids, working long hours, he was always helping somebody move, or fixing someone’s car for free. He loves his children. He loves people. He is an important part of the black community.
I’m sharing all this, because people are saying it is ableist to dismiss Kanye’s behavior because he’s always anti-black… Him wanting only light-skinned and mixed women in his videos, definitely colorism, which is just a euphemism for self-hate or internalized racism. That’s a separate issue that all black people in America are on some level struggling to overcome.
Him screaming and crying on the “campaign trail” and saying, “Harriet Tubman didn’t free the slaves.” That’s “my children are monsters and I have a knife talk.” Oh, earlier I forgot to mention my client had a butcher’s knife and was threatening to kill his own children. The children he loved and worked himself to exhaustion for. So when Kanye screamed about his father wanting to kill him as his reason for changing his stance on abortion. Then became too choked up to speak I couldn’t believe the media was recording this… much less reporting this as news. West admitted his wife might divorce him because of his behavior… Does he hate her? Everyone? Does he hate himself?
One year (I’m not going to stop my train of thought to research it), I think 2018? There was a mass shooting almost every day in the U.S. It was so bad, other countries issued warnings advising their citizens not to visit America. 98% of those shooters were white men. I didn’t hear about it every day. I didn’t hear white men being condemned. I never saw daily reports about white men killing literal strangers. White men had to successfully kill large numbers to get a mention.
Meanwhile, I was getting black on black crime reports and statistics. Actually, white on white crime is almost identical statistically as black on black crime. At the same time, white people actually kill more white people than black people kill black people. In fact, white people kill more of everyone when you include mass shootings. Still, no one is asking why white people won’t stop killing each other and everyone else.
At the same time, elementary through college started doing school shooter drills. White men started to talk about their mental health and feeling oppressed. Then America started to talk about the mental health crisis.
We (black people) say, that black people need to be treated with more humanity. While we as black people are the first to ignore each other’s humanity. We are the first to take other black people to task. We have to lead in loving us. We have to lead in being compassionate to us.
Kanye’s “campaign speech” literally broke my heart. I saw the press filming his mental break down like I would if they filmed him having a seizure… It felt like another indignity. Reading all the drags break my heart. Some folks are saying it’s ableist to dismiss his comments. I’d argue it is compassionate, empathetic and human.
I think that being an artist and being bipolar he may be open to evaluating systems, rules and ideas many people are afraid to examine. Give him a mic during an episode and he could be self-hating, anti-black, personally destructive and a financial liability.
I am overwhelmed at times with oppression. I hate the way it has shaped my family’s reality. I hate that I know people who hate their own dark skin, their own nappy hair. WTF is shrinkage? Your hair didn’t shrink. It’s nappy!!! Any black person who says they haven’t taken a white measurement to themselves or someone else is lying.
I’ve definitely felt frustrated about having the same conversations black people in America have been having since the 1500’s: equality, access, respect and freedom.
I’m frustrated by black classism. I’m tired of bougie black people talking over working people’s heads with the micro and macro of racism. I’m frustrated by questioning if black men are actually being lynched or killing themselves in my lifetime. I’m frustrated by Breonna Taylor’s murderers not even being considered for charges by a black district attorney. I’m frustrated by people saying don’t play the victim when we are literally being killed by the police in our beds. I’m frustrated by people saying racism is over.
I’m frustrated by black people saying ignorant shit like, “why doesn’t BLM care about gang violence and black on black crime?” I’m tired of the most critical people being the mofos who aren’t doing shit. And you know how we know you aren’t doing shit? Because you would know BLM cares about ALL people, ALL black people and values their allies. But again, you’d have to get off the internet and actually go to a BLM action to find this out. I’m tired of people who aren’t doing shit waiting for someone else to speak for them, to save someone else or them.
If you are black and want to reach out to gangs, get your ass off the fucking internet tearing down folk doing the work. BLM is ALL of us. But a few of us can’t do it all. BLM’s agenda is our agenda. If you want to center a specific concern: gang violence, community clean up, black unemployment, farming, food or medicine deserts… Put a program together and let’s go!
My grandmother, aunts and uncles participated in the Civil Rights Movement. My mother went to segregated schools. Oh and while we’re on this, I’m tired of white people not knowing basic American history. Post slave law, The Black Codes AKA Jim Crow didn’t end until 1965. Post slave law has only been over 55 years. Black colleges are where black people were forced to attend because of segregation. Black colleges are historically black because of white laws. Black colleges were not exclusive to black people they were including black students in education. White people have always been welcome in our spaces. I said all that to say, I’m tired of white people saying “what if we had white colleges wouldn’t that be racist?” Um Harvard, Princeton, West Point and any college bragging that it was established before 1965… Even after the Civil Rights Acts, some Universities still didn’t admit black students. And yeah, whit colleges are totally racist.
I’m tired of reading posts about black people being in a constant state of victimhood… A law of attraction person I unfollowed said black people are suffering because they think about being victims. Meanwhile, we are literally dreading teaching our children how to survive traffic stops. Or the first time they become aware they are being excluded or mistreated because of their skin. Statistics say we earn less, are promoted less but are also evaluated more harshly.
Last year, the Federal government voted we could wear our natural hair in corporate settings? Black journalist wearing their hair the way it grows out of their scalp are considered unprofessional, radical and revolutionary. As a result, it limits their career growth. Some of us black women have been straightening our hair so long we don’t even know how to deal with our natural texture. Black women are putting perms on 3-year-olds. We’re literally thinking about our proximity to whiteness even when we aren’t thinking about our proximity to whiteness.
I know older black beauticians who have no idea how to deal with actual black hair and are not trying to learn. They are still perming hair which research says causes cancer, fibroids and birth defects just so that black women can be barely accepted in mainstream society. Some random white person on Twitter looked at my profile picture and teased me for having locs. He said my loc updo looked like a pile of shit on my head during a debate about whether racism is real or a figment of my imagination. Then he compared him getting a haircut and shaving to me endangering my health by straightening my hair to be “appropriate” for work.
Speaking of locs. Locs, loctician, colorism and too many words shaping my life are not in the dictionary. I can’t find a black shampoo that doesn’t have detangler (small amounts of perm/ straighteners) in it.
My mother and all her siblings attended segregated (black) schools because they were excluded. My grandmother participated in the Civil Rights movement. This means, some of your white grandparents hung black people, terrorized black people, burned churches. Some of your grandparents attended lynchings, have postcards of lynchings and still say racism is imagined.
I’m tired of white people slipping up and saying the N-word. I’m tired of feeling like I slipped because I said he N-word. I’m tired of black people telling me they don’t like or use the N-word. We are the only culture of people who can’t have anything to ourselves… Other races have slang terms they exclusively use. We are the most inclusive race on earth. A black judge hugged a white woman police officer who killed a black man eating ice cream in his own apartment.
I’m tired of Black Americans acting like we don’t have our own foods, poetry, music, literature, dances and culture. I’m tired of us acting like every other culture of black people is better. I’m tired of explaining I intentionally speak chop because I love how we Blacks talk when we are alone with each other. I love it so much I want to wrap myself in our language. I love it so much I risk being accused of cooning when I use the words I heard on my grandmothers’ laps. I repeat how I said a thing wrong that made you laugh… Same way my Italian, Mexican and Columbian friends quote their elders’ broken English. We all speak the King’s English when we’re not home. I’m trying to be at home in myself which means everywhere.
We Black people are reared in anti-blackness. I’ve said, felt and done some anti-black things in my right mind. For instance, years ago I was telling Mina, this beautiful loc’d elder, admiring my hair that I twist my locs often because I need to see my scalp, I don’t like my hair nappy. Then she told me ever so gentle and lovingly, “You black, it’s spose to be nappy.” I mean, I brought European beauty standards to locs, do you hear me!!!! My edges USE TO stay laaaaaidddddd. This unlearning of self-hatred is a process… I was hating myself thinking I was loving myself.
This passion, frustration, soul hurt, fear, hopelessness, power, determination, freedom, hope, courage, curiosity, need to be all spirit not what is projected on my flesh, this need to feel loved, wanted, connected and necessary might get distorted if I’m mentally ill with a mic and an audience. Especially when the media editing and shaping my narrative is the same media that put Trayvon Martin on trial for his own murder. The media who went silent on mass shootings happening daily committed by white men all over the U.S. So, I hope, my own people will give me the same compassion white people give their mass shooters.
Before I get into this, I want to say I respect the Taylors finally having peace and closure. Losing a loved one is already difficult. Then for the Taylor’s to learn Breonna was executed by people who sworn to protect her is a whole other kind devastation. Not to mention, how the publicist for the Louisville, Kentucky Police Department (LMPD) slandered Breonna Taylor painting her as a drug trafficker. To validate her murderers, cover up their actions and diminish her light.
The Taylor family didn’t deserve any of this. Usually, victims of violent crimes are provided with resources and an advocate to assist the family with loss. Instead, the Taylor family was forced to fight while mourning. Most important, Breonna Taylor was an innocent public servant who should not have been shot eight times. I am grateful the Taylor family has reached a resolution that gives them peace.
Now that I’ve said all of that, none of the Louisville Metro Police Department’s (LMPD) lies have been addressed in this resolution. Taking accountability for shooting Breonna Taylor EIGHT times as she slept sick in her own bed, means not just apologizing but listing what LMPD actually did wrong. It means LMPD releasing all the information to the public, including releasing the coroner report. Even the coroner was in on the cover-up.
First, Breonna Taylor was murdered, while suffering from COVID-19 as a result of being an essential public service worker. After breaking into her and Kenneth Walker’s home, LMPD arrested and charged Walker with her murder and the attempted murder of a police officer.
LMPD took this action, even though Kenneth Walker called 911 terrified of a home invasion, and screaming he was in imminent danger. Walker was still on the phone with 911, at 12:43 am, when police literally broke down their door and began shooting into the apartment. One officer shot blindly through a window in the back of the house. Leading Walker to believe he was being ambushed.
Let me highlight it was 12:40 AM, in the morning, when Taylor and Walker were both sleep like most people at that time. Let me also mention, some bullets went through the walls of neighboring homes. The LMPD could have killed their neighbors, too. 
Then a whole other department of LMPD who handles the press slandered Taylor and Walker. Making it appear Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker was a drug dealer, who they were searching for based on information they gathered from the US postal service. Noting, Taylor had received packages of drugs for Walker. Certifying how and why Taylor became a person of interest who they believed was harboring a fugitive.
In real life, where facts are taken into account, Kenneth Walker was not a drug dealer. Kenneth Walker was not even the man the police were hunting. Kenneth Walker was a law-abiding citizen who owned a home in a neighborhood the city was trying to gentrify. Kenneth Walker was a legally registered gun owner. More importantly, the actual person Jamarcus Glover, they were stalking, was IN POLICE CUSTODY when they executed the warrant.
Let me also note, different narratives were being reported by LMPD’s publicity department. One, that they were hunting Kenneth Walker, Breonna’s current partner who they believed Breonna Taylor was harboring. The problem with this narrative is, Kenneth Walker actually owned the home. If she was in fact helping an alleged drug dealer, it would mean she was hiding her ex-boyfriend in her new boyfriend’s home. Yep… Sounds stupid to me too.
When in fact LMPD knew they had Jamarcus Glover, an alleged drug dealer, who they were claiming to hunt in custody when they served the NO KNOCK warrant. On top of this, plainclothes LPMD officers claim they identified themselves at 12:40 am before breaking the door down, to serve a NO KNOCK warrant whose very nature is to surprise drug dealers and get to the evidence before it can be destroyed.
Multiple neighbors interviewed said they never heard the LMPD identify themselves. Why would LMPD identify themselves on a NO KNOCK warrant? They wouldn’t. Why did their publicity department lie? Because No Knock warrants are only legal on drug houses.
Actually, LMPD raided Kenneth Walker’s home because there was a project to gentrify the neighborhood but Walker would not sell his home. As a result, LMPD began harassing Kenneth Walker in the months before this fatal incident in an attempt to force him out of his residence.
Facts: The LMPD never found any drugs during their subsequent search. More importantly, they falsified documents to get a judge’s signature on their No Knock warrant. An LMPD detective claimed the postmaster informed him Taylor was receiving drugs through the mail for Jamarcus Glover. Again, this means, Breonna Taylor was getting mail for a man she dated years ago at the home of her boyfriend Kenneth Walker.
Meanwhile, The U.S. Postal service released their own results of an internal investigation. Noting, Breonna Taylor never received any mail in the name of Jamarucs Glover. Nor had they reported any suspicious mail to the police for Kenneth Walker’s address. Furthermore, when LMPD’s narcotics department requested an investigation of the address they were also informed Breonna Taylor hadn’t received any packages for Jamarcus Glover. Now, the narcotics detective who claimed he was informed by the postmaster has been suspended as LMPD investigates ITS OWN SELF and determines how LMPD obtained the No Knock warrant.
Third, Kenneth Walker is a whole different person from the person they were “trying” to apprehend, remember they knew Jamarcus Glover was in custody when they raided Taylor’s home. Still, LMPD arrested a devastated Kenneth Walker, charged him with the murder of his own girlfriend, and the attempted murder of a police officer. Then held him in jail after violating his rights and this trauma. They held him in jail until his home could be sold to the organization gentrifying his neighborhood for 17K.
On top of all of this, Breonna Taylor’s murder was not even listed on the official police report. Under injuries, LMPD marked none. LMPD also marked there was no forced entry. The police officers also chose not to wear their issued body cameras. All these factors suggest widespread unchecked corruption as standard operating procedures. Which should immediately require an investigation of all Louisville, Kentucky Police Department’s incident reports and actions by the Department of Justice.
IDGAF if this is the biggest settlement paid by police in the United States for the murder of a Black woman if the state will continue murdering unarmed Black people to gentrify our neighborhoods. Then falsify official reports, turning a blind eye to executions making death squads standard operating procedure and state-sanctioned execution legal.
There still needs to be a thorough investigation of ALL LMPD’s police reports and records. The Breonna Taylor law is less than a nod in Vibe magazine because LMPD’s death squad doesn’t follow the laws in the first fucking place.
Again, what is also not being discussed, is that Kenneth Walker’s home was keeping the city from getting all the property in the same neighborhood. The police harassed Kenneth Walker, arrested him, and held him in jail until his property could be purchased by a developer for 17K. Will Kenneth Walker also be getting a settlement?
The LMPD used the fact that Breonna Taylor dated Jamarcus Glover two years ago, to remove Kenneth Walker from his home. Breonna Taylor was a casualty of a different war. Not a drug war, but a property war. The state used its power to gentrify Kenneth Walker’s neighborhood.
Breonna Taylor was an aspiring nurse. She worked at two hospitals as an EMT and was exposed to Covid 19 multiple times. In fact, Breonna Taylor was home sick from Covid 19 when she was executed in an illegal raid. Breonna Taylor dedicated her whole life to service.
Say her name.
STOP KILLING US!
BLACK LIVES MATTER
Sometimes, the light is a warning something is coming. You have options. You’re not really in danger if you can get off the tracks. Right? But the tunnel is tight. You didn’t die, but the humidity, anxiety and heat almost suffocated you. The sparks from the tracks stung all your exposed skin, some left permanent scars. Now the fear that you would never make it out of that tunnel alive, or that the train cars would not stop coming is a reoccurring nightmare.
But so what. You survived. People tell you how lucky you are. When you try to articulate your fears, they lecture you about being grateful. They remind you so many people didn’t wake up. Eventually, you’re ashamed to share your struggles. So when you’re triggered by lightning, a flashlight searching a dark room or trying to focus on the big picture like you did to survive, you wish for a different ending. Sometimes you dream you let go of the wall, kissed the train. Then she’d grabbed your face, pull your lips to her and embraced your neck. The snap is drowned out by the horns and the weight of the iron wheels rolling over heavy over the tracks. As she drags you along unaware of your fragility, to become pieces.
Physically you’re all in one piece. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually you’re in pieces. Sometimes, you curse yourself for walking in that tunnel and surrendering to your curiosity. Other times, it’s like it never happened.
I’m trying to find the words to come out again. This is not about sex, sexuality, or even gender. Been having those conversations a lot lately. Mostly, because I accept I don’t know or understand everything. Imma die not knowing some things… I’ve definitely had to ask questions. Really ridiculous uninformed questions… So I’ve been answering people’s questions about my own orientation and whatever I know about the LGBTQIA community. The other day my cousin and I agreed to disagree. He insists I’m choosing to date women. Yet, he would never answer if the close-ended question of whether he’d ever thought about making sweet love to a man but chose not to do it. He also insists all women are bisexual, which is why being a lesbian is the most acceptable choice.
I digress… Or better yet, I tangent.
I struggle with mental illness. I have my entire life. Today is one of the first days in my life that I’m feeling clear. Clarity is definitely a gift. I remember elders testifying in church, thanking God for being in their right mind.
I never knew I was out of my mind. I went to work. I had friends. I lived alone. I wrote. I painted. I loved. I created a family of my own with friends. But I never could finish college. There were things I just couldn’t quite grasp… I told myself I lacked discipline. I told myself I wasn’t smart that’s why I didn’t do well in math… Turns out, I have some weird dyslexia when it comes to numbers… When I’m taught with this taken into consideration, I’m actually amazing at math.
But I didn’t know I wasn’t in my right mind. I made a lot of really bad choices in the wrong mind. I told myself I’d put my girlfriend through school because I wasn’t college material. After she came out and was disowned, she dropped out too. (She recently graduated like 15 years later.)
I worked. Sometimes three jobs. Once I worked so much, I even slept on the clock. I’ve been homeless. I’ve been suicidal. I’ve even been institutionalized in a mental health facility, a few times. But no one treated me changed their view of me. They still had the same expectations they’d had before. No one offered to help. I didn’t realize I was in the wrong mind, so I didn’t know I needed help. So I felt like a failure.
I wanted to die. Not in the traditional sense. I didn’t want to blow my brains out. I just wanted to disappear. I wanted to not hurt anymore. Suffering had become a way of life. I wanted children, marriage, a house and to be excited about the holidays… But I couldn’t sustain relationships, though I’m loyal to a fault. I have friends forever. I keep all these people I meet in life connected. I’m the link… Disconnected from myself.
Then you add on having a church in the family, being an out lesbian and just living being seen as having no shame… Or being who you feel you innately are as disrespecting God.
I used to ask God, why he allowed me to be born. I use to ask if he got some kind of thrill out of torturing people. I asked why he gave me so many challenges to face… God never answered but friends said it was because I was strong. Also, there is this saying, God never gives you more than you can handle. But people die, so I beg to differ.
I sometimes would joke and ask God, why couldn’t I be a gay white man. Or why couldn’t I be naturally slim. Or why couldn’t I have a supportive family that wasn’t riddled with addiction, abuse, denial and mental illness. I use to ask God, for new parents. I use to ask God why I couldn’t have been born rich. I used to ask God to save me. But God left me to my own devices.
Oh, and I’m all over the place, like this blog… But I’m allowing myself to ramble a bit. It could literally be worse. Words ignite thoughts and send me on mental tours. I’ve got an extensive vocabulary. This could be a canvas. I’ve allowed a few tangents to express how my mental illness works, or keeps me from working. At the same time, I’m medicated enough not to get lost in examples.
I also wanted you to see what it feels like when, you’re lost and don’t even know to pull over and get directions. You don’t know where you’re going. You’re just content to exist. Then you’re surrounded by people who either are choosing ignorance, pretending or unaware something is wrong. You feel even crazier, when you know something is off but everyone else is acting like business as usual.
I’m not sure if it is a poverty thing. I didn’t realize I was poor until I was in my mid 30’s. I didn’t realize I had behaviors that created a cycle of poverty. I started college, so I knew about the macro and micro of society but… Doesn’t matter. Once I figured out I was poor, I’d had enough college to comprehend how poverty had shaped my life. More importantly, how life was further impacted by my mental health challenges.
Now, after being in a relationship with someone who always had enough and at times too much I get how people who have never lived in poverty don’t understand it. They have different habits. They don’t understand a poor person buying expensive wants and suffering for their needs. They don’t understand that when you’ve lived your whole life in survival mode, having something tangible, shiny and expensive will keep you from eating a gun or walking in front of a train. You’re not throwing your life away, you’re actually making it bearable to live… Live. Living.
“Living” is such a subjective word. Yes, I am alive, but I don’t know that I’ve ever lived. I’m always worried. I have anxiety. I have so many things that need to be taken care of… But I’m in survival mode, so I fix what’s broken. I’m always fixing. I’m so exasperated from fixing what’s broken, I don’t have energy to do maintenance. Mental health to the Black community is maintenance.
If Jr. goes to work and brings his check home. It doesn’t matter that he’ll give his money to any woman who is nice to him. As long as he keeps going to work. As long as Jr. is harmless. As long as Jr. doesn’t hit, says “please” and “thank you,” believes Jesus is his lord and savior… and cuts the grass like clock work, it doesn’t matter that he mumbles rather than strings recognizable words together. Doesn’t matter that he sits silent at all family gatherings staring blankly and then laughing without reason.
That’s just Jr. He’s always been quiet. He’s always been shy. When his wife packs his lunch, directs him to catch the bus two hours each way on top of a 10-hour shift, while she stays home with a perfectly good car in the driveway. People say she isn’t fair to Jr. People say they don’t like Jr.’s wife. But no one talks assumes he’s got some mental health challenges.
Jr. is a man. He doesn’t know what the definition or expectations of being a man is. Being a man, or being “the man” and then there is “THE MAN” which all keeps changing depending. But Jr. is agreeable. All the elders in his life have beaten him for anything they didn’t understand. They’ve broken his spirit. In some ways, they believe they’ve cured him. He’s like a robot. He goes where he is told and does exactly what he is instructed. He never complains, because he use to get beat for mumbling under his breath. If he hears voices he knows better than to talk back to them.
As a result, Jr. has no standards for how he should be treated and no real pride to speak of. He loves anyone who acknowledges his hard work. He has internalized all the horrible insults heard over his life. He knows something is wrong with him, but he doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t know if he can be fixed. No one really hits him anymore, but his wife, but getting hit is normal.
He’s learned to just do what he’s told and smile. He’s been taught to be none threatening, so he’s afraid to ask questions… And the few people he feels safe enough to ask don’t understand shit he says, they just tell him things several times slow. Then watch what he does to see if he understood them. But that’s just Jr. He gone always be Jr.
I am high functioning. I’ve had a thousand jobs. Like literally, I know something about everything. I’ve had so many jobs, I can’t even remember all the places I’ve worked. I’ve started a few businesses in my life. One did well. But I was afraid when money started coming easy. Then I didn’t know I had anxiety, PTSD and that I was depressed. Also, until recently, I thought depression looked like crying. I thought depression looked like suicidal ideation and possibly making plans.
I’ve always identified as an introvert. I really connect with people one on one. I like house parties not clubs. I like spending time with one friend at a time. I feel like I’m getting ready to have a major surgery when people I live are coming to visit. Then after they get there everything is fine. I know everything always works out. I love hosting, but I’m still afraid.
I start accommodating myself and explaining to loved ones, I can’t answer the phone… The ringer is off. I tell them I’m working on a project. I am, I love creating… But really, the sound of the phone ringing terrifies me. Sometimes I don’t have the energy to speak. Sometimes all I have in me is to get up and get dressed for work. Sometimes if I have a bad day at work it’s hard to come back. When I was young, I’d just go find another job instead of going back.
I mean, we say life is not fair. But I didn’t understand that companies create rules that none of their employees follow. This felt like chaos. Being teased for following some step. Oh, I’ve also got ADHD. So, I go out of my way to follow directions, pay attention to details and repeat back what I’m told. I’ve been surprised by my own carelessness, so by the time I’m 25, managers immediately trust me. I work hard at jobs with no career prospects. Careers and jobs are two different things. But when you’re poor everyone just has a job. Some jobs are better. Some people are just lucky. It doesn’t occur, I could do things to get a better job… You just work. Some of us aren’t college material.
I got my first job at 13 or 14, working for a summer camp. I was only allowed to work 30 hours a week. As soon as I started working, I offered but was maybe expected to buy my own school clothes every year. So every summer I worked. Until, I was old enough to work while in school. Then paid for my own lunches, clothes and any extracurricular activities.
Having money and a bank account felt like freedom. I was 15 with a boyfriend and no curfew. No one talk to me about savings or goals. Work, earn, spend. Do you know how many CD’s I got from Columbia House? I actually paid them. I had the best music collection of any teen I knew.
My parents were struggling to pay for things. They both had gambling problems. My dad was, is… a functioning alcoholic. At one point he was on even heavier drugs. I was homeless before I graduated from high school three times. I graduated from high school homeless. Once my dad tried to kill my mom but she got away… After a few months they were cool. I never was the same.
Before I was in high school, my mom’s credit was shot, so she started using mine. I had cable bills and utilities in my name. I didn’t know, I didn’t check the mail. I didn’t read the mail. Even when I had a pen pal my mom would give me those letters after sorting through the mail.
I cried a lot. I was lonely. My parents were always gone. I didn’t know where or when they were coming home. I survived on Ramen noodles, koolaid, crackers and plums. My dad worked long shifts. He never worked less than 11 hours. Usually he worked 16. Then when he got off he went gambling. For the few hours he was home he was sleep.
My mom worked, shopped, hung out with her friends and gambled. Then she returned to college. Then she went to school full time, worked full time, had group meetings with her classmates, and homework. I’d go days without seeing either of my parents.
No one talk to me about college prep. No one talk to me about not making sense or talking too much. Maybe they didn’t know I was not in my right mind because I was raised to be invisible. Black elders would say, “Children are to be seen and not heard.” Well in my house, I was to be invisible too. I was treated as a burden. My parents loved me but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a huge inconvenience. I always needed something.
Soooo, sometimes, I wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. When I took all the pills in the medicine cabinet I wasn’t actually trying to kill myself. I was trying to disappear for real. I hadn’t thought about death. I was tired.
I didn’t have any family where we’d moved. Being Black in Las Vegas wasn’t as bad as being Black in maybe St. Louis. At the same time, it wasn’t celebrated. The teachers and students were not seeing me despite being Black. In fact, I didn’t see color and was often rudely reminded I was different. I got crash courses in racism. I was afraid to tell my parents because I was supposed to be invisible. I didn’t hide anything from them really, they just didn’t want to see me.
I always cringe when someone asks how many siblings I have, because as soon answer, “none.” They tell me how I must be spoiled. Maybe I was, I didn’t know I was poor until I was in my 30’s. Maybe what tangible things I valued were provided. I liked writing, so I always had a lot of journals and paper. I liked painting and drawing, so I had tons of art supplies. I liked to read, I had a lot of magazines…
At the end of the day, I was institutionalized. For months, I was held against my will in a hospital. No one ever gave me meds. People talked to me, talked at me but I didn’t feel heard or seen. In a mental health group, when I was like 15, I was discussing things I needed. When a white kid who’d shaved her head pointed out that I had on name brand shoes, so my suffering couldn’t be real. Maybe she’d never heard of the swap meet, where knockoffs were sold. I’ve never been a name brand fan… Or materialistic. But she silenced and humiliated me and I disappeared from there too. I started to go where I needed to and do what I needed to get out.
I stopped worrying about healing or fixing or even addressing anything might be wrong. I just wanted to get home. Being treated like I was spoiled or worthless after I’d tried to kill myself didn’t help. Now I realize there were no other black kids there. Maybe, they didn’t think I deserved help. Maybe they thought I should be use to being invisible. I don’t know.
One year, I got perfect attendance, because staying home was boring. I liked school. I liked going to lunch with my friends. I liked learning things and debating the things we learned. I loved writing. I always had some kind of special writing class.
I didn’t have to ask my parents to ditch, I could just stay home. Don’t get it twisted, they had expectations. I couldn’t fail a class. I couldn’t bring home anything less than a C. Teachers couldn’t call the house and say I misbehaved. Other than that, there weren’t any expectations.
Throughout school, I was monitored for being Black. I didn’t know what racism was, so I definitely couldn’t explain when I was experiencing it. When I was in elementary, I think I was one of two black children in the whole school. I ate alone, played alone, sat outside the classroom or in a corner when in the classroom. All of my accomplishments were challenged. My parents didn’t believe anything I said. For years, I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I couldn’t understand why some kids weren’t allowed to play with me or why some teachers hated me at first sight. I kept trying to get it right. Then one day, I realized there wasn’t anything I could do, there was something wrong with me.
I remember running away in sixth grade because a teacher kept picking at me. She made tons of assumptions about who I was which at that age I didn’t know had anything to do with race. I knew my parents wouldn’t believe me over any adult.
I slept in the closet of a few of my friends for three days. Until they got scared my parents might find out… And they’d be in trouble too.
When I finally went home, it was one of the worse beatings of my life. Now that I think about it, it might have been the worst. On this rare occasion, my parents took turns beating me. Usually if one whup’d me, that was enough for the other.
The last time I got a team beating, I was like three. I put “The Muppets Go To Manhattan” in the VCR… the wrong way and it got stuck. VCR’s were a big thing in the 80s. They beat me so many times… I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to touch it. I could make my own food. I could get my own snacks. I could be left at home alone with instructions not to ever answer the door. Meh. The life of a Black kid, sometimes you get beat.
Back to sixth grade. Some of this beating was for the story the teacher told. Racist know what to say. They also depend on kids not being able to articulate what happened. She’d been basically singling me out.
It was a gym class, and the way they punished you was to make you walk around the field while the other kids played. I know how to be invisible. I was raised to be invisible. So when she directed me to start walking, and I was too lost in my own world… to know why I was being punished. So I did as instructed.
I daydreamed a lot. I imaged being saved, welcomed and valued. Other times I became my favorite heroes. Sometimes I dreamed of leading a singing group or being on “A Different World.” I could disappear from anywhere in plain sight.
After I started walking, I thought about how I ended up walking in the first place. I evaluated my behavior. I was being quiet. I was staring at the ground like other kids, pretending to listen. I didn’t have anyting in my hands. No one was playing in my hair… I couldn’t figure out why she was always talking to me about something, so when I got to where the gate opened, I walked off the field and to the principal’s office. I was tired of being humiliated.
Then, I didn’t have the words to explain what I’d been going through. I just knew that it wasn’t fair.
After that beating, I completely disappeared. I was not a great student, I got by. I did my homework. I loved going to the school library… I disappeared in books. Maybe my parents didn’t know anything was wrong. Maybe they were proud they’d succeeded in raising a “good” kid by Black standards.
It’s late. I don’t think I’m manic, but I feel better than I have in years. I don’t know if I ever felt good. But, thank you all for reading this rambling blog. Let me note, Black is the name of a culture in America, while “black” is a race shared by many people of African descent. Also, I’m not sure if I did it a lot here, but I like to speak chop. It’s a language my grandmother spoke, my community spoke and I think it is beautiful. I think it is part of Black culture.
I wrote this as a stream of consciousness… I didn’t edit… I know… That’s some lazy shit. I’m just so excited I’m finally able to write… It’s like I got my magic back and I wanted to see if the wand worked. I’ve been lost so long.
Coming out, discussing my mental health challenges is a process… I couldn’t do it in one blog. It needed to put it in context, for self.
I plan to stay on my meds. Maybe I’ll come back and finish this process. I don’t know. Feels like home being here.
Love and Light
What does it mean to be woke? What is consciousness? How does it manifest itself? Consciousness magnifies your spiritual self… above your flesh. It makes you re-evaluate things. Sometimes it shuts you down and makes you angry. Some food stops tasting good. You start having weird cravings if you tune in. Some are healthier. Others may be a sign you are missing something in your diet. In some, it intensifies their spiritual connection to The Creator, The Most High, God, The Universe, or their highest self. It gives our life purpose or at least makes us seek a purpose.
As a result, some find God anywhere and everywhere. We can be Christian but not take the Bible literally. We can be Buddhist but still go to church. We can enjoy Gospel music, knowing there isn’t a heaven or hell… or that heaven and hell aren’t physical places but a way of being. Hell is us in denial of our spiritual self and unconsciously trying to be happy meeting external expectations and goals.
More importantly, when you become conscious (wake up) you realize most of the stuff you’ve been taught is a lie. Which means you don’t know anything. So the quest begins… The unlearning. The deprogramming and reprogramming. You become hungry for something tangible to build a foundation to process on.
For instance, many people have begun to speak negatively about Black Lives Matter. However, it’s a global opportunity that black people all over the diaspora are using to protest their collective oppressors. My baseline to process challenges to Black Lives Matter is COINTELPRO.
(If you’ve never heard of COINTELPRO, you should definitely Google it.)
I know for a fact the following statements are true. The government will insert black people in black liberation groups to undermine its effectiveness. I know for a fact, governments will release false information to confuse the public. I know our government will create division among leaders of organizations by spreading rumors. I’ve learned this through reading as well as through meetings with elders who were once Black Panthers. I know our government killed Martin Luther King Jr. I know our government believes in cutting off the head of a movement. I know several leaders in Ferguson Missouri involved with Black Lives Matters have been killed. Based on this knowledge, I choose to support Black Lives Matter as a global movement connecting the black diaspora. I hope you will too.
The truth is not always black or white. It’s complicated. Right now, the truth being offered is Biden or Trump. The real truth is, we in America are not a Democracy. Democracy means one man, one vote. We are a republic. The Electoral College needs to be abolished, it is one of the last vestiges of slavery. I would love to see us move to rank voting so no vote is lost, and so we could get beyond the two-party system.
The truth is, we need a whole new political system, where we are not forced to pick the lesser evil. The uncomfortable truth is, I would really like to check out of the political process altogether. At the same time, Trump has done a lot of damage which has affected us all in less than four years. If he wins this next election, he can never be re-elected. Knowing there isn’t another term ahead, he would be a total disaster. So, it’s self-preserving to vote him out.
The truth is not easy to find, determine and in so many cases is painful. I was devastated when I found out the Africa I’d been idealizing sold my ancestors. Sometimes the truth can be so unbelievable and painful, some people choose denial or ignorance. Which looks like, pretending the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade never happened. Which looks like conspiracy theories being pushed by other black people, claiming they are indigenous to the United States of America. The quest for truth is where many people go back to sleep. Or, some of us are innately sheep.
I acknowledge we are not all leaders. All of us don’t need all the information. In fact, some of us are overwhelmed by too much information. Sheep are the most important people in the movement. We couldn’t build armies if we were all leaders. Somebody has to follow.
We often see the idea of being sheep as negative. Yet, the Bible also talks about sheep… I’m having a hard time here, knowing the whole truth. Sheep are led to slaughter and lambs are sacrificed. Jesus is often referred to as the lamb of God, as he was sacrificed for mankind. See, this is where I’d check out if I wasn’t able to see the goal and the steps to reach it. I need all the information. Sheep are frontline warriors. Egyptians saw them a sacred and mummified them like humans. Sheep give of themselves selflessly. Leaders are few and far between, and they can’t do the work alone. Leaders are born knowing their destiny and they lead in many capacities before they finally find their calling. While the majority of people are looking for purpose, leadership and the way… or a way. I believe in many ways.
There are sheep leading other sheep. If you are not committed to evolving emotionally, mentally, and most importantly, spiritually you are not a leader. If you are making decisions in irrational fear (some fear is good) you are not a leader. If you are not committed to staying conscious, researching information thoroughly before you share it you are not a leader. If you are not open to challenging your thoughts, positions and unwilling to change you cannot call yourself a leader. If you believe your freedom is dependent on oppressing any group of people; women, LGBTQIA, black people, people of color, certain religions, children, or poor people, you can’t call yourself a leader.
If challenges to your position make you emotional, verbally abusive, violent and so emotional you claim faith (faith means trust without proof) then you are not doing basic critical processing and… unfortunately you’re a sheep.
As a sheep, you need to be constantly open to changing your information source, or deciding to only trust some sources regarding certain things. There are some sources I choose for business and economic news. Another few sites for technological and science advancements. Then I have a whole host of sites I use to balance and check each other regarding politics and social news.
Sheep and leaders need to research the source of your information. You also need to understand everyone awake (conscious) does not have the same level of awareness. Some conscious people use their awareness to beat the system to their own satisfaction or taught self-destruction. That could mean many things. Some manipulate people from wherever they are or become capitalist, sociopaths, warriors or leaders.
Contrary to popular belief, being conscious doesn’t automatically mean you know more… Yes, you know more than people who are still accepting what they’ve been taught. As a result, it could feel like you’re a genius… You’re not though. In fact, we’re the loosest. We’ve lost our roots. We’re looking for something to grasp. We are devouring information… Some of us unconsciously… This is why some of you are sending me YouTube videos saying the government planned the murder of George Floyd. Seriously?
Some people who think they are conscious as appose to the unconscious, are actually unconsciously accepting information from another source without critically thinking. Which is another reason we are lost. Just because someone is black, speaks with authority, strings together some pictures, quotes and video clips, doesn’t mean what they are saying is true. Look at Candace Owens. All skin ain’t kin.
If you are blindly accepting information, you need to find a trusted source, which I still feel is dangerous, but it’s better than trusting any and every source. I think self-evaluation is an important part of a revolution. Are you one of the sheep? Are you a leader?
I think Democracy Now is a great news source if you are not critically thinking. It is a great way to know what is going on globally. It presents several perspectives. With this in mind, I’m asking everyone to post trustworthy news sources for sheep/warriors below, separate from your personal comments regarding this post. This way, if I disagree with the objectivity of your news source, your comment won’t be removed with the new’s source.
Ashe’
It’s been a minute since I came through and wrote a blog. I don’t know who reads these if anyone.
I have time. I have the internet. My energy is through the roof. I’ve been spreading all this joy around, so I decided to capture a little for myself.
I am grateful for new paths. I am grateful for new friendships with old acquaintances. I am grateful for enlightenment (I know this is cliche) and being surrounded by love.
2019 was horrible. It had a few fun moments. The highs were beyond this universe… So when I came down, I was beneath rock bottom. I cried and hurt more than I have in years. It was so excruciating, there were moments I didn’t want to live. There were a couple good moments. I felt safe for a minute for the first time in forever. Then, I got freer. I might say anything these days. I am clearer about what’s important to me.
I had the best New Year’s celebration I’ve had in years. No planning, it was totally unintentional. Sometimes good things happen when you float, but I gotta stop floating and pick a direction. I realized I don’t make long term plans. I’ve been planning to survive. Which keeps you in survival mode. At the same time, I thought I was living with intention. Last year taught me, I needed to be more centered on self. I needed to look further ahead. I needed to seek more joy, more fun, move love, more laughter and do more than survive. I need to live. To thrive.
Now, I’ve got bigger dreams. Not the new year new me stuff. I’m always changing. This is challenging but I adapt. I’m always seeking knowledge and better understanding. At the same time, I’m late to a lot of things that are common knowledge to other people. I know more than my parents knew at my age, but what is that really saying?
I am between a few different projects. I love being busy at my crafts. Creating… the process of making something is always so grounding. It reminds me I’m powerful.
I meditated yesterday for the first in years. My spirit had been asking for it but I couldn’t bring myself to sit… As soon as it was over, I immediately knew how much I needed it. I also realized how we know the way we should go, but we don’t always take that road… I’m not sure why I’m so resistant to my own greatest good.
I’d been saying, I need to meditate. My body has been asking for stretching, exercise, more water, more veggies, meditation and three pages to start my day… My spirit has been asking for more quiet creative time. I’ve been I don’t know… Not avoiding myself or thoughts, because I’m comfortable in that… I just haven’t had the energy to do the work. I don’t really know what that’s about.
Then an older woman offered to meditate with me. She was after time, calling and checking on me. Offering to pick me up. I went to her home and we started meditating. She gave me some books… I LOVE BOOKS! She gave me a moment to flip through them, like a whole ten minutes or so just to quench my curiosity. Then she informed me there is a meditation every day Monday thru Friday at 6:30am. Now I plan to try to catch them a couple times a week maybe until I can meditate on my own… Maybe forever. I’m still struggling to sit.
After I read some, she offered to take me to see her favorite elder, if she was available. She called and she was. We hopped in her car and went over. This elder will be 93 next week. She’s beautiful, funny, loving and free. She led the chant. After we meditated she shared a story. Narratives are shared when you go to an actual temple, but we were in her home… Her personal temple and we had service. I needed it. I needed her honesty. I needed both of them. I love black women. I am grateful for them.
They gave me so much to think about. I was buzzing inside. I love that the elder was so open. I sometimes feel I am too open. Hearing her story reminded me of the people that I free. We all have struggles and shortcomings. Hiding them only isolates us from ourselves. And anyone who delights in our suffering is actually delighting in their own shame… Because they have to hide their struggles fearing someone like themselves.
I had a long drive home… I’m always trying to multitask. So I thought to put my headset on and catch up with friends who’d called. I struggled with this because I really wanted to ride in silence. I just wanted to process. Think about all the things I’d just learned, read and experienced.
Not to mention, I am not a phone person. I am not always available. I live with my phone on silent. So, I am grateful for people who remember a time when we could be present and folks had to wait until you returned or got near a phone to call. I am grateful for people who leave messages and don’t take my absence personally. I am grateful for text, because it allows me to keep orbiting in my energy while honoring them reaching out. I am grateful for friends who don’t guilt me for needing to be with myself.
On top of this, I don’t always want to speak, listen and share energy. Some days, after a project, work, and life all I can do is exist. I planned to make the first call short. Just long enough, to sort through their expectations and needs. Then to determine and explain if I could help.
I was already dreading the call. They’d started to leave weird messages and send passive-aggressive texts. It had only been two days. Apologizing for calling too much, but trying to make me feel guilty. When that didn’t work, they didn’t hide their frustration. Since you never know what people are going through, I didn’t want them to feel like I was blowing them off. I’ve randomly had suicidal people reach out.
I always wonder how someone you barely know needs you. I don’t consider myself part of this person’s support system. Honestly, I wouldn’t even call us friends. Work, art, spiritual practice and community introduce me to all kinds of energies.
Finally, I’m glad I get to call my buddy. I’d been concerned but knew she’d reach out if she needed me. So I’d been giving her space on her family trip. It’s challenging being other: gay, butch, poor, free, well-read, critically-thinking, healing, supportive, compassionate, honest, not Christian. A lot of my friends have strained relationships with their families. Some because of their sexuality, but mostly because they are choosing to heal. This new generation is not passing down toxic family patterns. Some of us are creating and enforcing healthy boundaries. Others are walking away completely and starting from scratch. Strangers are becoming kin and kin becoming strange.
I wanted to make sure her soul was intact. She regularly enters hostile territory because she wants to be accepted, loved and connected. Just like the rest of us. She’s super forgiving. To her detriment at times.
Sometimes it can feel like we are drowning in our emotions… Or that someone is suffocating us with theirs.
I was grateful to hear everything went well. I listen with my whole being. Sometimes, the people we love spare us their suffering. They’ve been taught their feelings are a burden. So they make themselves small. I want to know about everything going on. That’s how we are undoing how we were raised as black girl children… Where we were expected to be invisible. I’m holding space for her to fill if she needs it.
I drive lost, prying into her life, asking about all the people she’s mentioned. Not wanting to interrupt the recounting of her weekend, I explain apologetically that the white lady on my GPS is competing for attention. As a result, I keep asking her to repeat herself. She obliges, repeating herself to my satisfaction without attitude.
As I’m listening, I am thankful for her support, love and patience. She was there as I worked through heartbreak, disappointment and all these shifting feelings. I am grateful there is no heaviness. I am grateful to be lighter and hopeful. I am grateful to tell her a lot of good news… She grins in the phone with me and I feel her joy. It’s a beautiful thing to feel a friend deeply happy for you…
I don’t tell her how much it meant to me when she refused to hang up, then sat on the phone as I struggled not to cry. I don’t tell her thank you for allowing me to take up space. I don’t tell her how much it means that she sees me. I just try to see her and support her.
I’m grateful that I have returned to myself. For a moment, last year, I was completely lost. When I’m really hurting, I avoid contact because I don’t want to depress other people. I believe in being responsible for my energy, but also, I wasn’t going to pretend. I wasn’t going to deny myself space to feel or opportunities to sort through and make sense of those feelings. I don’t want anymore unresolved emotional or physical trauma. I’m still healing. But it’s all downhill now. I’m grateful to be on the other side of suffering. Considering the lessons. Lost in myself. Naturally numb, or disconnected, not pretending.
Today, I got up before the sun rose. I began reading and researching for a project. I read and experimented with a new style of writing. Then I listen to a tutorial on that type of writing from Youtube while making breakfast. I’ve got words, poems, songs, dance sequences, rhythms and hooks floating in my head. I love this space. Anything is possible here. I know I wrote longer than an hour this morning, I could have written forever. I’m grateful for honoring my creative energy as the beginning of my day.
To be centered and successful, two elders told me to dream and make a list. They encouraged me to dream big. And read my goals daily so I will start moving toward accomplishing them. They warned me to avoid thinking small or doubting myself. Don’t let self-doubt in they kept saying. Sharing that the only thing they regretted was not walking in their power sooner. Wrapped in their wisdom, I felt some of that regret. I can literally do anything.
Still, I’m already afraid, I think… To write down my dreams. To live a life with direction. To plan for the future. To plan to do more than survive, but to live and thrive.
I am avoiding writing goals. Just like I’m avoiding meditation. I should have meditated today. I should have done my three pages… There is so much healing in writing and meditating. Why am I punishing myself? I don’t know why I can’t give myself what I know I need. If it were my little sister, I would have her strung up until she wrote out her goals. Why don’t I love myself enough to show up? Just some thoughts I’m ruminating on.
I don’t know why I mentioned the new year, because I am always learning and changing as a result of daily lessons. I am stepping into knowing daily. You know, heeding warnings I once ignored. I don’t recognize myself some days I’m so different from who I was even a couple months ago. I love differently. There are new people and tons of new opportunities… I’m laughing differently… I even did spoken-word a few days ago… And read something new. I took up space and remained present through the discomfort of being in front of an audience with a piece I didn’t have time to practice and polish.
I don’t know that I’m a performer as much as I’m a writer. I write so much, I don’t want to be held hostage in old poems, old thoughts. I’m grateful to be always writing. I’ve got to find the balance.
I am grateful for courage.
I am grateful for support.
I am grateful for all the creative juices flowing.
I am grateful that I might have found my path.
I am grateful for so many amazing friendships, that are decades-long.
I am grateful for closed doors. So I know what is not meant for me.
I am grateful for my guides.
I am grateful for clarity.
I am grateful for healing.
I am grateful for deep laughter.
I am grateful for emotional peace.
Love, Love, Love and Light
I live in an alternate reality. Where the president, is friends with child molesters and sex traffickers. He tweets national secrets and has classified conversations in public restaurants. Where he comments if his daughter wasn’t his daughter, he’d be dating her. Where there is a recording of him bragging about walking through a teen pageant dressing room and seeing naked teenagers. He’s been accused of rape, but there is some weird clause where he can’t be tried for crimes while in office.
The news stations are owned. So they don’t give you the news as much as they give you their opinions on what is happening in the world. No one is doing anything though. I’m not doing anything. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to begin.
I stopped writing. I’m going to stop writing for a year. I’m not accomplishing anything in my writing career. I want an agent. I also want to go back to school. I need more money. I need more of everything. More space. More… I don’t need more calories. In fact that’s about the only thing I could use less of…
I need more silence. More time to think. More laughter too, though. I need more hugs. I need more friends to invite me to 
places even though I don’t want to go. I need more money, to see more beaches, shorelines… I almost died a few months ago in the ocean… It didn’t deter me from my love of the ocean horizon. Seeing the ocean is like running into God… and staring at him brazenly.
I live in a world where there are levels to everything. There is health care for the rich and then for the poor. The rich pretend they don’t know things are different for poor people. And poor people are so busy trying to survive they can’t be concerned about existing longer in this place of survival.
I live in a world where people hate each other and call it faith. Where we poison our water and air for money. Where poor people who are deciding between eating and medicine, get suggestions to budget so they can get out of poverty. I live in a reality where if you say you are hurt you enjoy being the victim. If you say you are numb, maybe people will worship you and pity you in private.
I live in a world where ICE, created fake schools steal money from Indians and deport them.
Where black people are starting to finally embrace their culture. Where the realest person I know is a Jehovah’s Witness.
Where Walmart can lock up their black hair products but it’s not racists, it’s driven by statistics… But they keep selling guns to white men. There is a mass shooting almost every day, but no one discusses it. Google that, see what we are up to now. There are only 365 days in a year. my
The news is depressing. But I can’t bury my head.
I tell my family, my mother and father, that I’m going to stop writing for year. It doesn’t matter to them.
I never go a day without writing even if I’m not publishing.
I tell my family I’m holding my breath for a year and they say we all have to do what we have to do.
And I wonder if they’ve ever been passionate about anything. Not enough to ask. I guess not enough to care.
I guess I’m still selfish. Wishing people would see my wounds.
Sooo, I realized I hadn’t blogged in a while and decided this would be a good day to start.
It’s almost ten, after work and I still have some energy.
I went to work sick and felt better after I’d been there a few hours.
Now, I’m trying to decide what to do with the rest of my night, since writing is out.
Love is Life, Live
I started dating. Not dating. I have a profile on a few dating sites. I don’t know if I can call having a profile on a dating site actively dating. I regularly forget I have the profile. Until a friend asks me how it’s going every so many months. Which makes me check in to see if anything is different. If anyone has talk to me. If I want to talk to anyone.
I don’t always have the energy for it. I think if you are not going to be open and vulnerable you shouldn’t be dating. So I’m doing this weird fuck boy tango. Where I may speak to someone but not check back to see if they responded. Or I get into a conversation with someone and just get tired of it mid sentence and log off. Not because they aren’t hot, or interesting… I mean, saying “hi” back and forth or getting “WYD?” between greetings is fucking riveting… It’s the shit that keeps me up. So I’ve been doing this cycle to fizzle. Sometimes I like to pop my own balloons… Or maybe keep them and float away. Sometimes I feel like I’m above it all. Other times I remind myself if I want to be in relationship I’ve got to… you know… relate. And shit.
One of my favorite quotes is and I will always be referencing it, “You cannot hate yourself into a version of yourself you can love.” This is a really profound thought. Before I read it I was perpetually in a place of denying myself and working to earn the right or worthiness to be loved. We all deserve love. Most of my life I’ve been denying myself love literally saying I’ll finally love me when I’m my ideal weight. I’m always actively watching my weight or planning to diet and avoiding mirrors.
I dated someone who was into things… She never has enough things. She’s always measuring her own self-worth by her peers. And I somehow got lost in the world of things and started measuring myself by things and accomplishments. The person is miserable and is in this space of denying themselves love. I got lost in her struggle. I started to feel inadequate. I started to feel like I needed more money, more accolades, more education and to be more recognizable as a writer… I started to weigh all the things I was passionate about by what kind of capital they returned. Before them, writing was its own reward. This opportunity to disappear in another world and explore life through someone else’s eyes. I mean, how often do we get to walk in someone else’s shoes and tell the whole beautiful and ugly truths? It’s a beautiful thing…
In this moment, I’m anchoring myself. Deciding to seriously not take myself too serious.
For me, dating is a balancing act of being open, hopeful, aware, focused and curious. Something beautiful happens in those moments. At the same time, that beauty is not always a connection or even a relationship. Sometimes it’s just an affirmation of what we do not want. Other times, it’s a reminder of who we’ve been or where we are going. Sometimes we see ourselves new, after we end up alone with someone we always thought would be amazing. Maybe we’ve changed. Maybe they never were how we perceived or projected them. Maybe we want different things than when we were initially attracted to them. Maybe every date and every person is an opportunity to get clearer. Clarity is a gift in of itself.
Dating can be frustrating and discouraging. It can be fun and adventurous. 
It could be all of these things and at the end of the day nothing tangible at all.
Even Deities Evolve 