Portals

So I’m making an effort to make this as short as possible, because I’m running a little  short on time at the moment but I want to make sure that I write what is in me now.

Lately everything I see is a gateway to another realm, world, or place. I am almost always full of interesting thoughts ( to me anyway) and I find myself using my imagination daily. I have recently committed to yoga in a huge way. Since I have started practicing, I notice all the little nuances in everything, it’s like my eyes were closed on some level, although I believed that there were indeed open. That brings up what happened today and why this post is necessary.

I was talking to a friend, we once were lovers and have since found a space in which that amorous energy can still exist but not be sought after, so we have a very close friendship. The conversation was about revealing oneself, and this was/is the conversation that we had as a couple and still find delight in discovering in our friendship. We have a huge amount of transparency available to us, because we rarely if ever judge each other. He was explaining to me the other side of the coin, for men and how he as a man and black man has difficulty opening up in spaces. He felt it was  because of the perception of being seen as feminine and because he is already a serious guy with a very quiet demeanor other men have a hard time engaging with him. He explained that in social situations, he would ask another man a real feeling question and they would eventually avoid him. His aptitude is more along the nature of actually learning other people so small talk doesn’t interest him. After about 15 minutes of conversing we moved along into the realm of fear, and how it dominates our perceptions of ourselves and how we relate to others. I had this huge thought…what if fearlessness it not something we can attain? We are human, not immortal, so fear of death is always ever present. I went on the suggest that fear is probably more of a normal condition than we like to admit. It was then that I saw myself in my death dream as I call it.

The Dream: I’m in the passenger seat of a car, going to visit someone that I love immensely and there is a man driving me. The car is full of love, it’s presence is radiating off of our two forms as we ride down the road. I can see the yellow lines that separate us from traffic that is non existent. My companion is an old man who affectionately holds my hand and has our woven hands placed in his lap. I can see my fingers, long with clear nails and small rings under his.  We are driving down this winding highway and a blue car comes out of nowhere and cuts us off and we flip over and die. I am always certain after I dream this that this is in my future. During the dream, everything is serene and although I know that part is coming , every time before I am happy, I am sure, and at the moment that the car engages us, I am more than happy, I am at peace. I can see it as I type. It is then, that I finally release my fear, this thing that I have been carrying around for my entire life, lifts up off me life a cloud and I am finally free.

That is what I am experiencing, the release of my fear. It is always there looming on the edges, I’m never totally free, yoga has been like a fear portal for me.  In my practice, I transcend fear, I live with it, I breath it in and out make it apart of my magic pouch that I carry throughout the day. It is my friend, my constantly companion and reminder to keep going and I think, for me, that this is truly the closest I’ve ever been to experiencing freedom.

 

The Salt in the Sugar

Sunday evening I sat at my dining room table with my ex, we’d spent the day at the zoo with our two children and I told him I wanted to watch Lemonade. He has an HBO Go account  so he obliged, neither of us knowing what we were about to experience. In the recent weeks, we’d discussed therapy for co parenting and I was considering reconciliation if all went well. The day at the zoo was amazing, I witnessed my children’s faces light up in person as they watched the zoo animals instead of pictures because I personally don’t agree with the idea of zoos, so it is not something that I’d ever done with them.

After the zoo trip, he and I sat at the table that was once in our home, eating american Chinese food making jokes and him openly adoring me, after nearly 3 years of a heated and hurtful separation. Lemonade came on, the opening song was so stirring that it was clear that this was not just another Beyonce video. I watched her tell the story of so many women. It was one of betrayal. One of reconciliation. One of love. One of healing. It was my story, the one I’d chose to end as friends, as co parents. Last year, I wrote a poetry book Channeling Shug which chronicles my marriage and separation where I likened myself to Shug Avery from The Color Purple, difficult and unruly and woman. There is a poem in it that played in my head over and over as I watched Lemonade:

My momma always told me

Don’t let no nigga change you

Don’t let no nigga rearrange you

No

Actually she didn’t

She taught me to ball up

as tight as I could any feelings

To reveal them only after I was disappointed

or hurt in my dealings

as a means to use my tongue to cut like a knife

to master the art of degrading

To take blows from words and fist evenly

like a skilled boxer that was cool with losing his life

To count his money baby, make him buy you something nice

To let him run me down like trash in the street and cuss and beat like eggs

Raw.

That sex was a means, that my body was costly

And that love

Love was a luxury for bitches that were prettier than me

My momma taught me a lot about men

like his value was in what he could do

How fly his duds was

And how slick he could shit talk too

And god forbid he couldn’t be no bitch!

A man had to be tough as shit

So it’s no coincidence that even though

I swore no man would ever hit me

And I don’t trip off no mans money

And I prefer emotional availability

I still like a man with the gift of gab and some fly ass rags

and lots of swag

Some shit is inherited.

My momma always told me

Don’t let no nigga change you

Don’t let no nigga rearrange you

Unless

He has what you need.

-Lesson 1, Zoha Harpe 2014.

 

I had done just that. I had let this man change me. I was unrecognizable within 60 days of our interaction. At the time, I was 32 and ready to have what was mine. That was kids and a husband. I hadn’t thought much past those ideas and that was what unraveled me more than his demands or ideals of who I had to be to be his wife.

That was what resonated most for me in Lemonade: How I as a Black woman thought that leaving all of the me that got me to that point in my life, to that fabulous-ness called me was the key to getting and maintaining my marriage.

I was an artist, a poet and writer. I was a healer. I was fun, and loving and adventurous! I was brash, insolent and crude!

I was all of these things and so much more and I threw them away for my husband, for my family. This is what I told myself, this is for my family. Every time I packed a piece of me away that I thought was offensive or that came under scrutiny from my husband or the outside world. I folded all of the bright pieces of me around the edges of my feet where no one could see them. I walked on them. I heel-toed them. I muddied them. At some point, I looked down and they were ragged and no more me than the mask that I’d taken up. I hadn’t painted or written anything during our marriage. I tried a couple of times but not much happened. I tried to be the good wife and mother but it was so exhausting. I began to think that I was a bad mother because I didn’t enjoy motherhood like some other women did. He often reminded me that his friends had good Muslin wives, who home schooled their kids and wore their abayas and prayed 5 times a day and didn’t question the Qua ran.

I became angry, I could never be like these women, I didn’t want to be like those women. I rebelled, I fought back, I became unmanageable. I broke up our family, I asked for a divorce. I asked him to leave our home. I was a terrible woman. The kind he feared. I was happy he feared me, I finally had power. I wielded that power like an unsteady machete, not caring if I cut myself because my need to aim for him was so great.

fast forward….

Something happened a few weeks ago, I forgave myself. I became tired of carrying my anger for him around. I got tired of using it to harm him, myself, our children. It had been years, it was unnecessary. I no longer needed my anger to feel safe. I’d taken the time to refill my cup. I now lived in a world where I owned an abundance of love for myself. I was so relieved and surprised at the same time at my release of emotion that I spit out one last poem in anger and it was like dust in the wind; scattered and rootless.

As we watched Beyonce sing, I could feel my ex getting uncomfortable. I could feel him wanting to retreat. I had been every women that Beyonce channeled in Lemonade. I knew he knew, so I asked him, ” How do you feel about reconciliation now?” He laughed and then he cried. He’d gotten it, he said.

Now, I don’t credit Beyonce and Lemonade as the key to him understanding me. It took nearly 3 years of me standing my ground, leaving and filing for divorce for him to see that I was in too much pain to continue as we were. This might seem extreme, as I’m sure Lemonade seemed extreme to many who viewed it; however love is extreme. I am open to what time has in store. We have time and that might mean reunion or it might mean a great understanding . Either way, love is always worth it.

As a person who loves more openly than most, I welcome the tides of love. Because I know one day I’ll end up on the shore watching those tides, letting the gentle waves swim up to my ankles, remembering how I nearly drowned learning to love myself.

As for Lemonade, I’ve drank my share.

Taking time…

 

It’s been a while since I allowed myself sit still enough to write an entry on this blog. This part of my life is very important and when I hit the first road block to writing a new blog entry a little over two months ago, I didn’t make a big deal of it I just kept moving. However, a month later I noticed that I was  really having an issue with exposing more of myself in my journey. It wasn’t until today, after dealing with a barrage of negative energy from others that I decided to sit and examine my need to push past things and keep going.

In the past, I have  attracted people who have a  hard time with the concept of moving on. So much so, that they would insist that I sit in the energy with them and be a part of their dysfunction. In those relating processes I did just that and eventually, the weight of it became so bothersome that I stopped moving completely. So of course in response, I fled the relationship. Of course upon further examination i realized that I thought that was acceptable behavior as well.
As someone, who is adamant about working on myself, I decided to take the time to examine this energy because today was one of those days where I could have literally got in my car and kept driving until I was completely exhausted. Upon realizing this, I noted that have not stopped moving at all. I am always forging ahead and that is not necessarily a bad thing but how it has affected me might not be so great; hence my current situation.

I have a hard time with sitting still. I am always doing. My mind has about 300 ideas going on at the same time; focus has never been my strong point. I have made this work for me creatively, but not emotionally.

In my healing work to this point, I have an understanding of knowing and feeling, but allowing is a totally different beast. I can feel and know all the shit I want, but allowing, making space for the gift is the part that I forget to include. So here I am writing, allowing, inviting in my magnificent possibilities. Not just in word and deed, but in spirit.

Prayers are just words, feelings are just emotions, work is just doing, but to see these things happen in my life I need to make space, I need to allow and that takes time. I get to sit still. I get to breath.

In my practice of yoga and pole dancing, I have to be patient with my body. It is not the same body that I had five years ago. I am learning to apply that same practice to my heart.

I am healing. It is a journey, it is not an overnight actualization.

There is no need to push past things that make me uncomfortable. It is okay to sit with them.

I am open to receiving all that is purposed and designed for me.

Every moment I am opening, stretching, allowing.

I am already where I am supposed to be.

.

Behind The Music

Everyone loves a triumph. We like to be a part of the energy of the moment. The win. Often we think we know or understand why the situation is so groundbreaking, but unless we are that person, the idea of understanding is merely a leap of empathetic and/or sympathetic hypothesis. Vh1’s show Behind The Music always fascinated me because of this aspect of the human experience. Often the star overcame a horrific ordeal prior to becoming a star or during the process, which in turn catapulted their being into a greater place of stardom.

As I am often congratulated for my ability to triumph, I thought about my Behind the music, my untold story. I was 13 going on fourteen, my sister and I had been removed from my mother’s care because of severe abuse. After living in a group home for about six months, we returned to court with the goal to be reunited with our mother. We stood in the courtroom, her on one side with her council and my sister and I on the other with our Guardian ad litem (GAL). I looked at my mom and she couldn’t or wouldn’t look me in my eyes; I smiled at her and she looked away. I didn’t know what to think so I just chalked it up to her being upset that “these people were in her business”, as she often stated. A few things happened that day that I can’t forget:

1. The judge was a white woman and she was very kind, it was odd because all the judges before were male and scary and demanding.
2. Our GAL; a large, bulky, Nigerian man held my hand during the proceedings. He’d never touched me before.
3. Lastly my sister’s face when our mother announced that she was relinquishing custody of us to the state, it was blank. I was bawling and she just stood there with her thumb in her mouth.

My D for detained had instantly turned into a C for committed. That was how the government marked wards of the state. We would ask everyone who came to the group home whether they were detained or committed. If you were detained this as just a short dream that would end, if you were committed your nightmare was just beginning. The kids who had been D’s their whole lives were miserable, terrifying beings to be around. Most of them were on medications of some sort for their “outbursts”. I didn’t want to become one these kids, I was so mad at my mom, she didn’t even want visitation rights. My already strained relationship with my sister became more so, because I was a goody two-shoes that never did anything wrong, and she was constantly compared to me. It was decided that we needed to be in different homes, given our extremely different temperaments.

After a long year, I graduated from Junior high with honors. My mother didn’t pay my school dues, my Math teacher did. She also bought my graduation dress.  I had to thrift a prom dress and do my own hair. I made the best out of a painful situation, but I couldn’t stop replaying the moment at graduation when my name was called in that big auditorium full of people and no one cheered for me.

That summer I started my first Summer Youth employment job and I was turning 14. During my stay in the group home, I had befriended this guy, no a man, he was 38. He would let me sit on his porch and tell him all the stuff that I was going through and I had believed that we were friends. The first week of my summer job, I was sitting on the porch telling him about everything at my new workplace and he asked me to come in, I didn’t even think about it. I hopped up off the steps and went in his home willingly. I did not leave his house for a year. I was abducted. For a long time I didn’t use this word because of the shame I felt about trusting a strange man. I should have known better, but the reality was that I really didn’t know. I had no idea that I would be raped, sexually abused, beaten, and humiliated beyond the comprehension of my fourteen year old brain. You see, he just didn’t seem like that ‘type’ person.

I had my first encounter with male rage in that basement. My first pregnancy, my first miscarriage, my first black eye, my first set of broken ribs, I had a lot of firsts. I thought that I was going to die there, and I was often told that I would.  I would pray to GOD for relief, I would say please GOD let him let me go, he wouldn’t. No one tried to help me, not his mother who was nice to me when he wasn’t around, not his ex-wife who was terrified of him, and not his daughter; who coincidentally was the same age as me. These women lived through my abuse as well and I hated them. I hated them for watching me with pitying eyes, I hated them for their silence and I hated them for their fear that I tasted every time he punched me in my face or body. I was doing what they couldn’t do anymore, I  was saving them from a monster.

Nearly a year after I  went into that basement, he told me that he had found another girl.  He told me that he was going to kill me and throw me in the dumpster out back. I believed him. I knew I had to get out of that basement. I planned, I watched him, I started familiarizing myself with his routine again. There were only two ways out as he had always walked me to the basement whenever he was leaving, and locked me in. The was an unused wash room, but the problem was it was filled with rats, spiders and flying cockroaches, and another locked door. I had encountered these obstacles in my earlier days of trying to escape before Stockholm syndrome had set in. Then there was the basement window under the porch and that also had its  own set of vermin. I contemplated for a while and then one day after what seemed like a time of peace, he took a glass bowl and slammed it into my face, leaving a jagged gash over my right eye that he sewed up himself while chastising me for making him mad. The next day, I knew I had to leave. I crawled under that porch and let whatever lived there crawl over my body and in my hair and I kicked those cylinder blocks until they moved to where I could slide through. The sun was shining, and I had on a large sweatshirt and tights and a pair of shoes I found laying around the house that I’d hidden, because my own shoes that I’d come there with had been taken from me.

I walked to my mom’s house, from NW DC to SE. I waited there with my grandmother who looked at me once when I came to the door and just stepped aside and sat on the couch. We stayed seated in the living room, me at the dining room table in my quiet shame and her in her inability to help me. My mother came home at her usual time 6 pm. She looked over me and went to her room. I heard her calling the police, telling them that her runaway daughter was there. I was numb by this time and I waited. I waited for them to come. I waited while they handcuffed me. I waited in the station until the judge saw me. I waited while the judge stated that he was sending me to a lock-up facility. I waited on the van  that drove me to my new home. I never got therapy for this because no one asked, no one cared, I was just another fast ass girl who ran away from home.

These talks of R. Kelly and Bill Cosby remind me of that girl. The one who didn’t know but was held accountable for knowing. She had a future, but it was derailed. She played three instruments, had gotten accepted to Duke Ellington, ran track and was really good at it all of these things. When she came out of that basement there was no track and field scholarships, no elite art high school, just pain. I have done my best to protect her since then but it is time that she lives, that she loves again, that she is heard. She has sacrificed so much and I hadn’t known how to repay her until now.

As a Black woman my experience is not unique, I have met so many women with stories like this and much worse. I don’t know if it’s sympathetic resonance or if I have found my tribe. But I do know that it is unacceptable that so many of us have these stories. That people are willing to step over our broken bodies and spirits to ‘Step in the name of love.’ I find it ironic and disgusting. There is no music, behind the music that you enjoy, there is only pain.

 

 

 

The Lopsided Eye of Beauty

If you’ve never been ugly, this article might not make sense to you, but I want you to read it anyway.

So I was kid, an ugly kid. I had a lazy eye and I was poor and coincidentally; I smelled of urine. No piss! I was pissy smelling and black and girl and I had a crazy eye that didn’t do what I wanted and poor in Southeast Washington,D.C.!

Shit was hectic!

So you see, this was a lot. It was a lot for my childhood friends, who teased me just as much as they invited me to play. We’d play until the jokes started and eventually they were always on me. You see I had so much wrong, it was easy. I was easy. I cried almost immediately. It took me forever to develop the required grit to fight back. In my childhood memory, it seems like this treatment went on forever and all the time, but it was probably more like some of the time. Although there was this one time that this boy punched me in the face for being ugly.

Yea, shit like that was real for me. It was a lot.

It was a lot for my teachers too. One of my teachers, who was my favorite at one point; I overheard her say about me and another kid in my sixth grade class, ‘if they don’t dress well and smell good I’m not letting them participate in graduation’. I was in a panic, because I was a straight A student, but it didn’t matter because my hair was never done and I was dirty and ugly. It always came back to that.

I tried to overcompensate for my ugliness by being kind. I was too kind. I was often the butt of jokes that I couldn’t understand, because the type of cruelty that lives in the hood is not something that you can wrap your mind around. I combated it as best I could, but it hurt like hell. Then I tried to overcompensate for my ugly by being mean, that worked out a little better. I could fight, I had years of ugly memories stored to be angry about.

The price of ugly, had always been losing or not being able to enter the game. It hadn’t occurred to me that I wasn’t ugly until I was nearly 25. Could you imagine, living in the shadow of your childhood awkwardness for that long? I had long developed the necessary ugly girl skills of being outgoing, quirky and fun! These were the three tenants of ugly. It was like some unspoken oath that we all took. I’d see another ugly girl hanging with her crew and I’d be more outrageous, totally self deprecatingly funny and besides I was my mothers’ daughter; I could always out dress anyone. Being smart hadn’t gotten me far, because smart was not a quality that guys my age were interested in. So I dumb-ed it down, got the eye fixed, got cute.

The price of pretty was exhausting.

When I was ugly , I didn’t worry about how I pretty I was; or if I was as a pretty as your old girlfriend or the girl that you were eyeing while out with me. That was out of my control. I knew the deal. I could be me. Beauty had added so much strain to my already exhaustive existence.

As I entered my thirties, I stopped focusing on the notion of physical beauty. I wore my hair how I liked, I dressed for me, and I made faces; all the ugly faces that I was scared to be seen making as a young adult. I stopped looking down in photos, I stopped caring if my eye was straight, I started enjoying me. I found beauty in the me that was already there, underneath the rubble of a difficult childhood.

One day I looked in the mirror after finding a childhood picture and I realized that I’d always looked the same, beautiful; I just didn’t know it. At 32, I finally understood beautiful was all I ever was.