Nik Nicholson's Blog, page 7

Untitled

Untitled

This hair and head are familiar.

This hair and head are familiar.

Here’s an idea, Family

As an only child, I’ve often envied siblings. I love twins in all their forms. I always thought it would be cool to grow up with other people.

My parents moved away from their families. So even though I have cousins, I grew up alone. I was so lonely as a kid I rarely ever get lonely. In fact, I’ve always found it strange when people say they are dating themselves because they are doing things they enjoy alone. I go out to restaurants, movies, and when I was younger, clubs, too. Imagine being so used to being with someone, you call it a self date when you eat alone.

On the other hand, imagine being so lonely as a kid you learn to distract yourself so you don’t feel. Now thoses distractions are a thousand hobbies I’ve perfected as coping mechanisms. I’m literally, never bored. I sometimes feel lazy when I’m hanging out with people. Like, I could be sewing or painting or researching. Still, I imagined family would be amazing. Having sisters or cousins is like built-in friends. So when my grandma was passing, she kept encouraging me to move back home. She loved family and her house and food anchored all holidays.

My grandmother always admired how I lived in different states without family. As an only child, I perfected creating a family where ever I lived. I picked amazing, talented, funny, and big hearted people. I cooked and anchored everyone during the holidays.

Life with friends is amazing. You have so much in common. They get you. You have great communication. You have shared values, and hobbies. Most important of all, you feel safe with them.

You choose your friends. People who don’t fit your vibration aren’t in your orbit. You actively and passively avoid attachments to liars, unsupportive, destructive, negative, fear-mongering, hate-mongering, religious zealots and jealous people.

Every holiday is fucking lovely. My friends would clean my house up after the holiday gathering. Wash all the dishes. Sweep and mop. They even took the trash out. Sooooo, I’m thinking family has got to be more amazing and intimate than this.

After my grandmother passed, I moved home. Which really wasn’t home because I grew up somewhere entirely different. But it is the biggest concentration of both my maternal and paternal family. I was born there. I know people. People swear they know me and they are adamant about me remembering some time I spent with them.

I left in elementary, but I remember how to get from my grandma’s house to other relatives’ homes. I remember places that no longer exist and their absences are landmarks. At the same time, I don’t remember street names. I remember the turn to make. I don’t remember who owned what businesses that are not abandoned dilapidated structures mourning the pass.

When I first arrived, calling it home seemed superficial. Still, my family acted surprised when I didn’t know where things were. They explained streets to me in disbelief. Like I’d lost my mind or was pulling their leg. They mentioned people: family friends, relatives, and events like I was there. Even when I insisted I had no idea who or what they were talking about, they’d insist I forgot. Or worse, they’d get frustrated and settle on me intentionally being dim. Which made things tense. I started lying and just agreeing to overcome this.

Lying always makes me feel disconnected. So I started avoiding these family members. Or not speaking when I found myself alone with them. In fact, I stop speaking to anyone. My ideas always came across as wild.

I don’t hate any group of people. Not even hate groups that indiscriminately hate me. I’m not into sports. I don’t have a school I think is better than other schools. I’m not into shaming folks or trying to build myself up by tearing someone else down. I say what I mean. I don’t want to beat anybody, I want us all to win.

Shortly after I moved the lies started. My aunt who lived alone and invited me to stay with her in her 6 bedroom house, because it was closest to the job, started to be nervous about a lesbian living with her. So she changed her mind after I was already 13 hrs into a 26 hr drive.

I plan. I called and verified two months before moving. My friends begged me to move back down south. One found me a job in her office. She was so excited about the possibility of me living with her and possibly being long-term roommates. I was tempted. I knew I would be happy there, but turned it down to go “home.”

Home, was an immediate shock. No one was welcoming. I was a burden. Second day in town, it snowed. I hadn’t seen snow since childhood. It was freezing. Even my warm clothes weren’t warm enough and my blood was too thin. Lol!

I probably have 20 cousins in my generation. They are all in factions with their immediate families. They attended the same high schools but didn’t socialize with each other. Because of marriage, they can’t be linked by last names. Some of them hid they were relatives.

Then classism, religion and old arguments became unknown barriers. Maybe because my friends were disowned and moved to create their lives we didn’t have all these old wounds undermining connection in the moment. I kept trying to do cousin things, get us all together. My cousin on my dad’s side showed up and showed out. We had the best times. Until she moved to Texas.

Each cluster of cousins with their parents were dysfunctional tribes. And my free-thinking ass was a mirror. Sometimes I was asking obvious questions whose answers were rooted in years of trauma. Buried beneath so many layers of distrust, grief, shame and unprocessed anger… I was constantly stepping on landmines.

All these little tribes go to different churches. When my grandmother passed, her funeral was held in the family church. Its pastor is our relative, has my last name and hers. I don’t believe… I know there is a God. I like Gospel music. Church is a pillar in our family. It’s a whole day thing. Everyone goes and then someone cooks… that someone use to be my granny. Everyone would meet at her house and eat on Sundays. Now, they all eat apart. Each tribe has their own traditions.

Not being a sibling, Sundays were the worst. I was expected to go somewhere. Shaming and condemnation is the baseline of my family’s faith. Whoever… wherever I chose to attend was a point of contention.

I use to meditate daily too… I chanted. I didn’t go around saying, I’m a lesbian. Still, I was alienated. Then I would self isolate to avoid spiritual violence. Some family concluded my orientation was a demonic spirit. They said it was equivalent to being a child molestor. As someone who survived being molested by a family member I was repulsed by the comparison. As a result, I was always meditating, trying to stay grounded and focused on getting into my own place.

During this time, I’d been out over a decade. I didn’t even see myself as different. Meanwhile, I stuck out. No pun intended. My little cousins were curious. They followed me around and mimicked me to their parents’ horror. I just ate without prayer. I answered their questions best I could without stepping on toes. I acknowledged how smart they were and when I didn’t know things. I thanked them for teaching me things.

I dosey doed around questions like a champ. Then I fucked up. I was at one of their elementary games. One Catholic school against another. My little cousin’s team was down. Then she came running and said “let’s pray so we win.”

I swear it was a reflex. I’m like aren’t they a Catholic school, too? To which my 8yo brilliant cousin looks back at them… and is like “yeah.” Then she and her sister pondered this perspective. Kids get it. I got it as a kid.

Forgive me. I’m broke, off my meds and suicidal so this self-destructive behavior should not be a surprise. And because I’m out of my fucking mind depressed, I examine her words. My cousin breaks down favor, being God’s favorite like Noah and Moses. She’s praying for God’s favor. Her family, my family is favored by God.

Ok. I accept because I already fucked up. Not going to teach logic. Imma be quiet. At that point, I’d literally stopped talking to my family about anything outside of small talk. Since I’m an introvert, and I hate small talk, this means whenever I’m around them I say exactly what’s necessary. Would you like more chicken? What kind of greens are these? I get off work at 5pm. I’ve literally stopped speaking to my family because everything I’ve said has been met with family meetings or alienation as punishment.

“You don’t believe in favor?” My cousin interrogates me. I’m trying to get out of this conversation unscathed. The vibration is off. See, I look them in their eyes when they speak. I literally connect. I laugh at some of their jokes. They all have permed hair, so I’ve answered a million questions about my locs. I can always feel when they don’t understand something. I’m patient because they are new humans. In our family, moving slow when being instructed is a type of insolence. Even if we are moving slow because we don’t understand. I often lead with seeing the best in folks and assuming they are doing their best. As a result, I have these great connections with all the babies in my familty. They prefer me to teach them things. They bring me things to explain. They repeat instructions and I clarify with the adult what they said and help. I think I treat them like small people. So they are free with me in a way they aren’t with other relatives.

So she pushes, “Do you know the story of Noah, Moses, Job?” They’ve been told they are not allowed to be around me and I’m not saved. So they assume I don’t know about church and the Bible maybe. On top of all of this, her grandparents run the family church. Her mom is my first cousin. They live at church. “Um, I have a different faith.” I try to remove myself. I’m learning to make myself small again trying to connect.

“What is your faith?”

I learned from an elder the best way to answer an impossible question is to bury the initial question. Soooo… “Is God fair? How would you like your mom to favor your sister? Is favor fair?”

Let me tell you something, this little girl became another person in that moment. Going forward when we were in church together and they would start talking about favor, she would look back at me. I was always afraid she would tell her parents what I said or ask them something regarding it. You know kids can’t keep shit to themselves. They are just too honest, even their lies are obvious.

She didn’t move to Holly weird and become atheist. However, she had questions. Which I directed to her parents too late. I’m not saying I was banned, but living near my family was the loneliest I have ever been in my entire life. Once I moved into my own place I spent every holiday alone.

Holidays crushed me. My neighbor would bring me a plate. He had once joked that maybe I acted like a nigger. He’s white. He met coming from taking out my trash to let me know me and “my people” are the reason Trump won the election. Sometimes, I’d hear him squeeze packages left outside my door. Manipulating them with his digits trying to figure them out. Had he asked, I would have told him art supplies. So, I always declined his dinner and party invitations. I think he felt sorry for me. Which, I appreciated anybody remembering me, so when I cooked I made him food too.

At the end of the day, it was heartbreaking living close to family. I visited my friends in other states. I made friends. I planned my death. I couldn’t find a life insurance plan that would pay off under three years. I was so emotionally distraught… I was in emotional agony.

As at 19yo, years before my ideas about family was shattered I had a run in with one of my great aunts. She has admitted to having mental health challenges. At the same time, she doesn’t treat it or try to keep from causing harm.

This aunt is so crazy, she often tells how she left her 6yo son in a store an hour away because he wouldn’t listen. So my uncle after being home for an hour asked my napping aunt where the 6yo was. Then he went and picked him up. Everyone laughs about this.

Welp, I saved up and took off work to go to our annual family reunion. This reunion is centered around Mardi Gra and the ball. For years growing up, I’ve watched the adults in my family get dressed to the nine and go.

At 19 I’d bought a floor length gown. I got the appropriate under garments and all the accessories to match. Not to mention, getting my hair, nails, and toes done the day before the trip. I was so excited.

I will admit I am strange to my cousins. I read way too much and have a huge vocabulary. I eat food from all different cultures. They are generally into soul food and maybe Italian. I love sushi, sea food buffets, Chinese, Thai and some Indian food. I could live off of Mexican food. My mom didn’t raise me cooking soul food, so it’s interesting to have it everyday when I’m in the south. Also, part of vacationing for me means reading books, being in silence, sleeping and eating bad.

Everyone there is two to three hours ahead. So when it’s 7am, it’s 4 or 5 am to me. In the south, everyone get’s up early and fixes their bed. They don’t go back to their bedrooms until it’s time to go to bed. As an only child, I was to be seen and not heard. I lived in my room and still do. I didn’t start sitting in the living room until I got my own place.

Anyway, it was fun walking the streets with my cousins. We were all somewhere between 14 and 22 yo. We walked with the parade. My boy cousins snuck and drank. The rest of us girls watched the littles. We’ve got small cousins and foster children with us. All the meals are at someone’s home. It’s probably 90 of us hanging out together.

I don’t really think about being unsafe, when I jump in the car with my cousins to go from one house to another. It’s late at night, maybe 10 pm. The streets are small dark roads flanked by huge ditches. My cousin drives 60 and 70 miles an hour on these tiny roads in a jeep, swerving every time he turns. He’s got a beer between his legs. I notice his nostrils are swollen and his skin is red. You can smell the beer in the car. My younger cousins, talk and laugh as he drives crazy. I tell God if he lets me make it to the house, I’m never getting in the car with this nigga again.

We make it home. I’m so relieved when we get back to the house, I go sit on the floor in the room I’m staying in. I don’t know. I needed an emotional break or something. Anyway, 40 people are at the house. The Blues is blaring. Folks are dancing and teaching each other different dances. Several people are yelling over the music having conversations. The laughter goes up and down. Everyone has been drinking. I turn on the TV in the room, but it’s too loud to hear. I put on headphones and play something soft and soothing. My nerves are bad, my stomach is upset.

Little ones are running up and down the hall wrestling each other. I feel obligated to get in it if I see them. So I push the door up. When they keep coming in, I close it. As a family, closed doors mean privacy and unless you need to be in that room, you don’t knock. They are loud in one room and playing video games. So my crazy aunt comes to the back and closes their door. She takes an account of the room. She’s yelling so loud I can hear her over the earplugs playing in my ear.

Then she opens the room door where I am. She asks what I’m doing. I tell her I’m reading and listening to music. She tells me that I didn’t fly all this way to be cooped up in a room reading a book. She tells me I can do that at home. I listen respectfully. But I don’t budge. I just want to be by myself. Looking back, maybe if I had gotten up and went in the crowded hot room with all my cousins she would have left me alone. I don’t know. I just didn’t want to be around anyone. I was upset and I’m not a snitch so I can’t talk about it.

Soon all the “Big Kids,” that’s my age group come out of the room. Some who were outside calls us all to attention. My aunt keeps taunting me about thinking I’m better than other people. She tells people I’m rude and antisocial. Oh, and because it’s been so long, at the time I didn’t like being touched. It actually hurt me to have people touch me. I don’t know why. I still don’t know why. I still get super sensitive like this sometimes now, but not as often as I did as a teenager. Being hugged was excruciating to my spirit.

So my aunt had been forcing hugs on me for two days at this point. Sitting on my lap and saying I shouldn’t be so mean.

We all meet in the living room. All the big cousins are going on a trip. Guess who is driving. Iain never getting in the car with that nigga. NEVER!!!! I don’t give a fuck if I have to stay at the house by myself I’m not getting in the car with him. One of my girl cousins grabs my arm and tries to usher me out with them. We are the same age, and therefore besties for the trip. I get out of her grasp and tell her to have fun. Thinking back, I’m 14yo. Now I see how my silence could have cost several of my cousins’ death. I was in the I’m not snitching mindset then.

Anyway, when all of my cousins started talking about going to different fraternity houses, I wasn’t curious enough to risk my life. I stayed back by myself. My aunt took this as an affront. For the rest of the trip she picked at me. She corned me to tell me that I was selfish and self-centered. The more she would talk crazy to me, the more I would avoid her. Since my mom allowed it and my aunt kept confronting me in front of an audience, teasing me, I found myself hiding wherever we went. Then she had told anyone who would listen that I thought I was better than everyone else. She said I slept all day, because I don’t do alarms on vacation. I get when I get up, which was about 8 their time. I mean, people would be fully dressed, fed, beds made and hanging out at 9:30.

At home, if we didn’t have plans for the day, we kept our sleeping clothes on all day. Or we changed into something not very flattering to wear around the house. These cats had on pressed pants. Who ironing? I’m talking bout, my uncles were crispy. Their pants were ironed so precise they joked that those pants could stand up by themselves. One uncle said he stopped taking his clothes to a certain cleaner because he didn’t feel they are ironed well enough. Noting, he could iron better than that for free. I said all that to say, me being in my bedclothes was a disaster. No one just outright said, hey, we are accustomed to getting dressed as soon as we wake up. I would have followed. I was a stupid kid, I didn’t follow the social cues. I still struggle with social queues. I did make the bed as soon as I got up. But then I laid on top of it, which was wrong too. You’re suppose to open the room door and come out.

So here we are, me against my family. Everyone talking about how I sleep too much and didn’t offer to do the breakfast dishes as I am the youngest person in the house. No one said do the dishes. I walked in, my crazy aunt offered me breakfast. At home, we didn’t eat breakfast. Also, it was every man for themselves. So I decline. My aunt goes bezerk. She starts telling me that her husband is carrying all the bills because she was laid off and I’m being ungrateful. They prepared food for me. I try to explain I can’t even eat after just waking up. It was so early to my body. I wouldn’t be hungry for hours. Still she continuted. My mom just sat there. I sat at the counter which sits in the living room where everyone was.

My aunt stared at me and the whole room was silent. I am afraid. I know something else is coming, but I don’t know how to stop it or avoid it. If I go back to the room, that’s wrong. If I walk away and go outside it’s like I”m turning my back on an elder. I look around at my mom, then my other younger aunt hoping for a life line. People stare at me like I did something to deserve it. And the truth is, maybe I have. I don’t always know how I am perceived. My silence is often taken as an affront.

After I’ve sat there for a while, I make a run for it. I go to my room, a book to escape into. Before I can walk out my aunt asks if I can’t see. The kitchen is a mess and I should clean it. She tells me I’m the youngest person there. I go to the back room. I just want to get out of her sight. I sit on the floor in a corner. I’ve learned I shouldn’t touch the bed. I close the door, because I can’t think my thoughts everything is so loud. I can’t read and disappear.

Then, the door slams against the wall and my aunt is in the room with me. I’m tired of running and being insulted. I don’t understand what her beef is with me, so I can’t fix myself. I can’t be invisible either. “I thought I told you not close this door? Huh? We don’t close doors in this house.”

I don’t say a word. I know there are some questions. I know there are some places I should say yes ma’am. But I don’t have the emotional energy to bow. So I stand up and get my book. I can read outside. I can read in my mom’s rental car. I can read anywhere. Why did I sit my stupid ass int his room? When I get up to go, she tells me that her son who is 6’7 would let her hit him. She tells me I’m the most disrespectful girl.

A party blares down the hall behind her. The smell of BBQ reminds tells me I’m hungry. People shout even when there isn’t any music. They talk over each other laughing, telling the same stories they tell every year. I look past her and try to will myself to walk past her. This is the family that brags about a grandfather we all know was a rapist and child molester beating his own daughter at 27 for coming home too late. This is the family who believes children should be in complete submission. Maybe someone will back her up and hit me. Maybe my cousins will be tasks with taking her side. You never know.

Also, I’ve grown up in a mixed environment. So some of the cultural norms are offensive to me. Like I said people are beautiful. I say I like your dress and shoes. I give compliments. Black culture in my family is back-handed compliments. Like, “You think you’re cute.” Rather than just tell someone. Also, because my aunt is the center of the party whenever I say something nice it’s met with an insult. Like, “you would think that’s cute.” Or “since when is your approval something?” So I am just trying to find my way.

Looking back, I still don’t know how I could have completely avoided this. In any case the trip was horrible. Most of the elders were angry with me. I stood up to my aunt in that room. I told her to leave me alone. I told her I didn’t understand why she kept looking for me to be mean. She reiterated she felt I was wasting my trip by staying to myself. Her son was the drunk driving my cousins around, so they were all gone somewhere when she was going off on me. I didn’t want to tell on him.

So when 19yo me came to go to Mardi Gra, she asked me to stay with her. I hadn’t been back since I was 14 for obvious reasons. I thought as an adult, life would be different. I didn’t imagine I would be in the same situation. Plus I could drive.

The night of Mardi Gra we all started getting dressed. I was so excited. There are tons of pictures of my aunts and uncles all dressed up. I was looking forward to seeing where they go and what they do. The ball was like $20. You have to pay dues in our family, it pays for catered events and family things. So I’d paid dues.

I didn’t know who I was riding with. That’s how it is. We all walk outside and we just get in whatever car is going. My mom had left early with a date, they were going to dinner first. My young aunt got dressed where she could get her hair done by another aunt. So there I was all dressed up. My crazy aunt had left early because she lives there and had duties at the ball. I was calling around trying to get a ride. When my aunt came back home to tell me you have to be 21 to go to the ball and I was 19 going to be 20 that year.

I’m like, well why didn’t you tell me this, I’ve spent all this money preparing. I took off work for this trip. My aunt said she could get me in, they aren’t really checking IDs she just doesn’t think I qualify to go. She noted I was never a debutante, I had never been presented to society or come out as a lady. At the time, I didn’t even know what all of that meant. It’s a classism thing. Meanwhile, I had graduated from high school homeless. I lived in an actual shelter. Being a debutante never even crossed my mind. In the south this is a huge thing, I guess.

Then she walked out with her husband and left me at her house dressed up. I was sick. Two hundred dollar dress that had to be altered, never saw the light of day. I don’t even know where that dress is now. I was so devastated. After that, I didn’t really speak to her or go to any more family gathers. When I moved to Atlanta, I would drive over and hang out with my great-grandmother. I would stay with one of my great uncles. But as soon as that crazy aunt started in on me, I’d get in my car and go home. Over the years, she has made it a point to ask about me and to talk crazy to me when the opportunity presents itself.

Also in my family there are the haves and have nots. So there is a group of family members who see themselves as better than the rest of the family. They all have college degrees, were debutantes and own their own homes. In my family you don’t rent. You live with your family, married, until you can buy a house.

At the end of the day, I stopped going down south. I didn’t feel welcomed. Just my existence seemed to be a point of contention. This same aunt would call me and tell me she never traveled without her husband and that she married the first man she ever loved. She would often say in private conversations that she admired my independence. But in person with an audience, she would say all kinds of crazy stuff to me and about me.

It was in this distancing that I moved home, which is not down south. I had already created a persona if you will in my family. Me chanting daily reaffirmed my craziness to them. Now I’m talking about African spirituality and unlearning a lot of anti-black stuff we inherit. I don’t wear a lot of make up. I don’t like buying expensive jewelry. I like making a lot of the things I wear. I love to laugh and I’m seeking happiness and joy. Following your happiness is like one of the greatest sins in my family. So I’m just wild.

I wrote this long as blog to point out, my own hypocrisy. I loved the idea of being part of a family, but didn’t want to do the work to be part of my actual family. I feel like if people don’t know how to talk to me or can’t be accountable for their behavior I don’t want to deal with them. I block niggas for fun.

I go to therapy and encourage family to do so as well. I don’t go silent on secrets. There are a couple child molesters in our family. I’m not breaking bread with their asses. I’m not going to pretend they are shitty muthafuckas who should be quartered. I realize that my idea of family was a fantasy. Families can me messy and toxic. Some of my favorite people don’t talk to their siblings. They tell me how lucky I am and I think they are lucky and maybe taking their siblings for granted…

I’m realizing friends are the family you get to choose. So I don’t have these weird tensions and unresolved shit. We air out our differences or take breaks from each other until we can talk and feel safe. Sometimes getting to the root of a problem requires a level of vulnerability unavailable because of the slight. I’m kind of working through that right now with a friend.

As always, please forgive any typing errors. I just released all this. My heart is heavy, and I’m actually feeling lonely today. My mental health hasn’t been the best. I pray you are well. I pray you feel safe wherever you are, mentally, physically, and spiritually. I pray the the heaviness of all these mass shootings don’t dim your light. I pray if you are feeling heavy you have some coping skills to move through. Love and Light

The Idea of Family

I love collecting photos of my family. I love seeing old photos of my mother and her siblings grinning back.

On my mama side, we got big teeth. Strong bones. In fact, Iain never heard of my cousins getting a broken bone. Things get dislocated.

I love history. I love to know what the people in them were thinking and feeling. If you write memoir, a good idea is to ask several people in the same picture to tell you about that day and what was going on in the picture. That’s like an amazing writing prompt.

Returning To Myself

It’s 11 here. I’m wide awake. I’ve been working on being in school this fall.
I have a lot of regrets. I have a lot of fears. I don’t know the path to do what I want, and I fear I might have started too late.

I’ve been sick since last Wednesday or Thursday. I don’t know, the days seem to run together. I’m trying to remember to take my meds and take meds for sickness… And get enough fluids (IT SHOULD BE WATER) so I don’t kill my kidneys and bladder. I take so many meds.

I’m struggling, at the same time for privacy reasons I’m not open to sharing specifics. What I will say is my heart is broken. I’m healing. I can tell because I’m moving to action, I’m writing again, I’m getting back into the things I love.

Still, I can’t push myself to be held. I’m fragile. Too fragile to play interpersonal games. You know how we stay connected to friends who are our chosen family even after we are devastated by something they’ve done. They’ve apologized or they aren’t technically wrong. See they checked all the boxes, but you’re still disappointed.

On top of that, I don’t seem to understand things that seem like basic instructions. In life I’m literal. I follow instructions to the letter and get in trouble because they were just a suggestion and not the real rules. I need help interpreting and comprehending human behavior. What rules are real, which ones are suggestions.

I’m lost and found.

I’m sad and hopeful.

I’m moving forward and it feels, like getting nowhere at all. I just want to disappear and be famous, too.

Meds, Mental Health

When you take medication for your mental health, it does not make you high. In fact, generally, you have to take it for six weeks so it can build up in your system to gain any benefit.

I pointed out that meds won’t make you high because there was an recovering addict in a group I’m in. They were considering and recommended to take meds. At the same time, they feared becoming addicted to another drug. The group encouraged them to try other alternatives.

Anyway, once the meds start working, the results are just having a calmer reaction to something that previously would have sent you spiraling.

Instead of feeling alone in the world, you take the calls you’ve been avoiding. It literally starts to shift your perspective and needs. Consequently, you make better choices. When you make better choices, you create a better life.

Instead of self isolating and alienating behavior you may feel more social. Where before you were telling yourself no one cares or you don’t want to be a burden, you see everyone is facing different challenges. You may see how your gifts and knowledge can help others. You start to commune creating reciprocal relations and plans to make life better. Problems become opportunities to grow and learn. You are no longer buried but planted. We are all blooming.

Self isolating, alienating behavior and negative internal self talk is a recipe for suicide. Medication can help the internal self critic to speak less.

I’m sharing this because there have been a lot of suicides. Some close. I’m sharing because people are choosing excruciating and debilitating mental health. Rather than, take something to address their anxiety, depression and impaired judgment.

For some, there is a drug-free way of addressing your mental health. At least start a medication therapy until you find that alternative.

More importantly, once you start your medication regiment you will be clear and patient. Nothing sends a person in mental agony spiraling like something that doesn’t meet their expectations.

Yes, breathing, exercising, and positive affirmations help. Yes, talk therapy helps. Yes, setting goals help. However, they don’t help us all to get to a place where we are present enough not to have our past guilt or fear of the future weighing us down. Ruining this very moment. Some of us need more than thoughts and prayers. Some of us need more than clergy, we need a trained therapist.

What if we treated all wounds like paper cuts, which actually hurt more than some larger wounds? Bandaids for bullet holes and stitches for splinters. Meds help us think clearly about the appropriate reaction and solutions. Meds give us impulse control. So you don’t kill yourself because of a breakup, when there are 7.7 billion people on earth. So you don’t kill yourself because you were fired from the job, you’ve been slaving in to avoid walking in your calling. So you don’t drive off a cliff because the family that was emotionally and physically abusing you has disowned you. When they freed you from generational trauma and dysfunction.

I deal with mental health challenges. I’m in a group where a person raised concern with an ominous post. They’ve been found.

People love to be externally positive. Posting their daily nutritional intake, work outs and personal mantras. Awesome. That’s not enough if you have a chemical imbalance or are trying to work through serious trauma.

There are no endings unless you choose death. Everything is a new beginning. Medication is not the worst option. Feeling horrible every day and imagining the worst is the worst option. Letting your internal critic bury you alive is the worst.

If you are choosing suffering when there are options, your judgment is impaired. No no. Don’t insist there are different ways to address a mental health crisis. Breathing and sitting with your internal critic is not going to save you. Infact, that may be where you make a plan. Like my aunt says, on this here matter, we cannot both be right. One of us is wrong. If you’re stretching and thinking about killing yourself, it’s you.

Tell the people you love, you love them. Don’t forget to tell yourself.

Black History Month is Painful

Black History Month is always painful. One, for all the things I didn’t know. Then, for all the things I learn. Lastly, most people are uninformed because you have to go to extreme lengths to learn basic US history. People out here thinking racism ended in 1965.

Meanwhile,Texas wants to either remove slavery from textbooks or call enslaved people domestic servants. They want to portray enslaved people as extensions of their families. Rather than how enslaved people were treated, like cows or horses.  Black people like cattle were breeded, then their children sold off and lost because the census didn’t consider them as people until 1870. Before, they were itemized as boys and girls if the family was civil. Sometimes, they were nigger males and females. No names, no recognized relationships. So before 1870, I dont know who was married, or who gave birth to who. All slaves carried their master’s last name at the end of the Civil War. Different families unrelated could be Jackson’s. Might be four John’s eight Mary’s.

There were separate documents for breed tracking, like one might do with dogs.

How would Black children feel if they knew all the inventions created by Black people? What if we saw Black culture as valuable as the people who appropriate it? What if we talked about painters, dancers and scientists. What if we discussed Black politicians before we lost to reconstruction and the right to vote? What if we acknowledged the culture within this culture? We’ve got our own literature, music, food, idioms and traditions.

What if Black children knew we were constantly fighting to do more than survive? What if they could name just two of the more than 60 plus Black communities destroyed? We ask why Black people are still struggling, but no one knows all the things the US has done to undermine us thriving collectively. The government killed MLK, Fred Hampton and Malcolm X.

Jim Crow, AKA the BLACK Codes aka segregation just ended in 1965. The police still continued murdering our leaders well into the seventies. Assata Shakur is currently still on the run.

Sundown towns, aka vagrancy laws aka profiling is still a thing. Philando Castille was pulled over like 27 times before he was shot to death by police during a traffic stop. Chris Rock was pulled over 5 times in a month in a half when he moved to a new neighborhood.

Then you add housing covenants just ended in the 1990s. This doesn’t even address red lining, predatory lending, loan denial, Black tax on inventory and voter suppression. Black people were killed trying to vote after the Civil Rights Movement.

Trayvon Martin was stalked and killed. Ahmaud Arbery was cornered and shot for jogging. Then the system worked to cover up his murder. The family was initially told he was killed by a homeowner during a break-in.

I grew up in a dilapidated Black community until I moved west. 2022 that community is so poor, they’ve turned off most of their street lights. Their downtown looks like a war zone. All major grocery stores have left. What if we were committed to working together and not abandoning our neighborhoods?

Draft 29 of 5r

Maybe, it’s mercy.
To stay,
I would have hardened.
Barely surviving.

My spirit is strong, leaving.
Betrayal replays
Snippets of smiles-
Tongue sharpened teeth waiting to maime.
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.

Draft 26 of 5r

Maybe, it’s mercy.
To stay,
I would have hardened.
That’s barely surviving.

Leaving, my spirit is strong
Though pride’s infamy whirls down a drain of wounds.
Rewind. Fast forward. Snippets of smiles
Now are licked chops.
Still, my conscience is clear.
Betrayed.
In the absence of rage
I’m ashamed.
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 I’ve lost
Some thing.

I, always, have, me-
If I embrace the journey
Created by my creator.
Creatives can’t be forsaken
We love destruction, sacrifice, our people, baptisms, rebuilding
Dedications and renamings
Honoring our moment’s sacred.
Some beginnings reveal us to ourselves.
While others are also
salvation.

Draft 25 of 5r

Maybe, it’s mercy.
To stay,
I would have hardened.
That’s barely surviving.

Leaving, my spirit is strong
Though pride’s infamy whirls down a drain of wounds.
Rewind. Fast forward. Snippets of smiles
Now are licked chops.
Still, my conscience is clear.
Betrayed.
In the absence of rage
I’m ashamed.
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 I’ve lost
Some thing.
I, always, have, me-
If I embrace the journey
Created by my creator
Creatives can’t be forsaken
We love destruction, sacrifice, our people, baptisms, rebuilding
Dedications
And renamings
Honoring our moment’s sacred.