Punch Me Up To The Gods: A Memoir

by Brian Broome

I know that I never want to go back to the endless, desperate ache of begging someone to love me. I have been there. I know it like the sound of my own breathing. I know how deceptive a crumb of it can be when I feel starved for it. I want to learn to love myself, as they say. I’m not entirely sure what that even means, but I hear other people say it and it sounds good.

I placed a pillow over the face of bad feelings and held it there until they stopped moving, until I was sure that they were dead. But they never really die. They just find other ways to escape. I am learning to sit with them now.

There are times now when I imagine myself as an adult sitting there wrapped up in shame and hurt and he comes out and places his large hand on my back and tries to dam up the river with bricks. “Stop cryin’ now.” “No.” “You done cried enough now.” “I haven’t cried nearly enough.” Then I let go with everything I have, burying my face in my hands. I let slobber and snot fly. I squeeze my eyes shut tight in an attempt to drain myself of every single tear. And when I have exhausted every muscle in my body with the act of expulsion, I look up and turn to him. He is not there.

Baldwin spoke, knew who he was, and never allowed anyone to tell him any differently. I am not like him. He didn’t seem to need to be loved back and, in this way, he was brave. My biggest failing in this life has been my gasping need to be loved at the expense of so many other things. I have allowed others to tell me who and what I am supposed to be and, when I failed to meet their expectations, I blamed myself. This need to be loved by everyone has led me down dark roads more times than I can tell in one book—​in one thousand books even—​and all I have to show for it are these stories.

I have only recently begun to factor my mental health into the act of living. Black life in America doesn’t seem to allow for it. As a race, we are often admired for how “strong” we are and for how much we have endured. The truth is that we are no stronger than anyone else. We have endured, but we are only human. It is the expectation of strength, and the constant requirement to summon it, fake it, or die, that is erosive and leads to our emotional undoing.

I deserve the full range of human experience and so do you. My heart, in these past few days, has been full of love for humanity. The only difference now is that I am including myself in the process.