Finding Me

by Viola Davis

The attitude, anger, and competitiveness were my only weapons. My arsenal.

And though I was many years and many miles away from Central Falls, Rhode Island, I had never stopped running.

She never raises her fist for . . . her.

As I grew away from my parents, I tried to be my own person, dispelling what I’d been taught.

We were “po.” That’s a level lower than poor.

Achieving, becoming “somebody,” became my idea of being alive.

I knew it was shit. But it was my shit. It was my home.

A family of eight kidnapped children and two female guardians moved in on the second floor

What the fuck

I absolutely loved to witness any kind of fight outside of our apartment. It was better than prime-time television.

We weren’t interested in the softball set. We just wanted to win. We wanted to be somebody.

The majority of my most joyful memories were from my relationship with my sisters.

My sisters and I continued to navigate our world. We continued to figure it out on our own in the absence of parents.

From the moment we stepped into the church all eyes were on us. I thought everyone was mesmerized by how cute we looked.

The abusers were called “dirty old men” and the abused were called “fast” or “heifers.”

ashamed at myself for feeling violated by a grown-ass, perverted violator.

It’s funny that with the complaints about hygiene, no one ever asked us about our home environment.

How do I get to the mountaintop without legs?

The blood on Danielle was my mom’s.

As white as he was, Jeff taught us a lot about Black history.

It was now time for me to, as I’ve heard Black people say so many times, “shit or get off the pot.” So, I shit.

It was trying to save someone else when I was drowning.

Being real is wearing fifteen-dollar shoes and being proud to wear them. Being transparent is saying, “I’m always anxious. I never feel like I fit in. I need help.” I wasn’t transparent.

Going three thousand miles away and throwing myself into the belly of the beast that was California forced me to dig deep to survive.

Whether you have an education or not, the ugliness of racism comes down like a hammer. It enveloped my life when I was eight and at twenty-three, I was still bullied by it.

I thought I was completely, absolutely, without question in love. He was my first boyfriend.

That in my journey to “the top,” to being more “evolved,” I left the street fighter behind. I left my claws.

The infant mortality rate was so high that parents waited seven days before they named their child.

Suddenly the anxiety that always existed in the pit of my gut went away completely. I almost felt drugged. My skin came alive.

So . . . honey don’t try to label or define me, cuz I’m not who I was ten years ago or ten minutes ago.

I found the party inside me. The celebration that needs to happen to combat the pain and trauma of memory.

Secrets are what swallow us.

I got pregnant by my boyfriend of seven years.

I absolutely, without question, knew it was a life . . . which I had traded for my own life. Try dealing with the weight of that shit!!!

He said one of his rabbis said, “It’s futile to ask why. Instead ask yourself, ‘What did I learn from this?’”

the love you have for your children (even when they drive you crazy) is everything, absolute perfection as far as I’m concerned.

You make it out and go back to pull everyone else out.

My ass was tight! Translation: I was scared to death.

We had an open bar—dangerous because we’ve got a lot of addicts in the family.

“Wow, Vee . . . Julius has changed your life.” Yeah, he did, but I changed my life and Julius was the reward, my peace was the reward.

I love broads. I love authentic, ballsy women who are unapologetic about who they are.

As he was dying, as if it couldn’t get worse, someone stole his morphine.

He survived a quadruple bypass, only to die a few months later of cancer.

At funerals, no matter how much you think you know someone, you see a whole part of their life at the end. People sharing memories, stories that you never heard.

My daddy was gone. How can life keep going after this?

The purpose of life is to live it.

There wasn’t a lot to do—go to Walmart or hang out at each other’s houses.

We were a group of women, all together, no egos, no jealousy.

itself. In life, I exist. We, dark-skinned women, exist.

I now understand that life, and living it, is more about being present.

I’m now aware that the not-so-happy memories lie in wait; but the hope and the joy also lie in wait.