Category: faith

can you feel me?

May 27th, 2023

I sit in this space of public lament. I cry out a lot. I rage on about my life in the form of words and sentences. It makes me look like a self-deprecating, depressed humanoid. I can’t really run from my truth but it would be nice for me – and for you – to see me escape out from of my dungeon of doom and gloom and woe-is-me to locate an ounce of creativity to write about some light.

So I’m going to use him as an excuse.

This crush will probably wane soon. This smooth transition from fascination to infatuation will dissipate and I’ll be back to thinking that he’s just “cool”. Not in a negative way though. “Cool” in like, damn, I wish we weren’t so damn apart geographically so we could actually kick it more often. I think he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. “Cool” in that I’d beg my homegirl to date him if they did ever crossed paths.

And before you ponder whether I’ve thought about dating him, remember that I’m standing ten-toes down in a place of joy with this one.

I often talk about how I appreciate crushes. I truly do enjoy the feeling. There’s an innocence in basking in your own consciousness about someone’s perfection. Nothing they can say or do can knock them off their pedestal. My heart is fluttering but I’m humbled that he’s plugged into me in the way that he is right now.

I never felt this way before...
Boy, the feeling that you give to me I can’t ignore, you’re my joy…
You truly do enlighten me, you’re all I’ll ever want and need
You got the best of me so baby come with me, come with me…
You got me wide open and I’m digging you so baby
Keep it coming, truly indeed, sent from your majesty
Tell me can you feel me, feel me?

This is hard to complete. I want to veer off into a space where I get angry that whatever-this-is-that-I-feel is going to stay a feeling and not a reality. I can’t go there. There’s power in words. I’ve brought relationships to the brink of death just by asking God in words to do such a thing. I’ve manifested my own heartbreak. I’ve begged the Creator to make some dude disappear only for him to come back in a test of my trust in Her.

So what if I write that I hope that we develop a deep friendship. That in some way we’ll connect on a level where we’ll need each other for nothing else but as a source of love and light. We’ll celebrate each other’s victories like we got the gold medal ourselves; be inspirational and a push to do better and be better.

Truth be, he does that already. I think I offer the same.

So that’s why this “crush” caught me off guard. Maybe I’m in a space where I want to feel something about somebody and he’s in the way. I’m not mad at it. Like I said, this organ sitting behind a breastplate is cold to a lot of good things. Maybe the Creator saw me traveling into another short season of dread and chose this as the way to stop me.

So me rejecting lament is me telling those powers and principalities – those things not seen that want nothing else but to see me wading in the deep – that this feelings won’t be capped by those sleepless nights of wondering about this elongated season of loneliness.

It’s a reminder that joy is always around the corner and I should always make sure to keep him in my petitions to the Creator – not to stare into the eyes of mine but to always keep him in the eyesight of Her.

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an ode to sonic (charles hamilton)

May 25th, 2023

I have this thing where I hate for people to see me fail. I hate when others can see my flaws, that I make mistakes on the way to being labeled a “fuck-up”. I call those people ‘witnesses to my weaknesses’. I know for a fact that when they see me, they think about the times I did something wrong or said the wrong word or spelled that damn thing incorrectly or couldn’t put a sentence together or forget a punctuation mark. Or when I dropped something or forgot my keys or got off at the wrong bus stop or didn’t notice how ill-fitting a piece of clothing was on my body.

Or when I got fired from a job in the throes of deep depression or got put on blast by a man online for reasons I will never understand. Or see me schlepping bags from one bus terminal to another because I need to make it back to DC in time to have a place to stay for the night. Or stumble home drunk.

Or get punched in the face by your girlfriend on the internet.

Your worst moment could be in line for judgment. People are mean and people will bring up your worst days as your worst self as a way to knock you down a few pegs. I don’t talk about people because the wood plank in my eye is more like a damn cabin in the woods with full amenities and plumbing. I ain’t in the right.

But I think that’s where my transparency comes from. You can’t tell me about myself because I’ve already volunteered the information. I know I got some ‘ain’t shit’ situations in the stash. It’s a defense mechanism whether I want it to be or not but in its best form, it’s testimony.

At its best-worst, it’s a petition for help.

So I get it when another creative uses their art as their chance to put their pain at the foot of the cross and let go. Your audience becomes the first few rows of pews. The air and atmosphere is the Creator or whatever you deem appropriate to put on the paper is an escape from what it is you truly feel. Possibly a dream of what you hope for things to be. There’s hope and hurt in what we do.

Charles Hamilton and I were alike in many ways. We’re both creative kids with mental health issues that chose to medicate our trauma with substance misuse. Unlike him, I never got into anything hard. Instead I got into enough to numb the pain. The day I learned that alcohol could stave off my feelings just for a little bit was like a kid learning a new cheat code for Mortal Kombat. Fuck a slow trudge to victory with a slew of failure in-between. We need to get to this fatality quick, fast and in a hurry. I need to feel in control, for once. Feeling my body heat up like a cast-iron skillet thanks to top-shelf long islands took away whatever hurt, shame, confusion and anger that I had at towards a world that, in my mind, always made fun of me.

The internet is crooked and cruel.

I was on the internet the day it happened. I remember the memes and jokes. I cracked a few myself. Shit detonated like a bomb. Remember I am a person who fears being seen in the midst of making unwise decisions. I’m the girl with a plethora of dirt. The woman who isolates in hopes of disappearing from people’s consciousnesses.

That time wasn’t fun. It was sad.

I feel bad for participating in the sadness and people seeing it.
lover’s dread.

April 9th, 2023

This plague of loneliness has swept over me and not even the blood of the lamb can shield me from my fate. I hate when these feelings defeat me. I hate that I can’t just get over how I feel: without love, without an excuse to be cared for, without a reason to be lusted over, without a position to be held into. All of these things we called fleshly drown me. Drowned me enough to lay in bed early Sunday morning instead of celebrating the Passover Lamb’s victory over death.

I’m in a season of intentional longing and loneliness. This has to be God-breathed because I don’t want to believe this pain won’t be worked around for my good. I keep telling myself that I’m not in a place to be in place with any man. My garden needs pruned of the weeds of past hurt and decisions. What I need isn’t close to a want – stepping closer to a desire – because I need to want to be whole before I can appreciate what’s been given. Or what’s waiting for me. I just want to be watered. I feel ten steps closer to dead.

I’m tired of tricking my mind into thinking that this is a choice, that being single is a choice. This is out of my hands. Every chance at a relationship that I bring into my life doesn’t align with what the Creator wants for me, so it can’t do anything but fail. I’ll like them but they don’t like me in return. He’ll want me but once he finds out that he can’t fuck me, that want goes away. I’ll tell them no but they still try to violate me. I keep dreaming of running into him but every time I walk around his way, he’s never to be seen. I think he’s too good and pure for me and I’m right.

There’s this one. So sweet, so clean, so innocent. At least from what I can see. He’s the example of “right”; the right decision, the right type. I’m too dirty for him. My past is riddled with dark shit. I’m too off-balanced and off-kilter to mess up his seemingly perfect balance with God. I often joke that I would “ruin” his life. I’m really not when I say that. Ain’t no way our opposites would ever attract. The barrier between our closeness is that thick. Because if the Creator is indeed fair and just, making me and him work would render Her own words and power to be moot.

This is ‘lover’s dread’. I want to blame everyone else but me for it. I want to blame the men of the past for soiling me so bad to the point of destruction. I’m destroying myself as I write this, which I am because I don’t want to be weighed down by these feelings. These feelings hit me last night and remain here with me, even in this moment, as I thought reading God’s word would ri me of them. It failed. I couldn’t focus. My eyes are heavy but crying ain’t in my repertoire. I feel like I can’t, especially on a date like today. On this day, we celebrate when death is swallowed up by victory. When one thing we thought was dead and gone comes back alive and with a greater purpose. Death has lost its sting.

Death still stings. The death of my Dad still stings. I wouldn’t be in his place of dread if he was still here, conflating mistakes with poor decisions because they rendered the same result: leaving me a crimson stain unable to be washed clean.
the back pew.

April 7th, 2023

I call the last row of pews in the church, the “sinner’s pew”. In a church, sitting in the last row allows you to hide. You can’t be seen. You can full of people duck out the front doors once you’re overwhelmed with guilt. It ain’t about being seen, ain’t about feeling the reverberation of the music. You ain’t distinguished, qualified or a person of high standing in the community so your seat ain’t reserved. You just are there because, in truth, you have nothing left to lose.

The last row of pews is for those who feel like they have no other place to go. This place is your last resort. Everything — and everywhere else — and every other person — has failed. You heard that this place called a sanctuary is where miracles happen, where prayers are lifted up and answered. A place where God takes attendance to make sure Her best and brightest are ready to learn from Her.

You’ve been a truant. You’re only here so you don’t get expelled from God’s love and care.

God calls on you. You briefly raise your hand. Just to be counted. Some dude waxing off on the corner warned you that if you didn’t know God, you would get left. Left where? Pain, anguish, fire, decay and destruction. Little does he know that you’ve been there and done that. You wouldn’t be sitting on this wooden slab if everything was peaceful, if things weren’t falling apart. They tell you to run to God when it does. So that’s why you’re here.

It can be lonely back here. No one wants to acknowledge each other. There’s shame that comes with dragging your lifeless body to God’s feet. Shame in knowing that others will know that you were on your knees. It’s confirmation that you’ve really fucked up. You don’t dare have a witness to your weakness. You didn’t want to be in the club for delinquents.

But you are and you’re here.
A Never-ending Season of Lament, Part V

January 28th, 2023

“They continued to commit evil in the sight of the Lord”

Continued evil. An hour or more worth of evil. Beat one of your children to a pulp -levels of evil. A child that wanted to go home. He told them that, on the ground, as they mocked him. Begged him to keep resisting so they could break his arms. They said that. “I’ll break your fucking arms”. Hoped he’d get stomped out. He did. On camera. For the world to see. They didn’t know that. Maybe You did. Maybe You orchestrated this moment to happen in the where’s and how’s because something so evil had to be stopped.

I just hate that You use your children this way. That omnipotence of You strikes early and often and ugly. I don’t want to put this on You, I really don’t. We do evil completely independent of You, I know. I’m in Judges right now. I know what it’s like to watch Your creations act like they weren’t manufactured to do good works. But eventually they cry out to You because they’ve seen the error in their ways. You raise up one of your best and brightest to save them from themselves. Then peace. There is always peace. Until the end of the book, when the people had no king and did as they saw fit. You had enough. So you raised a king.

Then you raised a King of Kings who got beaten to a pulp to prove a point. Beaten by folks in the finest wears of a corrupt system. Threw rocks at him and hoped he’d get stomped out. Like Tyre.

He’s one of Your children. Just like Jesus.

This is trash and You know it.

Evil in your eyes continues to happen. Evil in mass form. Evil in corrupt systems and structures. Evil in kinfolk. What got into those children of Yours? That badge activates their privilege to justify their thug. I first saw the Vans on Tyre’s feet. The skinny jeans, the hoodie. Very much from-around-the-way. Cousin or brother or first date or neighbor or coworker-around the way. He was one of ours. One of Yours. He wanted to go home. He yelled for his mother. He just wanted to get home. He says he didn’t do anything wrong. I’m looking in the face of a child of Yours that’s scared.

Home. That’s safety from fear. He didn’t make it. I know he was running there. Where he was – at the mercy of generals orchestrating evil in the vein of their lord – wasn’t safe. He didn’t make it home. By the hands of folks who continued to do evil in the eyes of the Lord.

We know in Scripture that eventually You kicked evil doers out on the Promised Land. Are You ready to repeat some history? In ways, I don’t want you to. If I believe that You can raise any and all things from the dead then you can redeem any and all of Your children. Even the ones that beat another of Yours to death. I pray that their spirits are ripped and torn. I pray that their hearts won’t beat the same again. I pray that they fear for their own damnation. I pray that they call out to You in repentance. A justice system made of human hands ain’t set to save them now. A judge raised up to do what’s just and fair will, by Your willing, defeat evil and bring peace.

All for them to continue doing evil in the sight of the Lord. Because that’s what they do.

At what point do You kick them out for not learning their lesson?
2022: f*ck it. i guess we’re here.

January 1st, 2023

2022 was a year of wishing for absence. Asking God to not wake me up. Hoping the world would usher me into its topsoil. I hated to be here. I hated being present. Presence means an awareness to what’s going on around you. There’s a lot going on around me that I can see. I fear the day that you will be able to witness it. That’s why I haven’t been around. In spirit and in truth.

I woke up one day in May over everything I built for myself and everything I was blessed to witness away from it all. Going home hurt. It was this glimpse into how things could be if I made better decisions and lived with more peace. Home feels just like that. It’s cold but bearable weather. It’s walks to the grocery store passing faces as dark as your own. It’s ripe plantain and jerk seasoning at arm’s reach. Museums with your mom. A newly-existing peace with your grandmother. Native sounds, smells, tastes and tongues all around you. It’s sweet reunions and necessitated first-time hangouts. Kisses dripping in kerosene and laughs laced with love. Longer minutes and hours. Dread when you arrive back to the place that stows you away from what’s good in life.

Coming back to the worst of things was enough for me to crash because I knew it would be too long until I could be around that goodness again. I put in two-weeks without a place to go. I floundered around not looking for help because I wanted to crash and burn. I have this thing of desiring destruction so I can pick up the pieces and try again. It’s better to start in a cloud of smoke than in liquids and solids of pain. Real life stinks. So let’s start over. I beg God for a fresh slate but She hasn’t listened. She knows I don’t want that even as I fight what She thinks is best for me. But I’ve been fucking up since, walking that line to my own demise. Every time I near, I close my eyes and ask to be whisked away from it all. Kill me before all of this will inevitably make me stronger. But I’m still here. In spirit and in truth.

Here but not here. Family reaches and I don’t reach back. I love them too much for them to see me as I am. I know they worry about me. They should be. I worry for myself. I just don’t want them to see it. Seeing it is worse than thinking about it. At least you can call thoughts “delusions”. It’s harder to play off hallucinations. Those can get you committed.

I miss my family. Deeply. I know they care. It just pains me that they care for a wretch like me.

My faith and I are at an impasse. I still care about God and Her Son but it hurts to be around Her people. They’ve reached but I can’t reach back. I can’t read about Her people in Her book filled with stories about how She always has the back of those who believe in Her. That She manifested a Son to be a Savior and unbreakable connection to Her people. But I’m tired of Her people being a witness to my weakness. I’m tired of pretending like I’m cool.

I’ve struggled with the idea that becoming a Christian had all to do with survival and nothing to do with a deep desire to know Jesus. I didn’t grow up in this; I’m not prodigal by any means. I’m a girl who made poor decisions, fucked, drank and depressed myself into this mess that had to be saved by radical devices otherwise she’d be walking dead. Especially since I feel like I’ve become a worse person now that I’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit. It’s exposing wounds and hurting myself and others. So I diagnosed myself as a leper and live outside the city’s gate. When I’m healed, you’ll see me. If ever.

I learned this year that there are more fuck-ups in this world than figured-it-outs. Good people fuck up a lot. Some really good people never figure it out. But when you’re that person who people think will always figure it out, fucking up hurts like shit. You feel like a lie and a farce. The person presented to the world ain’t really who you are. So you disappear. Again, in spirit and in truth.

I’m covered in dread as I write this. Dread for my future. My job over the summer called my family to do a wellness check because I didn’t show up to work. Set off this chain reaction. Family called family. I only picked up the phone when my Mom called. I didn’t want her to worry about me even though deep down I do. That’s my Mom. That’s the one person you want worried about you. She’s going to do everything in her power to make sure you’re okay. She did. I was able to pick back up, find work and survive. But I survive, not thrive. The devil sits quietly in the corner of the room where I’m currently writing this. A faint whisper can be heard: “you don’t have to worry about survival if you’re dead.”

I wonder if those whispers are the thoughts that influence my decision to wish for dirt. Being alive clues me into the idea of that being the case. I’m still here. I still breathe, I still exist. My demons are still in the room, circling me like wolves do to prey, but there’s still a chance of survival. I can fight back. I can make it out of this wilderness alive. I’m not dead.

It’s the thriving shit I can’t get to but I guess I’m still here to try.

In spirit and in truth.
some thoughts on Kanye.

October 13th, 2022

When myself and others declared in 2019, before the release of Jesus Is King, to pump brakes about anointing Kanye as this savior of subverting pop commercialism to preach the gospel of Jesus, it wasn’t just because we knew he’d take this full-on pivot to white Christian nationalism (the seeds were planted, sure, but this is to the extreme). It was because when you tokenize someone more prone to brokenness than cheap porcelain, you will find yourself reckoning with a decision completely preventable: propping them up in the first place. We shouldn’t do this to anyone as they walk this journey with Christ. Falling on your face is an inevitable part of that journey. A million witnesses to your weakness is not.

That being said, the reality is that Kanye’s existence was weaponized against people like myself, Black folks adjacent to white Christian spaces who openly lamented about the state of being Black in this country. Crying out about a President who got more racist and sexist by the second and the 77% of white evangelicals who voted for him in the first place. Those who, with clear intention, voted for someone because of ‘the unborn”. Folks who, for the first time, are being questioned about their racial biases and racist sentiments.

“They don’t like Kanye because he has a different political opinion.” This isn’t a disagreement about taxes or how to allocate money to schools, damn. This is about a clear discrimination and hatred of people. A violence that stormed the Capitol on January 6th. And if we’re being honest, these folks use Kanye to mask their own prejudices and blindness to race.

“I can’t be racist — or have racist thoughts or ideas — if this Black guy agrees with me!” Yes. You still do. If you openly ignore the pain of others to satiate your own peace, you are part of the problem. If the Black people around you disagree, it’s probably best to not be dismissive of their thoughts. Or think they are the problem. You don’t know Kanye. You know me but my ‘me’ wasn’t enough to convince you that something is really wrong.

That shit continues to break my heart.

Kanye is a parrot for current white evangelical political thought. A thought so pervasive that it damn near re-elected Trump to the Oval Office. Kanye stood next to that man in a time when that man’s presence drove people, like myself, out of racial reconciliatory Christian spaces. Unfortunately it took a knee to George Floyd’s neck, a shotgun blast to Ahmaud Arbery’s back and gunshot wounds on Breonna Taylor’s body to wonder where the hell we went.

Like I’ve said, he’s their problem to solve. That’s their man. But as you can see, the public adoration from influencer Christian pastors is all but gone. He isn’t of use anymore. Or he’s too broken to fix. He isn’t too broken for Jesus. That’s who he needs more than anyone else.
describe a moment of silence.

September 5th, 2022

Woosh then nothing.

All of the noise of my past went down with me.

Super brief.

I don’t think I even heard thoughts. I didn’t have time for them.

Down, up, saved. That’s it.

I don’t believe I closed my eyes either. Or I don’t remember. I needed to experience it all.

Pure silence. That’s what I should call baptisms going forward.
An Ode to the Woman Who Saved My Life

July 16th, 2022

Life has an ill way of touching your heart enough to find yourself grieving in the most unorthodox places. For me, it was in a bar. Penguins playoff game in my left year, a drunken conversation about corporate buyouts in my right. It was one of those days where a glass of wine would make you feel better. The bartender poured it for me before I even finished checking if my debit card was in my purse.

I had this moment previously where I was upset about a potential date gone sour. He ghosted. Right after I sent him pictures to see if “my face matched my beautiful voice.” I fully understand that I will never be everybody’s type but it still hurts to be rejected. And there I was, staring at text messages in my phone that weren’t showing up. Ghosts, perhaps.

Hurt. I couldn’t understand it and I was frankly bewildered by my own emotions. But I needed to wax it all away and Riesling does that. Or so I thought. Because after four glasses, I was thinking about this dude, what he did and how he just told me everything he ever felt about me by leaving me the hell alone.

So I went looking for my Dad’s obituary.

I grieve for my father when I hurt.

It’s a trigger that I never want to go away.

And after searching four of five different configuration of his name, I could not find it. But I could find Aunt Shelly’s.

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Imaginary Playmates: A Week With My ASMR Boyfriend

December 23rd, 2020

Surrounded by this voice drenched in a Southern lilt, this talking book full of affirmations encapsulates me with whispered tones of “I love you” and “I can’t live my life without you.” You know it’s not for you yet it feels as if you’re the only woman in the world listening. You can tell through the comments below the video that you aren’t alone — there’s a community of like-minded women blessed to hear a man — this man — dote out words of affirmation as they — like you — curl up under the duvet and drift in and out of lucidity. The heavy breathing, the sighing, the “no, I’m still awake…”, the -fill-in-the-blanks conversation meant to induce slumber, all of it is just twenty-five minutes of a fantasy. An internet-birthed, unorthodox, borderline-insane, flesh-medicating fantasy.

Abbreviated as ASMR-BR, Autonomous sensory meridian response-boyfriend roleplay consists of men with very appealing voice boxes talking, laughing, breathing and being all things boyfriend — in recorded form. He asks about your day, calls to say that he misses you and even kisses you in between your favorite scenes in a movie. He’ll talk to you until you fall asleep or sex you into an intense shut-eye, whatever a good boyfriend must do to ensure that you know he’s forever yours.

I had no idea of its existence until a chance encounter with a YouTube link led me down a rabbit hole filled with words of affirmation and growls of pleasure coming from the voice of a Black man acting in place of a real boyfriend. Curiosity of a qualitative kind got the best of me and as I went deeper into this fantasy world, I wondered what it would be like to have him be my reality for a week. Challenging my holiness and hormones, my ASMR boyfriend gave me one hell of a ride. Just like a boyfriend should.

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