Category: life

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.
Words of Affirmation II

August 24th, 2022

You matter to me. You really do. You just can’t get out of your own way.

It’s been hard for you to see what others see about you so you’re slowly morphing yourself into the terrible person you think you are. You ain’t that person. Never work. Your goodness creeps out in moments set up for you to be your worst self. You were created to do good works and be good.

You are good.

You’ve conditioned yourself into believing that there is nothing good about you. Spoiled but not the good kind. You ain’t worth care, time, commitment or love. Especially love. Who is supposed to love someone like you?

Do you love you?

I stare at you and realize that you’ve turned into the walking embodiment of your faults. It wasn’t like this before. Dreams? You chased those. Ideas? You had them. No mountain you couldn’t top, no valley you couldn’t traverse. You were … you. But where is that person?

Hiding under failure? You ain’t a failure. You’re here. That’s a success story. Act like one.
Sports Culture is Morally Bankrupt. I’m Trying to Care. But I Don’t.

August 3rd, 2022

[Writer’s note: This piece was originally published in 2016 but in light of the discourse surrounding Deshaun Watson’s punishment – or lack thereof — for multiple instances of sexual assault, a lot of what I felt back then hasn’t wavered since. ]

I can’t find the strength to yell. Type-yell, at least.

It’s been a few weeks since the internet discovered and subsequently exploded over the case of Brock Turner, the former Stanford University swimmer who was sentenced to a mere six months for raping a a behind a dumpster. Hot takes are flying, thinkpieces are churning out. About everything rape: race, class, college.

I sit there, watch my timeline fly by in record speed. Every time I think of something to tweet, I stop. I don’t have the energy. Everything has been said, I think. But yet I feel like perspectives are missing. Not mine, though. At least in my mind. There’s nothing that I can say that would add anything to the conversation other than drowning in echo chambers and Group Think.

Everything being said is correct: rape culture is extremely pervasive. College campuses have a problem addressing rape culture. In 2016, Title IX is now more associated with rape and sexual assault than women’s athletics. Privilege played a role; it pays to be a White male. We knew all this.

Sports trump women at major college campuses. See Baylor, Florida State and Vanderbilt. We’ve built a sense of entitlement within student-athletes that they feel invincible. But again, tell me something that you and I don’t already know. It bears repeating for what?

Sports culture is morally bankrupt. Yet we try to attach inconsistent platitudes to a culture that consistently rejects it. And we don’t stop. Nor do we want to.

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On February 14th, 2017, I was sexually assaulted.

August 1st, 2022

Even as I write this, I don’t know if I’m making the right decision to talk about this publicly. I know how shame works, I know how victim blaming works. But even through that, I feel that the only way to exorcise the demons of self-blame and self-degradation is to let go of all that I feel.

Right now, I feel nothing. Not ambivalence to what happened to me but that I can’t really encapsulate how I feel about what transpired the other night. Physically, I feel weak. I still have sharp pains in places that I shouldn’t. I couldn’t go to work the next day, feeling like wasted space. Worrying if I’d pass him on the street or see him in the gym. That’s how I met him, that’s how I know him.

It was Valentine’s Day night. And the texts were flowing.

“I can’t lie, I’m a sexual person. I don’t know if I could mess with someone who doesn’t f***.”

I’m used to this. Practicing celibacy has taught me some things about some men: One, there’s this predatory intrigue in trying to understand why a human being would make the conscious decision not to have sex. Especially someone who is attractive, someone who could date whoever she wanted if she had her heart set out on it. In short, I don’t.

If you know my story, you know that sex was my coping mechanism to deal with the passing of my father. I had lots of it, with people whose names I don’t even remember. I didn’t know what else to do, you know. What else could give me momentary joy in the world that felt so damn painful? One 12-hour span in particular triggered the phone call that saved my life, that sent me to Pittsburgh and away from what hurt.

I still carry that hurt.

That’s why I don’t have sex. My current relationship with sex is so unhealthy. And I carry that into every interaction I have with a man because I feel that I have to put up that wall to ensure my safety.

At least, I thought.

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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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Category: life

2022: f*ck it. i guess we’re here.

Words of Affirmation II

Sports Culture is Morally Bankrupt. I’m Trying to Care. But I Don’t.

On February 14th, 2017, I was sexually assaulted.

An Ode to the Woman Who Saved My Life