It opens up with the story of Phyllis Hyman’s last days. She told her friends and family that she was set to rid herself from the world. She wanted them to know so it wouldn’t be a surprise. The mercy part of a mercy killing, perhaps. She drugged herself into death. I think about that method often. Almost done it before. I don’t have access to any other way that wouldn’t be violent. I do but I don’t want to feel my life seep from my body. That’s too much. 

I quit my job this week because I think I won’t be here on Earth for the next one. At least those are the thoughts that permeate my mind. On the surface, it’s because I woke up and thought “this isn’t what I wanted to do.” I’ve been on this ride more than one, the bumps and hills of retail are the same everywhere. You’re a fool if you think that “this time” will be different. It never is. I remember my Auntie telling me that I needed to think about my future. That I shouldn’t be working until I’m 70, that I should think about savings. I should be in a home or my own place at this point. I’m turning 35 in about a month. I haven’t been an adult in my mind for quite some time. I think about the first few years of living here. I felt like such a teenager. I regressed a lot. The person I was before my father went to see heaven was on her way, it seemed. Nothing got in her way. She gave a damn about a future with her in it.

Death can fuck you up in ways that you ain’t really ready for. I think the trauma of it all triggered mental illnesses and suppressed thoughts that have been embedded within me for years. Kinda like my Mom. My Dad said she was fine until I was born, my birth setting off her schizophrenia. I blamed my existence for her demise. I would read all of these studies and stories about how schizophrenia easily passes from mother to daughter. Maybe all of what I feel is on-set. She was 33 when she had me. We’re right on-time. 

I went to church for the first time in eight months. This relationship I have with God is weird to me. I don’t often get it. I wonder if my passion for all things Creator was a mask to hide my fear ot what it would be like if I didn’t have someone keeping me out of harm’s way. I don’t really have that now. My Mom doesn’t live near me. My Dad’s body is crawling with maggots. My mother’s side of the family has their hands tied with my brother. My Dad’s side of the family doesn’t know how to communicate. I’m really by myself. Chosen families are cool until they choose their real families. I can never be mad at that. Blood is thick. 

I’m writing this in a dark room, my window is barely the width of a 2×4 plank of wood. I live in the basement unit of a house. I don’t get natural light that often. When I was out of work the first time, I slept during the day. Easier to do when natural light ain’t here to keep you upright. Friends don’t visit that often. I’m here by myself for the most part. My roommates don’t really know me. It’s by design. I can’t stand to be bothered. I almost don’t want people to get close to me. I don’t want them to care too much. 

You see the contradiction in all of this. I don’t want people to be witnesses to my weaknesses. I don’t want them to know that I’m not okay. It isn’t their business. I want them to leave the fuck alone. If I die in this room, it would take the smell of rotting flesh and missing rent to notice that I’m gone. I rather people find me that way anyway. Going out as a reminder of what it looks like when you don’t check in on people, or call, or text or knock on a door. Just so they can be better humans to others. A martyr for missed calls, texts and connections. Staining on consciousness. 

I can publish this and not cause a blip. My work doesn’t resonate enough. I’ve said enough to alarm most. I’m someone who doesn’t get mad when others don’t care. Life is hard enough. I can’t guilt anyone into feeling things they never set to feel in the first place. That’s part of my vice: eliminating concern. I don’t want to you care. That seems super selfish, thinking that I actually matter enough to tell you to not care. The mind is a trickster in that way. 

“An Ode To Phyllis…” remains unedited since two weeks ago. When I finish it is when you’ll know to be prepared. 

Call me pretty. Please? 

Say something to me. Let me know that I am the most beautiful girl in the world. After all this work and care, say something. Anything. Let me know that it was all worth it. Pay me for my work, damn. 

Affirmation shouldn’t have to come from you. Affirmation shouldn’t have to come from a penis-carrying vessel like you. But I want it and I can’t fight it and it pains me to sit here at the brink of tears because I think that you don’t see me. 

You really don’t see, huh? I know by the time you gift me and the physical touch you withhold at my behest that you do see me. I do matter to you. I am special. I am important. I am worth four hours and thirty-eight minutes of your day. That’s how long we parlayed on the phone. On some high school shit. Minutes of breathing into each other’s ear because being present in the moment was worth more than the absence of sound. You had to be here with me, I had to be there with you. 

But that’s not how today feels. Today, I wanted words. I wanted coos. I wanted resistance toward taking things to a more heart wrenching level because we swore we wouldn’t do such a thing. I gave you an opportunity to say something to me about the work that kept me off the phone with you earlier in the day. Five hours of standing in front of a mirror, old school jams blasting, as I parted and gelled and twisted my hair. Twenty-two inches of premium yaki with hopes of playfully swing these coils in your face. 

You asked me about my day. I told you about my impromptu hair appointment. Images of my best work have been on the internet for hours. I know you peeped. But then that monster silence creeped in and I slouched deeper into my bed, covered in disappointment. I got off the phone to give myself the freedom to cry and lament in silence as to why I’m even doing this again. 

This again thing with you and I is par for the course. Here we go again, here this thing goes again. He’s back in my life again. I let you back in my life again. You violate me again. I get angry again. I create distance again. I miss you again. You double-tap and like and retweet to show me that you miss me again. I cave to the ideas of what I thought our relationship could be again. Rinse and repeat. Again. 

Again I see here angry that you don’t see me. Why do I care so much about being seen by you? Why do I care about you not calling me pretty? 

I know I’m pretty. Why on Earth am I crying because I didn’t hear it from you? 

You’ve been the subject of all my desires and detriment. I read back on the things I wrote about you: how I wanted to move on from you and I, from us. How I wanted to heal from you, how I wanted to choose the Creator over you. That I was done, we were done. I wanted to be released from what we created. This thing is no longer my project to manage. 

Yet the other night I felt like I wanted to try this again. 

I leveled off a text saying that I “love you” after it was all over. I do believe that. I love you even to the core of who I am: a fucking wreck. 

You’re meeting me in a moment where I am walking a line towards my own destruction. Everything is setting me up to fail even though I keep asking the Creator to save me from my demise. I know She knows I’m hurting right now, disillusioned and afraid. She knows that I am Her child full of pain. I hate who I am, hate where I am. Hate where I reside in this world. I want out. I need to get out. 

I’m quitting it all. I’m done. 

But you? I can’t quit you. 

You heard my voice. I sounded “weary”. You were the first person to notice my wretched soul. I’ve been hiding from everyone else in order for them to not see me at what feels like the lowest point in my life. That’s all I needed to release the guard I’ve created for myself to keep me away from you. 

I missed your voice. I needed to hear your voice. You speak to the girl within me who wants to be seen. I told you that I hate to disappoint you. Somehow you validate my existence as a human being. If you want me, then I’m as good as gold. I don’t understand why you still have that type of hold on me. 

Don’t ever release me ever again in your life. 

We talked about the last night when we saw each other. You apologized for what you did. For not seeing me hurt. Like it was your job. I never asked for you to do that. I just operated on hope that you would. You saw it but chose to not do anything. Again, like it’s your job. So I sank into a drunken haze and gave you what I thought you wanted. And snapped out of it once the Creator had enough of me cosplaying as the power and principalities who dragged me to where you were. 

I wanna snap out of this. I want the moments I’ve had in the past where the gusts of the Holy Spirit toss into the ocean to bathe away the sins of trying to make this work. It worked last night. 

God, I was taught to honor your omniscience. You see and know everything. You knew me before I was formed. You knew the results of your hands would be the moon and stars. You know what is best for me because you situate those rewards in their place for me to experience in due time. But if you know all, if you see all, if you made water leaked from rocks and manna fall in times of famine, if you knew to place Esther in the King’s court to stop the massacre of her people, if you knew David was meant to be king even as all other just saw him as a lowly shepherd, if you knew the fate of your son on the cross, then … just, then…

I’m supposed to trust your all-seeingness and all-knowingness at all times. Because the Bible tells me so. But then if I question you about nineteen children being slaughtered inside of their school or Black people being targeted in the bread aisle, then am I out of line?

I’m reading Job. Job didn’t waiver until he got to the point where he could no longer understand. 

I’m at that point with you. I don’t waiver in my love for you but I don’t understand how you work. 

Especially on days like today. You start and stop famines. You feed thousands and loosen devils. You knock down symbols of oppression. You punish crooks and liars. You say that I shouldn’t fear flesh but only power and principalities. But the flesh I’m told you knew of before its creation is walking into safe spaces to slaughter the other creations you commissioned at one time. 

But I should trust that you know and see everything after 19 children are called home to meet you by the hands of someone broken and worn?  You, the mighty power, the Shield, the creator of hedges, the one who enlarges territories, the one who brings justice to evildoers. You. You didn’t stop this. You didn’t pretend to stop this. Because you surely knew of Texas, right? 

I can’t put on blinders to your wonders. Not right now. 

I just ask why you couldn’t perform one at this moment? This isn’t fair. 

Maybe I’m being unfair to you. I’m in a season where I need your signs and wonders. You know my Babylon, you know my Dagon. You know what trips me, what aches me, what hurts me. I need your providence to rain down on me. I still trust you to right my sail. I still believe in your wonder-working power as the true folk would say. Even in the midst of chaos created by me and exacerbated by forces I cannot explain, I still believe that you care enough to help me. 

Omnipotent. That is you. 

I just wonder why carelessness runs our land. Why violence races through us like blood. I wonder why we’re so quick to shield corporations and the crooks who run them. I wonder why we let sexual violence run rampant inside of our church steeples and greed blot out our eyes from your Son’s grace. I wonder why we think we can kiss the king of the land’s ring and wash Jesus’ feet at the same time. You can’t serve two masters, right? I wonder why we see women’s bodies as political ploys. Women first saw your Son rise from the dead and I know you do all things with intention. I wonder why we tweet thoughts and prayers but move dead with our work. 

 I know you see all and know all. I know you are able to do everything. So you tell me. 

I know that when justice comes, crooks are to be terrified. Justice didn’t come today and the crooks willed it to be so. And the American criminal justice system is as crooked and terrifying as they come. So is Scripture lying to me? Is Proverbs mocking us in the midst of our lifetime? Or our Your people so lost that they can’t find their way back to what You created us to be: whole.

In wholeness, a woman died by gunfire. In her bed, next to her love. In wholeness, Black people mourned. In wholeness, Black people screamed until our lungs collapsed: ‘arrest the cops that killed Breonna Taylor’. In wholeness, we watched White people fall into a catatonic states of fake rage and coerced epiphanies. In wholeness, when it was announced that her killers would not be brought to justice, only Black people felt called to say something.

In wholeness, I’m okay if it remains to be this way. If only we speak, if only we mourn, if only we lash out, if only we engage. It’s wired into our DNA to never disassociate from pain and suffering. We have to respond.

I want to be shocked by injustice. I want to be shocked by Black death. I’m not. I wish I had that privilege. White people do. We don’t. Black pain and Black suffering are as commonplace as the air we breathe. I wish we could be naive to those things. But we have to live with knowing that every time this does happen, we have to will ourselves to be present.

To disappear. What a world it would be like if police misconduct, judicial incompetence and state-sanctioned death disappeared. How present are our bodies laying in the streets?

Buildings with bullets matter more than a body riddled with one. This is where we are.

Where do you want us? Always on our knees asking you “Why?” For what? What’s the benefit? You have the power to answer us and you don’t. We have to decipher through conjecture whether or not the world gives a damn about us. You sent angels before. Who can You send now to show us the way out of this hell? I know you didn’t manufacture this purgatory but at this point, who else is there to call responsible?

I know You are not a God that sees more value in property than people. They did. I know You are not a God who lets criminals escape their punishment. They did. I know You are not a God who allows maleficent leadership reign supreme. They did. I know You are not a God who allows victory for the Pharisee. They did. They did everything against what You, God, call to be just and righteous and yet they win.

They won.

I know Godly justice reigns over earthly justice but as I’ve seen in your Word, when earthly justice isn’t met, God will insert Her power. You wiped out peoples and lands because they failed to express love. We can’t even get a police officer arrested for carrying out acts devoid of such things.

Now a world is devoid of a woman who never got a chance to be her full self and actualize her dreams. You created this world so I ask You: What are You going to do about it?

All good things are subject to corruption but can later be redeemed. That’s the story from Genesis to Revelation, from garden to garden. A lot of death happened and is happening between Adam and the Lion of Judah. I just don’t understand why Black bodies dying at the hands of law enforcement has to be a part of that story.

The Fall caused this? This is an insane story arc to write because someone chose not to be obedient.

The God we serve is fair and just. The God we serve is righteous. The God we serve told the people of Israel to look after the least among them. Giving a damn is standard operating procedure. But yet we continue to fail at following simple directions. God gives us opportunities to get this right and we don’t.

We lament a knee to the back of one’s neck. We lament not learning our lesson from the death of Eric Garner. He couldn’t breathe either. We lament corrupt leadership and systems. Failing systems breed failing behavior. We praise yet caution the sudden interest by White allies and the sudden elevation of White voices. You can’t center allyship. That’s oxymoronic.

What a world we live in when a stay-at-home order protects Black people not only from COVID-19 but from police brutality and white woman privilege. We step back outside and it’s business as usual. But yet even as I write that, that business didn’t shut down at all. Black people make up a large percentage of deaths caused by the coronavirus and are main ones arrested and issued summonses by the police for not keeping to that stay-at-home order. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Damned if you exist in your Blackness and damned if you don’t — because it’s never your call. Your treatment is never your call. You get the police called on you. You get a knee to your neck. You get hunted down by pickup trucks and shotguns. You get shot in the dark laying next to your boyfriend. You get accused of crimes you didn’t commit. You get seen as a threat. You get ignored when your labor pains grow because for some reason, Black bodies can take more pain. And you die, three times the rate of white women.

You lose your life because damned if you exist. This is such an evil level of corruption. So when will this world be redeemed? And will Black people actually be around to see it be so?

They were tears of submission. Like … God, I’m done fighting you on this. You win. I’m done trying to figure out the “why?”. I’m done creating imaginary conflict inside the depths of my mind in order to justify this distance. I’m acknowledging what you always conjure up within me when you want me to know that it’s time to move on: a feeling of discomfort. I’m listening. I’m siding with you on this one. I just don’t understand why you’d tell me through our conversations that you’d want me to find a new tribe.

The story of Elijah and Elisha came up in Bible Study. In that space, we spoke about living in two kingdoms — the earthly and heavenly — and how we have access to the heavenly realm through Jesus by way of our conversations through prayer and through Word. We have access to the same power and the might of the prophets. We can put on the armor of God. We, too, are protected by the same forces that kept those who were believed to have the closest proximity to God. What’s there to fear when you have God’s army right with you?

This year has been a lesson about having faith or fear. Fight like Ephesians 6 — the armor of God — or run away and submit to our earthly emotions of fear, doubt and disappointment. I learned that fear that can be an idol and that we serve a God that forbids false idolatry in Her kingdom. We fear being alone, we fear the worst in our lives and in the lives of other people. We fear God’s wrath for past decisions. We fear never being loved.

It’s easy to fear when you forget Who — and that army — you already have. All of what I heard that night was a reminder of what I’ve learned through my personal one-on-one time with the Creator: faith over fear. But the story of Elijah and Elisha struck me most because it reminded of why I went to Bible Study in the first place: learning how to let go and let God move you forward.

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After a gang of losses, a win feels so wrong. I keep waiting for the bottom to fall out, for folks to wake up and realize that they’ve been making a mistake. For God to pull the emergency stop button.

I accept all fates. I don’t want to feel any of it though.

So full of joy that I can’t stop talking about it but so in fear that I keep telling myself to “shut up” because if it doesn’t work, then the questions about what happened will be too much to bear.

I’m so angry about wasted time. So much wasted time. I really want to forgive those past experiences that I’ve crossed paths with in my life but now I hate them with every damn fiber of my being.

Pieces of shit situations, not pieces of shit people. Exhibit grace, Ciara. All of it was my fault.

I didn’t see the value in myself. I thought I wasn’t worth anything. So you orbit people who make you feel like you’re something. Even if that something is actually nothing.

This feels so damn hurtful to write but I am so damn angry at myself.

I told someone that I feel so terrible that this was the first time something like this has ever happened in my life. And she told me to “embrace it” because “the past is the past and you now know what you to look for going forward.”

But I keep looking back at the past and break down. It wasn’t supposed to be like that if I just stood up for myself and didn’t accept all of what was happening to me.

I put up with a lot. I lost a lot.

And sometimes I don’t think that I’ll ever have the opportunity to gain it all back.