Write: For Women Who Are Like Me

I would like to show gratitude to Kimberly N. Foster, founder of the digital magazine For Harriet, for her inspiration and support of my recently published article Who Will Cry for the Little Girl? The encouraging words from fellow bloggers GG (of PLPT) and Bethy Pierre that appeared as comments on my WordPress site were light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Although I am sure the path of freelance journalism is for me, I am sometimes discouraged in my pursuit of professional happiness. Seeing other women pursue their passions motivates me to follow my dreams fearlessly. Thank you all dearly.

Why For Colored Girls Wasn't For Me

Twitter Ramble: 12/23 - 12/26

Finally watched For Colored Girls. Wanted to post but haven't used my time to sit down and work the words into comprehensible order. I used Twitter as a digital notepad (what a treasure indeed!). Needed to remember these things.

This movie is literally making me cringe. It's like a horror movie. The cryptic beauty of opera juxtaposed with the ruthlessness of rape.

I feel as if this piece is going to put me in a negative space. It must be written.

My attempt at writing about personal struggles with intimacy has become a character analysis of Thandie Newton's role in #FCG. Go figure.

IMO, Thandie's character (like others) is underdeveloped. All we are presented with is a foul-mouthed, flirtatious whore. No depth.

I hope to gain insight into the causes of my own debauchery while critiquing this movie.

I should be thinking this hard about a Tyler Perry film. I should. Black snobs aren't going to see cinemas; they're on Broadway, at operas.

Who Will Cry for the Little Girl?

For as long as I can remember I’ve been suicidal, paranoid and unnervingly anxious. There are moments in my life where I can barely tell left from right. I have always been an emotional wreck, probably bipolar or manic depressive. The online tests I took suggested I have borderline personality disorder, and I’ve tried to accept the fact that maybe much of this is true. Most of my behaviors are sub-clinical at best; the less desirable byproducts of a dysfunctional social construct. I am ineffectively coping with the traumas that happened to me as a child, but I wasn’t able to attribute my present pathology to things in my past. If it weren’t for my therapist, I wouldn’t see light at the end of the tunnel.

I first visited the counseling and testing center on my university’s campus desperately seeking help for what I thought was mild depression. It was my plea. I had stopped attending my morning classes two weeks previous and was barely able to get my son to daycare before noon each day. I did not respond emotionally to my fiancé, nor did I smile as much when our child played. I lacked personal motivation. I stayed in bed as much as possible and shied away from social situations. Sometimes I’d lie there, buried beneath the comforter and sheets and think, “I just want the pain to go away. I want to sleep, and if I never wake up again? Well hey, that’s okay.”

I sat in the counselor’s office cuffing a Kleenex, barely able to hold back the tears. I was helpless and hated feeling like I was out my mind. The walls were staring at me, and the anticipation building in my stomach made me sick. What’s surprising to me even now, two months after the ordeal, is how fluid and honest I was with a woman I believed could not know anything about me. It understood it was important for me to be as responsive as I was. (It’s important for every one of us to be honest when dealing with our mental illnesses.)

The therapist and I decided that it would be best if I continued receiving services, and assured me that I would find help if I agreed to come. I opted for individual counseling despite the three-week wait for it to begin. Group therapy was readily available but also intimidating, and for some reason I felt ashamed. I wanted to be selfish then, to keep all 15 free hours to myself because I needed to cling to something. It had been years since I recognized what sanity is, and I longed to keep these sessions to myself because they symbolized security. The most significant part of that first consultation was one simple discovery: that I suffer from clinical depression and severe anxiety. It wasn’t a grim diagnosis; it was a bittersweet beginning.

Before therapy, I did not know that depression was a mental illness. I’ve since learned that it is called the common cold of mental illness because it is so widespread. It’s often an indicator of other mental illnesses and, this too, may be my case, because like thousands of other women who seek out therapy each year, depression is a secondary mental health issue for me. Eleven years later, the truth is as hard a pill to swallow as the reality of experiencing it: I am an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Although I’m well aware that what happened to me is both real and wrong, it struck me as being unremarkable at best. The statistics, however, take my skewed perception with a striking blow.

The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry accounts that nearly 80,000 incidents of sexual abuse are reported each year. Substantial evidence says that nearly 20% of American women and 5% – 10% of American men experienced some type of sexual abuse as children. HeretoHelp (a project of the BC Partners for Mental Health and Addictions Information) records that 95% of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse have a mental illness, and that chronic depression is a common response to the abuse.

Knowing the roots of my downheartedness is comforting, but I realize there can be no method to my madness. The defenses I developed are well oiled mechanisms that allow me to perform most day-to-day functions, but they are crippling just the same. The reality of the matter is that I can neither manipulate depression nor make it disappear any more than I made it surface. Those like Tyler Perry may argue that by faith alone one can muster up the magic it takes to be healed of this affliction, but as a person with a strong belief in God I simply can’t agree with them.

Four months into my pregnancy I found myself clenching a kitchen knife, sitting on the countertop wanting to slit my wrists for the feel of it. I imagined drowning myself in the shower or jumping from the highest ledge I could find, just so I could feel the fear of flying before falling to my death. I needed to feel affection when my father returned to prison again. Needed to feel the spirit when my cousin was shot by local police during an attempted armed robbery. I needed to feel a million things because depression had crept from every corner of my bedroom and strangled the color of life from my deadweight body. Essentially I needed to feel the gift of motherhood when instead I felt burdened by the taut belly that grew regardless of my uneasiness.

I am not angry with God, or even at my abuser. By nature I am self-sacrificial, always offering up my happiness so that someone else’s may prevail. I was afraid to speak about my abuse for several reasons, some which seem unreasonable now. I was afraid to begin the healing process because I knew that in order to heal, one must be hurt first. I did not identify with “injured” or “bruised”, I thought of myself as broken goods. Because I knew that I could not be “cured” of the abuse, I wrote off healing as a lost cause and allowed myself to wander away into a world that doesn’t cater to women. Using what I know now, I will never let myself go through that kind of lonely existence again.

Even though I’m apprehensive about consulting a psychiatrist for medication, I’m still working with my therapist. Depression can be treated, and it is not impossible to get better. There are people willing (and wanting) to help you heal. As far as the abuse is concerned, I’m learning to reconstruct my way of thinking and coping. I’ve spent most of my life dissociated and numb, searching for the inner child who never had a chance to grow emotionally and love. I pray for the day that I can break down crying. Tears, too, allow you to heal.

Twitter Ramble: To Keep or Not to Keep?

I had a eureka! moment on Twitter today. Couldn't find time to write and let the words cohere so I'm posting them here for safekeeping until I return. These tweets were really stream of consciousness that I allowed to peak through. Thanks to Kimberly N. Foster for the seed that sprouted my thoughts.

Yes! Yes! I must write on this. RT @kimberlynfoster: Healing is hard.

For me, healing is hard bc of the words attached to the process. In order to heal one must be hurt first. I didn't think "bruised."

I thought "broken." I became obsessed with being "pure" or "whole" and once I'd convinced myself neither was attainable, I settled for hurt.

I settled for all the bad things because somehow, in my mind, the two negatives would cancel out and be positive. An emotional cutter.

My body, the chopping block. I see now that my body is a vessel. Back then it was an instrument, serving to further soil my name.

Yes, healing is hard, but it is not impossible. A lot of things are. Healing is not impossible.

Making emotional investments without promise of return is avoidable indeed, but the behavior is learned. One must be open-minded.

I've had self-sacrifice down pat for years. Self-service has been learned for me. That's what I aim to teach. Liberate the minds. Change.

I'm almost in tears but I must not stop the momentum. Teach young girls to love themselves, protect themselves, learn for themselves.

Teach them beauty is not skin deep, but in the eye of the beholder. Teach them to use their voices, opposed to their wombs, as weapons. Yes.

Tell a girl beauty is skin deep, she will see only what's in the mirror. Tell her beauty is in the eye of the beholder. She will own it.

*sigh* Felt really good to get that out.

Bad Stab at Poetry

Just some leftover words.

Try as I might to quiet the butterflies in my heart
They still speak to me, sussurously
Wanting to forgive you and move past you in the same breath
Wanting to rid my body of your beguilement
But I'll be the first to attest to the fact
That a broken state of mind is much harder to fix
Than a broken heart
A broken heart can be mended with a
little tender love and care
But a reckless train of thought is too dangerous
To set free on open land

Dear Diary (Why Do I Struggle With Intimacy? Pt. 2)

I've titled this post "Dear Diary" because it's

First off, I will define intimacy in the way it is used in the post as:
a close association with or detailed knowledge or deep understanding of a place, subject, period of history, etc. (Definition provided by Dictionary.com

This ___ from _____ of PLPT provided indispensable insight into my growth as a writer.

Self-Talk: Why do I Struggle with Intimacy?

Maybe I was held too much as a child. Maybe I wasn't held nearly enough. Whatever the reasons for my somewhat withdrawn, at times attention deficit and hogging, tactless behavior, I have reached a point in my life where these coping/defense mechanisms no longer warrant the results I desire.

Two months into therapy I find I am not healing or heading in the direction I would like. Yes, I am making strides toward being the mother and wife I believe I should be. Yes, I am able to understand what taking responsibility of my actions means now. Even still, there are things resting beneath the surface that seem to hold me back from the happiness I've so desperately sought and - darn it - deserve. 

While reading through Kim McLarin's Jump at the Sun I stumbled across something that struck a chord. It was a simple sentence, taking little to comprehend, but it resonated within me. Like Grace Jefferson, the book's lead, "I realized... I slept much better alone in bed. I slept better untouched."

And I did.

But lately I've started to worry that this kind of behavior will be devastating to my children, and already is to my fiancé. When he and I began dating I'd often invite him over to spend the night. Part of me afraid, and the other part alone, I longed for the warmth my college cohorts flaunted while wearing their boyfriends' sweatshirts and Tees.

I did not have a steady college beau, nor a high school sweetheart for what it's worth. I did not play the bases in a slow, calculated way and it backfired in a series of unhealthy involvements. At times I felt lonely. Other times I was completely okay with spending a significant amount of time with myself.

The bulk of these indifferences were intimate involvements that sometimes became emotional malice. My on-and-off again relationship with one guy finally ended in a violent mess that left me hyperventilating and frantically crying. Dramatic, but impersonal just the same. There were suitors who I shied away from for countless reasons. If I longed for comfort strongly enough, I might have let them into my sacred place.

In the case of my fiancé, I tried to forge a love unlike those I had known. Much of the connection we had formed during late fall and early winter. We spent hours on end blanketed in my queen-size bed, snuggled beneath covers and up to our ears in affection. He held me close at night, and even closer when my flashbacks came, sending me into a childlike, regressive hysteria. The nightmares from my sexually abusive childhood brought us together in ways I never would have imagined.

It didn't last long, though.

I ran to the arms of that same ex when my doubts about the existing relationship

Fast forward to the present, where I sit on the sofa with netbook in hand and toddling child nearby.

Advice to Writers: Keep a Diary

Some words of writerly wisdom from Jon Winokur's site: Advice to Writers

Keep a diary, but don't just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle and end—as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It's great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary.

-John Berendt

60 Days Till His Birthday

When I was pregnant I decided I would write Isaiah a letter so that he could take a piece of my present to his future. If ever times were rough he'd have a piece of me to hold and comfort him.
I never found a way to write down what I was going through.
I struggled with depression during the latter part of my pregnancy, and it would be a while before I realized the depression would last longer than a few months and would carry over into the first year of his life. Nonetheless, I tried to assemble my thoughts into some comprehensive memoir about our journey while he was in utero. I tried to write a letter.
I didn't want to fabricate some fantasy about answering my call for motherhood and birthing this miraculous being. It wasn't all "To Zion" the way I had fantasized while listening to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. It wasn't all "Thanks for my Child" like Cheryl Riley made it seem.
I was reluctant towards maternity and I didn't understand how or why God would give me this fragile, porcelain thing for me to mold and make incompetent.

I was wrong.

It dawned on me this weekend that, however hard the journey may be, it's the destination that counts.

HOMagE is where the heart is.

When I was seven, my parents moved us from our small home in south Georgia to a quaint little neighborhood in Warner Robins, a not-so-big town about an hour and a half away.

In other words we moved from a podunk little place to a mostly middle-class, predominately White neighborhood in a military town where I could count the number of Black faces almost anywhere we went.

Albany isn't the greatest for some, but for so long in my life it was the only place I'd ever known, and loved.  I have a flair for the nostalgic, and each time I reminisced about it all I could see were the family ties and time spent with the natural things.  I loved nature as a child and I'm left in awe of it as adult. My cousin/best friend and I would pick strawberries and blueberries, green plums, sour grass and pecans, and we could run for what seemed to be miles along the stretch in our grandparents' backyard.

Saturday mornings we'd watch the rain fall or help Granddaddy clean fish he'd caught at the lake just up the road. We spent little to no time watching TV. There were always people cooking or cleaning or spending the night and no matter what travesties happened (Flood of '94, tornado at school, our uncle being sent to jail) we always had each other.

Before my mother and stepfather began dating, my mom went to Augusta for a few months and lived there with her older sister. She left me with my grandmother who'd practically begged her to let me stay. I loved it. I don't remember much but what I do remember is my mom telling a story of how I began calling my gma "Momma" and her "Gina" instead. I've kept that story so near to my heart, just as I do the image of sitting in Grandma's lap while hearing her tell me that I'd always be her baby [girl].

No wonder it's been so emotionally draining to live damn near 200 miles away from the sweetest thing I've ever known: HOME.

It's been hard.

As I've matured and grown older the nostalgia has slowly worn off into a faint murmur of happiness; seeing the city itself is like looking through sepia-colored lenses with dust streaks on the glass.  Everything's in disarray but no one seems to be hungry for more. The trees are thirsting for green and the dirt is yearning for fresh air, but all that's left is misery and an old Civil Rights Memorial pool.

My grandfather sets in the same place each morning at the end of the kitchen table while his wife labors over a barely working stove. My aunts are all involved with pitiful excuses of men, so stuck in their own selfish ways they don't see my cousins prepping for premature pregnancy or prison life. My dad's distant relatives probably wouldn't recognize my face because just like his, they haven't seen mine in several years. I'm trying to convince myself to keep traveling there for major holidays but I won't be able to muster up nerve if things continue like this.

*sigh*

Tosin and I began our trek there  this year Wednesday evening, when we drove the two-hour drive to my mother's house. I immediately felt the pressures building but I didn't want to cause a stir since I will surprised he wanted to join my folks on Thanksgiving. Just a week before we sat in my car talking and I told him that my spirit longed for my grandmother, and that I hoped I wouldn't break down and cry before the end of the trip.

Go figure.

Late Wednesday night my mother disclosed to me the situation with gma, and all the feelings I'd experienced months before came rushing in like a roll tide I wasn't ready for.

Some time in July I got a phone call from my mother saying that my cousin had been shot by police during an attempted armed robbery and also that he had flatlined twice during his stay in the hospital. The news spread like wildfire since it was publicized on local TV stations across the state. It had come to me a bit too soon, considering that only two weeks previous  a very teary-eyed Courtney sat across from Tosin at lunch and had an eerie conversation on the subject. I relayed to him my feelings, I had a strong sense that 'something bad was going to happen to Chris if I didn't stop it' and whaddayaknow - it happened.

This time, just like last, I tried to fight back the tears of helplessness because I knew then, like now, that the universe's way of handling things is separate from my own.

My grandmother has a suspicious growth on her liver and that - coupled with bloody urine and fatigue - could mean something I don't want to accept: I'll have to move my home to Marietta and be content with never going to Albany again.

I'm saddened by the news, to say the least, and I'm fighting off negative thoughts as best I can.

Wasn't I just telling my therapist that my restless mind was ruining my mood and my life for that matter? Wasn't I scratched and scraped a little by having to admit to myself that my father is likely in jail again? It feels like every time I try to let my real, sensitive self show something comes out of left field and throws that whole 'be who you are' bull out the window. Damn.

I  can't be selfish and focus on self when my grandma is dealing with this blow. She seemed so happy and grateful when I took her shopping Black Friday (although I was smitten with just the thought of having her company for a few hours).  The 41 degree weather doesn't help with depression in the slightest. Neither do finals nor graduation.

I  admitted to myself earlier that I have a problem with closure.

But right now, I'll digress. It's true that seasons change and time waits for no man but could you wait a little longer for my grandma, sir? I want my son to know the wonders about where I was born, to see the stars and smell the sweetness of fresh soil after it's rained. I want him to know that we come from good, country, Southern folk, and that he gets the red in his skin from the Georgia clay. I want him to know that no matter how far you go and the sights you see, there's NO PLACE in the world like home. That the closest thing you've got to God is your Grandma.

-Tweet

Working Towards a Mellow Point: Past, Procrastination and Future Tense

http://www.personalitypage.com/html/INFJ_per.html

http://www.personalitypage.com/html/INFJ.html

Three weeks ago I sat face-to-face with my "therapist" and explained to her that in previous weeks I just hadn't felt like myself. I gave her some pitiful spiel about not being able to perform the way I should, about the stresses of housework, parenthood, and academia and the anxiety of being newly engaged. I was crumbling under pressure and all I could do was try my best not to break down in tears the way I'd done just three weeks before in an office up the hall from this one.

She was welcoming. She did exactly what I suppose "they" are taught to do during clinical trials and in-the-field training during graduate school. We lightly touched on the subject chronic anxiety and depression, and a resulting hardship withdrawal from school if things became too hard to bear.

Only two sessions after my initial consultation, I can say that I've made the right decision to "get help" for my condition, although I haven't been diagnosed with any particular mental/emotional issue. I attribute most of my problematic behavior to just being a selfish, picky person. My personality type suggests that I'm prone to depression and - without proper adjustments - crippling procrastinate tendencies.

I'm always upset. Paranoid. Anxious. I've been suicidal. I've thought suicidal thoughts. I've shown signs of multiple personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder. I'm almost sure I've had manic states of behavior. I've had moments of disassociation, where my body's been controlled by some outer-worldly force.

I have also been a victim.

At 21, several years since the last episode, I find it difficult to admit that I was sexually abused as a pre-teen until my latter teenage years.

It's been a long time coming for me, but I believe that I'll be ok. With a lot of motivation and an even bigger push, I know I'll be able to get through this.

Blue Light Cafe Performance Piece - 11/17/2010

I recited this poem at my first open mic production. It was difficult to do; I'd written it two nights before and was a trembling ball of nerves. I hope the words hold weight in written form.

I used to be whole
But now I'm mixed up broken
catatonic
Schizophrenic
Bipolar disordered
Tone-deaf
And Cacophonous
Sound-bitten and recorded parts
of a picture
That's bigger than me

I am not just flesh and bones
And bitter tastes
Like regret
With the linger of worn-down soles of tennis shoes that just sits on my tongue

I am silence so loud you can't hear your own thoughts
I am running through bodies like hearts and souls are obstacles in my way
That can be stopped
I am re-giving the gift of
Silence
Broken
Catatonic
Mixed up
And
Cacophony

I am victim
But I am not so far gone as to forgive my mother and tell her the thief she lies with
Has crept into my woman cave and sought out my bits of silver and gold
The good stuff
My bittersweet fruit
And now I'm just the hollowed rind that's been left out in the sun with no juice

I am not victim enough to
Forget that once upon a time when
Daughters were just pink little dolls
With ribbon and fancy
And after school play was much like a tea party
I wasn't too different
But just a much different piece in a puzzle I wasn't ready to put together
I wasn't ready to be
Broken

I am tired of hurdling
Having to scrape my knees for attention
Tired of pretending that with only a little glue I'll be good as new
A porcelain doll that's just pretty without any cracks
I'm a Humpty Dumpty character and all the king's men can't put my sanity back
Can't put my childhood back in it's place

It's not like picking and tossing things
You picked through me and tampered with things
You put my silence with cacophony
Put my good-as-new with my dirty things
put my catatonic with my manic things

Nigga, you came and molested me

You put my silence with cacophony
You dipped your meddling fingers in my pretty chocolate chip cookie stash
And tried to buy back my loving affection with this poor man's type of cash
That certain kind of money
That buys those streetwalker's kinds of souls

You took your big fat crayons and colored all on my page
Outside my lines you took me
And you forgot to put me back

But I will not be a victim, anymore
I cannot be a victim, anymore
I'll never be your victim, ever more
I have always been
Much bigger than that