onetruerevolution

I don’t know what happened. Or how it happened exactly. Perhaps it was all of the almost unbearable suffering that was 2014. Perhaps it’s because I finally went back to therapy. Perhaps it was all of the nights I spent on my knees, whispering help me into clasped hands. Perhaps it was holding the hand of my closed-mouth friend. Or the trip home sleeping in the ancient bed and warmth of my mother’s shadow. Or the trip to New Jersey and the smile of my glorious cousin Cassandra. Or the sermon and laying on of hands at her church. Perhaps there the Holy Spirit finally found me. Maybe it’s because I started going back to the gym. I think it’s the grace of God that led me to do all of those things in the first place. Grace: it’s not what you think it is. It’s messy and scary. It’s supposedly unmerited divine assistance to restore us to proper functioning. Anne Lamott wrote, “I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” All of this just to say, that by the grace of what I call God, I have found some joy, some happy.

What is this strange creature that, as Rumi says, has finally opened a window to find me knocking on its doorstep? It is a buoyancy in my being, an invisible tulle skirt that has made me feel light and graceful, a clarity around the need for an internal “no” to things I don’t want and a resounding and child-like enthusiastic “yes” to all else. It is my willingness to speak to strangers on the bus, to ask for a kiss or to say come here to my beloved, to call him my beloved, it is laughter laughter laughter and a smirk when laughter would not be welcome. And it is not without fear.

There is plenty of fear. Fear that I am forgetting something important that once remembered will cause me to scoff at myself and say how foolish of you to think you could be happy. Fear that those who say they love me are just pretending. Fear that something dark and shadowy lies in wait. To allow myself this respite in joy then takes courage. The courage that comes from knowing this too shall pass.

But in the meantime, I am choosing to bask. To raise my happiness set point. To allow my brain to remember this, savor it, and thus rewire. To look up at the vast blue expanse and say yes, thank you, more please. To let my body have this memory for when the clouds roll back in. I whisper to myself like a child, it’s ok honey. Go play. Whatever it is that comes, we’ll manage. I’ve got you.

And I’m protecting my happy. As the witch in The Wiz sang, don’t nobody bring me no bad news. I’m keeping my distance from all things drama-inducing, from soul suckers and crazy makers, nixing as Mary Oliver poetically describes, the voices crying “mend my life” unless they are those dear to my heart in need of help or unless it’s clinical and I’m getting paid. Otherwise, honey, ain’t nobody got time for that.

This has been a season of challenge.  And yet, even as I write that --as I squint my eyes to look into the past to see if I can determine when this season of challenge began, there is no set start date because I cannot remember seasons of ease.  Perhaps I am the sort of person who is easily challenged.  Perhaps I have welcomed challenge and so it has taken up residence in my life, in my psyche. I don't rule out these possibilities.  But I can say that these past couple month have been challenging in a way that is so subtle I find myself repeatedly surprised at having to muster my inner resources: having to bear down, buck up, brace, surrender, release, re-enter, get my sea legs and my big girl panties, be graceful, pray for grace, be merciful, pray for mercy... challenged so subtily I have to wonder if it's my imagination (knowing that all dharmas are dreams) and simultaneously challenged so monumentally that I can hear the question lurking in every corner. 

Who are you?  Who are you, really?  Are you who you think you are? Are you who you say you are?

Who have I been believing myself to be?

I am a strong woman.  And as I have explored in other writing, to be strong as  a black woman is not a choice.  What does it mean to be strong? There is the physical- and I do train in increasing my power in relation to navigating the physical world.  "Able to perform a specified action well and powerfully"-- yes, I am that.  Given a specified task and the minimal requisite training, I have the type of mind and being that will perform well more often than not.  "Exerting great force"-- Some element of choicelessness  surfaces.  In order for a black woman to have equal or greater impact on her world as that of a man, or that of a white person, she must learn to exert great force.  So much so that even when conditions are such that they do not require great exertion, the habitual tendency to struggle and overcome is deeply ingrained and perhaps to be otherwise must be unlearned.  

From the outside, this need to exert great force is often misinterpreted or mislabelled, "aggressive" "defiensive" "dominating" "overbearing" "outspoken"-- a personal character flaw marking the individual. And because we as humans don't like being flawed, I dedicated myself for at least a decade to attempting to soften, become less jagged, round out the edges, feminize, tone down, de-bitch, unfurl, rein in, to apply less force and pressure to living-- to the embodied articulation of my right to exist.  Only to discover that the social forces at work around me and internalized within me-- the vicious and pernicious forces of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forces of oppression--required a certain being-ness of me in order to be withstood.  

"Able to withstand great force or pressure."  I am strong and must grow to accept how my strength manifests, wisdom or neurosis.  Perhaps, my strength is best captured in the word resilience, "the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties."  It's in the getting up every morning with faith-- often the faith of a mustard seed--getting up even though all external signs seem to point nowhere, and even though the voices both externalized and internalized wish to convince me that there is something pathological in my difference from who I am and who they think I should be or who they are, in the getting up and getting through and getting over it and on with it-- there is the practice of resiliency.  

 it sends hard-to-articulate sensations to unmapped parts of my body & I become paralyzed &  my eyes close.

he says I know I've stubbed my toe thousands of times.

I say then why don't you get it.

                                                                                                                            *

Before the age of 15

the word pleasure was spelled in candy. I remember being little & putting my hands

where they didn't belong

deep down into a barrel of powdered sugary smoothness.

Put one in my mouth & let it roll over my tongue.  

My mouth puckered with white dust the store clerk called me sweetie

then called my mother over the loudspeaker.

I learned there is nothing innocent about any of it. 

                                                                        *

When I even think about my return to the blank page, my stomach filps-- though perhaps that is the US Airways coffee I drank and the subsequent panic that it will keep me awake while my boyfriend snores beside me in blissful slumber.  I take a deep breath in hopes of gathering evidence to support Fritz Perls' assertion that, "Fear is excitement without the breath."   I feel afraid.  What am I afraid of? Afraid that my life will swallow me whole, my life which in this moment glimmers with an eerie claustrophobia like flowers in the attic or the secret garden.  No, that's not right, that's a bit too dramatic.  Maybe it's more like a garden gone wild--overrun with unidentifiable growths--rambling vines--prickly brambles that can't wait to sink their thorns into that tender spot behind the ankle bone--rapid movement in the tall grasses.