hownottocryeveryday

Hi. How are you guys? A lot going on. I am fine here. My heart hurts a bit. Will try and move knives from it when I can. I’ve been a lot of places since my last post. Been a gypsy without a home unpacked. Lived in hotel. Lived with friends. Visited family. Touched base at the only place in the world with my name on the address. Now I’m upstate at a family member’s graduation, and next stop will finally be home.

I didn’t manifest a man or a mansion in a month like I wanted to, although I did manifest part of what I had written down in my goal book: “Be at peace with family and complete past relationships”. As fate would have it, my gypsy life and visiting people led me to connect with past relationships that needed closure and the raggedy parts of my family relationships were brought to the surface, so there is finally a possibility of peace.

I feel hurt and want some comfort. I have an imaginary council of elders that I go to for advice. They are here now with me. One says love your mother and love yourself. Friends have been supporting me. One sends me a message as I write. I have been supported by GIANTS. I am grateful even as I hurt. My other council members tell me to be strong. And powerful. Those parts of me that I’ve always rejected because I thought folks would kill me if they knew how outstanding I was… I accept them. Don’t give up on love. Don’t have a lot to write. Just wanted to touch base.

I saw Phillip. Dream Phillip from years ago in my blog. King Phillip. The only man who gets a name this blog. I saw him. Three times. He’s old now. I guess he’s always been old, but his age is showing now. He wants to have a baby together. I’m not making this up. I’m pretty sure he probably has a medical diagnosis that won’t allow him to live too long and he wants to have a baby before he dies. Maybe he has cancer. I’m sensing cancer… Ummm, yeah. But I saw him. We hung out. Talked. Lived a dream. I don’t even know what to think or feel about him. Don’t know if I’ll have his baby. I probably will, though. I’m getting old. Why not? I’m not sure. Not sure what I’m writing this blog about, but I’ll keep writing till I get somewhere.

I’ve said this before. For some reason, this blog is the best therapy I have. Better than a journal that no one sees. Better than a therapist and even group coaching. All those other things are good, but this blog puts me in touch with myself and helps me process in a different way. I Love writing. I thank God for this tool.

That’s what I was thinking about before I starting writing. Love. And joy. And feeling good. Vibrancy. Passion. Emphatic yes’s. Connection. Congruence. Alignment. Focus. In the midst of this this moment, joy popped in and landed on my brain. Vibrancy, dormant, raised its hand. Told me look at it. Forgiveness somehow seems possible. I embrace it. A different experience of being seems possible. Not just in a fantasy, but in real life. This is the way it was supposed to be.

I embrace the thought of dreams being real. Simmer with it. Sit with it. Bring it into body. We can handle it now. We are strong enough. We have the tools. We are wise enough. Ameen.

Day 564

Reality

He told me he is always worried about me

And my heart busted open with grief

He wanted to take care of me.

I felt it.

I hadn’t felt it in so long… I hugged a friend. I’ll call him Friend. Had forgotten the feeling. Been water wells for hours since… I ended up in a hotel using hotel points and also couch and car surfing. My friend made me realize just how scary and sad my situation is.

My friend made me realize how long I’ve been struggling. I’ve known him long… My friend made me realize what I really wish for. That I could be close with the people that I used to bond with, but that our relationships would be different than they used to be. My friend made me realize that maybe it’s not possible. My friend made me realize that I have grown far, far away from so much I used to know, but everyone doesn’t see it as growth.

The fakeness in families is flabbergasting… I’ve been crying for a few hours. Sobbing, really. I don’t remember the last time I sobbed. My friend busted my stone cold heart wide open… I’m grateful for a friend. A real friend who has known me since back when. A friend who finally thinks I’m worthy of being protected and taken care of and treated nice… Somewhere in his hug and glance there was an apology. Maybe I’m making it up, but that’s what it felt like… We have come a long way with this Love.

My chest literally feels busted open. My back nerves and thighs busted open. I won’t write too long, except to say hello. I felt afraid after meeting with friend, like what am I doing? Could I just go be with family? Why do I feel so far away from them? They mostly don’t mean no harm, but, oh, I feel so hurt and unsafe still…

I want to reach out to my sister. I miss her. I hope she is well…

You, reader, I want to reach out to you and encourage you. Sad feelings are not necessarily something to run away from. You see, they don’t go away by avoiding them. They go away by looking at them, processing, letting them pass through and touching them with Love. It’s not easy to do. It hurts. It might be too much to do all at once. They may never go away fully and I’m not giving you no advice, just telling you my own experience.

I’ve been out of body for a long, long time, trying not to feel stuff. I didn’t even know I was out of body. And I’ve been running in circles for a long, long time, not going most places where I wanted to go. Where I want to go is Love. Where I want to go is belonging. Let’s stop pretending that anything else really matters to me. Yes money and success and film and farm and heal the world, but more than that, Love. Belonging. Arms. Safety.

I got all discombobulated after feeling the feels with my friend. I’m avoiding stuff a bit by writing this blog. Avoiding making a decision on where to go next. Where to live next. Feeling all the fears. I do believe I will face at least one fear and reach out to someone who can actually help me this evening.

I’m grateful for a friend. I’m grateful to have at least one, but really many more, people in my life who have the capacity to help. I’m grateful that I finally see the loop I’ve been in and I’m willing to face fears to remove myself from it. I’m grateful that I’m able to face fears. I’m grateful that my brain works and can be resourceful. I’m grateful that I can feel the ache in my hips and the ache in my shoulders and the ache in my feet and the ache in my belly as I even write this blog and call resistance to progress by its name. And give it love and tenderness instead of anger and judgement…

This part of life will be intentional. The most intentional part we’ve ever had. Living fully. Finally. Making choices we can make wholeheartedly. Finally. Finally finally finally.

Ameen

Day 563

Intentional

I do not have a title for this yet. Hello world. I am on a plane. Flying from Belgium to Chicago. Prior to this I was on a plane flying from my heal the world country to Belgium. Prior to that, I was in my heal the world country for the past six months. Trying to heal myself.

It has been tough. The toughest. I know I’ve probably written about some pretty crazy things in this blog and just been through a lot of doom and gloom and pain, but this last six months has by far been the toughest – tougher than my whole body acting a fool and breaking down; tougher than whatever man relationships and heartbreaks I’ve incurred; tougher than being broke or almost homeless. The toughest.

I stopped writing for a while. Maybe I should start at the beginning. I will start at the beginning. The beginning of the culmination of these past few months officially started for me sometime in 2018, I believe. But it probably started in 2017 without me knowing. I should start this blog by saying it has been challenging for me to write blogs these days because I got in trouble for writing. I got in trouble because someone(s) close to me thought I was writing things publicly in order to tarnish their image. I wasn’t, but I did write some pretty dark poems. What is funny is that most of the poems I wrote were not inspired by the people who were offended by them. But some were. But I wasn’t meaning to offend.

I wrote poems about my feelings, and most of them were dark and desperate during this particular season. So, I wrote a poem. I had been writing poems. I write poems. For fun. To express myself. To process. A group of friends and I used to write thirty poems during April, which is poetry month. The group was led by my best friend who is no longer my best friend and for the past two years, I haven’t been writing with him, but I’ve been writing. He used to do this challenge for us to write 30 poems in poetry month, but I never finished the 30 poems. We extended our 30 poem a month timeline to 30 poems a year, and last year, for the first time since starting the 30 poem challenge over four years ago, I wrote 30 poems. They were about feeling safe in one’s life, jealously and rivalry, dysfunctional relationships, wanting acceptance. All sad stuff. I wrote about sad stuff on purpose. Because I never do. Nobody, besides the people who read this ol’ sad blog, really knows that I can get sad. Most of the people in my personal life are not comfortable with me not being the sunshine all the time. At least that’s how I feel. They rely on me to bring the party and resent me when I don’t. 

But I was sad and I had no party to bring in my poems. I was going through it. I was experiencing and witnessing so much darkness and I know so many others who were going through the same and worse and I wrote about dark things. My mother doesn’t like me to write about dark things. At one point, she had advised that I don’t write this blog. She will be mad if she hears that I wrote anything about her on this blog. I messed up at the beginning of writing this blog and told people about it. I didn’t realize that certain people might read it and then they will judge me or talk about me or say I’m trying to diss such and such in public. It’s why I use code names mostly when I write. But sometimes you can’t use a code name for your mom. And sometimes you can’t use a code name for your sibs. And sometimes, you just don’t want to because it somehow seems important to tell the truth.

So I’ve been struggling. Because these issues with people who don’t want me to write about or talk about them or their issues anywhere in the world except with them – and who honestly don’t want to deal with the issues even if you talk to them – are the issues that have been sinking me.

And talking about them and writing about them helps.

But I understand. Certain things can mess up a person’s reputation, especially if they have a reputation of being everything except who they are behind closed doors. Then you go and tell the world that they moved into your house and labeled your internet something offensive and didn’t change it even after you asked them to change it over five times. They trying to front like they are loving, cooperative beings who never do anything wrong and the world is just against them. Or if you write a poem talking about how you’ve felt about you and your sibling’s relationship for most of your life when he’s trying to show the world he’s the best brother ever. Or if you tell the world about some crazy, risk your life task that your mother tried to manipulate you into doing when she’s showing a face to the world that she’s the best mom on the planet.

A lot has happened over the past six months, and it’s mostly revolved around the breakdown of family relationships. I don’t even know where to start. I wonder if this is everyone’s story. The beginning of the end started with a breakup from a man. And then it was me disassociating and running in circles living in a movie I didn’t write and having however many dysfunctional relationships with men. And then my whole body and mind decide to collapse and breakdown. And then it was a breakdown and breakup with friends. And then finally, family. The hardest disentangling and dissolution of all.

I suppose family was the toughest. I won’t write too much about them because they don’t like being written about. But I’ll write enough to move through this, because it is in the way of whatever is on the other side of it. I’ve seen the sad side of happy. But there are other sides to it which aren’t necessarily happy. There’s this side, where you look at the sad things. I kind of have to look at them and call them by their name before I can be honest about what is really going on and move through them…

So, I’m on a plane. I’ve been overseas for the past six months, running away from everything and looking for a safe place to process and heal my heart. And in a hotel in the heal the world country and out on a farm, I found all my sad, sad pieces. My broken, broken heart. My stifled sexuality. My voice, pushed down, down into my back. My power, flickering. Anger and resentment never acknowledged. I felt the trembling, deep down in the nerves of my lower back, which never quite goes away and sometimes attacks like waves in my whole body when I feel particularly emotionally unsafe…

I kind of went off on a lady on the plane today. She was talking crazy to me. The flight attendant. People be talking crazy to each other in this world. But I digress. I would have never gone off on her in the past. Would have just sat there and let her talk to me like I’m somebody’s child while my nerve waves just kicked in. But I pulled her to the side and told her I didn’t appreciate her tone. She was telling me to put my mask on. She raised her voice and said she had gotten angry because my mask was off. My mask had fallen off while I was asleep and she couldn’t see that it was actually hanging from my face. I told her she didn’t have to be rude to me. She apologized. I think I’m sharing this because I never would have said anything to her in my prior post six months incarnation…

Where was I? On a plane. Coming from a hotel room for the past six months. Family relationships broke down. l won’t get into all the details, but one by one, I had fallouts with almost every family member. A sister disappeared. We would find out later that she disappeared because she thought I had started a rumor about her amongst our family members. I never did it, but till today, even though we’ve had meetings with family all saying as much, she, nor some family members believe.

Shortly after that, I went out of state to help another sib with babysitting. She literally called and asked me for help whilst I was in the emergency room because I was having chest pains and the doctor thought I was having a heart attack. I went. Did the gig. Thought we had agreed to two weeks, but honestly, there was a miscommunication and she thought I was staying longer. When miscommunication revealed, big tension. Mom called and talked to me like b*tch on the street. Like I planned to come out of state and sabotage my sister’s life. I’d been in sister’s house, in my home city, for literally two weeks. Hadn’t seen a daggone person from my childhood or been out of the house besides to go take the baby on walks. One night, went to the movies with an old friend. Told my sis ahead of time that I was going. Told my sister’s husband ahead of time that I was going. They didn’t indicate that they had a problem with it. Friend picked me up down the street because the GPS led him to the wrong house. The door locks with a code and I accidentally left the front door unlocked when I left.

Before I could come home, whilst I was at the movie theater, I get a message from my mom about how I’m disrespecting my sister and bringing people over her house and exposing her kids to things they shouldn’t be exposed to and living a certain lifestyle at my sister’s house. I didn’t know what my mom was talking about. I asked my sis. Actually I accused her of slandering me. When I got back home, me and sis got into a physical altercation. Actually, she assaulted me and I didn’t reciprocate. I left her house the next morning. What was most painful about the whole situation was how my mom talked to me and what she thought of me. Like, I left my home the day after getting checked for a heart attack so I could go help sis babysit because she had started a new job. And mom thought I was trying to sabotage her. And also that my mom had assumed that I had brought someone over my sister’s house (which never happened, and which I never in my life have brought anyone over any family member’s house without their permission) and my mom assumed I was doing whatever in front of my sister’s kids and that she told my sister all of these assumptions and my sister never said, “that didn’t happen”. She just let my mom believe all the false allegations against me knowing my mom was going to attack me about them. 

That incident and my runaway sister’s incident were the official beginnings of the dissolution of my family dynamic. My thinkings about my place in my fam was a bit shook. 

We carried on. This is a long story. That year, my mom went overseas to take care of her mom. I went overseas to help her. She was falling apart at the seams. Me and mom also started a family farm whilst out there. It was fun and exciting and painful. My overseas family is a whole movie. But my mom and I’s relationship got really bad by the time I left and I got really sick. I’m sure I was being food poisoned by the cook in our house, but my mom didn’t take it as serious as I did. I’m pretty sure I was about to die. I was so weak. My mind couldn’t think. I couldn’t really get words out without concentrating for a long time about what I was going to say. I slept for hours and hours in a day. I was saved by a cousin of mine, who got me out of that country when she heard how sick my voice sounded, and I went back to the states and got diagnosed with a bad case of food poisoning and very, very low iron.

I came back to the South, to my brother’s place. 2019. My brother took care of me. It might have been the first and only time in my adult life that someone had taken care of me and given me the energy of love with no strings attached and without asking me for anything. I didn’t have to give him attention, advice, money, help with whatever… I didn’t have to bring the party. He was just taking care of me. I was so happy. He bought me ice cream every day. He researched my condition and fed me foods that I needed to get well. He’d make me breakfast with a smile and leave it at my room door if I wasn’t awake yet. He noticed that I was kind of not fully in my body without me having to tell him. He noticed that any slight emotional thing might have me knocked out for an entire day, and he let me sleep. He noticed what was going on with me and did things to help me…

Then another sister came to live with us. She wasn’t about me eating no ice cream and she thought I should be doing more. I don’t think she meant any harm, but my ice cream made me so happy and I really was so glad to finally be able to rest. She wanted attention from me and I wasn’t in a space to give it. I’d tell her to leave me alone and that I’m gonna give her negative attention if she don’t stop vying for my attention, but she wasn’t taking me serious. Her and brother would start the day debating about any and everything. Brother stopped making me breakfast with a smile. He started forgetting to make breakfast. My health started regressing and I started getting scared that my healing time was over. At some point, sis got mad at me because I fell asleep during a meeting we had scheduled. She started saying stuff about me. I’d be lying if I told you what she said. But whatever she was saying, I was feeling attacked and sick of it. I swung at her. Yeah, I did. It was wrong. But, yeah. I did. I kept swinging at her till brother broke up the fight. So, yeah… That put a dent in our relationship. I was sorry for swinging at her…

Then, shortly after, me and best friend fell out. He had slept with my other friend and tried to sleep with me after. It was much more complicated than that, but that was the final incident that caused our breakup. So it was a double break-up. A break-up with my best guy friend whom I’d been doing life with for over twenty years and a break-up with my close female friend. Slightly devastated about our breakup.

End of 2019? An almost marriage that went awry.

2020 Covid hit. Right before Covid hit, a sister asked to move in with me and asked me to help her babysit her son. My brother, the one who took care of me while I was sick, was also getting married right at the time Covid hit. There had been a few situations that happened around his wife to be, and he was mad at me for saying certain things about her… 

Mom came back to the states because nobody knew exactly where this Covid thing was going and international flights were about to be shut down indefinitely.

I started the pandemic babysitting my nephew, first on my own, and then we went and joined his mom, my sis, on an island where they had sent her to work. The experience was OK, but not. Neither of us were telling each other why. I think we had a misunderstanding about money. At the end of the day, sis said that all the ways I had helped her over the years, she never felt “helped”. This hit me really hard. I’m not even gonna talk about the ways I had helped her over the years. We are just going to state the facts. Sis felt comfortable enough to call me and tell me she was having issues and within days, she was at my apartment with her son sharing a room with me. Within weeks, I had changed my entire schedule of what I had planned for those months in order to skip town and be there babysitting my nephew so she could get a handle on her new job and whatever else was going on in her world. Whilst I am in the midst of said babysitting, sacrificing whatever I had planned for myself, the girl tells me she doesn’t feel helped by me. I was livid. And heartbroken somehow. And over it. Camel’s back was broken.

I was over my family.

Went back to Cali after my babysitting agreement was over. I was taking some derm meds that had really bad side effects – potentially could cause suicide. I was massively depressed. My head felt like it was closing in on me. I was dating whoever. Dysfunction dysfunction. I think I had went to my brother’s house first to stay with him. I don’t know what happened. Covid had just started and after my trip from the island to his house, I was feeling a bit sick. I had seen somewhere that if you steam your face, you won’t get Covid. I boiled some water to steam my face. I think I put some lemon in the water. Maybe orange peel, too. Food stuff. Steamed face. Brother didn’t seem to be in approval but he didn’t say anything. I left the water on the stove overnight by accident. The next morning, I heard him yell my name from the kitchen. Y’all know how you might see those little jittery kids and how they react when they have a really harsh abusive parent that talks to them crazy? That’s how I felt when he called my name. He told me something about the water. Then he asked me what kind of scent I wear, or what kinds of lotion I was wearing, because apparently spiders had been coming to his house since my arrival and he thought it might have something to do with my scents.

I went home. I told him, texted him rather, that I didn’t feel welcome at his place because of several reasons. He texted back and said it wasn’t true and that we’d talk about it sometime. That was in April or May 2020. We ain’t talked about it yet. At some point, we did talk on the phone. I told bro about my depression issues and what was going on in my life. Bro asked me if I wanted his advice and I said yeah. He was so harsh. You know, maybe my family are just warrior people, but they are a bit like this flight attendant. We. We are a bit like this flight attendant in our communication with me and with some of each others. Just always harsh. Always angry. Always rolling eyes. Always annoyed. Always assuming that the other intended the worse. But my brother’s tone was so harsh as he’s giving my depressed, almost suicidal, ass advice. He basically told me not to worry about how people treat me and worry about how I treat them instead… And something to the effect of taking a particular action. I don’t remember the action, but in response to that advice, I told him that what he was saying was like telling a baby (me) who is sitting in a corner crying to get up and do something monumental out of their league. His response was to tell me that first of all, he doesn’t like metaphors, and secondly, I’m not a baby… I don’t remember what else he said after that.

I got off the phone. It had to be April 2020 because it must have been poetry month. I wrote a poem inspired by my brother and I’s conversation, but I didn’t post it online. Will come back to that poem later… I wasn’t mad at brother, but just sad. Just sad.

I had about one close person left in my life at the time. A friend who lived about an hour away. Long story short, we fell out, too. During the time that George Floyd had gotten killed, I had wanted to come visit him. There were riots on the streets in LA and the atmosphere was volatile. So anyway, I’m on my way to take the hour drive to see him. My almost suicidal, shaky nerve self is slowly telling my body what to do so I can get in the car and go see my friend. I call him because I don’t remember directions to his place. He doesn’t answer. I message him asking him for the directions. He doesn’t respond. He’s always on his phone, and I know he has seen my message and multiple missed calls since the hour or so when I started reaching out. I head his way anyway. It’s dark. I’m scared. I go as far as I can go without directions and then park at a parking lot hoping to hear from him. It’s a racist part of town. I hear gunshots. Finally he calls me. Tells me that I should have gone online to get directions to his place and I know he’s busy working.

I had to look myself in the mirror and ask myself just what kind of wicked person I am. Am I as wicked as the way people treat me? I had to really ask myself what I had been doing wrong. I asked the people, but they had no answers except that I should know. Maybe I talk too much. Maybe I call people out on their bullshit too much. The thing that was really getting to me is that the same people who want treat me like some booboo on Skid Row are the same ones always calling me asking me to be a part of their lives.

I was over it. I was over everyone in my life. I was heartbroken. I felt this thing called bitter for the first time. I’m fast forwarding a lot of stuff. Thank you for reading if you’ve read this far. This is really just me trying to process what all has happened and trying to connect some dots so we can get to the part of me being on the plane with no where to go and figure out how not to make this part of my life another chapter on depression, confusion and all the things I don’t want. 

So, around September 2020, I’m feeling heartbroken and over everyone and everything. My mom comes in town before planning to go back overseas to see her mom. A bunch of stuff happens. I tell my mom that I think folks are trying to kill my grandma. Nobody takes me serious and I’m not able to incite action soon enough. My grandma dies six days after I make the statement. I’m devastated. Everyone is. I don’t think her death was natural and say as much and get into arguments with fam for saying as much… Some of us go overseas for grandma’s funeral. I stay overseas because I want to investigate how grandma died, because I don’t want our farm to die, because I don’t know what’s going to happen with grandma’s house, and eventually because I get an opportunity to do film stuff overseas. I meet a man. He’s everything dysfunctional, but the only friend I have. We date. It’s dysfunctional.

I come back to the states about six months later. 2021 May. The farm is saved. Grandma’s death is partially investigated but no conclusions. The only conclusion is that five different people have five different stories of how she died, and depending on what day you ask them, some of the stories change. So lie lie lie. Why? Because the truth isn’t something folks think I want to hear… Grandma’s house is still there and unoccupied by the folks whom I think could have killed her. 

Back in LA, sis who said I don’t help her a year prior has moved into my apartment in my absence and turned my apartment into a home. We had agreed that she was moving in with her son and we three would be living together when I got back. She has decorated the place beautifully, but the first thing I notice is that all the closets are full with her stuff and there is not one empty shelf for me. There are two lovely desks, one child’s desk for her son and the desk I used to use has her desktop on it and looks like a work space. It looks lovely. Two designated work spaces but no designated work space for me. Sis had told me she wanted to redo the apartment and I gave her free reign. The only thing I wanted input on was the couch. She had went to look at certain couches and told me about it. Tried to get one and told me about it, but it didn’t work and when that didn’t work, I asked her to wait till I get back and we’d pick a couch together. She agreed. I got back. She had already picked a couch that was on its way. I wasn’t happy. The couch she picked was not a futon nor a sofa bed. Where was I supposed to sleep???? On the bed with her and her son???? On the floor? On the couch that’s not made to sleep on? As a long term “this house is a home” arrangement?… I felt offended. I just couldn’t see any evidence that this place was designed for me to live in, too. My place. My sanctuary that I had welcomed her into so it could be our sanctuary… She had considered my taste whilst picking the decor that she had already wanted to pick, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about the decor and had told her as much from the beginning. All I cared about was the couch. Because I figured someone was going to have to sleep on it. I had had a lovely black futon prior to her redecorating and for over seven years, when I had housemates, one person slept on the futon and the other person slept in bedroom on bed…

Anyway. Her birthday was coming up and she had planned a big extravaganza. I ain’t have no space in the house. A bunch of people were over. Had to do a bunch of stuff. I was tired. I wasn’t happy… She had named our internet a name that I really didn’t like – an embarrassing name – because she was trying to poke at some neighbors, and I had asked her to change name over four times and she wasn’t taking it serious. Long story short, a lot of things happened. I told her how I felt about them. She said she didn’t feel welcome at the house and left shortly after.

I went to stay with my brother, who had just had a surgery, for about a month. I enjoyed being with him.

At the same time, another sister was planning to come to the heal the world country I had just left and start her business. I will tell her story another day because I’m tired of writing now, but long story short, I felt like I was put in a position that I had said in advance that I didn’t want to be in and it didn’t have to be set up that way. She didn’t force me into that position but I felt like her project wasn’t gonna succeed if I didn’t help and I hadn’t planned to help at a certain capacity at that time… Our relationship suffered and distanced. That was Sept 2021. I left my brother’s place and went back to the heal the world country and helped with the tail end of her project. Stayed to file some paperwork for a family member and check on the farm. Was supposed to come back in November, but by November, I had had whatever arguments with my mom about whatever.

I can’t tell you what the whatever was. I think she was blaming me for this, that or the other. Blaming me for one of my sister’s actions towards extended family. I don’t remember the convo, but I just remember the tone. I remember being on the other side of the phone thinking, “Why is my mamma talking to me so crazy?” and I remember my back nerves hurting and I remember being tired of folks talking to me crazy and telling my mom I’m getting off the phone. I wasn’t looking forward to coming home. There was nothing to come home to. My mom was always yelling at me or blaming me or criticizing me for one thing or another. 

My baby sis and I hadn’t talked anything substantial since she moved out and I was really hurt about our whole situation. My other sis and I had drifted a bit since her project situation. My other sis who had assaulted me was living her best life and we were on good terms now, but she’s married with kids and super busy and you gotta get with that program if you come stay with her. My other sis had disappeared and was blaming me for doing stuff I didn’t do. My healer brother was now married. And my other brother, whose house I had just left, was cool enough, but I know I have to do and not do certain things in order to keep the peace while living with him. My other sis, whom I had swung at, was on good terms with me, but, you know, I had swung at her, and trust takes a while to build when things like that happen. And she lives with other family members. And if I’m being honest, I wasn’t in nobody’s mental state to build anybody’s trust. I was quite broken and really just wanted to be somewhere where nobody asks me for anything and people are just nice to me.

I didn’t have anyone to come home to in Cali. My friendships were extinct, besides a few new female friends who were super busy. I ain’t have no man besides my dysfunctional overseas man. So I canceled my November ticket and just decided to stay in the hotel overseas until I found something better to do.

I’d work on my writing projects, slowly get our farm in order, cry as much as I want to, swim in the ocean, walk on the beach and dance until I was ready to do something else. And that’s what I did.

Some time in December, I posted the poem online that was inspired by my brother two years earlier. I didn’t think anything of it. The poem starts out by saying a line from a conversation me and my brother had. No one would know the poem was inspired by my brother except my brother. Poems I write are generally mixtures of make believe and the reader can’t tell if the poem is an observation or a true story. But anyway, the poem starts off by saying the line and then goes on to talk about how a person wishes another person they’ve lived life with would accept them and like them as they are. I didn’t think anything of it.

I started a group therapy program in January because my nerves kept shaking and my body kept hurting and my brain was slowing down and I didn’t quite know how to get over all this grief and all these negative feelings but I didn’t want them anymore. Gratefully, the foundation of the program is on regulating one’s nervous system so that one can start to feel safe in one’s body and find ways to feel safe in the world.

In late January or early February or so, I had some extra money and reached out to my brother asking him if his bank account was good so I could send some to him. My brother responded with a text telling me that he had read my poem lying about him not liking me, and due to that poem and about three other things that had happened in our recent history and all the things I had said and done against him and his religion my entire life, he doesn’t trust me and I should find somewhere else besides his place to come home to when I return from overseas. I wrote him back just apologizing for everything and telling him I loved him. I was devastated and heartbroken. I still am. Later, I found out that he felt like I was trying to debase his character through the poem…

Shortly after that, a good friend of mine died. Shortly after that, my family called a meeting where I was the focus. We were going to talk about all my issues with family. We only got through me and my sister’s issue – the one who started the project. I don’t know if anything was resolved. Nothing, really. Not at that time. But in this moment, I have accepted that she is she and me is me and I do believe we have good will towards each other. I just don’t know that that inspires any action on my part.

At some point after meeting, me and my mom finally talked. I told mom what was going on in my life and mom asked how she could help. I told her she could help me by believing what I’m telling her about my health and she could also help me by not asking me to do stuff for my siblings and coupling criticism with praise. ‘Cus she has a history of always asking me to do stuff for my siblings and I have history of having a hard time saying no, so I’ll feel bad and do stuff I really didn’t plan on doing, but then I’ll be mad when I don’t complete what I really had wanted to complete for myself at that period of time. I told mom that I only had three things I wanted to do this year – reach certain benchmarks with farm, produce and distribute a film, and do all I can to make myself available to have a baby, and I didn’t want to take on anything else.

Mom agreed to do her best to help in the ways I asked and she also agreed to come overseas to help with farm in the near future. Shortly after our talk, I found some new workers for our farm. Just to give you context, every time I go out to our farm, I worry for my life. Just believe me when I say my life is in danger every time, please. I will explain more on a later post, maybe. So this one time, I went out to the farm and we realize that we have coffee there. A coffee tree. My “you don’t help me” ungrateful sister had spoken about wanting to do stuff with coffee once upon a time. I sent a picture of the coffee tree to our farm group, knowing my mom, who is a partner on the farm, would see the picture, and knowing my mom would tell my sis about the coffee tree and maybe she’d do some coffee stuff with it later. Mom saw the pic and asked me if I could tell our new workers to nurse some baby coffee trees and I told her no because that’s extra stuff that I don’t have the capacity to do at the moment, but we can do it in the future. Mom said OK. A few days later, she sends a message to our family group chat saying she’s not coming overseas until me (she pointed me out specifically) and some of my unnamed other siblings, cleanse our hearts of jealousy, bitterness and hatred.

I asked God why he hates me, but he didn’t answer… Mom and I went back and forth about her message. I also informed family about the exchange between me and brother and sent them a copy of our text exchange and I also informed family about an overview of what happened between me and ungrateful sis before she moved out. Nobody said anything about anything publicly, although three sibs reached out privately to tell me sorry and tell me they think I’m a good person. Another sib posted a general message on the family chat saying we should respect each other.

Then, with no mention of the message my mom had said about me, mom sent another family message asking who in the family wants to join her and ungrateful’s bee business that she plans to come overseas and start. People start responding. Brother sends a message telling folks about something he did in his career. People start responding. I’m sitting here like, are these folk really gonna sit by and see all that’s happening and not say nothing about it publicly and then be talking about mom’s business when mom just called me everything but a child of God and essentially said she ain’t supporting me on nothing??? And bro just sent me a text message while I’m out of town telling me not to come to his house because of a poem??? And now he talking bout his career and y’all congratulating him and responding to mom’s request but y’all not gonna say nothing about what’s going on?

I addressed the family myself. Either y’all aren’t there for me, or y’all feel like this treatment towards me is justified, and if y’all feel this way, that I’m just that foul of a person where it’s ok for folks to treat me a certain way, and/or if you don’t have the guts to stand up for me when folks are dragging me through the mud but then feel perfectly comfortable asking me to do stuff you won’t ask anyone else to do in order to help you? Get outta here. I left the family chat group.

My mom and sis came overseas in March/April to work on sister’s project. I supported. Mom stayed and helped with farm stuff. We fought. We bonded. At the end of the day, I Love her. But I don’t have the words… My back hurts. Me and sis didn’t fight fight, but had tension and bonded, too… Mom asked me to come back to the states. Told me not to push my luck. I’d stayed alive overseas for this long. A lot of people died. I booked my ticket to come back to states a day after her.

And here I am. On a plane. Going to Cali. But I don’t where. At this particular moment, I don’t really know where I will live. Somewhere in the past week, bro told mom I could come back to his house. I have a sub-letter at my place. I could go back and be his roommate, but he’ll hit on me sooner than later; or I could stay at my place by myself. But staying at my place by myself with no real friends in LA is super depressive… I could go to the South and be with mom or one of the sibs, but I don’t trust it. Because… Well, because of everything in this blog post. We Love each other, but… I really don’t want to babysit when I don’t feel like it or be sequestered at home or have to give anyone any attention I don’t feel like giving or spend any money I didn’t plan on spending or move faster than makes me feel safe and healthy.

So here I am again. What do you want, Laydie? My family relationships are not the same. They will never be again. My friendships are not the same. I finally got tired of dysfunctional overseas relationship and broke that off. And here I am. What do I want? I don’t know that I believe my family relationships could be good. They are all good and loving people, but everyone feels justified in their stances, including me. Everyone behaves and is behaving exactly like they choose to. Full of shit.

I need to make a choice before this plane lands. I want to believe that good stuff is possible, but sometimes it’s hard to believe as much when you have been sad for so long. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to just be taken care of not taken advantage of and seen as good. What it would be like to be able to be as nice as I really am and somebody just say they like me. They are OK with that. It’s enough. Good job. And not hurt me. Not lie to me. Not cheat on me. Not see me as a thing to use. Not compete with me… I wonder what it would be like to be able to cry and be held. To be able to mess up and be forgiven. To find an equal with a big, brave heart who liked me just as much as I liked him and wanted to be with me… Who would be good to me and I wouldn’t have to worry about him trying to cheat or lie or use or abuse me… 

I don’t want to go back, y’all. To anything I’ve known in the ways I’ve known it. There were and are good parts to my family dynamic. Many good parts. And friends. I’ve had awesome friends. And even the mens. So many good experiences. 

The words on top of my awareness are wholly and fully. What can I choose wholly and fully? About living? About my home? There’s nowhere on the list I can choose wholly and fully and I don’t want to be going to live anywhere by myself any more. I don’t want to repeat this decade again. I can’t do it. There’s a baby in me needing to be born…

So let us speak truth about what we really want, and in spite of all the disaster, because of the holy, holy ruin, let’s close our eyes and realize there is nowhere else to be but honest and loving and forgiving. Easier said than done, but not as hard as it seems. I was going to start talking about what I want for the farm, but Spirit said let me talk about what I want for myself first.

What do I really want? Really? I want to be happy. I want to feel safe with somebody. Like there is someone I can care for who won’t hurt me. I want to have fun and never have to think about money again. I want to be able to be in relationship with my family that honors myself. Not fake stuff where the energy is always like they judging me or wanting me to be or do something that I have absolutely no interest in being or doing. Really… The dream that I don’t dare to dream is that I meet someone really really nice. I can’t even write it because it feels challenging for me to believe it’s possible, but I’ll write it. The dream is that I would meet someone really really nice. A nice man. Like now now. At the airport. He’d Love me. Don’t look anywhere in your past, my Spirit tells me. If the past changes, it will find you. But be here for now. Present. You meet a man and he says let’s move in. And you do. Now now. And I do. I live with someone I Love. A man. I don’t want to do no roommate stuff or family stuff honestly. I want to know what Love is. Even with my family. 

Radiate, You say. Forgive everyone. Forgive everyone. Morning and night. You know the answer to all of this. Interface with humans every day. 

-I know I sound so weird to anyone reading this. LOL. 

Find someone to hug every day. Pray one more time. Prescription. One week fasting. By Monday see results. Tomorrow go ahead and reach out. Tonight – Do Feminine Power and right out clear intention. If nothing else, forgiveness every night and morning. Complete and total and forgiveness for yourself as well. One hug a day. A really, real hug. Find somewhere to cook. Two hours a day self care. Set a time now and be disciplined. Three hours if you need. Make a plan. Find somewhere to go and reach out to those you know. No more detail here… 

So if you don’t know what to focus on, if you don’t know what to choose, your prayer is that you do know what to focus on and you do know what to choose. A hot tub and a bath. Love songs. Choose Love songs. Choose to find something holy and love it. This one is for you, Laydie. Stop writing for a minute and be still. Just really, really still… 

It’s a week and four days later. I got off the plane and landed in LA and tried to sort out what to do. Thought about not posting this blog because it tells all my business for real for real. But I’m gonna post it, complete the past and move on. I’ll write a new blog today. 

Thanks for reading.

Love,

Laydie

The Past

Hey y’all. I’m not going to take too long on this. Something just happened today. So many things happened today. First off, my ex is trying to get back with me without addressing the things that happened between us. I don’t understand us human beings. I’m just gonna say that some people are all right with some things and others aren’t. I’m not all right with so many things. I realize. It’s a bit extra for certain people. But it’s quite normal for others… I so don’t get how people be hurting each other, holding it, acting out on it, but then want to act like nothing is really happening if you bring it up. Check their journals or their text messages or their phone convos or ask a mutual friend and you will hear all the stupid stuff they are holding against you, but don’t want to resolve it or even acknowledge it if you dare bring it up…. That’s not what I came here to write about, though. My ex just text messaged me because he can feel that I am shifting away from him energetically and he wants to pull me back in to suck my blood…

What I want to talk about is all this blood sucking, but particularly something that happened just just now and the impact that it has on my emotions and what I’m going to do about all of this. So what happened was, I don’t know where to start… This blog entry is a manifesto of sorts, but it’s starting off kind of weak… So I’d like my manifesto to be strong, but not fake strong where I have to ignore how I’m feeling about things and pretend I don’t feel and I’m going to conquer everything.

So where to start? Should we start at the beginning or in the moment? Let’s start in the moment. I’m still out of the country. I’m feeling sad because I’m alone. I mostly feel alone everywhere I go, though, even when surrounded by others. I’m feeling sad because I don’t have much that I look forward to in terms of relationships and I don’t have much to look forward to as far as relationships when going back to the states. At least here, when alone, people don’t really hurt me. In the states, most folks in my personal circle are always asking me for shit that I’ve become rudely uninterested in giving these days and resenting me for not giving whatever is wanted on demand when it is wanted. Mostly the giving is absolutely nothing that is energetically or vibrationally nourishing for me.

So I’ve been here. For the past month or so, I took a time off. I haven’t been doing much on the farm, although the farm is still going on, producing fruits as it does. It’s the harvest and I’m supposed to lead all these big plans. We could do a lot of big and impactful things if I got with the program. We have already done a very big thing – planting a farm of 1200 trees and the trees actually surviving till harvest- but now there is life after the harvest. What to do with all these fruits? Someone has to lead the implementation. I’m tired. My business partner is my mom. We don’t feel emotionally safe with each other for valid reasons. Last time we were here together, I threw a bottle at a wall because she wouldn’t help me when I was literally pooping on myself and throwing up out the nose. She doesn’t feel safe because I threw a bottle. The bottle bounced off the wall and almost hit her and now she says I threw a bottle at her. I wasn’t feeling safe because I was pooping on myself and throwing up out the nose and my mom was yelling at me instead of doing anything to help me…

So that’s where our relationship left off. Since then, my grandma died and then my aunty died and my mom fell apart. We all fell apart. I tried to stay around this country to make sure things didn’t crash and burn too much, but my contribution was mostly unacknowledged and instead I was criticized for all I didn’t do and asked to do more on my own. I became resentful and bitter. I quit my unofficial never really voted but always punished for not being leadership of our family. My little sis fucked me over for a career opportunity. My other sis tried to manipulate me into putting my energy towards one of her initiatives instead of using my energy to followthrough initiatives that I had already started and that needed my immediate attention in order to survive. Maybe they did it on accident. Maybe on purpose. I don’t believe it was purely accident. At least not for baby sis. There has been bitterness brewing. It comes out on the rare occasions that you confront her enough for her to admit it.

I became heartbroken and so, so depressed. In the past few years or so, almost all of my relationships had been falling apart. That brings me to today. It started with the Advisor. This chapter, or this series of chapters started with my big sister and the Advisor. This might be a long entry. Let me just write and process it so I can move on. In February 2018, before I even started doing any kind of work overseas, I was in the emergency room. My chest had been hurting and my doctor did some test and said I had to go to the emergency room. Maybe I was having a heart attack, he said. I was very afraid. I was in LA by myself. Well, my brother was there, but I struggle with asking him for help because I always feel like he’s annoyed when helping me. Not now. Not anymore. But I used to feel that way.

So I went to the emergency room by myself. I think at the time I had a few friends in LA – a guy who lived an hour away and who has never really had any free time in the ten plus years since I’ve known him; a girl who also lived an hour away and is the sweetest person you can imagine, but is a single mom who also has limited free time; I had a neighbor who was crushing on me and would do passive aggressive stuff to punish me whenever I didn’t respond to his romantic advances; and I had two to six other males friends who were also crushing on me, all of whom I liked for one reason or the other, but all of whom I would eventually have a negative experience with after hanging out, because we would reach a certain point of bonding and then they would directly or indirectly tell me that they want to jump my bones or marry me or they wouldn’t say anything at all but just be looking at me looking all butt hurt and then I’d feel guilty…. That was a long sentence. I’m not editing… I had recently cut off two female friends because of me feeling betrayed one way or the other. It was the first time I had actually cut off a friend because of feeling betrayed. Actually, nope. It wasn’t. It was the first time in a long time I had cut off a friend and it was the first time I had cut off a friend without actually having any backup friend in the vicinity…. SO, because my relationships were all a bit complicated, I went to the hospital alone that day and thought I was having a heart attack.

They checked me in. Put me on all these machines. I cried. At some point, one of my sister’s called me. She wanted to know if I’d come baby-sit her kid and leave in the next few days. I wrote out the whole story but deleted it, cus I think she’d be kind of offended of me telling her business. Suffice it to say, the trip didn’t end too well. In the last day that I was supposed to be in town, I went to the movies with a friend, The Advisor.

Long story short, we went to the movies. I told my brother-in-law I was going hours in advance, and I also messaged sis to tell her I was going. She was at work at the time I left. My companion, who is the Advisor that I’m about to write about, was a friend whom I hadn’t seen in over ten years. He came to pick me up, but actually came to the wrong house to pick me up, so I had to walk down the street to meet him. We went to the movies. It was good. Then on the way back home, I got all these messages from my mom about disrespect and calling me all sorts of names. She said I was inviting people over my sister’s house and just all kinds of accusations. I confronted my sis via text to ask her why mom was saying all this stuff. No one had come over sister’s house the entire time I was there. Even Advisor hadn’t reached the house to pick me up. I hadn’t seen a single person besides my sister’s family during the whole time I was in town besides that one outing with Advisor. Me and my sister got in an argument via text and the argument escalated to an in-person argument once I reached home.

I left the next day. Me and Advisor had a talk – he had recently gotten divorced. I asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted a friend. I said I wanted a husband. He said he’s never getting married again. We agreed to be friends. Before I go on about Advisor’s story, there’s one thing I want to mention about my sister’s story. It’s about my mom. Me and my mom have had a rocky relationship since I was a kid. We always patch things up at the end. But for some reason, the way she talked to me that night changed things in me. She talked to me like a bitch on the street. She talked to me like I had planned to sabotage my sister or I don’t even know. Here I was with my broke almost had a heart attack behind skipping town so I could support sis in her new career endeavor, and mom just took such a bad painting of me as truth and ran with it, ready to knock me out on the streets.

I was hurt. It was the beginning of the end of so many things. I went back to Cali. That was three years ago. Alchemists would say that it was the beginning of the calcination and dissolution of my identity. I systematically broke up with almost everyone I was living life with over the past three years, culminating in these past three months. First my mom and I’s relationship began to shift. It didn’t fall apart, but it was the first time I felt offended and abused. I coudn’t quite get over her talking to me like a b*tch off the street and being so eager to pick up a story about me that wasn’t true – a really foul story – and run with it. That’s what she thought of me? I didn’t even think that’s what she thought of me. It was all quite confusing and it hurt… Then my big sister. We didn’t fall out, but the same. I felt some kind of way about the things that were said, done and not done during my time with her…

Let me get back to the Advisor. During this time, Advisor was flirting with me a bit, but I didn’t take anything he said serious since he had already said he wasn’t getting married and only wanted us to be friends. I hadn’t been overseas to our country of origin yet and so I really didn’t quite understand that no man from this country wants to be a woman’s platonic friend. It’s just not how they are raised. Until he blatantly told me, “Laydie, I want to f*ck you. And please don’t come around me if you don’t want to f*ck me”, I didn’t quite realize that’s what he was really up to in my life. I thought I had had a friend.

My mom moved overseas. I came overseas as well to be with her. We started a farm. As fate would have it, the Advisor got a job overseas as well. A fancy official job. He moved. He literally lived right down the street from me overseas. I could walk to his house in fifteen minutes. We were neighbors for six months and I only saw him once . He tried it with the sex. I didn’t sex him. I might have if he actually had some protection or if he had actually ever gotten an STD test in his life, but lo and behold, he had no protection and he could speak nothing of the STD testings, so no sexy for him. He was mad. That was 2019. I didn’t see him for two and a half years. My first sojourn overseas ended with me and mom planting a farm, me getting sick, throwing a bottle at the wall because mom wasn’t helping me and then me miraculously getting back to the states before dying. I think during that time as well, I started falling out with one of my sisters. Not an actual fallout, but a shift in relationship. It was small, but big. I was really sick. I was, like, dying. I’m not exaggerating. I was dying. I needed to get out of the environment I was in and get some real medical help. But nobody believed me. That sis in particular. She wasn’t trying to help me get out of there. In fact, she was trying to convince me to stay so I could help our mom. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t understand that I was literally dying and literally had been laying in a bed for eight plus hours a day and pooping and pissing on myself and barely able to get words out straight. It registered that either she didn’t believe me or she didn’t care. Either made me feel very very unsafe with her. Like, I felt like I don’t want to be nowhere near if I’m sick. She think I’m somebody’s superhero and gonna have me out here dead or emotionally depleted cus she got some kind of superhuman expectation of me and can’t see that I need normal people stuff.

I’m just gonna write this all out, ‘cuz I never really took a good like at what’s eating Gilbert Laydie. I got back to the states all sick. My younger brother took care of me. It might have been the first time in my life since I was a little girl and my dad used to take care of me that someone actually just took care of me in all the ways I needed. My brother was so happy to see me. He was so happy to take care of me. I felt so Loved. I was getting well. But then one of my other sisters came home. I don’t know what was going on with her and my brother, but they didn’t get along like me and him did. Stuff changed in the house. My brother stopped taking the best care of me. I’m sure I was suffering from some major PTSD or something, but my health started relapsing…

Y’all, my life story is full of shit. My sis he sees me as superwoman wanted me to come visit her. She had come into town and wanted me to go back out with her and visit for a week along with other sis who had just showed up. But when she came in town, she invited me to go to a family sports game with her. I had no energy, y’all. I was so confused about putting one foot in front of the other… And I would say that maybe I wasn’t showing, but my brother got it. I never told my little brother that I would be struggling just to put one foot in front of the other to walk, but one day, he told the family. He told them that I looked like I was completely out of my body and like I had to think of how to put one foot in front of the other to walk. So it showed. Maybe they just couldn’t see it. But I felt it. I went to the game with my sis. I fell asleep in the rafters. I had to pee suddenly. She got upset that I didn’t give prior notice because it delayed some meeting she was supposed to be at. I couldn’t give prior notice because my nerves were offline and I didn’t have prior notice within my own self of when I needed to pee. We went to the store. Her dog was in the car. I hate the smell of dog. I wanted to throw up. She ain’t buy me no ice cream when I asked her. I think she was concerned about me getting fat or ice cream being unhealthy. I didn’t have any money to buy ice cream. I didn’t want to go visit her. I wanted both of them to leave so someone who noticed that I was out of body could buy me ice cream and help me get well. They left. They weren’t happy that I didn’t go spend time with them.

It’s been a tough few years, y’all. Too many stories to tell. At the end, I ended up falling out with the one sister first, then another family emergency had me on some bullshit with my baby sister, off somewhere helping her while she was being all ungrateful acting like she’s doing me favors. She and I’s fallout started there. Culminated earlier this year as she returned asking me for some help and being ungrateful compounded with disrespectful this time. Other sis wanted me to be Superwoman again and lead two full-time businesses while taking the leadership on a new endeavor she had and getting my twitching body in check. We didn’t fall out. I don’t think it’s possible for us to actually fall out, at least not on my end, because her intentions are not bad. But there is a distance between us now. I created the distance…

I created distance between almost everyone. I saw my friend the Advisor about a month ago after not seeing him in two and a half years. Somehow I had reached out to him with vulnerability, and he had responded. And we ended up seeing each other. I met in his fancy office. From there we went and I watched as he practiced his sport… and then he took me home. We talked about meeting again. As fate would have it, I ran smack dab into him at my hotel. It was quite awkward. He was with his official people, and then, out of the blue, he asked me what room I was in. I was on my way out. I told him the room number and then told him but I’m headed out for the day. I would later find out that he didn’t hear me. I had messaged him about something and then he fronted me and asked why I didn’t tell him my room number. We went back and forth and he said I didn’t tell him my room number. I said I told him, which I did, and then I got upset about him implying that I’m lying to him. At some point, he messaged me ” I have the total freedom to stay or not stay in touch with you”. I responded by saying I have the same freedom and he’s not the only one with value. We ended the text exchange with me leaving some long message about how I’m his friend and I ain’t tryna have no more hurtful exchanges with him and me giving him my room number. He didn’t respond.

Today I messaged him asking if he’d like to exchange a hug with me. In retrospect I shouldn’t have. His response was a laughing emoji and “Go away”. I didn’t laugh. I cried. Blocked him. Unblocked him. And here we are. He actually won’t just randomly say anything mean. His messages or communication to me is always in response to me, so I don’t have to worry about him calling out of the blue with some meanness.

So I wrote all this why? Because I’m still sitting in a business lounge just about as sad as can be, wishing I had someone to hug but not having anyone to hug that I feel safe with. My exboyfriend says he misses me. Wants to hang out. My body hurts after being in his space. I feel more hurt than comforted when around him, but he’s the person I’ve talked to most these past seven months.

This morning I had a meditation. Other people might feel differently, but it came to my awareness that I had become accustomed to taking in others pain and giving out goodness in exchange. I never thought to take in goodness and let go of my own pain. Somehow the thought actually seemed offensive to give anyone pain on purpose. But people give me their pain on purpose all the time. Think I’m some hero and that’s my job. If my life were balanced, I might be able to carry more, and I guess what I’m getting to is I can’t do this life by myself anymore.

The message from the Advisor was just – I don’t even know what to say about it. I don’t know how to feel about my life. I wonder those kids feel. The ones who are really, really abused. And then some parent says it’s their fault. They wanted too much attention. Or they were too pretty or cute. Or whatever. Like it was their fault that someone punched them in the face or did something atrocious to them. It was their fault that someone raped or assaulted them. And they grow up with this awful feeling on constant blame and unworthiness and they tend to always be blamed or blame themselves for the extraordinary bad treatment they get in the world.

Allah, sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever make it out of here, or if I’ll spend the rest of my days just writing sad blogs. I’m getting older and I haven’t been able to make it through to this mythical other side. It’s mythical to me, because I haven’t spent much of my adult life over there on the other side of happy. I’ve had moments, but then they pass and the rest of my life is like the bullshit I wrote about in this blog. It’s been some bullshit pain most of my life. Worst things happen to better people, I know, but the things that have happened hit me hard. Bereft is the word I can think of.

Bereft of zeal. Bereft of passion. I’ve been that way for a long, long time, but maybe I just started becoming aware of it in these past few years. I just started feeling it. I actually remember exactly when I started feeling. In 2018. I went to a therapist because my life was full of shit. And she told me to feel stuff. And I realized I had been a disembodied ho for quite a time. It’s ok. I can call myself a ho. I was gonna try and say something insightful or profound to cheer me up after all this sad writing and sad reminiscing, but I won’t.

I was gonna try and write an empowering, energetic manifesto talking about how I would longer accept painful dynamics and today, actually yesterday, was the first day of the rest of my life. But I don’t feel empowered. I don’t feel quite hopeful. I feel sad and like I’ve lost a lot. I miss my family. I miss my friends. I don’t particularly want any of the relationship dynamics the way they were ever again. I don’t particularly think anyone is going to change and I don’t know that changing myself in relation to the folks I was spending life with would change anything. I think I chose to relate to people, certain people, in certain ways because I thought I wasn’t shit. I don’t think so many things that happened are ok. I don’t think it’s me, actually. Well, it’s me. I’m a hypersensitive empath of sorts who took a really long time to realize just how different her thinking and her behaviors are then the average Joe. That notwithstanding, I do believe hypersensitive empaths have a right to this world as well.

Just like people with mental and physical disabilities. They have value, too, and they have to figure out how they can live in this world. So they might not be able to be in large crowds without ear plugs or whatever accommodations they need. I just might not be able to look in certain people’s eyes without getting a headache. Or I might need extra amounts of niceness or intentional goodwill and care. When I say it out loud, it just seems like everyone should need this. It shouldn’t be so special for people to care about how they are making the next person feel. We shouldn’t have to fight for people we Love and people who claim to Love us to act like they Love us.

I’m gonna close this depressive entry out. I will post it, even though it’s sad as can be. And I’m still going to make this blog entry my manifesto. Going to try something new. Going to win this argument in my brain that says you can’t be sad and move forward or that you can’t feel sad and have a different experience of life than you’ve ever had. It’s a lie. Yep. Change looks so many different ways. There are so many factors involved. I don’t have many answers. I’m not gonna sit here and say we are in control of everything. We don’t make the su rise or bring out the moon and healthy, happy people get hit by cars daily and die and evil people rule stuff and some people try really hard and never get to where they want to be – they just aren’t able to figure out or if they figure it out, they just aren’t able to act on what they know.

My dear friend the Advisor doesn’t want to be around me unless I’m gonna f*ck him. I’m not gonna f*ck him, even if he has condoms and is disease free. He’s mean as hell and I don’t feel safe with him. He has his reasons for being mean. He’s actually one of the kindest men I’ve ever known at heart and is just putting up defenses so folks don’t hurt him. I get it. But still. I’ve been that story or been at the effect of that story most of my life. It’s no way to feel safe. You never know when the next person is gonna start punching you for something you didn’t even mean to do.

My manifesto? It is small and quiet. And it is actually the start of something incomplete. It has to be said, though. It has to be done. We have spent a very very long time giving people access to our innards who are either not willing or not able to take care or our innards. And we have been suffering, wounded, because of it. And so, first off, there will be no more access to my innards for those who do not demonstrate a willingness or an ability to take care of those precious parts of me. Do you know that this is the first time I’ve thought of this? Like, how can you ever be happy if you have a wound and yet you just keep punching, pinching, touching, beating up that deep wound everywhere you go? And instead of healing it, you berate it and talk about how it shouldn’t be bleeding that deep. It doesn’t matter who thinks it should or shouldn’t be bleeding. It’s bleeding, dear. The first step is to stop the bleeding. You might feel the pain for a long time, but it will heal eventually if lightening doesn’t strike or some natural disaster doesn’t occur.

These are the things you have control of. You can take of yourself. You have to. You have to, OK? This is me I’m talking to and you I’m talking to if I’m talking to you. You have to take care of yourself and first things first, you have to stop doing and being around things that hurt you. It doesn’t mean you have to hate people. Here is the hard and tricky part. You also have to forgive things that hurt you, including yourself. Don’t ask Advisor to hug you anymore. He doesn’t want to. He’s not consistent. He wants to f*ck you and maybe be your man or maybe not. Just make sure he has access to you on demand. Who knows what he wants. What we know is that he doesn’t want to just hug you on demand AND he will be very mean if he feels vulnerable around you. Now, if you were normal and hadn’t been in a seven year war of constant wounds, this might be easy for you to manage. But since you have been in a about a decade’s worth of stupidness and you are a hypersensitive empath with very few real life connections to boot, being vulnerable to the emotionally unstable Advisor is not the way forward.

I have never taken inventory like this. Relationships. What’s going on with them? Do you feel like you are accepted by the people you spend most of your time with? Do you feel appreciated? Respected? Loved? Emotionally safe? Do you feel like if you win, they will swing you around and be happy for you? Do you feel supported? Fundamentally nourished vibrationally? Y’all sensitive ones, can you be vulnerable with anyone and expect that they will hug you? Does anyone ever hug you? Like give you a hug, not take a hug from you? Give you energy on purpose? You know it if it happens. This is not to make you feel bad. This is to make you aware of why you have probably been depressed or sad or not thriving in the ways that matter most to you for so long. This is not even for you to try and blame all the other people or call them evil or whatever. They, we, are all going through our own things.

But what do you need, dear? What do you need to thrive? What do you need to dream again or to just give up the dream and accept life as it is and make the life you have your dream? What do you need to fall in Love again?

I can not remember the last time I’ve fallen in Love. I don’t even know when is the last time I thought about having a family with someone. When is the last time I wasn’t all disappointed and wounded by a man? I can’t remember these things. When is the last time I had a friend or a teammate that wasn’t looking at me all side eyed and in competition and all bitter and resentful about whatever and unable to smile at me… Let me finish this five hour blog entry. I’ve been writing this blog for almost six hours.

I’m not gonna edit it, and I’m not gonna end my day here. I’m gonna do some other stuff before ending my day and I’m gonna call this my manifesto.

1. I’ll stay away from things that hurt me. Like what? If someone tells me to go away when I’m asking for nourishment and to share Love, I’ll go away. If I tell someone they are hurting me and their response is to dismiss or attack or gaslight, or do anything but ask how they are hurting me, why I am saying that and/or how they can make it better, I will kindly disengage. There are some things that might be hurtful that I can not help but stay away from – certain obligations or responsibilities. I will find ways to engage with those things that feel safe to me. There is always a way.

2. I will find someone to hug and I’ll practice hugging myself until I find someone whose energy is aligned with my own. What does aligned mean? Aligned means what I want to give is what they want or need to receive. And what they want to give is what I want or need to receive.

Just one more. This is not about goals or dreams or ambitions. My new manifesto is about feelings, that part of me that has dominated and been disregarded for so long. When I feel good about something, or rather, when I feel certain about something, it is so, so easy for me to push myself towards taking action. I have been all fickle about so much for so long that it has been so hard for me to push myself to take action. I think it’s because nothing seemed like it would result in me feeling good in any form or fashion. In fact, everything just seemed like it would bring more of the same pain. So, voila! I’m not motivated by sheer ambition anymore. I’m not motivated by others’ expectations of me. Maybe I have finally gotten somewhere. I used to say I was motivated by trying to live my destiny and I actually was, but that doesn’t even do it anymore. I think it’s because sh*t got to feeling so bad that what motivates me now is the possibility of things just not feeling so bad. That’s really it. Dude, if my destiny feels like sh*t nonstop, I’m so sorry, but I’ll have to opt out. I’m interested in feeling good.

Can I tell you a secret? I’m pretty sure I was a goddess or something in another life. I’ve never felt particularly compelled to prove that I can do stuff. I’ve never felt like I couldn’t do whatever I wanted as far as material stuff is concerned. But what has always tripped me up is this feeling that I wouldn’t be Loved if…. If what? Fill in the blank. And this has stopped me from doing so much stuff. This is the deepest wound. This is the deepest fear. This is the redundant experience we have been reliving. And this is the second day of the rest of our lives and we live without that false and distorted thinking now. We will be Loved if, and and but. That is the third item on my manifesto. The most important.

3. I will Love myself if, and and but no matter what. What does this mean? What does this look like? Louise Hay has this mantra, may her beautiful soul Rest In Peace: I Love myself therefore. What do you do if you Love yourself? You eat the foods you need. And what else? You find out what you need and you give it to yourself. You don’t just do that if you didn’t make any mistakes. You don’t just do that if you met a certain benchmark. You find out what you need and you give it to yourself period. The end. Full stop. You don’t give up on yourself no matter how hard and how long you have been trying to do a thing. You assess and reevaluate and try a different way. You give yourself permission to be helped. Eventually you will get to the part of loving others and doing all this stuff for others, but not because it’s forced. You will do all that because you want to. Because it feels good. Because you feel honored to Bless others. Not because you want attention or credit or accolades or because you have to. It lands different when you Love someone because you want to, and not because you have to. We are only fooling ourselves when we think that others don’t know the difference. Hypersensitive empaths always know the difference.

We’ll stop here finally. We’ve gotten to the center of the tootsie roll. You will be Loved, Laydie, if and and but no matter what. You will find someone to hug whose hug doesn’t have negative repercussions. Even now. Even if you just start with you at first. You will stay away from things that hurt you, no matter if it makes sense. You have been hurting for so long. I’m sorry, ya. I’m sorry.

Day 562

If, And and But; No Matter What (You Will Be Loved)

Y’all. Something very exciting and interesting happened. This might seem small, but it is very huge for me. For the first time in my entire life, I felt the difference between my energy and anyone else’s. You don’t get it. This is the first time in my entire life that I have felt the difference between myself and others. The strangest of strange things has happened, has been happening.

I don’t really have an intention in writing this blog except to share and process what’s going on with me in the process. I came up with a new script idea that has my heart pounding and racing. A la Joe in little women. Something from the depth of my heart that feels important to share.

About relationships, entanglements and disentanglements. I feel the possibility of freedom lurking in my hips. It is the first time I remember ever consciously feeling this way. What happened? Well. First off, I dumped everybody. I always feel a bit bad when thinking about this and feel the need to justify myself for dumping everybody. Everybody didn’t do me dirty. I’m wrong in certain ways for cutting myself off from some people… But in this cut off, I can feel.

I can feel the pull. And I can feel the difference between being pulled and not being pulled. And I realize I don’t like being pulled. And without being pulled or pushed or making decisions out of guilt or obligation or trying to please or some other kind of programming, I can feel, for the first time in a long time… maybe for the first time, myself. I can feel what I actually want to do. I can feel what makes me feel good and what doesn’t. I can feel what brings me up and what brings me down… I can know what opens my heart and what closes it and what feels good.

I have been under a spell for a long time. I come from a culture where people actually do spells, although we never did those things in my personal household growing up. But we heard about them and heard about them being done to others. And so when I say I’ve been under a spell, I can’t tell you whether someone or someones actually threw spells on me or if I’ve just been in a subconscious fog for a long time. But whatever the real case is, I have not been able to see clearly, to feel clearly or much less move clearly. It’s like I had this huge inability to say no to anything anyone asked me. At least I felt that way. But it would seem like even thoughI felt like I’d be giving people whatever they asked of me I major ways that nobody else gave to them, I didn’t feel like I was appreciated. I was generally taken for granted. My needs neglected and overlooked and me resented if I dare mention that I have needs or much less demand that such needs be met.

I had huge issues with saying no to people and setting boundaries. I wanted to help. I wanted to be accepted. I felt guilty like certain people depended on me and couldn’t do certain things without me. And I developed an entire matrix of relationships wherein I felt like I was mostly on the giving side, wholeheartedly, and the ones I was giving to always seemed to want endless more and not appreciate what was given and demand blood to my own detriment or they weren’t satisfied. Even then, if blood was given, they weren’t satisfied and would be angry that I’m not well and they have to care for me.

Yesterday, I declined having sex with someone. Too much information, I know, but I feel like I passed a test. Can I tell you something sad, sad, sad? A lot of us women have sex when we don’t want to. We don’t really like the guy. We don’t feel like our bodies are safe with him. The sex is not that good. Maybe we are horny a little bit, but not that much. But we get to a certain level, or in a certain environment, and the guy is all horny and we feel sorry for him that he put in so much effort or so much work trying to get some and his need is so great… or we feel guilty that we turned him on and his thing is all thingy when we really had no intention of thinging him and actually had only wanted to cuddle with him or play tease, but then he wants to poke and we feel guilty and then we just have sex.

Many children are born from these experiences. Many life long diseases and unbalanced womb ph’s come from a woman just deciding to share her very life giving womb with someone without much protection because we felt the need to please. I have done it. Put myself in enormous risk for a guy who clearly looks like he hasn’t cleaned his tongue with a tongue cleaner in maybe his entire life. Or someone with some stinky feet. Or someone who has multiple partners a year but only gets a sex check up once in several years. Not saying I’ve sexed all those kinds of guys, but definitely been exposed to them.

So, last night, a guy came over. A guy I’ve been on and off dating. We had broken up for the umpteenth time, and I had gotten some distance away from him finally. And from the distance, I realized that I felt better without the constant entanglement of his energy. Why? Because his energy had no food for me. Awareness is an interesting thing. When you pay attention to certain things, you can see them clearly. So when I got sick and tired of vampires eating my blood and leaving me in a corner trembling and not ceasing, I finally withdrew. And started to feel what if felt like without getting blood sucked. I’m not talking about literally. I’m talking about energetically. It is something we can feel. I hadn’t been consciously interested in it for a long time, but I had heard this concept before: People and places and things are either giving to you, taking from you or just neutral. There’s no judgement in it because sometimes you want or need to give and sometimes you want or need to be given to and sometimes you just want or need to be left in your own space and not impacted.

The beauty in awareness is that you can feel yourself and then you can actually feel where you are in the spectrum and subsequently what you need to be balanced and to thrive. This is all such a new way of thinking for me. I’m sure I’ve read countless books about it and heard about it so many times, but up until recently, I haven’t been able to integrate any of it into my world. People would ask me for stuff. I wouldn’t even know why I was doing stuff. At the end of the day, it was mostly just because people asked me or just because I felt guilty or wanted to help or be there for somebody and so I showed up somewhere. And I don’t feel like there is anything wrong with that, up to a certain level.

But what had happened was, I had developed in a way where I had a very hard time even being aware of what made me happy. I had a hard time feeling good about doing stuff for myself. Even when I did stuff for myself, I would feel guilty and others would echo it to me. How dare I buy anything for myself when there are so many people poor who just need food? How dare I keep my entire day to stuff for myself when there were others who wanted my time and energy to do stuff for them? How dare I ask that anyone pour anything into me – love, kindness, goodwill – when they were looking to me to be the pourer? How dare I not accommodate someone who shows up on my doorstep asking asking if my burdens don’t look as heavy as theirs? I had a hard time saying no, but in this past year, life showed me.

I got backed up against a wall. I had finally, almost, started doing stuff for myself that I enjoyed. I started this farm overseas, and it was a downright tragedy for so many reasons, but it was an amazing success because we have a farm. Overseas. And it’s bearing fruit. 1200 tress. And that was my goal. To have a farm, overseas, bearing fruit. And now the next phase can begin. But not if I don’t work on it. And I wrote a script. Sent it to some foiks. And they liked it. And it still needs work, but it was the first time I had sent this script to some folks. And it seemed slightly possible that I could actually be a writer if I just pushed really hard for a short amount of time. Then all kinds of shit hit the fan. In this midst of all this, certain people started calling me asking me shit. People I Love. They wanted me to dedicate my full-time all time to them. Move in with them and feed them blood all day. Work with them full-time and feed them support and energy on brand new projects. They felt like they needed me and they did, indeed, need support. But they were setting things up for failure and not recognizing what each person on their teams actually need to thrive. They were making schedules that weren’t conducive to my thriving when they could have made schedules that were conducive to my thriving and asking me to either abandon myself or work at a very stressful pace that would inevitably have me sick in order to meet their timelines.

They were asking me to sleep on floors or chairs or share peepee beds with them, so I could accommodate them and wake and sleep absorbing their energy, ignorant of how negatively this would impact me and unwilling to listen when I tried to explain.

And the men? They were asking me to give and give and give and do and do and do and it all boiled down to me ignoring whatever it is I want and just figure out what they want and how they want me to be and then be that.

And I woke up one day super confused and deeply sad. And bitterness started creeping in. And resentment. And I wondered how is this my life and how are these my relationships and don’t they see they are hurting me and don’t they care? And how can they be asking me to sacrifice for them and not even be concerned, in fact be bothered, when I mention what I need in order to thrive in my own life? How and why would they think that my own life would be for them and not me? And call me the selfish one to boot? Or had I done enough? Had one or two years of concentration on my self just been too much for them to bare? Was it time now for me to join the team of depleted women all over the world who spend their days and nights pleasing, forsaking their joy, doing most things out of obligation, staying excessively active so we dodge our feelings, numbing ourselves so deeply that we don’t even know if we feel love or If we like whatever man or why we’re doing anything at all, and then crying at night in bathrooms or finding other toxic ways to cope with it all?

I think they wanted me to join their alliance. I think I had been in that alliance for most of my adult life. I think it had almost killed me, and there is something about almost dying that will wake your ass up. And I think I just didn’t want to die anymore, and so I did anything I could to live.

I wish I could tell you that I sat down and had mature conversations about boundaries like I read about in my Boundaries book. I didn’t. I tried a bit. People got offended. Started calling me names. Pushed back and implied I owed them blood and resented me for not giving. Attacked. I pushed back, too, but got tired of attacks. I will win. I am a word spar veteran, but I didn’t really want to win. I didn’t want to break people down. I just wanted to be left alone to make decisions in my life that I felt were good to me for once. I wanted to be able to do what I had been hearing about in so many places – to do what I thought was good for me even if it meant I wasn’t going to do what someone I love wanted me to do. I had a few convos, but mostly they weren’t convos. They were declarations.

I wanted to care. I know I should care, but I didn’t. I could not care about people who were asking me to give them blood and watching me die of low blood and either not aware of my demise even though I’m dying right in front of them or quite all right with my demise as long as they are getting what they want. I couldn’t really wrap my head around being a martyr anymore. It just didn’t make sense. Especially an unappreciated martyr. They not even gonna write your contribution in the history books. it definitely didn’t make sense to me. So I stopped.

And I lost bonds. And I lost relationships. And I got really, really depressed. Everyone I had been walking lock step with for most of my life was now gone. And I was alone. And I didn’t want to go back to the dynamics I came from. But I didn’t know how to change them. And I didn’t believe that even if I changed myself, unless I did what people wanted of me on demand whether or not it was good for me, that it would make any difference. I was hurting so badly. I was in overwhelming, overbearing pain. Talk about crying every day. I was boohooing every day and dodging phone calls and hesitating on decisions and avoiding everyone and everything.

And I couldn’t escape the feeling. I ended up engaging with one particular person in a way that I thought could honor myself and also help them. It was weird. It felt like they wanted my help but they didn’t really act on most of the things I suggested to them unless they had no other choice. And then they were just doggone rude and disrespectful about everything. But then act like nothing was going on till you push them to talk then they explode about decades’ worth resentments.

At some point I got tired of it all. It hurt too much. It was clouding too much. I couldn’t think clearly about anything. My body was tripping like it’s never tripped before. My primary emotion was excruciating pain. My primary interaction was hurt. I didn’t have any people in my world anymore. I didn’t have anyone to talk to besides different men trying to bang me… Finally I reached out to a therapist.

She gave me great advice. Alignment and compatibility. She said I had been used to all this bullshit bullshit and she was absolutely right. This up and down extreme. And the way out of it all was to go towards what was aligned and compatible with me. I met some random young gigolo that encouraged me to open my heart and follow my heart and move out of isolation. These concepts resonated with me. But how to implement them?

I was by myself. My world had burned down and I had been so sad for so long that I had lost faith that there was any hope for me. I had lost faith that I could have any good relationships. I had bought in to whatever these people had said about me. There was just something inherently wrong with me. I was the troublemaker. The angry black woman. The unloveable one always asking for stuff from people. The attention whore. I was the one who was always supposed to give much more than I was giving and my bad life experience was my fault for being selfish… I needed to get over my stupid depression and running away and deal with life like everyone else. I was too old for this shit. How would I make money and even if I got money how dare I spend it on me if there is anyone in the world I owe anything to? My world was surrounded by these opinions of me. I must have done something to earn them… But I didn’t believe them. Maybe I was a psychopath indeed. I didn’t believe them. But I didn’t believe anything else, either.

I was confused. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have anyone in life I could trust anymore. My few mentors were overwhelmed with people with bigger problems than me. I was afraid to leave my room. I got sick. And then, one day, in the depths of despair, I reached out to a friend. My old friend the Advisor, who usually treats me like shit and doesn’t respond to my messages. He responded to my desperate cry for help and asked me why I can’t find new people in my life to be safe around. I told him I was scared and didn’t think I could live through some of the painful things I had been through anymore. He asked me what are my options. My primary option was to stay sequestered in some room or in some apartment indefinitely, but that wasn’t quite working. It was safe, but it felt like my life was wasting. So I thought maybe I could do something else. What if it were possible to find safe people to live life with?

Was it possible that I could do some of the things I wanted to do, but I could do it in a safe way? Like maybe I could have my farm, but I could find people who actually had good will towards me and no hidden negative feelings or unresolved resentments to be on my team and walk with me? Like, people who I actually liked being around? People who made the day better and not people who I had to caretake and constantly manage their negative whatever? People aligned and compatible? It felt like a dream in my mind. It still feels like a dream, but dreams can come true, and the thought triggered something in me.

At least if I didn’t have safe people in my life at the moment, I could give myself the possibility of feeling safe – I could give my nervous system the possibility of stabilizing – by not interacting with people who made me feel unsafe and hurt or people who just kept asking for my time and energy without asking how I’m doing or what I need to be doing well. I decided I would do what I needed to do to be doing well… I decided I would try and access my heart and actually do things because my heart wanted to. I hadn’t done that in a while. I don’t know if I’ve ever consciously done that in my entire life.

So here were are today. I didn’t have sex. A man wanted to. My ex. I broke up with him finally. I could say it’s because of all of the bullshit we’d been through, and it is, but more than that, it’s because I finally accessed my heart and asked it if it wanted to be in this relationship and it said no. Yes, he was my companion. Yes, he had some good qualities. But mostly, the dynamic between us felt like most of what I had known and felt comfortable with for the majority of my life. He was not feeding me. I was feeding him. And his nourishment was a barter outlined by unspoken agreements for me to give up bits of myself: my friendliness, my joy in sharing with others, my interest in fun, my ability to be forthright and honest, my emotional safety, my brilliance. I didn’t quite feel like I could share just how brilliant I was with him. He would look with admiration and then jealously. He couldn’t swing me around in circles and clap for me. But those were not the reasons I broke up. I could reason myself out of all that and talk about his compensatory qualities. The reason we broke up is because my heart said no.

And the reason we didn’t have sex today is because, horny as I was, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to put myself at risk or having a baby or a disease or just not being sure about what’s going on with my body for months or getting all energetically entangled and not free to date anyone. I didn’t want to. And for the first time, the guilt of not pleasing a horny man did not override my sense of doing what was good for me.

And when he left, as I am sitting in the sun without him, I feel his energy. And I feel my own, too. And I know the difference. His energy is not mine and it impacts me and I impact him. And I’m not even going to talk bad about him. He has been instrumental in bringing so many unconscious patterns of relating to others to my awareness, and I am grateful to finally be able to see and dissect myself from a lifetime of programming that has been blocking so much for me. This morning, I chose to choose what’s best for me, instead of being a sacrificial lamb to do what someone else thinks is best for them, but will cost me a lot of emotional duress.

I’m proud of myself. Perhaps you will call me selfish. I have been afraid of that word. I’m sure that’s a word invented by the misogynistic patriarchy as a way to disembody and disempower women so that we remain in service to agendas other than our own, but that’s another story. Is there a way to be selfish and also selfless? Who cares? Is there value in selflessness? Is it even real? have we all been duped? I don’t have the answer to those questions, but they are worth asking because many of us are on some bullshit sacrificing, self sabotaging, unfulfilling relationship dynamics, foregoing boundaries, killing ourselves, not living in integrity, bowing our doggone heads low like dogs, not daring to love or share because we are scared of being called selfish. Enabling and disempowering narcissists. Nurturing emotional terrorists. All causes have effects.

I am proud of myself for embracing selfishness, this awful, awful concept, and allowing others that I wish would love me to death to hate my guts. it is the hardest thing that I’ve ever done. Made choices that would disappoint another in order to please myself. Picked my own interest above another’s. Some will say I always do that, but I rarely have done it, and even if I’ve done it many times before, so what? There is a spell. An unspoken agreement in our human consciousness. Most of us depressed people have been under this spell for far too long. The spell says it is bad to put yourself first. Some evil assess who have abused putting themselves first at the cost of hurting others over and over again have made us think it is bad to put ourselves first. But I am here to tell you, you person who has in issue with putting yourself first, that you are probably not selfish. You are probably finally learning self love. And you are probably finally setting a foundation to get out of this hell hole that has been most of your life. What I know is that when you get, you give. You have already been giving what you have big time even when you don’t get. And when you get more, when you feel well, when you finally feel stable and nourished, the very first thing you will do is want to give everything away and want to live everyone around you up. You have always been sharing and generous with your heart. You still are. You are only finally learning to give your heart what it needs so that it can function at its big ass capacity. I am so, so proud of you.

Some people won’t like you. You gotta make peace with that. You gotta make peace with the fact that some people won’t forgive you. Forgive yourself on behalf of their ol’ mean ass uncompassionate asses. Don’t hold yourself hostage anymore. This is big man stuff. This is big woman stuff. We’re not kids anymore. This is breakthrough stuff. I know you might not believe that anything good anymore, but what are your options. Here we are in this life. We could have jumped out windows or hung ourselves or blown our brains out or crashed a car many a time before, and we sure thought about it, but we didn’t.

Here we are. Still in it. And still too stubborn to quit. And gratefully, out from under major spells, changed. Ready. You are ready, baby. You have never been before, but you are ready now. You have stood up for yourself and risked losing everything you’ve ever loved for the possibility of stopping all these trembles in your hand. You have sent a message to the Universe: enough is enough and I will risk it all so I don’t hurt anymore. And the Universe has heard you. And I am so, so proud of you. Bravo, baby. Bravo, you selfish, sexy thing!

I Love you.

Sincerely,

Laydie

Day 561

Selfish and Selfless (What are Your Options)

Y’all. I have fifteen minutes before doing work. I wrote out all the things I have to do. The list is long. I know there is a way to pause and get all the past stuff done before picking up new stuff, but I keep picking up new stuff and not doing the past… I just want to process all this energy flowing through me so I can feel a little stable before really getting into this day.

I think I’m in Love. It’s always about a man, a friend or family… What about me? So much has happened. I cut some people off. Cut umbilical cords. Mostly, I feel guilty about this kind of thing. How will such and such make it without me? How arrogant. I am not God. This time, finally, I don’t feel guilty. I feel proud of myself for saying no to anything and all things that are not loving, kind, respectful and lined with the intention of goodwill. I have never in my life done that before. I have always been too afraid to let go of certain relationships.

God made the relationships painful and stupid enough for me to finally realize all the shits that have been in the way of all the goods. Owning my life. Self-responsibility. Power. Joy. Fully being present. Finding places to share all the things that I want to receive. Finding places where I am received but not exploited: seen, taken care of, supported in the ways I need, applauded. Not resented and treated like I’m only good for what I give. Celebrated for efforts and forgiven and encouraged when I am weak and my heart and true intentions being seen. Doing the same for others. What a world. What concepts.

I met a guy. Some young guy. Rather, he met me. He busted my heart wide, wide open and gave me a reference point of care. He’s broke as a joke, but gives me things, like his clothes, his food, his energy… He holds my backpack. He sees my heart and wants me to be happy. He keeps my company. He lives in a little place, but invited me to come and stay with him so I could save money and have support. He’s just about as sexy as a man comes. He swims with me in oceans and picks me up on his back and spins me around in circles like a kid. He’s honest to a fault. His kiss is magic. Passion unrestricted. If I do something that offends, he tells me right away. We talk about it. I say sorry. Change behavior. He forgives. He’s brilliant. I think he’s smarter than me. He likes to dance even though he can’t and likes to see me dance. He’s the religion my family approves of, but is quite all right with me believing and practicing whatever suits me…

He talks about following my heart. I wonder how he came from this place. He’s powerful and so kind. He speaks to waiters with respect and friendliness. He gives charity to people. He’s always laughing in his eyes. He busted my heart wide, wide open… Him and a few other recent encounters… My heart is busted wide, wide open. I have missed myself so much… Of course my ex boyfriend tried to come back and get together with a vengeance. He felt the energy. I have moved on.

Finally, maybe for the first time in my life, I have fully decided not to consort with abuse and not to be abusive, even if it means being alone for a while till I figure out how to be nice and till I find people who are naturally interested in being nice as well. Or till the fatheads already in my life give abuse a break finally and start acting like humans and treating others like humans… My ex is not a monster. At his core, he is a sweetheart and he’s nice enough. But most of our relationship has been riddled with conflict. He doesn’t swim in oceans or dance or swing you around or greet waiters with kindness or give charity on the streets or try and find ways to save you money. I have never been to his house. He has never talked about me being happy or opening my heart… Not because he’s a bad person. Just because his thoughts and interests are in other places…

But I ain’t. Nope. I ain’t trying to turn an apple into an orange. Let him be an orange and let me be what I am and let us find what makes us comes alive and be at peace in this world…

My time is up and time to start my work.

Have a Blessed day everyone. Thanks for reading.

Love,

Laydie

Day 560

Love, Laydie

Let me get to the truth of it. The root of it. I’ve been sitting here most of the day sick of myself. Well, it started that way, but didn’t end there. I threw a pity party, but I don’t want to start there. I want to start where I am: with something on my heart to share. Fully Safe.

I was trying to get to the root of it. Trying to see if there was anything in my life that I wanted fully; if there was anyone in my life that I wanted fully. I was trying to see if I could feel my heart again. And I had all this stuff to do, but I didn’t care about it. And I have all these options of people to be around, but nothing really lit me up except My People, but he didn’t choose me, so he wasn’t an option.

But do you know why My People lit me up? Because he was safe. Because he’s never hurt me. Because he has always appreciated every good thing I’ve given, even if it was only a smile and never demanded things of me that would hurt me if I gave. He’s never betrayed me and he always celebrates my wins wholeheartedly and sympathizes with me for my losses. I am alive with him and unashamed of my bigness. It doesn’t make him feel insecure or inadequate or jealous. I don’t have to hide when good things happen to me for fear that he’s gonna start asking me for shit or resenting me because good things are happening and I’m not giving all my blood to him. He gives me more good things when good things happen and reminds me that I deserve good things..

Sone guys just came into the business lounge. They were in here earlier smoking and talking about exploiting diamonds from this country. People are always talking about exploiting this country, but I digress. They are taking my attention. I want to write what was in my heart before my attention goes away to other things. Side bar. I am living in a hotel where government officials pass by often. They sit in this business lounge and talk about crooked deals and other things. They are here smoking now and doing drugs and I will have to leave soon.

But I had something to share with you and I want to get it out before I leave. It is about fully. I searched my heart. It was out of service… Yesterday I went swimming in the ocean. I don’t want to put that on my blog – let me tell you about my life – I don’t want to talk about what a good day I had on my blog because people I know read this blog and people I don’t know read this blog. And some people will get very mad and upset if they hear that I used my time and my money to do something that brings me joy instead of using my time and my money to do something for them or do something that they think I’m supposed to be doing at this moment. So I hide sometimes when I am happy. I hesitate to post happy pictures or say that I am well. Because it feels like a free-for-all for everyone to come asking for shit or demanding that I do whatever they think is important for my life.

They don’t get it. I didn’t get it until right this moment to be honest. What I need and what I want is to be well. You understand? More than well. I need my heart to work. That is my superpower. It has been out of service for far too long. I need to feel safe in this world. I haven’t felt safe in so, so long. Can I tell you what happened? Can I tell you what came to me in deep meditation just now? I haven’t been doing anything fully for a long, long time. Been halfway in it. Partially in it. Not all the way in love with anyone. Not all the way into any endeavor. Sometimes all the way for reasons I don’t know. I was all the way into the farm when I started it. I don’t know if I have ever been all the way into any creative endeavor besides the first draft of my horror script, one of my songs and also all the way into a poem I wrote for a talent show and some pf my other poems… The point isn’t to get down on myself for my lack of all-the-way-ness, though. My point was to actually be aware of what was going on.

I walked away from myself. I haven’t been into it. I haven’t been into this life for a long, long time. I’ve just been struggling and feeling unsafe everywhere. And I’ve had my reasons, you know. I’ve been unsafe. I don’t want to go through my life and start blaming and naming, but my little sensitive ass has mostly been unsafe in this here body for a long, long time. Ugly and unwanted. Pretty and wanted to be used. Quiet and ignored. Vibrant and envied. Not really knowing how to change much… Wanting so badly to be Loved and approved of and accepted and safe to express my real self and understood and seen as good and given compassion and arms… Benn wanting arms for so long, but they never came. And never really able to find others who appreciate just what I am giving as is, either. No matter how much blood I give, they always act like I ain’t give shit and ask for more.

So my message. What came to me. First, it was an awareness of the issue. The issue was that I was not fully into anything at all in my life. I was half-assing it all. There was nothing that excited me. No one that excited me. Not even my own self. Secondly, my heart was out of service. It just wasn’t working. I didn’t love anything anymore. I didn’t love anyone any more. My heart was super broken with no hope of being healed.

So what was the solution? I’ve been praying all day long, y’all. And the first step was to get my heart in order. The truth is, it doesn’t take too long. These changes take seventeen seconds. What takes longer is practicing so that our bodies and our minds and our environments believe that we have changed. But opening my heart doesn’t take too long. So I sat there. I had to get over the bitters and get over hating people and recognize that even evil asses are not in their real selves… Oh. That’s what I came to as well. I was judging myself and calling myself all these names and thinking of the ways others had judged me and expectations and blah blah blah and finally I said f*ck that shit. That’s not me. That’s not the truth of who I am. And I had to let it go. And forgive my own self. Even if I had shown my ass from time to time. It wasn’t just because. It was because someone was making me feel unsafe. And most people are like that. Some are bigger assholes than others. But most are walking around with all these false personalities built off of defense mechanisms just trying to survive in this world.

Doesn’t mean you should ignore how people behave. Believe them. But there was space for forgiveness and compassion for myself and others today. And somewhere in that space, I felt my heart. I actually felt all of the hearts of the hearts I had broken over the years. All these men. I was sorry. Most of them never had a chance since First Love. I wasn’t fully into them. I wasn’t even fully in my body. There was nothing they could do to win me over, except offer a safe space like My People did. But some of them did Love me. Some of them did try. They just weren’t good enough and I wasn’t aware enough to realize as much before we all got in too deep. And hearts were broken. Yes. I said they weren’t good enough. This is something from today as well. I’ve always felt like I can’t use those words. Like everyone is good enough. Like everyone has access to my everything because that’s the humble way to be. But it’s not true. Everyone will not take care of you in the ways you need, even if they want to. Everyone isn’t able. It’s just what it is. Some people are more sensitive. Some people are more kind. Some people are more loving. Some are more creative. Some are more vibrant. Some are more intelligent. Some are more stable. Some are more cool. Some are more disciplined, responsible, patient, etc etc. And we all need different things. And we all give different things.

I went to the ocean yesterday with a young guy who did everything that my now exboyfriend never did in eight months of dating. It’s just how Youngin’s made. He danced with me because he wanted to. He admired me and vocalized it. He went in the ocean with me impromptu because I wanted to and kept me safe. He was polite to waiters. He held my hand. He asked about my life and was interested in hearing what I had to say. He appreciated my singing and asked me to sing more. He expressed himself truthfully… It was enough. it was what I needed at the time, and it’s ok to realize that. It doesn’t mean ex doesn’t have great qualities. He does. He has qualities that Youngin doesn’t. But at this particular junction in time, I really, really, really needed someone around me who had an open heart…

Back to my point. My heart opened in my meditations today, and the way to opening was through forgiveness and compassion, for both myself and others. I felt. I feel. I was aware of a part of me unaffected by the disillusionment of life, and I asked it to guide me. I asked it to help me find something or someone that I could be fully into, so I could stop half assing my life, And heart did a good job. There was really no one – not. here in this country. There were a handful of people who lit me up when I thought about seeing them. None of them were the men I’m dating. The men I’d been dating and considering partially made me a little interested, but not really. Not fully. Hesitation and half-stepping all over the place. My spirit and heart were telling me that I need something to get fully into, even if it was a small thing.

So I looked at other life stuff besides my relationships. Career? Could I get excited about writing stuff and making stuff? Nope. What about a farm and a business and healing and helping the world? Nope. Boring. Why?… And then I found it. None of it felt safe. I only believed that I’d be more burdened, more unsafe, less loved, less taken care of, more alone, more overwhelmed, more pressured in the world of work… What I wanted was to be safe. I wanted God to tell me that if I got out there in the world and took on life fully, people wouldn’t hate me. My family wouldn’t come for blood and hate me if I didn’t give it nonstop to my detriment. I wanted to know that I would have friends and be able to find a lover just as big – bigger – than me who could be my “with”, but God wouldn’t give me that reassurance.

I decided not to do anything. it didn’t make sense. This is a new realization. I actually read about it in my Oneness book, but now I am experiencing it. It didn’t make sense to do anything if I wasn’t do it fully. I know, that’s not how our world is set up. We’re supposed to do what we’re supposed to do to get by in life, but it doesn’t work for me. it hasn’t worked for me. Half assed efforts, half-assed intentions, half-assed feelings give half assed results. I know this. So I didn’t want to move until I could find something in me that wasn’t half assed.

And I found a little voice in me that said it wanted to be safe. I know it sounds all abstract, but that’s what I could get into fully. I fully wanted to be safe in this doggone world. I wanted to be able to be myself without being hurt all the time and sad all the time. I wanted to be able to smile and be happy for real without people coming for me. I wanted to be able to make mistakes and be able to do things better without being demonized. I wanted to be safe to love somebody, anybody, who wouldn’t hurt me when I’m vulnerable. And sure a farm and movies and whatever else and heal the world, but none of it was interesting to me if it meant that I’d be hurting and struggling all the time. Yes, I said struggling. I know that is taboo as well and paint me lazy if you want. But struggle is for the birds. Work is fine, but struggle? I don’t believe in its value anymore. Strength? Yes. Power? Yes. Tenacity? Yes. Some of that might include struggle, but we have been programmed to seek out struggle as if it’s a good thing.

So the question was, how to be safe? And y’all, the answer was so cliche. Step into your power, strength, love, joy, personality, talent, sexuality, grief, sorrow, feelings, wounded parts, softness, kindness, masculinity, femininity, intelligence… EMBODY… OWN… take responsibility, that yucky phrase… take responsibility for being your whole self. A catch 22. Being yourself fully would make you safe to be yourself fully in the world. That was the message for me. I don’t know if it’s for you, so if it’s not, don’t take it, but I think it’s for somebody. They said I was bigger than the monsters, but not if I don’t shine. I’ve heard it before, but I heard it today. Radiate. Radiate what? Everything. Who you are. You understand? You’re not by yourself in this Earth game. This Earth school. This Earth test…

I am thinking of she who comes with her own things, Ntozake Shange, and how I never understood her name until now. She Who Comes With Her Own Things came with all her things to Tanzania. She left legacy for us In Colored Girls and the message was our wholeness. She barked down predators with cigarette in hand and was brave enough to pamper her skin. All your things are sacred. Bring them to the alter and be Blessed. Use them and Be Blessed…

Ameen.

Day 559

All The Things

Depressed is an understatement. If you’ve never felt it, what it feels like as like your mind goes offline. To the point that absolutely nothing that made sense makes sense anymore. Eventually, if it goes on long enough, you stop believing in yourself. You stop believing good things are possible. You keep letting yourself down. People keep letting you down and you feel deeply unsafe in this world.

Heroes don’t come or if they do, they come with swords behind their backs and will stab you for whatever ego calls for at the moment… This is trauma. This is what it feels like. This is what it looks like. The odd thing is, when you see a traumatized person, sometimes they seem very relatively happy. Functional. Successful by some measure. Lucky.

I won’t write long this morning. I’m going to do some work. I’ve been saying that for a long, long time, but not finishing anything. There’s this guy in the hotel I’m in. I’m overseas in a hotel because no where in the world feels like home and I don’t really have anywhere to go… So, there’s this guy here. He’s from overseas, too. And nowhere in the world feels like home to him, either. He’s really cute. And he’s got a million issues like me as well. He was in jail once upon a time, and then he got out and he started a big business for ex convicts and now he has a bunch of money. And his ancestry is from this country. And he came back trying to heal the world, but then he got in deep and found out the world is shit and now he’s half assing his life like me and just kind of almost doing stuff, but you can tell that he’s not fully into anything and not fully leading anything and not fully following anything, either.

Fully is the topic of this blog. There’s nothing I’m fully into, either. I’m supposed to be, I know. But none of looks interesting. All of it hurts. And I’m afraid to hope for anything anymore. There you have it. That’s the truth. Nobody came, Allah. I’m mad at you. Nobody came to help me. Nobody came to Love me. I tried. I really did try. I thought I was a good a person, but my life looks like I am only a person to be used and my good is only there to be envied and punished because of. And my humanness and mistakes are not allowed and punished so deeply that if it doesn’t break me then they won’t stop. And I feel sorry for myself, but no one else does. Even my sorrow is resented. I am surrounded by pimps. But there is no escape. Everywhere I go, I am a ho. A ho that doesn’t even have sex. A loser…

But everyone thinks I’m a winner. That’s the saddest part. Because it means I can’t get no real help. I can’t get no real Love.

I’m here in a hotel. My money is running out. I don’t know where my home is. I don’t know where my heart is. Someone told me I don’t own my life and take responsibility for it all, and they were right. And I don’t even care.

So what are our options, dear reader? If you’ve been stuck in depression for so long and just can’t seem to get out? If you’ve been in limbo over and over? If nothing motivates you because life just seems like a big load of shit? If all the things you were supposed to do – be proud, be somebody, show, prove, compete, sacrifice for approval – if you want don’t want to do all that? If you don’t want fake shit but everything in your life and everyone in your life is fake shit and you don’t know how to change it or even care to change it because you don’t believe the change is possible? If opportunities knock endlessly but you don’t take them because you’re too scared that the wold will hurt you again? What do you do? If you want a man and a family and all that but all you see is blah blah bullshit? And you stay with blah blah bullshit because you don’t want to be alone? But blah blah bullshit hurts?

I want to say we’re going to love ourselves and do all this She-rah stuff and make a warrior’s story out of our lives, but I don’t really believe it. “Act as if”, Claire says, but I don’t believe it, either. I wish someone would hold my hand. I have a life coach and a success coach, but still don’t feel like my hand is held. Maybe they are not for me. They are for strong and powerful women, not crazies that literally need a hand held. They think I’m more capable than I think I am, and this is hard for me.

They said I was a magician – a witch, actually. Wise and powerful and Loving and kind. But I see none of it in my life anymore. I see a shadow of who I used to be. I see a broken heart. I see deep, deep loneliness and aloneness. I see disillusionment and despair. I see wasted talent and wasted brain and wasted body. I see a loving mother with no children. I see a joyful partner with no team. I see a dancer with no dance partner. I see a touch healer and deeply sensual woman with no one safe to touch and no one to touch her. And you say I did it to myself and I say I wish I could do it different, but I don’t believe I can.

So what is there to do? Walk into the ocean and never look back? I think of it sometimes. I know suicidal thoughts now. I understand them now. You just don’t see a way out of your pain. You just don’t have anything to look forward to. You just don’t feel capable of change. I get it. I’m in it. Not fully in it, either… In a decade’s long limbo, not fully into anything.

And asking you, Allah, how can I get out? The way is not here alone in isolation. I know that much. My ear is buzzing as I write. But I haven’t found partners aligned and compatible yet…

So, my pity party was disturbed by someone coming into the business lounge where I am in to tell me how much they admire me… God, you got so many jokes and twists and signs and turns… And then someone else called me to ask if they could join me and work with me today… So you mean to tell me you wan give me small hope, God? I put out an email for people to join me and be a part of a new writers/accountability group. Some people responded immediately. So you mean to tell me that there is a possibility that folks will want to do stuff with me?

Ok fine, God. Pity party over. And thank you. Nothing huge shifted. Just came out of a dark feeling and into a lighter feeling of a little bit of hope. It’s enough. It doesn’t take that much for me. Maybe a fool, or maybe a genius. Maybe I’ll just keep trying. Or maybe fully I’ll just keep trying. I will fully keep trying. If I’m being honest, I haven’t fully tried anything all the way. Almost fully. My life coach asked me to dedicate just thirty days to fully. Fully showing up for me. Even if fully looks like partly sometimes. Even if fully looks like fifteen minutes of writing before my whole nervous system goes into chattered teeth and meltdown. Just fully something. So, for the next fifteen minutes, and if I can, even going up to one hour, I will fully fully fully be full of myself. Yep. All of me. Just allow all of me to be online and onboard. Fully present. And do a thing. Just one thing. I’ve been so afraid of all things all the time.

So I’ll bring my whole self right here fully present right now to do one thing for my one self without feeling guilty about not doing all things that are asked of me from all so many people. We’ve upgraded. It doesn’t look like it. It doesn’t feel like it. In fact, it feels downright crazy to even say or think we’ve upgraded when we feel like shit and are thinking about walking into oceans…

But if I take a long step back and look at me from the outside looking in, I would wrap my arms around me so, so tight. Because it has taken half a lifetime for me to be okay with thinking about me first. It has taken half a lifetime for me to say no to abuse. For me to put a sign on the door to my life that says, “If you are not entering with kindness, respect or at the very least no ill will towards me, you can’t come in.” I never thought of those things before. I gave access to any depths to anyone who asked for it and didn’t ask for any kind of treatment in return. And people got used to seeing me as someone just there for them. To the point that they got offended and felt like I was asking for too much if I even asked for my basics to survive so I can help them… I’ll own it. There is so much I’ll own.

You know, we don’t do most of these things on purpose, so don’t get too down on yourself once you realize your own part in creating the shitty shit life you feel like you have. I’m not going to get all unrealistic and fantastical about it. Too much might not change. But something might. I don’t know how I got in my mind that love and friendship and having at least one person in my life or one space in my life where I can express and/or be the best of myself and they will clap and celebrate me, and/or having at least one person in my life or one space in my life where I could express and/or be the worst of myself and they would hold me or comfort me – that has been my deepest wish and dream. Having someone to Love for real that felt safe to Love… Oh, I’ve been even scared to imagine it was possible to like, have a career and be surrounded by people who were interested in the same kinds of things I was interested in and people who supported each other…

But all of this is indeed possible. Maybe. My old doubting mind started to doubt right after I wrote that. Started telling me I’m supposed to be all depressed and hopeless like I was when I started this blog. I’ve become used to it. It it possible that I could become used to something else? One thing at a time. I’m gonna go imagine possibility, and then I’m gonna go give myself fifteen minutes to fully engage into a project that has been never ending. Maybe I can finish it today.

Thanks God for the small miracles. Ameen.

Day 558

Fully

Y’all. I want to tell you something. Yesterday I couldn’t get off the bed. Stayed in the room all day long. Didn’t see a single person. Was all up in my feelings. Feeling so low. I wrote a blog entry, but didn’t post it. Deleted it. Was processing my feelings. Talked about my boyfriend. I broke up with him. I had a boyfriend. I’ll just call him that for simplicity purposes. We never really sat down and said, “Hey, I’m your boyfriend and I’m your girlfriend and we’re going somewhere”, but we were dating and I wasn’t dating anyone else while I was dating him.

So whatever happened or didn’t happen, none of us were happy in the relationship. I blame him for everything, but that’s another entry. I blame me for even going anywhere with him, when from the very beginning, something in my intuition said, no, I can’t be 100% with him, but because I couldn’t find the reason mentally, I just decided to give it a try. We hurt each other a lot. He lie too much. That was the reason that my subconscious picked up on from the very first day when he called me by my name (without me ever introducing myself to him) and then subsequently told me he had never heard of me and didn’t know anything about me and only wanted me to work with him because his spirit took me. “How he know your name if he don’t know anything about you?” my subconscious nudged. But I couldn’t decipher it’s language and just took as me being hesitant to be with him for reasons I couldn’t understand.

The reasons presented themselves and ultimately culminated in me recognizing a lifelong pattern – probably lives long pattern – that I can finally discard. Laydie the martyr. The one who needs nothing and gives all, to a point where people forget that I have needs and actually begin to resent me if I speak of them. Whose giving of all is not seen, appreciated or respected because nothing but constant lifeblood on demand will do for the receivers. I take responsibility for it all. I’m not gonna blame myself, though. I’m not gonna beat myself up. I’m not gonna blame or beat anyone else up, either. I’m gonna do something different. Forgive. So, my therapist said there’s a way. I started seeing a therapist. I needed somewhere in my life that I could talk to someone who didn’t hurt me, even if I had to pay for it.

I cried so much yesterday. Mourned so much yesterday. I was in so much pain. And today I’m not. What shifted, you ask? Well, I’d like to say I did it all, but really I didn’t. I know you might not believe in God, but I have to tell you what has worked for me. What has worked for me is believing in more than me. Maybe it’s a mental trick. Maybe there is God. Surely, there is more to life than I can perceive. I prayed for so much help yesterday. I felt overtaken by grief and unable to take action on anything. I was supposed to be making all these decisions about my next moves and doing all this work, but I didn’t do a doggone thing. I didn’t even sleep on the bed. I stayed on the couch the majority of the day and night. I didn’t eat anything besides some peanuts that I had. And I drank a bit of water. I’m sure the peanuts gave me a pimple. Finally, after 10p at night, I ordered some food. A peanut stew dish and some pounded yams…

Somewhere during the day/night, I reached out. I reached out to my friend and mentor, My People, and told him how I was tired of this experience of life and I wanted a new experience. I thought about people who jump off bridges because their lives are so bad and they can’t see any hope, but my culture just doesn’t allow for bridge jumping. I listened to Abraham Hicks talk about something I don’t remember – making your own self happy. I reached out to another friend, the Advisor. He’s not really a friend, but he’s a friend at heart. Even though we’ve exchanged some very very painful moments, I never quite believe he hates me. I always feel like he’s really, really rooting for me. So I reached out to him. I told him I was sad and that my life sucks and that I could really use a friend. In our recent past, he normally says mean things to me and rejects me when I reach out to him, but this time he didn’t. He asked me what was going on and I explained the devastation of the past three years to him, which coincidentally started right after I had gone to the movies with him three years ago, and was greeted back home with a fist fight with my older sis, who was mad at me for a plethora or reasons, but namely for not being her martyr and having the audacity to have fun when she wasn’t having any. That incident, which was followed by my mom attacking me like a bitch off the street and having a convo with said sister wherein mom accused me of all sorts of falsities that had happened at sister’s house and sister didn’t bother to tell her the truth about what happened, started my realizations of my role in my birth family. The shit role.

I have been consciously and unconsciously disentangling myself from a relationship matrix that is no good for me ever since, and recreating the same old dynamics and suffering the pain of losing relations with people whom I have lived my whole life with side by side. But our relationships just weren’t doing it for me anymore. I was not happy. I did not feel like many of the people close to me would really, really, clap for me if I reached my full potential and wish me good will, much less support me. And they definitely evidenced that they will not be there for me at my worst. They will kick me and judge me and ask me for stuff and hurt me and roll their eyes when I am at my lowest instead of having compassion and helping me. And worst of all, they will accuse me of the worst of intentions, probably projecting their own bullshit onto me. All of this has been happening over the past few years. I’ve been living all this shit out. I’ve been an emotional wreck for the most part, not able to find much stability anywhere.

So yesterday, I also listened to a bit of a psychic reading on one of my friend’s Facebook pages. A lady who claims to be a psychic. I like her. I don’t think she’s faking her reality and she says good stuff that resonates with me sometimes. So I listened to some of her online video yesterday, and she said, “If the house around you burns down, rejoice!” If that wasn’t a word, I don’t know what is.

My friend the Advisor didn’t reject me like he usually does. He treated me with intentional kindness and asked me what I need in order to get better in life and he also asked me if there was anything he could offer. Then he called me. I haven’t had a real conversation with him in years. it was good to talk to him. We talked. He’s brilliant. I appreciate his brilliance and his sincerity and his ability to get to the heart of a thing. He believes me and he believes in me… He believes in the goodness of me and that was enough.

Meanwhile some other new guy in my life. I don’t have a name for him. Nameless. He sings corny eighties songs to me. I guess he grew up in the eighties, which makes him old as dirt. Nameless claims he’s in love at first sight with me. I really can’t make this stuff up. I have to write a comedy about this Love life of mine. It is really so so very funny from the outside looking in. I ain’t gone say nothing negative about Nameless. I’m just going to appreciate him, because if I hadn’t met him – I met him about three days ago at breakfast at the hotel I’m lodging at… If I hadn’t met him, and if he hadn’t been so nice to me and so open and so accepting and complimentary of me, I would not have agreed to have met him for dinner. And if I hadn’t met him for dinner, my boyfriend at the time would not have acted like a jealous ass. And if my boyfriend wouldn’t have acted like a jealous ass, he wouldn’t have made me think of all the women I’ve known who have had jealous boyfriends who have sabotaged their work meetings and life ambitions because they were jealous. And if I hadn’t thought of all those women I’ve known, and even thought of my own self years ago when I dated a jealous and was in constant closed up terror and sadness… If I hadn’t thought of my desire to never, ever be like that again, then I might not have broken up with my boyfriend.

And if I hadn’t met Nameless for dinner and had a two hour conversation with him, wherein he talked about his raison d’être… If he hadn’t spoken about passion, passion! The word I had said to boyfriend just a day earlier, which boyfriend had ignored and dismissed as trivial. If Nameless hadn’t talked about the importance and necessity of passion, then I just might not have believed it was possible for me to meet folks who I could be aligned with, and I just might not have had the courage to break up with my now ex when I came home and ex told me he ain’t going dancing with me and he ain’t dancing at home with me, either. I got dressed and told him I was going dancing anyway. And I took ex home.

I do believe the next day, ex came over and was curious about who tried to hit on me when I went dancing. I didn’t engage in the conversation. Ex spend the night, and in the morning, he wanted me to walk him out. I didn’t walk him out because it makes me look like a ho if I’m walking a man out in the morning. And me and ex weren’t even having sex. If I’m gonna look like a ho, at least let it be valid. Ex got mad about me not walking him downstairs.

I saw ex the next day. He was still mad. Was on his phone the whole time during our meetup. In my mind, I was like, this is some shit. Me and ex had experienced a lot of bullshit before this. Mostly him lying about almost everything and just not being kind to me. I guess he didn’t feel safe with me. I can own that. I didn’t make him feel safe because he wasn’t safe. Because he started out lying and I couldn’t trust him. Talking about him is taking me to the dark emotional space, so let me shift gears and get to the point of this blog entry. This entry started with a point in mind.

I broke up with ex. I was devastated because he had been my “with” for the past six months and I didn’t have a new potential “with” in sight. I was lonely and I was feeling all of the sadness of my breakdowns with family, my breakdowns with good friends, and my inability to get in just one healthy romantic relationship. And also judging myself because so much magic and opportunity always comes my way, but somehow I am not able to fully harness it and complete stuff and just move on to the next chapter. The next chapter frightened me. Actually stepping into my full potential frightened me. There was a belief in me that my family and friends would hate me even more if I was actually as successful as I could be. They hate me already when I’m unsuccessful, generally jobless, up and down cash flow, manless, friendless, raggedy-is apartment, unstable health and fat-ish for the past few years. How they gone act if/when I’m fine, healthy, live in an owned mansion with staff and stuff and if I have my dream career that pays really well? And if I have a fine, good man that is actually nice to me??? And I’m a public figure and helping the world and blah blah blah??? They just might try to kill me. At least that’s what it feels like in my mind.

Yesterday I went through all these thoughts and feelings and didn’t have a resolution for much. I ended the night asleep on my couch. My couch is the hotel couch. I felt homeless and lost. I didn’t know my next plans. There was no where to go. No one to come home to. My friend the Advisor advised that I be open to new possibilities and be open to meeting new people and having new sorts of relationships. I told him I was scared to get hurt again. He asked me what are my options. The option I had been choosing for some time was just to withdraw and hide away from the world. It wasn’t working. Another option that I had never thought of was to face the world in ways that are safe to me. What a concept. Eff what everybody says or thinks. Eff some energy vampire or attacker saying I spend too much money or I’m not working enough or I need to do this or that involve them in my life because they are going to “support” when really they are hurtful as hell to me. Nope. Find safe places to be in the world.

Today I woke up feeling better than yesterday. I was able to sit up and meditate. I was able to come out of the room and go down and eat breakfast. I read part of my inspirational book “Oneness” and they said I had arrived. Support, happiness and alignment were mine. Completion of life theme issues was here. It was a really encouraging read. During breakfast, one of the staff complimented my new slimmed down shape. Then I came to the business lounge to start work. My energy was feeling kind of low and off, so I did a Positive Intelligence meditation and then a breathing meditation. You breath in through your stomach, chest and up through your throat and nose for eight counts, you hold it for 24, and then you breathe out from your stomach, chest and up through your throat and nose for sixteen counts. I did that for seven minutes. It felt good. It felt like something was moving around me. Some kind of energy. A friend of mine messaged me to tell me he loves me. He does. I can feel it. He has always been so very supportive and kind and open with me. I so appreciate him

So, this is what my day has been today. I feel better. Much, much better than the darkness of yesterday. You know, they haven’t diagnosed me with it, but I might be bipolar. I can’t believe how I can experience such extremes of emotion from one day to the other. I ain’t gonna claim bipolar or any other condition, but I am gonna share one more thing with you before I go…

I had asked my therapist how to deal with my family. Most of the times most of them call me, it tanks my day in a bad way. They are mostly calling to ask for shit or blame me for shit and then throw energetic resentment darts on top of that. I want to talk to them, but not really. Not like this. Many of them are full of shit in my opinion. I may be full of shit as well, but I’m quite all right with my own shit at the moment. I’m not OK with constant attack, abuse, meanness, advantage, usury, ill will and demands that clearly hurt me with no support to meet such demands. One of my family members had call me to tell me about whatever (fill in something that means “You’re bad. Do what I say even if it’s bad for you or else I won’t approve of you.”) I got off the phone and really wanted to never talk to these people again. My therapist suggested that I take things in doses. I don’t have to answer their calls and I can answer them when it’s good for me in ways that are good for me. When I’m charged up since they are most likely in a place of draining and/or depleting me. Secondly, I can still be nice them. That’s harder for me and will require some internal work, but I’ll do it, God willing. I’m not as mad as I used to be but still not feeling like doling out much niceness. I will find the part of me that has compassion, forgiveness, and Love for myself and for them, though. So, here’s the thing that was new to me. Therapist said I don’t have to stand in the line of fire. I can stay out of the line of fire and offer what I genuinely feel like offering to them when I genuinely feel like offering it. Not because they’ve bullied or manipulated me, and they gone try it with the manipulation. Do it because I want to. It’s a nice thought. The idea of being able to love who you love and not be hurt by them even if they don’t change not one doggone bit.

I’m gonna get off this blog now and do some writing on my project. Y’all pray for me, please. I want a better life. I want to be a better life. I want to experience real joy while I’m in this body and I want to be a good person while I’m on this Earth. Honestly, I don’t want all these bad relationships. They had to die because they were built on contracts that did not fully allow the participants to be the best of themselves and have what they need to thrive. On both ends. I understand that now. I’m not ready to renegotiate any of these old contracts yet. Some will be renegotiated and some will be expired for life.

I want to offer you this before I close. Be good to yourself. I know you might feel like you don’t deserve it. Maybe you did some shitty things. I forgive you, OK? Forgive yourself even if the bastards don’t. Don’t feel guilty about feeling better. Don’t feel guilty about thriving. Don’t feel guilty about finally seeing something other than this dark, dark hole you’ve been in for so long. You don’t have to spend your life trying to save people in order to feel like a good person. I know that’s what you thought this life was about and maybe that’s what it was once upon a time, but it’s not that anymore. You are a good person, OK? Just because. And your thriving will Bless so many more people than you being all hurt all the time. We all know that when you win, the first thing you do is share your wins with others. We all know you can’t be selfish even when you want to, because your life’s work and your life ambitions are all about service. There are boundaries that you need now, though, and others might view them as selfishness. You know what they are. You know you can’t thrive with your feelings hurt all the time. You know you’re not good when you have no one who doesn’t hate you in your life. You know you need dance. I am with you. Get what you need no matter who calls you what. You have to live, OK? I want you to live. And give what is good for you to give as you see fit to give it. You are a giver, after all, and the world knows that and that is why the world keeps giving you chance after chance after chance to keep giving.

You have changed. Right now. Today. It has changed. Your life has changed. You are not the same person you used to be. You are wiser, stronger, softer. You have learned many, many lessons. Even though you can’t tell, you are more loving and stable than you’ve ever been. And you haven’t been able to see it, but others can see it from the outside looking in. Your life is a good life. Be willing to embrace that my Love, and even in those dark, dark moments, take comfort in knowing that it may pass.

God Bless you. Bless you. May your path continue to be Blessed. I Love you I Love you I Love you so much!

Sincerely,

Laydie

Day 557

I Love You I Love You I Love You

I realized something. The difference between successful and unsuccessful people often boils down to the team they have and how they are able to work with them. Y’all. Your girl has been suffering. For a long, long time. Life for a hypersensitive, intuitive empath is not the easiest, especially if you spend a long time not acknowledging, respecting or accepting who you are… I got distracted. Distracted myself, rather. Finished up on my transformation of identity cards today. My mom is calling me. I don’t want to talk to her. Sorry for saying that. Most people calling me always asking for something from me. They’re not particularly interested in really helping me thrive and are all jealous or mad or mean or try to pull my energy if they see I’m anywhere near anything besides struggling and desperate. God forbid they find out I’m happy and actually have free time and have the audacity to do things with my life that actually bring me pleasure. Just me. Just because I want to feel good. It’s a thing. I am going to make a huge assumption, but if you are depressed and have been wallowing in the mud for a while, I’m going to assume that part of it is because you’ve been utterly utterly alone for quite some time. Not alone, like there are no people in your life. There might be people. There are most likely people there – family, friends, lovers – but you’re relationships with them leave you feeling so many things that you don’t want to feel. I’m so very very sorry. You have been trying to change them. You have been trying to change you and maybe it hasn’t been working. They have only gotten meaner. You have only gotten meaner. And you are tired of it all. May I suggest a time out? In this moment? Like, right right now. Time out, peace and pause… We’ve been on this blog for quite some time. -Laydie, I want to tell you something you already know. You’ve been denying your magic, wisdom and power. I know you have your reasons. But for the next twenty-one days, I would like you to do something else. Accept it. Accept your wisdom, knowledge and power. You know you’re not going to marry the guy you’ve been dealing with. Why? because he doesn’t make you feel good. Full stop. The haters will say no one is perfect, and that’s true, but overall, he doesn’t comfort you. He doesn’t get you. He doesn’t respect the things that are important to you. You feel like you have to put up walls and boundaries and make so many demands of him in order to get your needs met, and it’s every day, because he is not used to giving. It’s not his way. He only gives to the downtrodden, and that is fine, but that agreement is not for you anymore… Do you see what you have been doing? You have a matrix of belief that has you here thinking you are only supposed to helped, given to, loved, if you are down and out. That if you dare thrive, if you dare be healthy, if you dare be happy and care free, if you dare have a man you Love and have enough of anything, then punishment is your reward. -Today, I’d like you to pull up this weed that has been eating your happiness and blocking your joy. And the other one, that you have to build a man, that you learned from your mother and father. It is not the truth. It’s ok, you hear, if you meet a man who wants to build you. You met one, actually, who wants to give to you. You met one, really, who wants to breathe life into you. You can take care of him if you like. No one who Loves you would advise you stay with the man you’re with. He doesn’t dance with you. He doesn’t meet your needs. He doesn’t understand your passion. He is looking to eat of you and only beginning to understand what it means to give. And Love. And you Love the new guy you met… Can we be honest? This is not exactly where I thought we’d be going with this blog. I had the idea of support and belonging on my mind when we started this. Can I open up my arms and let chips fall where they may? I think it’s time for that. Let chips fall where they may. Let life be what it may. Surrender> let go of control and at the same time walk with single eyed focus. OK. God. For the next twenty-one days, I’m going to join a group, to walk with single-eyed focus with. Let me be honest with myself. I do not want to waste life to so much sadness and regret. I want to be done with this. This part. This part of always feeling stunted. This part of always feeling hurt. This part of never belonging. This part of not feeling accepted. This part of having so many projects in my mind and heart that aren’t expressed. This part of playing low. Can we ask folks about team building? Can we ask about making friends? Is it project to project things? I am going through a change in thought and my anxious self wants to leap out of my body. But I am choosing in this moment to stay put. And choose another thought. Choose to own my power. Choose to own my wisdom. Choose to own my knowledge. Choose to own my magic. Choose to be so whole… It feels funny to make those choices. The nerves in my low back begin to tingle. But it’s the only choice that sets us free. It doesn’t just happen. If your muscles have been all tightened for years and your thinking has been all tightened for years and your life has been all dysfunctional for years, it doesn’t just change without some action upon it. Can we make this day the day? Not so grandiose? Not with all these big commitments. Can we do something really small? Can we go somewhere with someone? Can we travel in our backs? Can we let go in our bellies? The places that want so bad to hold on… Can we let them go? Every single one of them… Y’all? I’ve been feeling sad for a long, long time. I’ve been trying to figure this life thing out for a long, long time and I know I’ve just been running in circles and circles. And I’ve been on roller coaster rides with so many ups and downs… And, maybe it’s easy to see the answers from the outside looking in, but the answers haven’t come so easily to me. umm… But I do know, what I want to say right now and put out to the world, is that I’m not giving up. Nope. I’m not giving up on life. I’m not giving up on the possibility of peace and happiness. At least peace. At least peace of mind. At least an existence where I can feel better than depressed more often than not I know it would have been much easier if I had just stuck with a religion. I could say that this is the meaning of life and this is why we do this, that and the other and measure everything up against a reference point. Be good, believe this, do ABC and D, and then you’ll get some reward at some point. And if you’re suffering here, you can make it mean something. Still keep doing the same things your religion says and things will get better. I’m writing too much. But I was trying to get somewhere. What are we gonna do about all this sadness? What are we gonna do about these relationships that we just can’t make sense of? How are we gonna change ourselves or grow ourselves so that every day of our lives is not perpetual Groundhog Day? What will it take to be happy? What do we gotta do, God? I can’t keep living like this. I can’t keep going through the same experiences in different presentations. I want to be free now. This is where I was getting to. I want to be free now. And you say to describe what I want. My family. I want them to stop hating on me and judging me and competing with me so much, to accept me as I am and actually have good will towards me. To be kind to me, not because they are forced or obliged to, but because they want to because they Love me. And to recognize that I am more than just a support system for them and that I, too, need support and Love. I can’t even dream that big, but it would be amazing if I ever truly felt the real energy of support and Love from them, even if I was super awesome. I’d like them to forgive me, even for the stuff I’m not sorry for. Don’t judge. This is my dream. I ain’t really sorry for much because I feel like most of my meanness is by far well earned. I wish I could be nicer to them and want for them the same things that I want them to want for me, instead of just being guarded around them and not allowing Love to flow. I feel so unsafe with them, Allah. Like they just want to eat my flesh. Like they are not ok with my happiness. Like I have to hide it from them because if they find out I’m doing good, they will try and steal my joy, or they will resent me and want me to come join them wherever they are, even if it’s self-imposed misery because of their asshole antics. I don’t want to go places with them. I didn’t want to be around them overseas because I don’t like the way they treat people and I don’t like their attitudes. I wish my uncles and cousins weren’t so evil. That they hadn’t tried to sink my mom on so many occasions and sink us as well. I wish there was somewhere or someone in my life that I could really trust. Now we’re getting super honest. I remember my therapist telling me few years ago that I had no one that would stand with me at my worst or celebrate me at my best… And it was true. My family kicks me and resents me at my worst because they expect me to be their hero, and they kick me and resent me at my best because they expect me to be their hero, or maybe they want to be the hero and feel left behind… And then mom tries to guilt me into saving everyone and giving my blood to everyone the moment it starts flowing, and I never really get to the place where I’m full up before I start sinking again… Those are the patterns I want to push delete on, but it all seems so sad and daunting and impossible. I can’t even open my mouth to say I wish I had a man and a family of my own or I wish I belonged somewhere or I wish I had some friends I could laugh with. I don’t know what happened to my friends. They all disappeared. And I don’t want any of them back. I mean, not like we were. I was mostly captain save-a-ho. We were not supposed to succeed. None of us. I find it funny, though, and might want to take heed that they think I have succeeded. It’s actually quite hilarious and it’s a place to start as we go through this brick by brick of allowing for a whole new world and a whole new life experience. They think I am successful because I am here, traveling the world half the time, living my dreams, focusing on whatever I gosh darn want to, whenever I want to, somehow having the money to do these kinds of stuff even though they know nothing about a job from me for years. I guess I am pretty super lucky from the outside looking in. But people don’t feel my loneliness. They don’t feel my back trembling almost every blessed day as I face some kind of fear. Or the pain in my thighs. They don’t understand my chattering teeth or shaky hands or the ache and tension in my body from not enough hugs and no good sex for too long. They don’t know how much I yearn to laugh my heartiest without reprimand and how creative I actually am and how hard it is to have so much of me unexpressed… They don’t know how frustrating it is and how deeply saddening it is to be walking through this life alone. Y’all.. my momma just called me to attack me for whatever whatever…. I ain’t doing this no more. Yeah nope. I’m proud of myself. I ain’t doing it no more. Lord, why my momma don’t like me? I feel like the character on Million Dollar Baby… and Jenny from Forest Gump. Dear God, make me a bird. So I can fly away. Far, far away. Why my mamma so abusive. Why does she think it’s ok to constantly abuse me. I’m tired of being abused by my mom. I’m not doing it anymore… Lord, how do I stop my mamma from abusing me? Let me tell you what we not gonna do today. We not gonna fight my mamma. We not even gonna try and convince her to stop being an abusive whatever… Is there anywhere in the world I can go, God, where I am safe and Loved and cared for? I feel most alone and lost and hurt when I am with my family. I don’t want to go to where they are. I’m exaggerating a bit. I don’t feel that way with all of them, but for the ones who I have a neutral or positive relationship with, I never quite feel like I can express the fullness of me when I’m with them or when they’re with me. I’m tired of folk telling me something wrong with me all the time. My mamma? We gone leave her alone. Let me tell you what’s not gonna happen in this moment, God. I am not about to turn my attention to fighting my mamma, fighting no family, being drawn into any conflict anywhere on this Earth. Nope. Not. Happening. What I am gonna do is focus on exactly what I was focusing on before my mom called to attack me. I. Ain’t. Doing. This. Shit. No. More. Can I tell you something interesting that happened? The other night, my almost boyfriend tried to attack me for going out to a business meeting while he had come to visit me. I had told him before he came to visit me that I had a potential business meeting that I might go to when he comes over and it was understood that if the potential business partner did not confirm, I’d hang with bf and if the business guy did confirm, I’d go to meetng. So right when my bf arrived at my place, the business guy confirmed. The business guy is rich and handsome and tall and my boyfriend was jealous. Said I didn’t have to rub it in his face that I was meeting with a rich guy. Was mad when I got back from the meeting and didn’t want to go dancing with me like we had originally planned. Do you know what I did? I took his ass home. I told him I was going dancing anyway and he didn’t want to come. And so I took my boyfriend’s ass home. And I don’t feel bad about it. My mamma? We not doing this anymore. My sisters? We not doing this no more? My friends and men? Look, y’all. We not doing this no more. I don’t really care what I did to whoever that makes them feel justified in treating me like shit. If they think I’m that awful that I need to be treated like shit, I do think they should stay the fuck away from me so that I don’t do whatever it is that they think is so bad that they have to treat me awful or they can come near, be interested in resolving issues and stop treating me like shit. That is the line drawn. That is the line I’m drawing in the sand. People just can’t abuse me any more. That’s it. Full stop. They can’t do it anymore. I won’t abuse myself by engaging with them. I don’t care what I did. Sorry, but I really don’t. I absolutely don’t care. There is nothing that I have intended for a human being on Earth that warrants this shitty behavior that I’ve been subjecting myself to for far too long. So, we are going to be intentional in this moment. Instead of getting all depressed because we don’t feel like people Love us, or because we feel like they love us but they treat us like shit anyway so who cares if they love us… Instead of wondering where in the world will we go and who will we live life with if these people aren’t around… Instead of doing that… Instead of reverting into thinking we are bad people and we deserve all this bullshit punishment of a life, how about we just don’t do that? They are still a part of your life because they want something from you. They want something from you because they see something valuable in you. But let’s not associate being valuable with being abused and exploited and taken for granted, as we have been associating for so long. That will keep you with your head down and not playing big because you are afraid of the pain that comes with it… Let’s paint a new reality. Right now. I am here with you. Right right now. As we are looking at all of our sadness and everything we’ve been through – I know it’s been a lot – … As we are feeling our despair and heartbreak and deep, deep fears… I know it is so much… As we are doubting whether we will always be alone in life and whether we will ever find a hand to hold or some arms that don’t hurt or a place to celebrate life, may I suggest that we plant another thought? Right right now. In the midst of it all. What if we just decide to use all the knowledge in all those doggone self-help and religious books and all the lessons we’ve learned in how ever many years we’ve been on this Earth? What if we decide to just as wise as we really are? Like, for real for real. Just own it and be wise already. It’s Ok. My mom called just now and I didn’t answer. She messaged and I messaged her back saying I can’t handle being attacked or abused at the moment. She said she “will NOT ‘abuse’ me any more” and I said thanks. I don’t care if they call me bad or rude. I don’t even care if she never accepts that she’s abusive, etc. etc. For the birds. What I care about is finding ways to keep myself emotionally safe. What I care about is emotional stability for the first time in a very long, long time. Can we challenge ourselves? In this moment. On this day. Can we make a choice? Bring our wisdom, our power, our ability to keep ourselves safe, our knowledge, all of our clarity, every last bit of it, to the forefront and fight for our right to peace of mind? Even if we have to confront ugly realities? Even if we have to renegotiate relationships and be by ourselves for a bit? Can we do this for our children? So that maybe we can even dream of having children and have them? How long will we be victims of so much? Can we talk about power now? Not power over people but power over ourselves. Agency over our emotions so that they don’t sink us with every negative interaction. And energy. My baby, you are responsible for your own safety. Your intuition is on point. You’re not crazy. Your intuition ain’t never been wrong. Why did it take me this long to realize my mamma is a rage-akholic. Understandably so, but doesn’t negate the fact that she will attack your ass at any given moment and it’s up to you whether or not you want to be around that. Ok. Back to us. I’m gonna close out this blog in a moment. This is a big girl blog. Honestly, I’m feeling very very hurt about my mom’s attack just now. My hands are trembling and my self is attempting to leave my body. I am going to pull it right back in and feel this shit. Not out of torture, but it’s time. It’s time to grow. We are the presence of God that is deep enough and wide enough to contain the entirety of our inner experiences. So I’m gonna bring the most powerful part of myself to the forefront right right now. And we gone have a talk with the part of me that just got sucker punched by my mamma. We’re not gonna make anything up. We not gonna try to understand why or make any sense of it or judge anyone or try and fix my mamma. We gone absolutely selfish. Do you know why? Because at this very moment, you are hurting. Well, I’m talking to myself, but maybe you can relate… At this very moment, we are hurting. Someone hurt us. Now you can paint it another way and blame yourself if you want and say it’s your bad behavior that warranted the hurt or they didn’t mean it or they didn’t do it on purpose or whatever. They’ve done it before. That’s why it hurts. In fact, they’ve done it over and over again in different formats. That’s why the wound is so sore. So you are hurting. And what just happened is that your body closed up. Your sore hip contracted again and your nerves spazzed. These people who hurt you, whether they did it on purpose or not, whether they will every accept any responsibility or not or blame you for the whole shabang… Most likely, they will not be comforting you at the moment. They will not be the ones to massage or pay for a massage for your hips. They will have nothing to say about your spazzed nerves and forget about them tomorrow as they ask you to do shit for them again. They are not your caregivers at the moment. Maybe one day they will be. Maybe one day they have been. But at the moment, it ain’t them. You, Madame or Monsier lonely, are the caregiver of yourself. Don’t fight. Don’t fight anyone any more. Don’t fight your mamma. Set a boundary and move on. She just can’t be calling you and attacking or abusing you. If she does, you will kindly get off the phone and/or not answer her calls. The end. There has to be a way to be hypersensitive and safe in the world. There has to be a way to not be constantly on a painful emotional roller coaster. It is in fact possible. People have done it. And you don’t have to be mean to others to accomplish it. You may start off being mean to others and you have my very well permission to be mean as hell to whoever is violating your boundaries and hurting you. Do what you gotta do to protect yourself. They don’t understand how much they are hurting you. Or maybe they do understand and need to be punched in the face to stop. Whatever it takes. I’ve been working on this entry the entire day. A bit of a procrastination tactic, but a bit not. I’m gonna close out soon. I’m not gonna edit or reread, because if I do, I might not publish this. I kind of want this post to be more than just musing, though. I want to be intentional about a new way of life, a new way of being, a whole new world… I want to do something with my magic and power. I want a different life now, God. I life that I want to be a part of. A life that feels good. It seems really, really far off from where I am. I don’t know how to fix not one of my stank broken relationships and if I’m being honest, I don’t feel like fixing any of them. I don’t feel like being the only interested in fixing stuff in my dynamics anymore. It’s not right. Even small children know how to make peace. I’m not helping anyone by always being the one interested in peacemaking with reluctant participants. I want to practice some of the tools that I’ve been learning for such a long time. Ahimsa. Loosely interpreted as non-violence. Let’s start there. Emotional strength. We need some people to do this with. So let’s start by counting the people we already have. Side bar. There is a difference between having people and having people. Sometimes you have people who are in your life, are even doing stuff for you, but the energy isn’t right. You feel it. You know when you feel it. There is bitterness, resentment, envy, malice, the good will is not flowing. Something in you just doesn’t feel comfortable sharing good news with those people or celebrating or smiling too big with them. Doesn’t mean they are bad people. Who cares what they are at the moment, unless you are interested and available to help them… When I say we need some people, what I mean is we need some people we feel good with. We need people who feel like they are with us for real. Who we can trust will clap for us for real in their heart of hearts. I am sure there are more people who feel that way about me than I’m aware of… But these days it has been one of my little sisters that has really made me feel Loved and cared for and seen. So, this is the intentional part of the blog. I am intending to take action towards a better life. I am willing to change, grow, process, cut, nurture, nourish… whatever it takes. Join. What I know I can do now is ahimsa. Non violence. But ahimsa doesn’t mean sitting around and getting punched. That’s not cool, either. I believe that if you are used to being the punched and the unseen and you are learning to keep yourself safe, the best way is to set boundaries as to who can access you in what ways. Doesn’t mean you have to disappear from the whole world, but sometimes it means that. You are moving away from painful situations because you are learning to set a new pattern and habit in your life. You’ve gotten used to this dysfunctional stuff and you won’t get unused to it if you’re all up in it all the time. So you get away from it and try and see if you can find ways to experience the things you dream of, even if you have to experience them by yourself at first. Even if you have to pay someone to be your therapist or friend at first. That’s what I’m going to do. Just a little thing. My commitment is to show up every day. I know I’ve disappointed myself so many many times and not kept these commitments. But I’m going to keep starting over and keep trying again. Show up every single day. Write this blog every day so I’m not alone on this journey. I was going to join a class at my spiritual center, but I’m not fully feeling it right now. So instead of that, I’ll keep checking in with some of the people who I think are with me. That will help me not feel so alone. I will keep checking in with my feelings. My task for this week is to complete a thing I’ve been working on for a while, and also spend every day practicing follow-through, discipline with my words and work, water and prayer. I can do this. You know, we can have feelings, even awful feelings, and still get things done. That is the lesson we are embodying. We can have good feelings, too. It will take some time and practice to change, but I am hopeful. For the first time in so, so long, I am hopeful about the possibility of a different kind of life. And now, for this evening, we are going to home. We are by ourselves, but deep down, we know we don’t have to be that way. Ok. So it makes things a little better. We are not little kids not being picked to be on the sports team. We belong. Yes, we do. Saints and sinners all belong somewhere. If you are feeling all different and left out, I want to give you something. You. Belong. Even if you haven’t figured out where your place is yet, know that your place is somewhere. Know that you’re not alone. You can use your imagination for this until it becomes real. Imagine someone who loved you. Maybe the person is dead. Maybe the person is no longer in your life. But think of one moment in your life that you felt Loved. Really Loved in the ways you need. And if you can’t think of any of those moments in your life, then let’s imagine it. Imagine that it was possible for you to belong somewhere. To be welcomed and not hurt. Just with one person on this Earth. Just in one place on this Earth. I am here overseas. And today someone gifted me with a bottle of water and some free French fries and a gift of ginger beer. It was a server in the hotel here. He was happy to have me outside sitting with him as he served. I was happy to be welcomed. I am thinking of a rare moment in life when I was in a dance camp and I belonged with a group of women when I made a poem and they agreed to participate in the presentation of it. I belonged. Feel like you belong here in this world. I know your mind is doubting if any of this will work. You are asking if it will change your life at all, and I’m not giving any guarantees. I’m only asking that you try something. This is a tool I know, but there are others. There are other tools you know. But like most medicines, they don’t work over night. Those bacterial things get cures in like three days or seven, but some pesky mold might take three to six months to get out of your system. But the medicines only work if you take them and if you take them consistently. So I’m asking you to pick something. Please. I want you to survive. I want you to thrive. I want us to live better lives. Pick something you can practice, and can we commit to 21 days. I will practice writing every day, and water and prayer and exercise and sun and love. If I have no one to share Love with who doesn’t hurt me, I will share it with myself. A very very small intention is simply for me to feel better. It’s not so concrete and I will refine it as things go on. But it’s honest. I want to feel better. Have a good night y’all. And Bless you. Sincerely, Laydie Day 555 Feel Better