hownottocryeveryday

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

Y’all…. So, so many things going through my head. So, my ancestors or some spirit or some spell done called me back to Sierra Leone to be over here doing work. I’m sitting with sister having a meeting at the moment. Overseas. Overwhelmed. I was complaining a minute ago about everything. I’m not so complaining anymore. I have to go in a bit, but I just wanted to get on here right quick and write a little quick message about a motivation that came to me. It was about commitment. So, I don’t know what I was saying, but let me tell you something right quick. In this hellova thickofa mud, sometimes ain’t nothing else gonna do it for you. Nothing else is going to work except a real, real, real bonafide commitment to get out of it. We’ve been up in here for way too long. I want to be happy now. I’m still mad at a lot of people. I still have a lot of conversations to have. I still have a lot of processing and shaping and deciding to do. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive. I have to go to a dance class in a minute. My time is full up. I wanted to touch bases with you. So, I started seeing a therapist again a couple days ago. She told me to start looking for and seeking out people who are aligned with me and people who I’m compatible with. I’m into it. I feel hopeful. I’m learning not to judge. It’s time to heal. We’ve just been hurting for way too long. It’s time to heal. Thanks for reading. Be well. I Love you so, so much. I Love you I Love you I Love you.

Y’all… So, I just want to write a bit because I have work to do. I am overseas. It has been the hardest season of my life. It’s a new moon. My sis is here with me. The one I punched in the face a long time ago. She’s my friend now. I am glad to have her here. Relationships have been falling apart. Relationships have been falling together. I have been deeply depressed and heartbroken and mostly out of body for the past few months. A fall out with my little sis made me realize the nature of my relationship dynamic with her and also with other family members whom I was close with. Made me realize what she really thought of me and what her real intentions for me were. Nothing that filled me up. I was sad and mad and bitter and resentful. Still feel some of those feelings, but the bitters are finally melting away. Just today. Just today they’ve started melting. My farm overseas needed attention. Needs attention. Lord, don’t ask my why I’m over here overseas starting a farm in the middle of nowhere talking bout some community development. You bound me here. It wasn’t of my thinking or ambition. This is really one of those instances where I feel like some ancestors just pulled me into this Godforsaken country and obliged me to do some work. I could have done like my sister. Just in and out with some impactful project and a temporary team. But noooooo…. I’m over here talking bout I’m a do a farm. While people are trying to land grab, back stab, sabotage, and my number one teammate is traumatized and having a meltdown. And I’m traumatized and been having meltdowns, too. I’ve had a lot to say. I’ve been holding a lot of anger and pain. I’m talking to my therapist today and very excited about talking to a therapist. She loves me. When I pay her. It’s better than nothing. So, it occurred to me in a really real way that I can’t go out like this. This life I’ve been living has been entirely too sad. Entirely too unfulfilling. It is not that I’ve not been trying. I’ve been trying so many things for so long, God. Structure and capacity building are my needs. Capacity building within my own self. But first and foremost, accepting responsibility for my life… I was in deep meditation today, feeling all sorry for myself. Feeling all sad and depressed as usual. Trying to count how many ways nobody loves me. Feeling so unLoved. And then I asked for help. I remembered something one of my mentors had said about transmutation. And how, in order to do alchemy, you let in a higher frequency in order to transmute the lower. So I imagined that light was coming into me from above to try and change all this murky darkness that has had me running in circles and circles for years. I tried to imagine that this time could be done. Like, all this tread milling and depression and lack and not having needs met and not expressing myself in ways that I wanted. I imagined that maybe God cared about, against all evidence that I could see. Why not? It’s my imagination. I saw that I had been shirking all my power. I didn’t want it. I associated power with my experience of it. Just having relationships where people expect you to be giving and leading and supporting, but they don’t really give you anything you need and in fact get very upset if you dare demand being cared for in any way or God forbid get sick where you need to be cared for. I associated power with sacrifice and constant busyness and loneliness. I associated power with war and drama all the time and fighting for someone else’s right. I associated power with absolutely no fun and no love and no care and no hugs and no sex and no ease. I didn’t want it. But not having it hadn’t been working too well for me, either. Being all small and stupid hadn’t been working for me. So I made a decision today. I made a commitment. To end this shit. In spite of how I feel. Because of how I feel. This is that moment y’all. This is the climax or the turning point in my own story. The place where the hero of the story finally realizes her misbehavior and chooses to resolve it in order for the hope of a happy ending and for the hope of problems solved. So what is my misbehavior? Could I really admit it? Could I say it to the world. Misbehavior is a character trait that is the source of the character’s problem with the world. God, I want to know. Not accepting my power, you say. I have my reasons. I have been hurt because of power. There’s more, but all that other stuff is a false personality I’ve built up to try and survive in a world where I felt powerless. If I were to just own it. Own I am the goddess – the world would fall in line. K. I have to get to work now on my script. I am safe. I am comforted. I am powerful. I am Loving. I am kind. What does a life other than sadness and depression and unfulfillment look like? What does it feel like to be appreciated and supported and loved and have my love and support received and appreciated? I don’t believe I’ve ever had a good life where those things happened for me. I’m not gonna get all overly zealous and say my life is going to change presto chango just because I wrote a blog and had some inspiration today. I will say, though, that I’m thankful to even have a thought that maybe things can get better. I haven’t been able to think that in a long time. I will say, though, that I’m thankful that I have food and water and a bed that doesn’t hurt and somewhere to lay my head. there is so much more to write, but it’s time to get to work. So, to summarize. I don’t know how it’s going to happen. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but it could happen very soon. The stake I am putting in the ground today, though, is to choose to end this dynamic of sadness, unfulfillment and depression. It’s over. Today. Now now. And not to dream too big. Be systematic and structural with it until I find some stability in a new thought. Do my very very best to finish this last edit of this script… Do my very very best to put structures in place and build capacity so that my farm can thrive… Do my very very best to tend to my wounded psyche and broken heart and broken sense of self and keep myself safe from abuse so that I can faith in the possibility of goodness again… Gotta go. Ttyl Day 554 Stake in the Ground

Y’all. I wrote this whole long post for the first time in a long time, and then it all got deleted. I talked about letting Grace find you, being good to yourself, and Loving yourself like you would Love yourself if you were your own child. And not being fixated on issues with others. Being all right with having a good life even if people didn’t like you or forgive you or approve you or even if people never said sorry or made amends or acknowledged your pain.

We have been prisoners. No judgement. But we have been prisoners. Today, for the first time in weeks, I am off the bed and productive. I’m using my imagination to imagine what it would feel like if Grace found me. How would it feel to just not hurt anymore. I know there are so many good things I have not experienced, but would I allow for the possibility of experiencing something good? Could I choose to practice something good.

I also made an announcement. The days of being dominated by negative emotion are over. Finally. Now. Today. The days of pushing away myself and not accepting myself and living for the approval of others is over. Now. Today. Not in a mean way. Not in a me against the world way. But in a committed way. Mainly to forgive myself and be good to my own sweet soul. And to treat myself as if I was my own child, with Love and Kindness. At some point I’ll treat others that way, too. But start with myself. I’ve needed it for far too long. Build an unshakeable foundation of inner integrity and well-being.

And be good to yourself, OK? This is so not as deep and raw as what I originally wrote, but it’s time to go now and face this world. I ask you, God, to help me as I am finally ending this loop. Cutting this chord and breaking free.

Ameen.

Day 553

Loop Ends (Be Good To Yourself)