Letter from a (formerly) Broken Heart

Start dismantling your life at the end of a relationship and you will discover more about yourself than at any other time, except for perhaps illness. All those uncomfortable things that have been ignored, all those compromises you were determined never to make. The feeling that your heart has been ripped out and your guts are dripping on the floor for the whole damn world to see, even as you try desperately to hold it together.

Start clearing your computer, deleting and moving files over and you will discover all the projects you never got to, all the classes and calls you downloaded but never listened to. All that space that was taken up games that took up way more time than was really necessary.

Start clearing out your apartment, after you have still been living together, and see the truth that eventually pulled you apart: this person that was once your love has been in a relationship with themselves for a long time, and it hasn't been going well. No matter how much you might be loved, the spirit has fallen apart so badly that it may never be put back together. Or at least that is the impression that is being gotten.

While you've been busily hiding out from joy, from possibility, from life, everything in your world has been deeply affected. Just keep thinking I should have left sooner or I wish this could be fixed and see how far that gets you. Pay attention to the shock that registers on peoples faces when you respond to their "You haven't together that long" with an answer of thirteen years. They cannot quite comprehend it, all those years and now it is all over, time to move on.

Know that those shoulds are not helping you. They don't change the past. Know that now is the perfect time to give yourself all the things you have been longing for; that deep love and understanding. That truth that includes accepting yourself for all that you are and not worrying about all that you are not. Now is the time to get real forgiveness, to get honest with yourself and get down with love. There is so much out there waiting for you and it isn't in the form of another person. It's in the form of you, becoming your self at long last.

Know that it happened at this time for a reason. Maybe it was all timing. Maybe it was because you have so many amazing people in your life who were there when you needed them most. Maybe it's because whatever is waiting for you is finally ready and needs you be ready, too. Maybe it is to serve as a reminder that things can change dramatically and for the better in a short span of time.

Be gifted with the opportunity to recurate your life (hat tip to Jennifer, that has been my motto for a while now!) and then do it. Don't wait to get trapped by yourself again. Don't look for love outside of yourself until you have rekindled the love inside.

Don't ever forget that you are so much more than you have ever dreamed for yourself and that is just exactly what is waiting on the other side.

Don't forget that I love you. And that you will always be perfect.

Here It Comes...A Better Version of Me

"I am likely to miss the main event
If I stop to cry or complain again
So I will keep a deliberate pace
Let the damned breeze dry my face

Oh, mister, wait until you see
What I'm gonna be..."

A Better Version of Me - Fiona Apple

The Real Me

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One of my friends jokes that I am always running around having revelations. She's not wrong. I always think it's funny that she says it like it's a bad thing.

I have indeed been 'running around having revelations' lately, the kind that lead to more than just 'ahas!' but to conclusions to long, drawn out stories.

There is the fact that I no longer want to live a life where my second-hand electronics break once a year and leave me scrambling, a pattern that has held for five years running. That I want to upgrade my dishes and have nicer meal times. That space is something I need to claim in many ways.

There is the little issue of unconscious feeling that I might need to make myself less in order to make others feel better. That revelation was painful because I was not fully aware of where it was happening. Or of the people who really apparently (still) need me to do that. Leading me to believe it may be time to send them, gently and with love, back out into the cosmos to find a better match in energy.

*******

The other day while talking to my life coach about this it came up that I tend to shine bright like the sun, sometimes blinding people without trying to. Though not as unapologetically. I said to her "Does this mean I have to start handing out hats and sunglasses?"

She, flabbergasted, replied "NO! The Sun doesn't hand out hats and sunglasses to everyone!"

Absorbing what she said, I think "What did I just say? Did I really just say that? Because she's so right. This is why I love her."

*******

This week also brought home the fact that the communication issues I've been having with certain people boil down to this; they are communicating with a version of me that no longer exists. They don't know how to respond when I don't push and pull like the old days. My exasperation feels like something different to them than what it is. A need to be seen as I am. A need to be heard in a new way.

What they see is not who I am or who I am yet to evolve into. They haven't quite rolled with that. The same is likely true in the other direction. Caterpillars about to change into different things. Moths or butterflies, each unable to recognize the other.

*******

Conversing with the Universe. Stretching toward the new, the unseen, that fantastic magic that waits, just there on the other side. This is the other side, the side I could never see before. It was only ever blocked by clouds, which blow slowly away with the afternoon wind. Cupping my hand over my eyes, drinking in the warmth from that glorious golden orb in the sky, I think, it's time buy a cute floppy hat.

Biracial in 2013: It Still Matters

*Warning: in a rare turn, this post includes swearing*

I think it was my junior year of high school. We had a sub that day and we were filling out some of that random paperwork that gets sucked into a machine with your vital statistics that never gets seen again. At the race part, I had drawn a line with an extra box and written in 'mixed race'.

The sub didn't like that.

She insisted I had to choose and we had a rather heated discussion in which I told her I would do no such thing. I could not, in fact, choose between the ethnicity of my parents and I didn't really care what she had to say about it. In the end, I gave her that piece of paper exactly the way that it had been doctored but I was really troubled by her response. Later, in conversation with my parents, I expressed my frustration, feeling as I would many times throughout my life, that was no place for me if I didn't make a choice that seemed pretty lame.

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Currently one of my photographs is on the cover of Blackberry: a magazine, one of my art pieces is inside and one of my photos plus two of my poems are in the previous issue. A friend of mine told she was disappointed with the magazine being aimed the way it was because it leaves people out due to race. While happy to listen to anyones feelings and acknowledge they have the right to have them, I respectfully disagree. Having gotten to know the publisher via social media, I know her aim is very pure. In fact, it's even on the about page:

BLACKBERRY: a magazine aims to be a premier literary magazine featuring black women writers and artists. Its goal is to expose readers to the diversity of the black woman’s experience and strengthen the black female voice in both the mainstream and independent markets.

This, right here? This is why I wanted to be a part of it. 'featuring black women writers and artists. Its goal is to expose readers to the diversity of the black woman’s experience and strengthen the black female voice' 

 Because I know I am so, so lucky that the people in my life see me as more than a race and that means I get the chance to really be myself. Others are not so lucky. I wasn't always. I spent most of my teens years being called stupid, racially driven nicknames like 'chocolate vanilla swirl', 'oreo', and 'token Black girl'. Because those people were so needing me to be put in a category that they could make sense of, an adult  who didn't know me tried to force me claim myself as Black, even while every kid I knew told me daily I wasn't Black enough to really even be Black.

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        I'm not adopted. These people are my parents. That is my real mom. Don't like it? Don't look.

 This might actually be the sweetest commercial I have ever seen in my life. It is representative not only of my own experience (!) but that of many others. (Read this fantastic opinion piece, I loved it. I went immediately to follow her on Twitter.) In 2011 it was reported that since 2000 the mixed-race population had grown 50%, or approx 4.2 million people. Yet they had to turn off the comments because so many people were saying insanely racist things. And then last year there was a huge mess over the Hunger Games (and by the way, if you read that & didn't know those characters were black? You. Are. A. Fucking. Idjit.)

I wish I could say I am shocked when people say racist things. I'm not. I hear it every day. Because way back when, when all the PC stuff started, I said this would happen. I said it would cause a problem. And partially it has. The real problem is just plain ignorance. The assumptions made about black people make my life hard even if I don't fit any part of the stereotypes; what people see is not that I am funny, charming, talented, kind, warm and loving. They see my skin color and that is enough for them to make a judgement call. Trust me when I say that is not something I say or take lightly.

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I get it. I want what you want. I would love for people to not walk up and ask me which of my parents is white. I wish no one ever said "You speak so well for a Black person", because then I wouldn't feel the need to look at strangers and say "Oh, for Fuck's sake!"

I would love if no one had ever pissed off my mom by asking if I was adopted. I would love if we could live a world where color lines don't exist. But we don't. I used to get all kinds of guff from my Black and Hispanic male friends and Black cousins for dating white guys. So I really do hear when you say it seems that we shouldn't be drawing our own lines of distinction in the sand. For me, it doesn't feel like drawing lines so much as coloring in between the ones that got drawn around me.

A Matter of Grief

Photograph (C) acuriousgirl 2011

 The world has been lately filled with a great sense of loss. There is so much going on out there that it is hard not to feel it, and deeply. When we think of grief, we tend to think of the loss as death or divorce, yet there are many types of loss that are often overshadowed. Any type of loss should be allowed space for grieving.

Sometimes sorrow can be over what appears to be a simple casualty, such as an injury or a job. Both of these can have huge impacts. Imagine having spent your life as a runner, falling & injuring the knee so bad that you can never run again. Grief may seem silly to outsiders, who may believe you are lucky you can still walk, but to the individual it can feel like a monumental misfortune, forever changing life’s landscape.

Losing a loved one is terrible and gut wrenching. Yet if you are so busy being strong for those around you when you finally take the time to mourn there may be more pain waiting for you than previously thought. Guilt, shame, hurt all pile up in a corner, waiting to be uncovered & swept out.

By denying yourself the right to mourn, you stifle your own healing process. If we bear in mind that quite often what we interpret as others judging us in truth us judging ourselves, we can gain the power of allowing ourselves permission to mourn whatever we have lost .

The demise of a dream, ability or any other loss should not be allowed to be judged by others as ridiculous or unimportant, because grief is very personal. The best way to work through any type of sadness is allow yourself to feel it, embrace it and once worked through, permitting us to see any benefit we may have missed.

In the end not all loss is bad and some loss is meant to give us opportunities we might otherwise have failed to spot. Working through the grieving process is both healthy and necessary, no matter what it is we grieve.