Temet Nosce

I had a rather unsettling night last night. I know… that’s not news anymore. I went to sleep rather early after a dinner of Lasagne and Cornbread muffins (I know – it was a craving on the Mr’s side). But the food wasn’t settling right… so I laid down. And from 11PM to 6AM I was subject to dreams and experiences that left me unrested… confused… concerned.

I dreamt that because of our intimacy issues, Earl and I got a divorce. At this point in the dream it just seemed there was no remedy… there would never be a remedy and so we had to go our separate ways in order to maintain some semblance of sanity. So in the dream, I move back to my mom…. *sigh* my brother’s apartment. Which, in the dream, is now being lived in by him, my uncle & his wife (in my parent’s bedroom) and my aunt and her son (in the living room). It’s cluttered in the house, but not like it’s been in the past 3 years. Moreso, active living people clutter but the furniture was in good shape and where it belonged (except the dining room table). My aunt and her son were even using the sofa bed (which hasn’t been used? in YEARS). I got there in the evening so everyone was pretty much asleep. And I sat at the dinette table, where my mom used to sit and a voice, which I’ll assume was my own mind, my consciousness, spoke to me.

So now what? Where do you go from here? Strange question to ask… cause you don’t even remember who you were before all of this do you? There were things that YOU liked to do and places that YOU like to go. You had hopes and aspirations… and dreams. And you kept putting them aside for everyone else. You can’t even remember them anymore, can you? You can’t even remember who YOU were….

And I woke up from the dream and laid in bed really trying to remember… who I was… before “all this started” – before all the sicknesses. Before all the forced decisions. Before being married. What did I want out of life? What was I hoping to become? And why? Who was I? and how did I become who I am now? And I drew blanks. Every single one… blanks. It could very well be because it was 3 in the morning and I was too tired… but even now writing it down, I can’t recall clearly. And maybe I’ve put it so far in the recesses of my mind that I can’t reach it because I don’t know if it can happen. I drifted back to sleep and picked up where I left off.

The house was in a panic now. My uncle’s wife comes screaming out of the bedroom yelling that there’s a snake in the bedroom. Some how this snake, albeit small – known to all of us as poisonous come slithering out quickly and chases us into a corner of the living room. Someone came and killed it… not sure who it was. Felt like it may have been Earl but i don’t remember him being in the space (especially considering the divorce).

I announced that this was entirely too much craziness for me so I went and took up a room at the 4 Seasons in the city and laid there in a white room going over my lack of knowledge of who I was again. Still drawing blanks. I fell asleep in the silence of that room….

And woke up in the silence of my own. I just sat up in bed trying to pull together the thoughts in my head and realized, I have to get back to a place where I feel like… I’m grounded in myself. I KNOW who I am, and what I want and have made a solid decision about what to do with that information (whether to pursue or ignore – but based on ME deciding… not me pushing it aside to make anyone else happy).

I have made my mission starting 2009 to get to know Victoria again. Find out what she wants and see what’s happening in her world right now to stand in her way. She does now and always will deserve my full attention and I will be a captive audience.

She’s the most interesting person I’ll EVER know.

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Surviving the Apocalypse

It’s common thought that among the children of Moms everywhere, they cannot even FATHOM what life would be like without their mother. “I think I’ll go crazy that day.” “I don’t know what I’ll do.” “I’ll want to kill myself.” “I don’t even want to think about it… ” Wrapping your mind around it is a whole other incident than actually dealing with it. And that’s the God’s honest truth.

In all fairness, I’ve been bracing myself for my mother’s death ever since I was a young girl. For as long as I’d known her, she’s been in some kind of pain. In my early years, it was constant back pain. Not debilitating… but constant. Then followed by knee pain in my double digit years. The both of them together made it so that in a 15 block walk, she’d have to stop 3 or 4 times to “catch her breath” but she was really trying to get the strength up to endure the pain for a few more blocks. Then both of them so severe that she had to quit one job of the two that she held. Then sciatica that forced back surgery that had her feeling better and almost like new… But she went back to work too soon… and undid the whole thing. Then diabetes. Then hypertension. Then the continuing obesity that got worse with every year. Then the cancer. Finally… the kidney failure. With that kind of history, you’d think that I’d be QUITE ready for her to have passed from the earth. But HOPE, man. Hope is a drug. And the fact that it springs eternal makes you a junkie for life. I would always sit there and hope… that she’d come home and start a weight regimen so that she could take the pressure off of her knees so that they wouldn’t hurt so much, so that maybe we could go to the mall together like all the other kids. I would hope that she’d take VITAMINS instead of all the prescription pills so that she could fortify her body with the stuff she needed to survive and not all the stuff they just prescribed her so they could keep making money. Even when she was in the hospitals and homes this past year, when she lost 120 lbs… HOPE took me over and I imagined her taking the reigns, beating EVERYTHING that was against her – kidneys, cancer… the whole kit and kaboodle… and get a new lease on life.

No such luck. The only hope answered is that perhaps she wouldn’t suffer very long. But 20+ years is a LOT of pain. And truly, it’s the only consolation to her being gone. I know now there isn’t an aching joint, a paining abdomen, a screaming back anywhere NEAR where she is now. For the first time since I’ve know her… she’s NOT in pain.

Unfortunately there has been a transference of that pain energy.

I’ve never been so sad. Felt that anything was so hard. Cried so often. Been so hopeLESS. To those who might be wondering what the worst part is… it’s that now that they’re gone… YOU HAVE TO KEEP GOING. In a world that you find shockingly empty and meaningless once they’re gone. Having to rationalize your urges to call and hear their voice, because that’s usually what you’d do to get through the day – with the reality that she’s really NOT here anymore and YOU are. To jolt up from dreams of her where she was herself – loving, sweet and perfect – to realize that it’s the ONLY place you’ll see her now.

As much as I’d like to hold her again… Just to feel her motherly embrace around me…. I will NEVER. EVER. AGAIN. And I? Have to get used to THAT reality. That’s the worst part of this.

Today makes 1 month that she’s been gone from this world. And Thursday would have been her 67th birthday. And next week will be my first Thanksgiving with ZERO parents… Christmas and New Year’s shortly there after.

I have to survive it all. And emerge on the other side…

Still without my mom.

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Proud to be an American

“I remember when I went with momma to the washeteria
Remember there in school one day, I learned I was inferior”
- Erykah Badu

It has happened. The 44th President of the United States beginning January 20, 2009, will be a man who looks like me. A true African-American – born of an African man and a White American Woman. One of the most articulate, charismatic, intense, focused, genuine politicians I’ve ever seen. Whenever they show reels of him and his interaction with people, I hear Ozzie Davis’ voice in my head saying, “Did you ever talk to Brother Barack? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him?” – taking my bit of creative license. Because that’s the power and leadership and love that he exudes. He really shakes your hand and interacts with you. He seems amazing. I hope to get to meet him one day.

I cried on the couch when they “projected” that he would be the next President of the USA. Because of SO MANY REASONS. Because they told me that we would NEVER see this day in our lifetime. Because I’ve spent a LIFETIME searching for role models beyond atheletes and rap stars. Because they DID tell me in school that Negroes were inferior… and I was sitting right there… so I fought all my life to be Better. Stronger. Faster. Smarter. Quicker. Prettier. Wittier. Fly-ER. Just so I could be considered on an even keel with those who get the spoils with less work. At 34 years old, I sat across from a woman who told me that I’m “so well spoken”… because she didn’t expect it from US. Just like Chris Rock said…

‘…you get racism at all levels,’ he goes on, straight-faced, explaining that he lives in a New Jersey neighborhood of $3 million houses. The only black people living there are himself, Mary J Blige, Jay-Z and Denzel Washington. ‘One of the greatest R&B singers of all time, one of the greatest rappers in the world, one of the finest actors in the world,’ Rock says. ‘The white guy who lives next door to me – he’s a dentist. He’s not even, like, the best dentist in the world, he’s not in the dentists’ Hall of Fame or anything. I had to host the fucking Oscars to get that house!’ His voice went so high it sounded in danger of breaking. ‘For him to be the dentist equivalent he would have had to invent teeth! Black man gotta fly to get the shit the white man can just walk to,’ he says, shaking his head.

I knew it would be an uphill battle just to reach the level of THEIR playing field.

All of this to say to non-Black America: You are going to see a lot of African-Americans and Caribbean-Americans and Black-Americans and Of-Colored-Skin-Americans prop up flags in their windows and on their yards. Maybe even rock a lapel pin. Some of us might actually look prouder now when the National Anthem is sung. Or even go so far as to say that for the “first time” in their lives, they’re Proud to be American. It’s not as a slight at all. Try not to look at the side where you feel they’re really saying that they’ve been ungrateful for America all the years leading up. Instead… try to see how the Obamas in the White house is a realization of a dream and an affirmation to us all over the nation… around the world… that The Dream never died. It was dormant, that’s for sure. But the Hope of doing more for ourselves, doing better for our family…. actually ACHIEVING the American Dream seems closer than it ever was because we watched one of our own do it RIGHT in front of us… IN our lifetime. It’s not just talk any more. We have the EVIDENCE of it being real and the PROOF of what we’ve hoped for.

It’s beyond a Dream… it’s becoming, for us, a REALITY.

Listen... the dream lives on

Thank you Barack. Thank you America.

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