Remember the time when we were a little freer, our minds were more open to new ideas, and our hearts were more open to not judging others based on differences. Am I imagining a time that wasn’t, a time that only existed in my mind?
I think these might have been only fleeting moments when we all seemed to step closer to each other and to understanding. Then, as suddenly as it came, we were pulled back into the all too familiar grip of division, fear of others, and hate. I know it is human nature, the longing for connection, yet here we are, building barriers, shouting slogans, and tearing at the connective tissues of hope.
Unfortunately, some of the people I once believed I knew, who were part of my inner circle, have changed, and I no longer recognize them. It saddens me, as I have grown older and expanded my own understanding of the world, to realize what it means to be open to new ideas, people, and cultures, just how small some people’s minds truly are. My worldview changed as I traveled and saw the world, while others tightened the cocoon around themselves and demanded that nothing change, or worse, that things return to a time they do not even remember.
Even more importantly, my understanding of how we individually affect others expanded, and I became more self-aware of the impact that both acts of kindness and acts of cruelty can have. I walked the grounds of Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. I was soul-sick for days; something in my spirit folded up. As a young person, I visited Southern plantations and warehouses where human beings were bought and sold, beaten and belittled simply for their higher melanin. Their humanity ignored in favor of a monstrous false layering of ‘not like us’, therefore inferior to justify the hundreds of years of brutality this nation imposed upon a people they stole from another land, beat, and bred into inhuman enslavement.
By the time I was old enough to understand there was something fundamentally wrong in the world, I had begun to question my place in it. I questioned everything. My place in my family, how I fit with my peers, and where I fit in the world around me. My conclusion? I didn’t fit anywhere; I always seemed oddly outside of those around me. I rebelled, and I paid dearly for my rebellion. I broke my own heart more times than I can count. I had my spirit and my body broken by those who wanted me to fit into boxes that made them comfortable. Yet even when I thought there was nothing left of me, something rose up and fought, demanded I survive.
There are days even now that I question my place in the world, and I wonder why I fought so hard to get this far. There are mornings when I wake up after a restless night of bad dreams, where my body aches, my heart hurts, and my spirit is lonely; I wonder out loud why I fought so hard? There are days when my solitude weighs heavily on me, and I wonder aloud, why am I so alone now when I poured so much into so many for so long?
There are times when my spirit feels weighted down, and my heart is cracking. Those are times when I remember there was another time when it wasn’t like this, and I wonder if maybe the reason some of us 
from that time are still here is as a reminder of those days when we were walking toward something better? I think maybe it is, and those of us who still remember are the quiet reminder that it is worth the fight, even as we break inside.
Yes, it’s terrible today, and it feels as if everything has gone sideways, but some of us remember a different time. We remember, and we know there is a better way, but we also know we failed when we turned our backs and became passive. We own this failure; we may not have voted for it, but we failed to stand up and demand better, so we own it. Now, we must own correcting fifty years of ongoing and persistent destruction of everything we fought for.
If we don’t stand up now, tomorrow is lost, and the promise of this nation, however imperfect, will disappear forever and for all of us.
The above is not everything I know; it is simply a silly list of ‘things’ that on the surface feel connected to why I continue to sleep alone every single night.
Those were just the highlights. Fantastic right? The men I have met have all behaved as if they were somehow doing me a favor. Fools who have convinced themselves their presence is enough and nothing more is required of them. These man-children have somehow gotten it into their heads that they are THE GIFT, despite their inability to provide even the simple things necessary to create and sustain a relationship.
don’t drag my history into my future. But I should not have to tell you the intimate details of the brutality of my past to make you comfortable. I rose up, I survived, I am more than my past. All of those things those men saw, those things that intimated those man-children, those things that created me, the woman I am, the warrior-queen, THE GIFT I am; those are my past, and I am not ashamed but they are mine and I feel under no obligation to share them.
our own money. Or even when we purchased our first home, and they handed us the keys. It could be anything; each of us has our own idea of what that ‘it’ moment was when all just seemed like it was, well, perfect.
the world around us. Was the shift in the world, or did we somehow lose that spark that made us dance in the rain, laugh at silly jokes, or want to cuddle with someone we loved. When did this happen to so many of us that now we live these terrible lives of isolation, fear, and ever-increasing aloneness?
make life easier. The generation that freed women like me to have careers, own homes, and choose different lives from our mothers. The generation that changed this nation in very real ways, at least for a while, is now the same generation that is miserable because of those changes.
I have not made New Year resolutions in decades. They are a form of self-flagellation in which I find little purpose and much to be afraid. What possesses any of us to sit down at the end of each year and make a list of all our ‘failures’ and then make a list of all we will do ‘better’? Really, are we demented? Or maybe we are simply defeatists at heart.
You see? Self-flagellation.
though, that I what I seek is something different than grace. It is more, that I don’t hate myself for all my mistakes, for the things I could have done differently, for the secrets I could have told and choose not to. I know that too frequently, I put myself in the way to be hurt as retribution for the wrong I believed I did. In retrospect, I didn’t deserve that, yet I did it anyway at great expense to an already savaged spirit.
Some days, I drag you out of the place I store memories
Did you use to love this time of year, the entire spectacle of it? Getting ready, decorating the house, putting up the tree, preparing cookies…..you know, the whole Christmas thing.
family toasted, loudly then drank. It was inevitable that one of the men would always toast the women of the family, and much cheering would ensue; it was recognized that we were the heart, especially my beloved stepmother, who held us all together for many years.
Loss is something we all face across the years of our life. The circle of life includes the end stage, Death, and we can do nothing to avoid it. We all face Death; it is profound and life-changing for many of us. Death forces us to examine our own lives every single time someone we know dies, whether that person is a casual acquaintance or dearly beloved. Whoever the dead is, we are touched somehow; we look inward despite ourselves.
It’s you again
QBG_Tilted Tiara 