10 years ago, today
10 year ago today i was sitting in a precinct waiting to be picked up after witnessing a homicide. well, i guess i didn’t really know it was a homicide that day - the trial was 4 years later. that’s what poor inner city kids get when they die: several different prosecutors, over several different years, over several different other things (and people) that are more important…no one is REALLY interested in the justice they speak of…
a couple of days into mourning i heard something along the lines of “he deserved it,” and i never spoke to my family about it again….well, that is until i finally admitted it was rape. then i wanted to be comforted, or at least acknowledged. i had “gotten down to the bottom of WHY it happened to me” and i was loud and vocal about it. but no one cared. they only cared about me being productive and efficient and a “boss babe” - i had a duty to fulfill, how dare i grieve!?
homicide and rape. once those terms became a part of my normal vocabulary i started to realize why the people that “loved” me hated him…but i could do both, i could love and hate. and no one could tell me otherwise. at the end of the day the people that said they loved me couldnt even show me love in the ways i needed it, anyway. what made this any different?
back then i wasn’t open to the idea that this duality in thinking was a result of my own brokenness. Stockholm syndrome is what i think they call it? in hindsight, any healthy person could see me for what i truly was: pathetic. or i guess more so pathetically looking for love in all the wrong places; in all of the wrong ways. i could be amazing at everything i tried, almost effortlessly!! except i didn’t realize that the only reason i was trying anything at all was so that i could be seen, and loved, and understood. maybe if i could just show them!!! then it would all work out like i played it (and re-played it) out in my head!
“you’re only as needy as your last unmet need” i proudly PROCLAIM today in my yoga classes. as if somehow knowing im needy, takes away the need? …you can’t intellectualize your emotions divanna….
but every time i feel them, every time i TRULY feel them….they say im too much. they hate me. they don’t like the expression of self - the unfiltered truth - they only love my jazz, they don’t like my blues….
but it’s ok. because i’ve learned to like my blues. to LOVE my blues….without my blues, my jazz wouldn’t be so dynamic!! i can do both, i can love and hate: i love and hate you. i love what all of this has turned me into. and as time passes, if you look at the full spectrum, hate turns a little bit more into the side of love each and every new day. it was always meant to be this way, wasn’t it? or maybe it’s cognitive dissonance? either way, it was inevitable.