Heart At Ease

I would say that most people felt like school was a big deal for them. And it was. It surely was. It is. I cannot say that it isn’t. But when you watch documentaries talking about slavery and the mentality of the generations immediately following that time in history you begin to realize how serious it was for them. They didn’t view it as a plague.

It being a plague can be quite daunting. Quite obtuse in reality but to some that’s exactly what it is. Not knowing how to fit in. Not having compassion in your own personal life from family and friends and maybe you not understanding that the lack of seriousness you have about school can haunt you for the rest of your life. It can make things incredibly difficult. Hard to trust others. Hard to believe that they care. I don’t remember school being very diverse as far as teachers. The teachers were quite interested in a matter of fact about the way they lived life instead of understanding what you were breed to see it as through your own lens. Sometimes you can view it as something that

My mechanical hardness began when I entered relationships that didn’t give me the very respect I deserved. Defending myself in school was an attribute I had acquired as a result of dealing with the hatred some had towards who I was as a person. The truth being that I was never a child that was in the principal’s office because of disputes, arguments or fights. I was taught that when the teacher doesn’t really see you that often in that atmosphere, it’s better. So, I acted accordingly. I remember there being two instances in middle and high school that had wound me up in the office. And that was it. So, looking at my high school record as far as behavior you would see the evidence that I was not a bad child. Or what you choose to define as a bad child.

Sometimes people talk about your gait as something that is subject to satisfy them. The way you walk is not here to make anyone else happy. I say that with so much conviction because I don’t feel like it’s necessary to judge someone because of the way they walk. But I began to see a side of myself that was so defensive. And it was because of so many factors in my personal relationships and friendships that made me unhappy. They refused to see the deep chronic depression. They saw it as laziness. And so, I would harden up to keep their love away from me. I don’t want a backrub. Don’t want to be loved. Don’t want to be showered with gifts. Don’t want to be adorned. I will give myself a backrub. I will love myself. I will shower myself with gifts. I will adorn myself. I would ultimately keep these guards up as much as possible because at heart I knew I needed to love myself. I knew that part of me not loving myself was showing in the people I was choosing to be with. The things that I was choosing to deal with. The parts of myself that I would hide. I figured that I would sit and think about it sometimes, and when I did; I felt very isolated. I felt so alone and insecure about these things. How are people thinking that I am supposed to act? Supposed to walk? The walk is something that as a child I would study. I would study the military man that raised me and how he walked. And with so much respect for being strong I would stay thankful and grateful for being able to walk in general. My grandmother said that the doctors thought I would never walk again. And to this day, I am thankful to be walking. To be jumping and running. The gait being mechanical. Elegance is what you make of it. And if I had a choice, I would be in a dress everyday all day. Maybe 4 different dresses in one day. I love heels. I love the feminine side of myself. But I would notice that when I displayed that side of myself, sometimes the friendships and relationships that I would in would suffer for some reason or another. I would feel inadequate. I had to adapt my masculine side of myself to the way that I feel. Not that I felt like I needed to overpower someone and argue more with them about who I am in a defensive way. Just stand up for me for and take less of the berating.

But when it came to grades it was the focus. It was the parts of my childhood that bothered me to the core. It was the accident where I fell out of the 3rd story window when I was 6 weeks away from turning 3 years old. That defined so much of my life. So much of myself. So much of my dreaming was of being able to afford nice clothes. Going shopping and going on vacations. We would come back from school vacations and had not even gone on so much as a road trip. With a road trip being somewhere that I had wanted to go. But when I was much younger, I remember that being something that was evident. Vacation time. Then it dissipated.

Losing my grandmother at such a young age brought me into a part of depression that I could not get out of. My GPA failed immensely. My friendships failed repeatedly. And I felt ashamed for having these types of issues in my life. But beyond my control was the introspect as a child. It can sometimes be up to those around you to hold you dear and show you the way you should be. The way you should go. How things should be for you. But you don’t see past your own trauma. It was the longing for her being around that drove me deeper into sadness. It was the not understanding what had happened to me as a child with that accident that haunted me amongst other things. And I had not realized that those would be the very things that would haunt me for the rest of my life. I remember cutting off friendships because they had laughed at my GPA, calling me a retard. And I said very frankly,

“I don’t ever want to be friends with you again. You will never understand my life, childhood, dreams or anything that I have been through. And I cannot have you around me.”

That sacrifice in itself was unheard of to me. Something that I was not used to doing. Throwing away relationships just because they didn’t understand how their judgement affected me. They didn’t understand or care to understand how what they had done to laugh at me had hurt me immensely. But it had. It had dragged me down. I bore the weight more than they realized. And I ate everything in one bite. Moving on from that friendship to another hopeful adventure hoping I would one day find someone who understands to replace that person that damaged me so much from their lack of understanding.

Racism is something that is an unbearable tear to the heart for some. It is a way for people to express how they feel, and for others it can be a way to hide. I was sometimes dealing with both adverse aspects of the ordeal. Feeling like you might like me because I don’t seem like most “black girls” but there is still some apprehension to getting close to me because of the innate hatred you have for someone of a different race. And the uncomfortable part is that I would have so many sleepless nights holding in what people would say to me. I would not tell anyone. There would be 5-7 years that would go by that I did not have therapy. I would write to have therapy. To have sanity. And when that’s gone, what’s left? More writing, and more memories. It’s unbelievable the turmoil we put ourselves through when we don’t have and understanding of the brandishing we dish on someone else. I want to make you understand. That is what I would feel like someone would be trying to tell me by calling me all these names day in and day out albeit we had to be in school together. We had to play together. We had to exist together. And dealing with the turmoil from that brought back horrible outcomes in tears.

As with anyone that has been a child of someone that has dealt with substance abuse issues, you hold onto the trauma. And when someone sits in your face or goes around conditioning you to deal with how they think of you it makes you argue with yourself. They call you a crackhead. But your mother or father abused drugs. And you lash out angrily because you know this is the 200th time this person has said this about you in general. And it’s not true. But what do they know about you that makes them think that this is a word that is going to hurt you just because they said it to other people so many times to gossip in an ill manner about you? But when it comes to you, they may say it once. And it crushes you. And I mean crushes you from the inside out. Because the way it’s said is no stammering. They say it like they are used to referring to you as this. And in reality, they are used to referring to you as this. Crackhead. It hurts.

It killed more than once in my personal life to be defined by a name such as this. To even have to resort to calling someone a name. But it’s the stammering that I would focus on. Did they stall and think about what they wanted to call me (which makes me think a little deeper about how badly they want you to hurt) or did it just blurt out (which makes me think a little less deep and think that it was just something that came out, although still hurtful).

It can ruin someone’s life, the assumption of knowing who and what someone is. I often sit and think to myself

“Who have you hurt that you need to apologize to?”

Sometimes it’s yourself. And that’s the beauty of increasing your emotional intelligence. Recognizing that you need to apologize to yourself and others. From the heart. Because the heart can become mechanically hardened just as well as it can be mechanically softened. And there were times I would think about life and say to myself “You need to soften your heart.”

Don’t be so hard. Just open that heart up a bit. Be at ease. Be at peace.

XOXO,

El’Aundra