The Exorcism of Nia Simone

Your father, he is a mountain.

He is solid ground, rich soil, challenging terrain

That leads to the most stunning views,

With him we stand on higher ground.

Your mother, she is like water.

She is as warm as she can be cold.

She can be nourishing, refreshing, like a freshwater spring,

Or she can be an ocean of salt water.

Her love will surround you, embrace you, immerse you.

Who are you, my dear one?

We will spend our lives loving you and studying to answer

This question.

The answer belongs to you.

Made of earth and water,

Where is your home?

You know where you belong.

The Man I Love

Each time people mention that they've never seen me so happy before, the man I love tells me he's never known me any other way.

Each time I write a blog post, he reads it that day. Aside from my own feelings, his feedback matters most to me.

Sometimes I think it is hard for him to picture me in my last relationship, feeling crushed and devalued and so insecure.

Each morning that I wake up by his side, I feel loved and empowered and capable, even when I cannot find my breath because the pain is too great. When I am physically at my worst, he tells me how proud he is of that person that I am, and how proud he is that I always find it within me to persist. He does not see me as weak. He sees all that I push through and believes that I am strong. It reminds me of myself.

Each time that people tell him how amazing of a partner he is to me, he tells me that he does not understand why he hears it so often, because he is there for me just as I am there for him. He does not understand the full value of his love, his patience, his tenderness, but I do. He does not understand that value of those qualities when they spring from masculinity, but I do.

I have always acknowledged that choosing a partner in itself, teaches your children what is and what is not acceptable. It is a large part of the reason why I chose not to stay in past relationships. I have always hoped to have a partner who I could be proud of, who would show our children that masculinity is not inherently toxic. That masculinity can be compassionate and kind and gentle, just as it can be defined by strength, confidence, and passion.

I am so grateful that this man is my life partner.

I am so grateful that he is the father of my child.

The Spaces In-between

This photo was taken just a month before I left an extremely unhealthy relationship that damaged my self worth to the point that I did not believe that I deserved better, either from or for myself. I believed that because I had consciously made the decisions that led me to this moment, that I deserved to suffer the consequences. I did not feel that there was a way out.

Things can look fine without being fine.

Only a few hours after this photo was taken, my significant other physically threatened me for the first time. We got into a heated argument, because he was uncomfortable with me publicly sharing how I was able to recover from a past sexual assault. He felt that this somehow portrayed him in a negative light (even though this instance of assault had nothing to do with him), because it would damage the public perception of my worth and would therefore damage his own reputation. I was so offended by this assertion that I decided to skip the wedding we had driven out of town to attend, asked him to get a ride home with family, and proceeded to pack my bags to go home and get my thoughts together. He approached me aggressively, threw me against the bed, and ripped the keys I tightly gripped from my hand. Shocked at how physically aggressive he was being, I decided to just take a shower, take a breath, and try and to plan how best to exit this situation. At this point I was pretty hysterical, mostly because of how shocked I was and how physically threatened I felt, and I just needed some space to be able to think more clearly. I was in the shower for maybe five minutes, when he started kicking the hotel bathroom door, again and again until it slammed open, hitting the wall of the shower. I screamed and cowered in the tub. He was furious. The kind of furious that makes men look inhuman. He said that he assumed that I was calling someone and came in to retrieve my phone.

However the thought had not occurred to me. It had not occurred to me that I could not handle this situation and that I needed help. A few weeks later, I took an online quiz made by a non-profit that helped women who were victims of domestic violence. It helped determined whether or not an unhappy relationship was simply unhealthy or whether it could be labeled abusive. Any score higher than 10, signified an abusive relationship, and I scored a 50. It occurred to me for the first time that that way he made me FEEL was an indication of an emotionally abusive relationship, but even when the quiz suggested that I seek professional help to leave this relationship, I still believed I could handle it on my own.

I could not.

I needed help.

I write this just to say, if you are in over your head, please do not go it alone. Please do not call your best friend or your mom and think that they have the answers that will help get you out of this situation safely. If they are not professionals, they are limited to their own experiences and understanding. Please get professional help if you need it. Call a counselor, call a non-profit, call a fucking lawyer.

You deserve to feel safe and loved, and there is no shame in understanding that you need help. I'm not much of a should-have, would-have, could-have human. The past is the past, and I often believe that focusing on what could have been different limits the infinite possibilities that I can create from here and now, but my biggest regret in leaving that relationship was that I did not seek professional guidance.

I have always wanted to be a mother.

It is one of my earliest memories.

I was five when my parents found out that my mother was pregnant with my sister. She was so sick through her first trimester that the doctor put her on bed rest, where she was administered an IV. I remember she was so fragile that I couldn’t even hug her tightly, but all the same I thought that her pregnant body was the most beautiful and amazing thing I had ever seen.

I still feel that way today. I love stopping to connect with pregnant mothers, looking frustrated with their aching, tired, expanding bodies. I love being able to tell them from the bottom of my heart, “You are absolutely stunning.” When I see pregnant women, I feel an instantaneous sense of awe, responsibility and protection. The idea that “it takes a village” is planted deep within my heart. It is your job to nurture this growing life inside of you, and it is my job as a part of this community to exalt and support you in this process, even if it is only while we occupy the same space in the grocery store. (I feel the same way about supporting parents even after even after the child is born, but that’s a whole different blog post.)

I have always wanted to be a mother, but I never knew that I would ever get the opportunity. That is how life is. We can want something with all of our hearts, but that doesn’t mean that it is in the cards, and I had largely submitted to the traditional standards and expectations of society: It is important that I succeed in school, and then in my career, and once those items have been taken care of I should fall in love, get married, and finally have a kid.

Honestly, the checklist seemed so long that may be why I felt that I would never get the opportunity, and although I am happy and in love, my complex chronic illness has increasingly affected my day to day life in recent years. For this reason, I am still working on step two. This continues to be a source of stress for me. Never in a million years did I think that this year, 2018, would be the year that I become a mother. I am above all things a planner and this was not a part of the plan right now, but all the same, here we are.

I am going to be a mother.

The last night we spent unaware of this knowledge, my partner and I were planning a trip to Russia for the world cup. This is the first year that Panama has qualified and his family is ecstatic. We were up late because Michael was trying to register for the ticket lottery. We were bickering because he is not known for his attention to detail and love of planning and I hate when things are not clearly communicated. It makes me unnecessarily grumpy. He’s working on organization. I’m working on being more patient.

I woke up in the middle of the night, maybe around four, and decided to take a pregnancy test. I was experiencing pretty severe exhaustion during the day and was extremely bloated, something that literally NEVER happened to me anymore as a result of changing to a primarily plant-based diet. I grabbed a digital test, ran to the bathroom to offer this stick a sample and waited for those loading bars to stop blinking at me… PREGNANT.

I don’t remember thinking anything at all. I just sat there for a few moments, staring blankly at the test. Then I walked to our room, stroked Michael gently on the head and said, “I don’t think I’ll be able to go to Russia this summer…”

“Okay….” he responded, only half awake.

“… Because I don’t think I should be traveling internationally in my third trimester.”

Even before he opened his eyes he was smiling, and it put me at ease. He wrapped me up in a hug and just beamed up at me with so much love. That was that. You can call us “Mom” and “Dad”.

I cannot tell you how unbelievably grateful I am to have Michael as my partner in life and soon in parenting. I cannot tell you how lucky I feel to be having a child with the same goofy kid I met at summer camp in middle school; the same guy who was my first kiss; the same guy who listened to me cry on the phone all of those nights when we were teens (I really enjoyed my drama back then); the same guy whose phone calls still brought me so much comfort and happiness in college, even when the calls were shorter and less frequent. Long before we fell in love, I can tell you that I loved this man for the person that he is, and I know with every fiber of my being that he feels the same way about me. Neither of us are perfect, but we are most definitely complimentary beings. I am aware of how invaluable this is, and it is because of this that I know that things will be all right.

There are so many details that we will need to address even before the baby arrives, but thankfully we have a truly incredible network of support surrounding us with love and arming us with information and help. For now, we are taking things as they come and are trying to enjoy each step of this beautiful process and the slow countdown to the end of our time as just us two. I just can’t stop saying it,

I am going to be a mom!

Family Heirlooms

My mother introduced me to so much of the music that means the most to me when I was just a little girl. Thinking about that makes me so infinitely grateful. The music we listened to was so strongly rooted in story telling, and often complimented by a soulful voice or the striking use of a stringed instrument.

Bob Marley, Santana, Tracy Chapman, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Erykah Badu, Sade, Lenny Kravitz, Ella Fitzgerald, and the woman who inspired my name, Ms. Nina Simone, were all regular visitors in our home and in our car during our road trips. After my parents divorced, my mom would sometimes pack my sister and I a bag, we would hop in the car, and she would say to us, "Which way should we go?" before we took to the open road. I remember feeling free in those moments, driving down the highway with the music turned up, and so these artists became the sound of freedom. My mom taught me that music can allow you to create your own environment, no matter where you are and what is happening. To this day, I use it as my shield when necessary. Music can be such beautiful rest from the chaos.

Motown was always a very popular choice in my grandmother's car. She knows every word to the songs that she loves and I have always loved listening to her sing along while I sat in the backseat. The Supremes, Diana Ross as a solo artist of course, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Jackson 5, Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke. She would listen to music and would recall memories of that time, memories of her family; how kind and hard-working her father was and how sweet and lady-like her mother was, about her old neighborhood and adventures with her childhood friends (the Aunts who I assumed were genetically related to us until I became an adult). She taught me that hard work, community, creativity, beauty and pride were the backbone of black neighborhoods when she grew up. All this she taught me when she was immersed in the music she loves.

There were many things I wish my father had taught or given me a girl, but the most cherished gift I did receive from him was a passionate love of funk music. Earth, Wind and Fire, Kool & The Gang, and the Commodores come to mind immediately. Funk allows me to finally stop thinking and just move, and as a fairly neurotic human that is very necessary and healing for me. I still abuse it for that very reason to this day. I remember being eight or nine and choreographing jazz routines to funk music in my yard, stopping every passing neighbor to enlist them as my audience. I was an extremely rhythmically challenged child, so in retrospect my neighbors were very sweet for obliging me. It seems fitting that the music Michael and I most like to dance to is funk. We could just stay on the dance floor forever if the music has that feeling.

I think of these family heirlooms fondly. I regularly pull them out to admire them and to make sure they are well cared for in my memories. It is the music that has shaped my understanding of the world, passed down to me from my elders. It can never break or be bought or can be taken from me. It is a part of me, and for that I am grateful.

ACE Scores

The following information is from the CDC about the Kaiser-Permanente ACE study:

"Childhood experiences, both positive and negative, have a tremendous impact on future violence victimization and perpetration, and lifelong health and opportunity. Much of the foundational research in this area has been referred to as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)."

In the study titled "Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults" researchers conclude:

"Persons who had experienced four or more categories of childhood exposure, compared to those who had experienced none, had 4- to 12-fold increased health risks for alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempt; a 2- to 4-fold increase in smoking, poor self-rated health, ≥50 sexual intercourse partners, and sexually transmitted disease; and a 1.4- to 1.6-fold increase in physical inactivity and severe obesity. The number of categories of adverse childhood exposures showed a graded relationship to the presence of adult diseases including ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures, and liver disease. The seven categories of adverse childhood experiences were strongly interrelated and persons with multiple categories of childhood exposure were likely to have multiple health risk factors later in life.

Conclusions: We found a strong graded relationship between the breadth of exposure to abuse or household dysfunction during childhood and multiple risk factors for several of the leading causes of death in adults."

I took an ACE test recently, and I scored a 7 out of 10.

I am not sharing this information because I am interested in placing the blame for my current health issues on decisions that were made by adults during my childhood. I am not interested in convincing myself that failure is inevitable, so that I can relieve myself of the stress or the work of pushing forward.

I believe that there were many ways in which my childhood was very privileged and there were many ways in which I had more support than many others. Throughout my life, I have benefitted from positive relationships with people whose childhoods could accurately be described as traumatic, people who have worked very hard to ensure that they escaped from toxic and cyclical health and behavioral issues. My mother and my grandmother have lifted me up with love and encouragement, and have pushed me to be tough in a world that can be unkind. But to be fair, each has had to figure out the best way for them to accomplish this goal. To each one, success has meant different things.

My purpose for writing this passage is to share an idea that occurred to me recently. I do not believe I will ever become the human I want and need to become without truly taking to heart the lessons that I am learning right now. I believe that if I had continued to succeed by conventional measures, I would have never willingly considered the value that can come from suffering because I was using achievement as a form of escapism. Ultimately, I believe that I would have endured even more of the severe consequences associated with my ACE score in the long run.

I was kind of an unusual kid in that I was allowed to ask A LOT of questions of the authority figures in my life and also received a lot of very honest answers from them. Because my grandmother and my mother took the time to explain "why" I needed or should do something, I usually listened. My mother was much more rebellious as a child, and she made it very clear to me that shrugging off good advice, without cause or a specific goal, often caused her more hardship than good in the long run. The anecdotes were more than convincing for me, so I did what I was told, again and again, until I forgot to ask why, until I began to assume that all rules, like the rules in my home, were made for my benefit and for my protection.

And this is not the way of the world (OBVIOUSLY).

My relationship with my ex was the most exaggerated example of this phenomena. I believed that because he knew me so well, he cared and wanted what was best for me. It evolved to the point that when he wanted me to do or NOT to do something, I believed it was probably in my best interest. In retrospect I can see the ways in which that is a dynamic completely inappropriate for a romantic relationship. However, having grown up without a father figure in my home, I can also understand how I was confused about the dynamics, the boundaries, the requirements of romantic relationships with men. I felt that maybe I should be or do something other than what I am, because that was the "right" way to be in a relationship. I had no idea that a relationship is only right when I can exist and thrive as me and you can exist and thrive as you.

I graduated in the top ten percent of my class in high school (check) and also in college (check). Shortly after graduation I did a two month internship, and was quickly promoted to the position of editor at a local magazine (check). I had a great relationship with my family (check), and had the same good friends for years and years (check). I dated the same guy all throughout college and then we moved across the country to start a life together (check). I was on track to check off all of the little boxes on the lifelong list I had created to demonstrate to myself that I was not lacking value because I perceived myself to be a mistake, one that my mother had never actually intended to make and one that my non-present father very reluctantly and very minimally endured. It was kind of a "fuck you" checklist for success. The only preordained box left unchecked was marriage.

When I decided to leave my ex, I was aware that I was deviating from the list, but I did not feel that I had to alter the plan at all. I could always just replace him, and complete the checklist all the same. I still felt in control. I still felt that I understood how the world worked and how to get what I wanted. But when a person who I had loved and trusted wholeheartedly, told me that he understood all along the ways in which he had systematically broken me down psychologically and emotionally during the course of our relationship, I was shocked and crushed. I was repulsed by him, and by the fact that he did not understand how much more disgusted I was now that I understood how manipulative he could be. In retrospect, I can see now how equally sickening it is that I chose to be a part of that relationship as a way to prove to myself that I had value, as though that were something that could be bestowed upon me. We cause so much harm when are dishonest with ourselves.

So after that relationship ended, I started challenging myself to be more honest with myself, and everything kind of blew up around me. I had spent my entire life until this point trying to accommodate (or more accurately, trying not to inconvenience) those around me, and I found it challenging and empowering trying to make sure that I had the space to exist and thrive as well. It caused changes in the way I communicated with myself and with my loved ones. I lost friends, and I had major fights with family members. I began to experience chronic pain that was more consistent and more severe than in the past. But with the pain, I was finally unable to resort to escapism to avoid my truths. I could not stay up every night working, or dancing, or talking to interesting strangers, or indulging in substance abuse, or working out obsessively, or staying up all day and night painting or writing or just kind of manically creating. I had to stop, and take a breath and yield to the horrifying flood of consciousness that I had avoided for 24 years.

It was horrible and terrifying and empowering, but sometimes I think that there was no better mindset for me to be in when I fell in love with Michael. There was no bullshit left in me at that point. I had no patience for dishonesty from him or from me. I have no desire to be possessed or to possess another. Love is a choice that we make. It's a feeling that we feel, but hormones, food, weather, music, friends, social media, can all change feelings. I feel very similarly about my relationship with Michael to the way that I feel about being alive. It is a beautiful opportunity and a choice, but not one that I HAVE to make. It is a choice that I enjoy making.

When I was going through EMDR therapy, I was able to reflect on the many connections that my brain makes from the past to the present. So many decisions that I made before that time in therapy were not made when a challenge was presented to me, but rather the first time that kind of challenge was presented to me. Because my mind often had to multi-task while in a state of emergency, it simplified things as much as possible. This=That. A=B. This, to me, is a specific example of the negative effect of high ACE scores. When you are always dealing with an emergency or a trauma, you don't allow your brain to wander outside of certain parameters, for your own safety. You look for warning signs and jump to conclusions. This is how you protect yourself. The gift of EMDR for me, has been that it has given me the tools to slow down in those moments where I would automatically jump from A to B.

This past year has been a true challenge and a triumph for me. Being back in my hometown has been difficult and triggering. I have, without a therapist, dealt with some of the most severe and challenging effects of PTSD that I have experienced thus far. I have felt so fragile, and so weak, and so reactive, but I have also leaned into the tools I learned. I have learned to better listen to those around me. I have learned to be more present and to soak in the warmth of a great conversation with a loved one. I have made creating a priority for myself again, acknowledging for the first time that art is a part of me and a necessary part of maintaining my health. I have also made the same declaration of nature. I am a part of nature, and I do not feel whole without the reminder that I am but a small part of a large ecosystem. I have learned to read the same books multiple times in one year or listen to the same songs multiple times in one day if it helps to create an environment that is more positive for me. Michael and I often get up to see the sunrise on the river, just so we have a moment of immeasurable beauty to reflect upon during the day. Recently, we have started doing Tai Chi and I have been enamored with the concept of yin and yang and can see this pattern in all parts of my life.

I do not believe that I would have ever learned to trust myself if I had not hit rock bottom. I believe that I would have continued to overachieve while drinking heavily, and continuing to be impulsive, inconsistent and reckless. I would have continued to work myself into the ground and then forced myself to play just as hard as penance. I think that all of this would have protected me from ever having to deal with these scars of mine, but I think I would have died early from risky behaviors and chronic health issues. This has been such a challenging season of life, but I have been planting my seeds and showing them lots of love. I am hopeful that as I take these next steps, they will continue to build a strong foundation for the life that is meant for me.

TRIGGER WARNING!!!!!!!!!

joyeux anniversaire

Three years ago today I was raped

This morning I came across a note my rapist wrote to me once,

Describing what he felt to be his personal shortcomings.

This was a task we each performed individually

To create more transparency in our relationship.

There are a few lines that continue to haunt me,

"I keep lots of anger inside."

"I'm a liar."

"I take revenge to be a moral imperative."

When we broke up, I was afraid. People kept telling me not to worry. When he began stalking me and threatening to kill himself if I did not spend time with him, people told me that I was misinterpreting the situation. He wouldn't do anything to hurt me. When he invited me to dinner that night, telling me that it was not a date but just a way for us to spend time together and strengthen our friendship, I hesitated, but I went. When we arrived at a very fancy restaurant, when I saw the special bouquet of tropical flowers he had ordered to our table with a note for me (five and half years and he still didn't know that I prefer pastel colored flowers), it felt like I blacked out before the first drink touched my lips. I was so stressed. I just blanked. I remember drinking A LOT. I recall being uncomfortable as he recounted his recent trip to Amsterdam and how he had refrained from purchasing sex while abroad. He said it was because he still cared about me. I repeatedly told him that I was not interested in rekindling our romantic relationship in any capacity. I remember telling him I did not want to have sex. I remember going back to his apartment and watching cartoons. I remember falling asleep on the floor while watching tv. I remember dreaming of Michael. In my dream I was sleeping soundly in his bed, in his apartment in Ohio. I remember regaining consciousness for a moment, feeling my body being thrusted from behind, my eyes were closed but I could feel my face being pushed into the carpet, and then nothing. I remember waking up, instinctively holding my swollen abdomen and curling into fetal position. I was in his bed. My panties were gone. I ran into the other room where he was sleeping on the couch.

"What did you do?"

He apologized and started crying.

"What did you do? Where are my panties? What the fuck did you do?"

"I'm sorry."

Now I am crying and I am screaming,

"Did you fuck me while I was unconscious?"

His face went pale. His eyes looked away from my own. He just kept apologizing to me and explaining that he was drunk.

He looked ashamed.

I ran back into his bedroom and locked the door. I drank so much that night that it was hard to think clearly. I just sat in his walk in closet and cried until I fell asleep. In the morning we hardly spoke, but he drove me back to my apartment. Days after this he submitted himself to a hospital for psychiatric treatment.

I remember how distressed he was when I ended our relationship. The ending of any relationship is heartbreaking. You mourn the death of a future that will never be. You mourn a past and a present that you may not have intentionally and purposefully created.

Well darling,

joyeux anniversaire

Each year, regardless of the heights or the beauty I have seen, this day reminds me of you, a self-identifying angry, vengeful liar.

I like to share.

I like to share parts of my life, because I think it is important for us to normalize honesty. I think it is important that those who do not or cannot adhere to social "norms" do not feel shamed for existing or for daring to be seen. I say "norms" in quotes because I find very little to be normal about many of the social constructions we live with so comfortably.

I find that people perceive me to be agreeable and aesthetically enjoyable and so I think it is important for me to make you aware of all of the ways in which I am NOT grounded, put together, or pretty. There is yin and yang. I am withdrawing and overflowing all at once.

I find that sharing online can be taxing because humans, when interacting only in thoughts and not in physical form, can become inhumane. I think the internet creates an "out of body" experience for many people. They believe they can do, and see, and understand things that do not fall in line with reality when walking through the physical world. As a result, it feels like we have created even more outrageous and unrealistic social "norms" online.

I can see the patterns.

Do you feel it?

Apathy. Diffusion of responsibility. Voyeurism.

These words weigh on me heavily.

Once a friend of mine turned to me spontaneously and said,

"Nia. You try WAY too hard."

I stopped and laughed, and every time I've thought of that moment since I've had the same reaction. She is right. I try hard at everything all of the time. I care. If I can do something, I will. This is how I approach personal growth, the maintenance of my relationships with others, my healing, the way I walk down the street and interact with others. I am a deeply passionate person. I feel a very strong sense of accountability for my actions and responsibility for the messages that my actions send to the people that I interact with. When I allow toxicity into my life, I allow it into the lives of those that I love. I believe this to be true, but have not used the internet with that same sense of accountability or responsibility. I was still consuming and supporting toxicity by offering views on my instagram feed, and snapchat feeds, and each ad that I encountered. Why did I tell myself that I SHOULD be able to consume garbage without shitting myself?

So, to address the photo above, and also to address the fact that I am still posting on the internet as we speak, I have decided that the people in my life deserve more from me. I have decided that I deserve more peace of mind. I am tired of how endless, how restless smartphones make the world. You can see the most beautiful thing, something that makes you stop and cry, but just moments later you're yelling about politics and hearing people simplify each other in degrading ways. I wanted to get rid of my smartphone because I wanted the rest. When I'm standing in line, I want to stop and breathe and notice the details of the room and the faces of those around me. I have the most amazing partner. He's a really beautiful guy, and now that he and I do not use smartphones, I spend so much more time smiling into those big, beautiful, warm brown eyes. When we are waiting for something, there are more moments when I go to search for those eyes, and they're already searching for my own, smiling warmly.

I do not shun technology or its use. I just want it to stay in the desktop in my room. I want to walk around in the world being more present in my body, and in the world, and in my home, and with my family, and my friends, and my community, and most all just here in this moment. So in the same way that I would like to simplify my life enough to move into a tiny home, I just needed to just get rid of some of the clutter in my mind so that I can better focus on my goals.

When I was a kid my mom would always say to me, “As long as you are still alive, things can get better.”

It’s still some of the best advice I’ve ever been given,

And because I am alive, because I Am, I am thankful.

I am thankful for the ability to feel and experience my emotions authentically and to be able to share that experience with others.

I am thankful for the opportunity to take pause and decide where I am going.

I am thankful for the most incredible network of support. I don’t know how I would have gotten through these past weeks, and this world without you. You remind me of myself, You love me for myself, You empower me to be more myself and you know that the me that is me, loves the you that is you with all of my being and strives to support you in the same capacity.

I am thankful for that beautiful feeling I get when I am surrounded by people that I like and I love, maybe something that borders close to pride. It’s a factual kind of feeling tells me I am part of an ecosystem, that our lives are symbiotically intertwined.

I am thankful for the power of personal narrative and the diversity of the human experience. I find comfort and inspiration in the knowledge that there are so many experiences that we face alone, and so many that we experience together.

We are taught that we are responsible for ourselves,

And should be accountable for our actions.

I believe that we are responsible for ourselves,

I believe that we are responsible for one another,

I believe that we are accountable for our actions

And also that

We are accountable for the things we do not do.

I most always have the time to stop and listen

When I see someone in pain.

Anyone who knows me, knows this to be true.

I have learned to make the time,

Because I often felt the world did not make time for me.

That is the first form of suffering I can recall in my human experience.

The feeling of being invisible to people who claimed to feel

Love

Towards me.

Growing up,

I was determined to succeed anywhere that I could.

Because maybe, if I earned the space,

People would finally stop and listen.

But I have found that there are no accolades

That can give a woman of color the space and the visibility to be heard

Rather than seen.

All that I can do is speak,

And hold tight to my truth.

And now that I am here

Dealing with PTSD

With no clear resolutions to my health issues

I feel the world treat me as though this is how it has always been,

As though nothing that I ever accomplished was a reflection of me,

Just an anomaly.

And now that I fulfill the stereotypes

Of the “at-risk” child of a single mother

Turned to failed adult,

Their expectations have been fulfilled.

Recently my ex/assaulter got married.

I think that part of why I struggle with dealing with this so much is

Because of his privilege.

He claims that things just didn’t work out

And simply started over.

I was a wash, but that’s no reflection of him.

He deserved a second chance at fulfilling society’s expectations of him,

As a rich, white man,

As a “nice guy”.

Sometimes I get so angry,

Thinking about how hard my mother

KNEW

This world would be for me,

And how hard she worked as a single mother to put me through 12 years of private school.

To keep me safe,

To give me a leg up,

And this was the "boy-nextdoor" I met there.

A fucking monster

In “nice guy” wrapping.

Trust me when I assure you that people are not good

Because they come from a "good" family.

(It makes me think of

My high school sweetheart,

Who always drove me insane.

He was so wild, but he was kind.

He was a good guy,

In "asshole" wrapping.)

I watch as those who knew us both treat me as though I am broken

Because I am stuck on repeat

Skipping

HE RAPED ME.

HE WAS CRUEL.

IT DESTROYED ME.

So unpalateable to hear those words.

Why can’t she just play her part?

We want to root for her, but not if she’s making such a fuss.

I do not understand the motivation for this part that you want for me to play.

I grew up with an alcoholic father, and also without any father at all.

I grew up helping my single mother raise my sister.

Halfway through my childhood we moved halfway across the country,

Away from the support system that I has always known.

I grew up being sexualized in my own home by my step-father,

All the while being judged and criticized by my high-school's administration for acting out even though I graduated with a

4.16 GPA.

When I go to a new therapist it takes me hours

TO LIST

The traumas I have endured

And yet it is so easy for them to tell me that I should just be more positive.

“It’s hard, but you can get past this.”

I was one of the only bumps in my assaulter’s road.

One of the few times in his life, that he did not get what he wanted,

But it is me who should have the patience,

And the time,

To wade through all of this pain.

Poem#1

All of my life I have watched for the day

That this feeling comes to shore.

I stand

Like the sand dunes along the Atlantic.

I have weathered many storms,

Many waves,

Many hardships,

But these new storms are

More frequent,

More intense than those that came before them.

I can’t tell you that I will still be standing

When the weather is through.

Poem #2

You say that I am

“strong”.

It makes me flinch.

I don’t know how it is,

That saying the words:

“I am not okay,

I am fragile,

I am weak,”

Makes me “strong”.

I feel the word move the ground beneath me,

And push me closer to the edge.

From here

I can see the mangled remains of another me.

Pushed past the edge by another lie.

“good girl”

Who were we to ever determine my worth?

good

better

bad

horrible

empty

honest

promiscuous

stereotype

survivor

different

smarter

I am just a being.

We are all the same fucking thing.

If we stop.

If we just

STOP

I could sense the ways in which I am not me

And you are not you

And that would be a fucking relief.

Poem #3

I picture laying flat on my back,

And taking a razor blade,

Gently cutting a line down the center of me,

Between my eyes,

Between my breasts,

Through my belly button,

Like the equator on the map,

Except dividing the left

And right

Hemispheres of me.

Maybe I could better handle these feelings.

These physical reactions,

If I could break things down a bit.

Chart them out a bit better.

"You are bold

Like the primary colors

But

There is NO thing basic about you.

Southern women may find you

'Unnecessarily brash'

But I believe the word they are searching for

In that Lily Pulitzer bag is

GENUINE"

I wrote this poem for a good friend of mine about a year ago. Right now this southern forged American treasure is heading home and I couldn't be more excited!!

(Also I think that posting old poems I have written is a good way for me to continue to work on this blog while I'm organizing the four blog posts I have been working on for a month now...Most all of the poems I write are for a person I love. Lots to post!)

The Times They Are A Changin'

After I was raped, I had a lot of people with good intentions pushing me to "get over it". So in order to make those around me more comfortable, I acted like I had. But that's not how this works.

When I finally began to acknowledge the impact that relationship, break up, and sexual assault had on my self perception, I was so angry with my ex. I was angry with the people who had pushed me to move forward, to distract myself from working through these complicated moments of my life. For a long time, I was angry with myself for not knowing better, not seeing how I was being manipulated, not doing more to prevent the deconstruction of my self-esteem.

What is interesting to me about all of this anger, is that I have never before identified with that feeling. For most of my life, I have identified more with sadness than with anger. In those places where people react with anger, I usually withdraw and mourn and then return to the situation feeling a bit more clear headed. That came next.

When I returned to Florida, I found myself so heavy with sadness and guilt. Sadness at the weight of the betrayal of that sexual assault. That someone I had once hoped to marry, and had slept safely beside for many nights could have so little respect for my person. The guilt came from the voice in my head that told me I had reason to fear him. It came from that voice that had always known that relationship was not for me. The guilt came from remembering all those times that I gently suggested that we should part ways, rather than just getting the fuck out of the quick sand.

Once, I was chatting with my nutritionist about the lifestyle changes I have made since returning home (eating vegan, living more mindfully, creating art, being clear and honest with myself). She offered me a statement of hope. To paraphrase, she told me how change, even when positive, can be slow moving and frustrating in the beginning. She suggested that at some point, there may be a moment when I suddenly gain momentum and feel things really falling into place and coming together. At the time, I was not sure that was a realistic expectation, but there's no other way for me to describe this past week.

In the past week I got a new job. I had the interview and my first day in that same week. In short, I am thrilled. I'm thankful for the opportunity to provide support to/be a part of a team of compassionate people who help people in our community. I am thankful for those people who are always willing to help others connect with new opportunities.

In this past week I have felt so well and have been in so little pain that I have gotten to truly just relax and ENJOY the time I spend with people I love. Michael and I went on a couple of dates (and practically for FREE which is our favorite). On Friday, we went to an awesome new art venue in town and met some really interesting, creative people. I even saw a few familiar faces. I was experiencing such low levels of pain that I was not distracted from what people were saying in conversation, or desperately searching around for seating. I wore a dress that I LIKED without concern about how much pressure the straps put on my shoulders. I had a glass of wine. I laughed so hard I felt warm all night. On Saturday, we took Gracie for a swim (she's swimming into the deep end and back these days) and later that night got to support a local artist at her EP release party and enjoy some great local talent and even more art. Then on Sunday we went to a state park to relax and enjoy the sun and salt water. On Monday I went to work, took a nap, and then then Michael and I met up with my mom and one of her best friends from the 80's at Hamburger Mary's. On Tuesday, for the Fourth of July, we relaxed at the house, grilled with my mom and were all smiles lighting off fireworks that night.

It means so much to me to that my pain is dipping to manageable levels. Yesterday, I was really hurting, but even knowing that it is possible for me to have life experiences without being so distracted by excruciating pain is really encouraging.

I feel that things are really coming together.

Lyrics and video by Kesha

"Well, you almost had me fooled
Told me that I was nothing without you
Oh, but after everything you’ve done
I can thank you for how strong I have become.

‘Cause you brought the flames and you put me through hell
I had to learn how to fight for myself
And we both know all the truth I could tell
I’ll just say this is I wish you farewell.

I hope you’re somewhere praying, praying
I hope your soul is changing, changing
I hope you find your peace
Falling on your knees, praying.

I’m proud of who I am
No more monsters, I can breathe again
And you said that I was done
Well, you were wrong and now the best is yet to come.
‘Cause I can make it on my own
And I don’t need you, I found a strength I’ve never known
I’ve been thrown out, I’ve been burned
When I’m finished, they won’t even know your name.

You brought the flames and you put me through hell
I had to learn how to fight for myself
And we both know all the truth I could tell
I’ll just this is I wish you farewell.

I hope you’re somewhere praying, praying
I hope your soul is changing, changing
I hope you find your peace
Falling on your knees, praying.

Oh, sometimes, I pray for you at night
Someday, maybe you’ll see the light
Oh, sometime, in life, you’re gonna get what you give
But some things, only God can forgive.

I hope you’re somewhere praying, praying
I hope your soul is changing, changing
I hope you find your peace
Falling on your knees, praying."

Ain't Nobody Got Time For That

Yesterday a dear friend introduced me to the concept of soul ties. Essentially a soul tie is a long-lasting emotional and spiritual connection that is created between two individuals who are physically intimate (or rather being physically intimate is one way to create this kind of tie). The connection is powerful and is difficult to break. When a relationship is tumultuous and toxic, the connection can often have negative repercussions on the individuals involved, even after that relationship has ended.

After looking into the concept further, it is most often discussed in Christian communities to relay the lasting emotional and spiritual impacts of sexual intimacy. It is used to explain why it is that we often actively work to stay in relationships that are toxic for us or feel haunted by the presence of a poisonous, past partner even after the relationship has ended. Their suggestion is that abstinence before marriage is the most effective way to prevent these harmful connections from being created, and that prayer is the only way to sever this bond.

I am not a Christian woman, and so I do not agree with a lot of the moral judgements that linger in those discussions surrounding sex. I believe that I am an animal biologically designed to consume fuel, excrete fuel and to attempt to reproduce. I am not ashamed to eat, to shit or to fuck.

However, I do believe that a beautiful symphony of energy, made of all that is, exists in the universe. I'm a hippie like that. I believe in the exchange of energy between that collective and an individual, and also between individuals. I also agree that sex can be a powerful, emotional and spiritual experience that connects you to a person in a very unique way.

In that relationship with my ex, I supported his growth. I was nurturing and I was soft. In the moments where I was once hard and cold as a teen, I tried to offer him empathy and warmth. In exchange I was fed fear and distrust. The idea that I am an object to be valued by the eyes of the beholder (all eyes except my own) became a mantra in our home.

In addition, I did not choose to partake in the last sexual encounter that I had with my ex. Unconscious people don't drink tea (For those who are familiar with that annoying fucking analogy for date rape). He knew that I had no interest in being with him anymore, and so, in a drunken state, he decided to take what he felt belonged to him. This violent act of betrayal was emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually scarring for me.

The further that I am from the night that I was raped, the more confused I become at why I still feel haunted by his presence. When I am truly afraid or anxious, my thoughts often turn to him, although the issues I am facing almost never have anything to do with him. Sometimes when I am angry, I become afraid that my thoughts mimic his toxic words. I enjoyed learning about the concept of a soul tie, in that it allows me to make sense of these connections my brain is making. These feelings of fear and anger, they have no home in my heart. I have always struggled with anxiety, but never before him did I choose to act out of fear. Those thoughts had always been my motivation to keep moving. Fear and anger, these are vines that flourished through my connection to him. These belong to him, and I don't want them anymore.

I interpret prayer and mediation as very similar concepts and believe them to be effective tools. After some meditation, I wrote the poem below to clarify and declare my intentions to myself. Figured I would share:

On this,

The longest day of light,

Summer Solstice,

I create a clear severance

of the soul tie that has

plagued me.

I reclaim the light that is

Mine

And in exchange, I return to

you

Your piece of darkness.

Unlike the TV you stole,

The XBOX you stole,

The sex you took from my

Unconscious Body,

This light still

Belongs to Me

And I'm a need that back

Now.

STRANGERS

(Unedited poem written June 13th, 2016)

Overwhelmed with grief

Over the loss of human lives,

Over the loss of humanity,

Over the lack of love,

And

Out of love,

We gather beneath storm clouds

By the hundreds

To pay our respects,

In hopes that we can contain

This feeling

Of hopelessness.

I am an ally.

I am not latinx.

I am a guest in this space.

My only purpose is

To listen,

To offer my love to those in need,

But my heart

My humanity,

Too,

Is crushed

By the weight of this news.

I stood in the rain

Crying,

And you offered to share your shelter.

We carried the weight together.

The hands of strangers intertwined,

Out of grief

And

Out of love.

BOY BYE

Yesterday I received a lengthy facebook message from my ex/rapist. I pulled down my notification tab to see if I could clue in to the content. And then…

I chose not to open it. In fact, I paused for a moment, thought about it carefully, and deleted it.

During our break up I never got the chance to express myself to him. Every time that I tried to explain how I felt, he interjected and mansplained MY feelings to ME. After the night that he raped me, he refused to acknowledge what he had done. This is why we stopped speaking. For more than two years, he has not felt the need to reach out to me. It wasn’t until he came across this blog that he felt the need to say anything at all to me.

I do not care to hear his reaction to my words. If he has been unaware until now of how deeply his actions affect others, I worry that it may be possible he is still the deeply egocentric child that I once knew.

I want him to know that I was not destroyed by our break up because I finished mourning the death of our love LONG before I left. I want him to know that he left first, and left me living with a ghost. I fought so hard for what I thought that we had until there was no fight left in me, until there was hardly anything left of me at all, and finally, I decided that what was left was worth salvaging.

I enjoy thinking about how much stronger I am now that I have been through that terrible experience, because I cut back all the diseased branches we left tangled in fear, and began to grow again from the trunk. I am not carrying the weight, the guilt, of that relationship anymore. I am no one's "good girl" anymore.

The following is a poem by Rupi Kaur, from her book "Milk and Honey". It very accurately depicts the words I never had the opportunity to say to my ex, a man who was defined by selfishness as much as he was by fear during that terrible time:

“i will tell you about selfish people. even when they know they will hurt you they walk into your life to taste you because you are the type of being they don’t want to miss out on. you are too much shine to not be felt. so when they have gotten a good look at everything you have to offer. when they have taken your skin your hair your secrets with them. when they realize how real this is. how much of a storm you are and it hits them.

that is when the cowardice sets in. that is when the person you thought they were is replaced with the sad reality of what they are. that is when they lose every fighting bone in their body and leave after saying you will find better than me.

You will stand there naked with half of them still hidden somewhere inside you and sob. asking them why they did it. why they forced you to love them when they had no intention of loving you back and they’ll say something along the lines of i just had to try. i had to give it a chance. it was you after all

but that isn’t romantic. it isn’t sweet. the idea that they were so engulfed by your existence that had to risk breaking it for the sake of knowing they weren’t the one missing out. your existence meant that little next to their curiosity of you.

this is the thing about selfish people. they gamble entire beings. entire souls to please their own. one second they are holding you like the world in their lap and the next they have belittled you to a mere picture. a moment. something of the past. one second. they swallow you up and whisper they want to spend the rest of their life with you. but the moment they sense fear. they are already halfway out the door. without having the nerve to let you go with grace. as if the human heart means that little to them.

and after all this. after all the taking. the nerve. isn’t it sad and funny how people have more guts these days to undress you with their fingers than they do to pick up the phone and call. apologize. for the loss. and this is how you lose her.”

I Beg of You

This is me, standing on top of a mountain,searching for peace at the peak of chaos. Here my body was just starting to break down from fatigue and chronic pain, and my heart was just starting to scream for change so loudly it could not be ignored. I was so unhappy, I forgot that the natural rhythm of life flows through peaks and valleys. There is no up without down. I was living a life of comfort, monotony and dissatisfaction. I had flatlined.

It is so beautiful the way that life ebbs and flows. Now in this moment, I stand at sea level again, my heart reshaped like the sands on the bottom of the river after a storm. My body is still recovering from the thrashing winds, but the push and pull of my own breath, the ebb and flow of the ocean, the rise and fall of the brackish waters of the St Johns.... Have brought the movement and life back into me.

If you are struggling, please keep moving towards your goals. Lean into change if that's all you can afford. Please do not stay in that terrible stagnant place for fear of what comes next. Please stop holding your breath. Whatever happens next cannot be as hurtful as the slow suffocation of your own heart as it loses oxygen.

It's Like Screaming Without Making A Sound

About a year ago, I really felt like I could see the rewards of my determination and hard work. Michael and I had settled into our little apartment in CO, and created a beautiful home life together. I love coming home to that man. I had made a lot of positive changes in my behavior, and was happier than I had ever been in my life, but I was still living with more fear than I could write off as being normal or comfortable. I decided to see a trauma therapist to work through these automatic fear triggered responses that began after an emotionally traumatic past relationship.

After some research, I found that many people recovering from the emotional and psychological trauma of sexual assault have made great progress with EMDR therapy. EMDR is a type of therapy that uses meditation and the stimulation of the left and right hemispheres of the brain to re-process difficult memories in a healthier way. This is not an academic definition. It is just my interpretation. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing. Some patients (who have better eyesight than I) follow an item with their eyes as it moves back and forth in front of their face. Some people use tapping, where they alternate tapping with the left and right hands. I held these little plastic bean sized buzzers that alternated vibrating in the left and right hands. I would meditate on a specific traumatic event, the gut/primal feeling that it gave me, how it made me feel physically, and my goal for how I would like to feel about that event. Essentially, we worked to re-route automatic neuropathways that fear created by allowing me more time to slow down and think through fear triggered processes. This kind of therapy is very empowering for the patient. It goes only where your mind goes. There is no point where a therapist gives you the "correct" opinion about a situation, but rather they create moments of opportunity where the patient is empowered to make these conclusions on their own. I am so appreciative to my therapist, whose patience, support, and kindness has changed my life.

One of the stress management exercises that my therapist encouraged me to practice in my free time, was to imagine physically gathering my fear and disposing of it. She said that she peels her anxiety off, like a lizard shedding skin, and puts it in a locker. I prefer to imagine shoving my fear into a burlap sack, kicking that fucker off the city dock, and watching it sink until it disappears from view.

The first time I heard "FEAR." I was so drawn to the metaphor in the line, “If I could smoke fear away I’d roll that motherfucker up, and then I’d take two puffs.” (Lamar, 2017). K Dot rolls up his fear and smokes it. This man gets high off of the demise of his own fears. That is beautifully empowering. Since being back in Florida, I have personally found it most helpful to paint my fears, to look at them clearly for what they are. For me, this is enough to take away their power. Reality is never as insurmountable as the dark depths of my imagination.

Shortly after I arrived back home to Florida, my attacker announced (via social media… I know FML) that he was in a new relationship. When I was preparing for the move with my therapist in Colorado, I was working on the learning to trust myself to be able make good decisions for myself again. Suddenly, with the sight of a single post on my newsfeed, I questioned everything. Why didn’t I go straight to the hospital to get a rape kit? How could I have forgotten that he wouldn’t be alone forever? Why didn’t I press charges? Why didn’t I tell his family how physically threatened I was during that time? Automatic fear triggered wormholes of self-doubt. My greatest fear was thinking that because I had not taken action, another woman might find herself in the same place that I had…. Dumbfounded at how I could have known someone for so long and not seen them for who they were. Even when he told me in the very beginning that he was a bad person, I smiled and soothed our fears with my high hopes and blissful ignorance.

I couldn’t sleep for a couple of weeks after I heard that he was dating someone, symptoms of my PTSD were returning, and finally, early one morning, I decided I NEEDED to paint. I NEEDED to paint. I felt sick with the need to paint. Being the man that he is, Michael drove me to our storage unit that day and moved piles of boxes and furniture to find my paints and my canvases. I missed the sight of them, the smell of them. Having them with me in the car on the ride home made me feel a little calmer. Just a little.

That next morning I painted the first piece I had worked on in years. It’s a swampy forest. The trees are made from brown paints dripped down a previously painted canvas turned upside down, making what was once the grass into the peek-a-boos of green, tree canopy. What was once the sky in the previous painting is now swamp water. I added some shadows where the trees loomed over the water. Then, in the dark places where knotted tree roots crawl over murky waters, I wrote all of the secrets that I had kept from that repressed time in my life. I wrote about all of the things that I was too afraid to speak out loud during that relationship and afterward, because I was too afraid to hear for myself how bad they sounded, how unkind he was to me, how unkind I allowed him to be, how unkind I had become, how afraid I was of him. How months after our break up he raped me when I fell asleep in his living room after a night of heavy drinking. How he was the one who told me what he had done when I woke up early in the morning to find my panties gone and my abdomen swollen with pain. How he refused to acknowledge it ever again, although he checked himself into the hospital for psychiatric care just days afterward. Some of the secrets I won’t ever speak or write again. I just needed to record them as my truth so that I know that they are real.

When the painting dried, I hung it on my wall and just stared at it. Every day, when I look at that painting I feel a little better. It’s like being able to scream without making a sound.

Then I started drawing again. I have always enjoyed making pen drawings and I love the way that watercolor and pen look together, so my grandmother signed me up for a watercolor painting class. It’s been so relaxing for me. We are working on recreating images, so my brain just turns off and floats into textures and colors.

Last weekend, I went to a mural arts workshop. I don’t think I’ve ever been so in love with the process of making something. Our teacher was such a grounded, encouraging soul. She really customized the experience so that she could best help us accomplish our own goals. Also, where watercolor painting leaves my shoulders and neck in pain after hours of leaning over the paper, being upright the entire time was really helpful for my posture and the longevity of the time that I could participate. I brought a mask, because I remembered how sick I got the last time I used a chemical cleaner, and did not get nauseous from the fumes. I also brought an umbrella as respite from the heat. Best of all, I brought my headphones and listened to hours of Kendrick and Sango.

My brain has been swimming with images and ideas ever since I left that workshop. The images I imagine are mostly bright plant life on black and white patterned backgrounds. In my mind, we, humans, are the plants and the patterns are society. We are organic, natural beings growing and maintaining in an artificially created environment that is not nourishing to our humanity. I truly no longer believe that there are good and bad people. I do not think that my attacker is at his core a villain, but I do think that the toxic environments in which we grow and thrive create toxic thoughts and decisions. I do believe that when he showed me the worst of him, I showed him the worst in me and we both lived in that dark place until that terrible breaking point. We need to become more aware of the decisions we are complicit in making. We need to be more aware of ourselves, our feelings, and those around us. I want to paint images that remind me that this society we live in is not a reflection of my human nature, as a reminder of the how important it is to live a life that IS organic to me.

"Loyalty, Loyalty, Loyalty"

I have a beautiful family. They are so close to my heart that it brings me to tears sometimes. My family is made of genetic and chosen family members. As an extroverted introvert and a recovering perfectionist, I perceive myself as having many layers of intimacy and I hold myself to high standards.

When I say that I am an extroverted introvert, I mean that there is a certain closeness that I experience only with a select few. While I love getting to know strangers, and enjoy my dynamic with many acquaintances, when I call someone my family it is a serious commitment to me. When we speak of your pain, my heart cries with you. When we speak of your bliss, my heart soars with you. This exists in other relationships for me, but what's more is you allow and create room for me to express these sentiments with you and you share in these experiences with me. We are intellectually stimulated by each other. We laugh and are silly together. We can be still and exist around each other. Maybe we come from the same roots and our hearts and lives have been cultivated to intertwine. Sometimes that's enough.

I mention that I'm an extroverted introvert AND a recovering perfectionist, because I hold myself and those I love to high standards. I am not saying this is necessarily fair, and I do not feel that other people need to change to meet my standards, but some are already living lives with these values in mind and I am naturally drawn to these humans and cannot let them go once I love them. The neurotic part of me wants you to know that I do not believe these standards are unachievable, although sometimes they can be daunting. I believe that we should share a willingness to love self and others, and the determination to grow beyond our limits. These are the mantras that have kept me afloat through my health journey so far. The more that I surround myself with people who LIVE these values, the more inspired I become to push forward and out of my comfort zone.

We do not need to have the same interests or background or goals for the future, but I want to know that you are at least leaning towards the truest version of yourself and are working towards a vision of the future that you believe in. I want you to hold me to these same standards, to make me give pause when I turn away from my own path because of fear.

I have always believed, as far back as I can remember, that I am nothing more than the sum of all the love that in my life. Any light or beauty in me is a reflection of the love and empathy that I have encountered in my life. I have been truly blessed in my life.

My experiences with chronic illness and chronic pain have only intensified this belief. The phrase, “I get by with a little help from my friends,” could not be truer for me. These are humans who have helped me to break down so many of the barriers I put up around my heart, with their patience and their love. They have helped me to prune down those dying branches, allowing me to focus my efforts on new growth. I continue working hard to become the most self actualized, health-full version of myself so that I have more to give to them, and to my local community, and to my global community. There are unique gifts that we each contribute to this world, and I am working to develop mine so that I can contribute positively to those around me.

I believe that one of the greatest gifts that I have to contribute is my comfort and willingness to be vulnerable in public. So often, we overcome major challenges and feel that we need to prove that we did it with ease to demonstrate our strength, but it provides comfort and encouragement to those still struggling to overcome these challenges when we share our hardships. Showing our scars can show others that they are not alone in their experiences, and as someone who has dealt with suicidal thoughts before and who has many close relationships with individuals who have also experienced these thoughts, I know that having some company in those dark places can make all the difference.

When I went through that difficult break up and in every moment since, I have become more honest with myself and with those I love. It has caused conflict in many areas. I was used to being perceived as a pleasant and put together person and it took me a moment to adjust to the fact that people react differently to honesty, especially when that is not what they are accustomed to hearing from me. I have lost a few friends and people that I considered to be chosen family. I have chosen to end interactions with others. However, yesterday morning, after a long day of yard work and before-the-week-begins-again-errands, Michael and I were sitting in the back yard enjoying the view, the sunshine and each other’s company when I couldn’t help but exclaim how happy I am. There are very few parts of my life that I can describe as superficial or that lacking in depth these days. My relationships with others are stronger than ever. They bring so much color and depth to my world.

There are many ways in which I am still growing and gaining strength, but I am excited about the journey and I am proud to walk it with the members of my tribe. I am excited to reach my goals and to be better able to give back to those around me. Maybe even more exciting are all the ways in which those I love are walking similar paths. So many of the beautiful humans I know are becoming more empowered, more confident in the ways that they express love, and less fearful in the ways that they confront conflict. We are falling in love with people who adore us for WHO WE ARE because we are establishing a loving relationship with ourselves first and are honest with ourselves about who we are. We are building our lives on a foundation of happiness custom fit for our beings. It is not easy, but it is so incredibly rewarding. It makes me so grateful that I write this in tears. What a beautiful thing it is to share our journeys with others.

Let’s talk about health and wellness.

I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 2010 or 2011. Mayo Clinic defines Fibromyalgia as, “A disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues. Researchers believe that fibromyalgia amplifies painful sensations by affecting the way your brain processes pain signals. Symptoms sometimes begin after a physical trauma, surgery, infection or significant psychological stress. In other cases, symptoms gradually accumulate over time with no single triggering event,” (Mayo Clinic, 2017).As I mentioned in an earlier post, these symptoms began to accumulate to a perceivable degree about a year into an emotionally unhealthy relationship.

In 2010, I began about two years of cognitive behavioral therapy. My goal was to create healthy stress management skills to help manage my panic attacks. Therapy included breath work, meditation, regular exercise, and maintaining a strict sleep schedule. I religiously adhered to my therapist’s suggestions and was able to manage my anxiety attacks within a couple of months. Seriously, I followed the instructions and guidelines to the T. Most all of my college friends knew not to call me after 9:30 PM on a weekday, because I would be asleep, and if they did they would begin the conversation with, “Sorry for calling you so late.” My friends are unbelievably respectful of my self-care and personal boundaries.

At the same time, I began receiving regular treatment from a rheumatologist, who was the specialist my primary care doctor recommended for Fibromyalgia. The rheumatologist suggested that I begin taking anti-depressants, “Because, trust me, you will eventually become depressed.” As I was not experiencing depression, I did not follow these instructions. Other than that, my rheumatologist would regularly offer me pain medications and also ran bi-annual blood tests to make sure my liver was still functioning properly and that I still showed high inflammation in my blood.

Between 2010 and 2017, my pain has increased in intensity to the point that it has become disruptive to my day to day life. In that time, I moved to Colorado for a few years and later returned to Florida. For any Fibromyalgia patients reading this right now: HIGH ALTITUDE AND FIBROMYALGIA DO NOT MIX. I believe it was the combination of the emotional trauma I endured during that difficult relationship and break up, in combination with wintertime (which I was unaccustomed to as a Florida native), and the high altitude that caused my symptoms to become completely unmanageable.

If you know me well, you know I am any doctor’s dream. I may do another two weeks of research on a prescription drug before I decide whether I want to take it or not, but let me know what it is that I need to do to achieve my health goals, and I will make those changes immediately and pretty consistently.

It was in Colorado, when my symptoms became unmanageable, that I became open to the idea of changing my diet as a part of my health plan. A friend of mine dealt with chronic illness as well as several food allergies and used clean eating to help manage her symptoms. At first, I removed gluten, cane sugar and dairy from my diet. I am a SUGARHOLIC and could not have done this without Michael’s support. I love sweets. NO JOKES. By the evening of the first night, I was already like, “Let’s go get ice cream!” So he made me chocolate mousse with honey, avocado, cocoa powder and coconut oil so I wouldn’t bail. He has also made almost every dietary change since that point, with me. I told him that I understood it was not his personal limitation, that I wouldn’t be resentful if he did not want to change his diet. He said that I helped him to quit smoking cigarettes and he wanted to support me in this endeavor.

Since returning to Florida, I was introduced, via phone, to another woman who has taken a more empowering approach to her chronic pain. She has struggled with many of the same symptoms that I have, and also with different and severe symptoms as well. She suggested that I see a Functional Medicine doctor.

“Functional Medicine addresses the underlying causes of disease, using a systems-oriented approach and engaging both patient and practitioner in a therapeutic partnership. By shifting the traditional disease-centered focus of medical practice to a more patient-centered approach, Functional Medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms. Functional Medicine practitioners spend time with their patients, listening to their histories and looking at the interactions among genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that can influence long-term health and complex, chronic disease. In this way, Functional Medicine supports the unique expression of health and vitality for each individual,” (The Functional Medicine Institute, 2017).

Every other doctor I have seen until this point implied that it was impossible to understand the cause of Fibromyalgia, but that I could be made more comfortable by treating the symptom, my pain. The very first thing that my Functional Medicine Doctor did, was order a hearty and thorough list of blood tests. He also inquired about environmental factors and about potential emotional trauma. After getting the results back, we determined that my treatment plan would include moving to a completely plant-based diet, PT, chiropractic adjustments, therapy and the addition of more activities that make me feel passionate and connected to my life: art, immersion in nature, more laughing with my loved ones.

About three months into this plan, I am starting to notice changes in my body. Where I was once almost always nauseous from pain, I no longer brace myself in expectation of muscle spasms throughout the day. I am in the most pain in the mornings and at night, and the intensity of that pain is about the same as before, but I am no longer just living in pain. There are times during the day where I am in NO perceivable pain. My energy levels are increasing. I am setting positive goals for the future. I am creating again: writing, drawing, painting, dancing. As a performance artist, I always felt that even if I am not creating art, that my life itself can be art. I am starting to feel that way again very strongly. My goal is to live as intentionally as possible.

I started a week long juice detox yesterday, at my doctor’s suggestion. The idea is that by flooding my body with raw nutrients and not adding any additional toxins, it will be able to focus on healing rather than digestion. I have never dieted or detoxed in my life, so I’m sure you will hear more of this.

For now, so far so good.

Part II of III

"My Body's Nobody's Body but Mine. You have your own body. Let me have mine."

Beginning at about 12 years old, friends and family have noticed men staring at me with sexual interest. I generally do not notice (I have TERRIBLE eyesight), but every once in a while the extra theatrics do catch my attention. They are not usually staring at me specifically, but rather parts of me.

I briefly worked in the used car industry, and I have also seen men look at cars in that same way at auction. A quick scan shows that the product is, overall, in good shape. Searching the product further, will allow the buyer to determine both assets and blemishes. Once it has been determined that the upgraded features of the vehicle far outweigh the blemishes and issues, I have seen what appears to be herds of men drawn like zombies to the auction lane where the car will be sold.

When they enter the bidding lane, whoever pays the most for the car will walk away with keys in hand... But I am not a car.

I always wonder what posses heterosexual men to approach women because of their sexual feelings. I do not feel the need to yell at random people when I am feeling happy, or sad, or mad. When walking through a crowd of strangers, none of my feelings about them are really of any relevance to them. If I am suddenly sent into tears by the sight of a small trinket on someone's jacket, I don't scream, "Hey! Hey you! You made me cry over here! How could you do this to me?"

I generally scoff at the mansplanation that men are overwhelmed by these feelings and that women cannot understand. I want you to know, you are wrong. Women have strong sexual desires. The difference is, women are not taught that the object of our desire is ACCOUNTABLE for our feelings.

The most bothersome part of when men approach me, as a woman, is the way that I am NOT heard when I speak for myself, but I am, if I am spoken FOR. If I am not interested, most likely, men will continue to push for more time and attention. They think there's a particular pitch that will change my mind. However, if I say that I have a boyfriend or a fiancé or a husband, they realize that they should show respect. And not for me, the respect they are showing is for another man who is not even present. Young, heterosexual women often claim to be lesbians when this happens, although I don't know how sensitive this practice is. I believe that the idea is that men will back off if they realize you are not even in the market.

Once again, I am not a product. There is NO market.

Ah, okay. Now let's briefly talk about sexualization and patriarchy with chronic pain. I already had VERY little tolerance for this whole process of objectification. Now, imagine me living in Colorado. Every step that I take is painful, for my ankles and my hips and I cannot hold my upper body comfortably on top of my lower back. My breathing is often shallow, because deep breathing HURTS MY LUNGS. It feels like I am almost suffocating, like the pressure from my neck sitting against my collarbone might cause my head to explode. I am focusing on the now and making it to the next moment. I am at work, trying to keep to a schedule, pushing to meet the physical expectations of someone who does not live with chronic pain. I am stressed. I am almost always keeping tears at bay.

Okay, NOW, is when you hit on me. Maybe you're a client of mine, so there are expectations guiding MY behavior in our interactions. I likely feel uncomfortable explaining to a 70 year old car dealer why his misogynist behavior is inappropriate in a work environment. When you were a kid, I would have needed to walk into the back of the restaurant, call you, "Sir", and use a different water fountain. There is too much context that I would need to provide. We don't have the time for this. I need to be back in Denver in an hour.

Maybe I just smile, and begin a different, work-related conversation. Maybe, since you clearly require my validation, I extend a weak, "Oh, thanks."

If you were paying attention, my eyes would tell you that I am pretending that I am not present in my own body, both to distance myself from the physical pain I am experiencing, and also to distance myself from the shit I'm currently spewing out of my mouth just to be "pleasant".

I don't think I need to explain much more for you to understand the level of patience that women, let alone women with chronic pain, walk around this world with.

Now imagine this: I just moved to Colorado, every day I am feeling more tired, weaker. I am feeling totally uninspired to create through writing or art. I am feeling isolated. For the first time in my life, I am far from certain family members and friends who know me, and my struggles with chronic pain, loved ones who encourage me to engage in self care. For the very first time, I am living with a boyfriend, and for the very first time, EVER, in my home space, all conversations about my person, are specifically about my appearance and my sexuality.

Once, I remember being so much pain that I was curled in fetal position, crying on the floor, and he asked if he could, "fix it with his dick." I suppose this was a myth I was complicit in establishing. I was trying to explain how it is that I can be in a lot of pain, enjoy sexual gratification, and then suddenly find my body flooded with pain again. I was trying to explain that the pain does not go away, but that my touch receptors were suddenly flooded with pleasure. It was really more of a distraction than a fix, because once that pleasure dissipated, I was no longer distracted from the pain and it was often much worse than before. However, he interpreted that to mean that he had a magical dick that temporarily fixed my pain... (UGH).

I am a "feminine-looking" cisgender, heterosexual woman of color. My features are not horribly asymmetrical. I am not overweight (I mean this by health-full standards). When I do gain weight, it falls gently onto my curves, making me look even more "womanly". I am the place where the lush, tropical jungles of Samoa meet the beautifully haunting, fertile fields of the South. That sounds pretty damn beautiful to me.

But I felt like an old woman. I felt like the witch from a movie, who has been stealing the youth from children to maintain her eternal beauty. Not because I felt beautiful, but because I felt like some ancient ruin, quickly deteriorating. I felt prehistoric. And now, all the time, all we talked about was MY BODY.

I didn't understand how all he saw when he looked at me was pleasure, when all I felt was pain. I suppose in retrospect there were many moments where he demonstrated his lack of love for me, while demonstrating love for my body. The night that he raped me was simply a physical expression of this sentiment.

"DAMN."

Here I will discuss some of the poetry in "DAMN." I am not even touching on the organic and authentic feeling of his music and his flow.

The album opens with a slowly articulated poem that ends with the artist losing his life. He introduces a theme that repeats throughout the album,

"Is it wickedness? Is it weakness? You decide. Are we gonna live or die?" (Lamar, 2017).

Kendrick's albums are often an introspective reflection of his own morality. His judgement is often turned inwards, discussing his complex feelings about his own actions, and the way that he chooses to live his life. Through this he creates insights about human nature and society, but it is not usually others who stand on the chopping block, but himself.Fans are familiar with this theme, and the idea that Lamar is burdened by the question of what will happen to him in death.

"good kid, M.a.a.D. city" begins and ends with his grandmother guiding Lamar and his friends through a recommitment ceremony. Essentially the story begins and ends in their salvation although the album is ripe with internal conflict and sin. "DAMN.", on the other hand, begins with the introduction of a deceptive older woman, who plays upon Lamar's morality to lure him to his death. It begins and ends in uncertainty. What will happen after death? Will he live or die? Is it wickedness or weakness that makes kindness a danger in our times?

Later in the album, Lamar discusses his grandmother's death. It seems that the artist's conceptualization of the afterlife and of morality has been rocked by his grandmother's passing. There are several moments in the album where the Lamar declares, "Ain't nobody praying for me," (Lamar, 2017). This album begins and ends with the artist feeling adrift from the beliefs he has built his life around.

Already I'm thinking...YES. I am with you. I am in this place where I am now beginning to create my own narrative, and I am re-evaluating the factors that led me to this moment. For such a long time, I so easily embodied the characteristics of a "good girl". More than one person has described me as "prim and proper", but truly it just came naturally. I generally do not mind following rules, if I understand WHY they have been implemented. I loved being in school and always achieved good grades. I enjoy wearing sun dresses and smiling as I acknowledge strangers. I am soft spoken. I am perceived, as an ex's father once said, to be, "Not TOO black. More like Tiger Woods." I believe he was speaking to the fact that I am both mixed and am also articulate enough not to make him feel embarrassed in front of my ex's grandfather. (To be clear, there are no personality traits associated with being black, but there is a certain, sickening truth to the fact that my "light" skin affords more softness from some.)

I thought that I had created space for myself within the structure of the obligations I felt I needed to fulfill, but when someone else is writing your plot line, does it matter if you get to fill in the details? That story is more about the author than it is about you. I began reading a book recently, "On Intellectual Activism" by Patricia Hill Collins. In this text, she discusses her work "Black Feminist Thought". She describes the different narratives in which society has PLACED black women. She discusses the ways in which academics and the media have assumed that the experiences of white women are fully representational of the experiences of women of color. She identifies the ways in which these narratives are inaccurate and misrepresentational. Why? Because NO ONE can tell your story but YOU.

But what happens when a lot of the context upon which you built your life may now be irrelevant? You look through your bucket of truths to see which of these still hold validity. For me, writing this blog is an important part of destroying that narrative. A large part of the "good girl" character to me, focuses around the idea that one should avoid causing a fuss at all costs. Truly, society would rather I drop dead of a heart attack before inconveniencing you with my feelings. It would rather me live in excruciating pain, making each breath, kind word, and smile equally excruciating, than to give me space to stop to focus on my health and well being. Thankfully, I have been blessed with a strong support system that has allowed me the space and support to heal.

Kendrick also looks for healing in writing, and in music. In "FEAR." he says, "I can't take these feelings with me, so hopefully they disperse within fourteen tracks, carried out over wax," (Lamar 2017).

I have many thoughts about this album. Lamar talks about his fears, the strength and endurance of the black community, inequity of power and money, the false alliance between disenfranchised populations and some white and/or comfortable Americans in the Trump era, the beauty of women who are unafraid of their natural appearance, the dangers of pride, and the triviality of conventional success, amongst other themes. For the first time that I can think of, he includes a song for his fiancé and high school sweetheart. I did enjoy this one, as my partner will always first and foremost be my, "homie for life," (Lamar, 2017). The line, "Keep it one hundred. I'd rather you trust me than to love me," rang true to our relationship (Lamar 2017). It is the reason why I'll always love him. I stand by "XXX." as being the BEST piece of music U2 has worked on in a LONG time. The themes in this one are so relevant right now. "LOYALTY." with Rihanna... YES TO THIS. "FEAR." may be my favorite song on the album. Many of the sentiments here landed uncomfortably close to home. I may write some more about this one at a later time.

I don't want to get into too much detail. If you're interested, PLEASE, listen for yourself. If you're new to Kendrick Lamar, know that he enjoys creating hooks that seem to praise superficial values, but if you listen to the verses, you will find he usually elaborates on the complexity of the subject. He often creates the illusion that a song is shallow like purposeless radio rap, while never straying from his truth. I suppose it's not really an illusion, but rather the reality that we are all complex and simple at the same time.

That is art to me.

"There is another way of looking at the world that takes me away from victim consciousness. I can rewrite the stories of my past to a more empowering and uplifting thought system. I can view the past as having a divine purpose, a life lesson, or a growth opportunity."

I was really challenged by yesterday's post. It was both a very difficult place to revisit, and also left me feeling very exposed. But, my goal for this blog is to challenge myself to find comfort and peace in the truth. I want to tell my own story in my own words, to reclaim my life. This is not the story of Nia, the victim. This is the story of Nia, the victor. However, I cannot ignore the journey that led me to this point.

I want to be clear. I have no vindictive motives here. I include my time with my ex because that time in my life was an important lesson for me. Our break up was the lowest point that I have experienced thus far in my life, and as such it is ripe with opportunities to take a better look at myself.

Writing has always helped me to organize my thoughts and come to terms with challenging experiences.

Now is the moment where I can take a look at my actions. What has and continues to serve me well? These things I must keep. What has hurt my heart, and my mind, and my body? Those things must be dispelled. What am I missing? What do I search for outside of myself? These are the lessons I have yet to learn. They will add more value to my life than I can understand in this moment.

Forgive me as I take a moment to find my balance. It will likely take me a moment to get to Part II. I'm healing the ghost-like pain in my heart that was unearthed by reliving such difficult memories. Much of this next bit of writing will have to be for me, before I am able to share it with you.

The support I received after yesterday's post, left me in tears. I am so grateful for all those hearts who have taken the time to pour some love and encouragement into my own.

Thank you.

Part I of III

"My Body's Nobody's Body But Mine. You Have Your Own Body. Let Me Have Mine."

I don’t remember what children's channel always played this song, but it really resonated with me as a kid. Some part of my tiny brain was immediately like, "YES! Everyone can G.O.M.D. I am the boss here..." I understood this statement to apply to the physical boundaries that I was allowed to implement, as well as emotional boundaries that allowed me to filter out external perception and judgment (The ones I was AWARE of anyway). There are opinions I see as relevant, but most are not. This is MY kingdom... You have no authority here.

I didn't focus on physical attractiveness much, as a child. Not mine anyway. I spent K-12 in predominantly white, private schools. Like most children of color, shortly after entering elementary school, I concluded that I didn't fit conventional beauty norms, determined I would never hold value in that way, and moved on with my life. I felt beautiful because of the beautiful things that my body could DO.

My hands created entire worlds: with words, with drawings and paintings.

I was writing love poems for my "true love" [insert crush of moment here] by first grade. Creating an entire world in which my imagination could express the depth of the emotions that my brain could not yet process. Let's be honest. The emotions were not that deep. This is what happens when you read simplified Shakespeare and Greek mythology to children at bedtime. They have a flair for the dramatic.

I was ALWAYS drawing, and my creativity was met with the full support of my family. They would hang my paintings on their walls and in their offices, and would cut out colorful drawings of butterflies and birds that I drew on tracing paper and pasted it to my windows like a sweet, simple, stained glass. The worlds that my hands created were celebrated by those whose opinions held weight in my world.

When I pushed my body, it met the challenge, all throughout my life. Sports. Dance. Busy schedules. Stressful home life.

I didn't reassess the way I interacted with my body until I had to.

About halfway into college, I believed I was having heart attacks. However after the results of the second EKG, I concluded that the feeling must be induced by something else, although not specifically stress. I was under the impression, before that point in time, that I was conscious of my body’s reactions to stress, because all of my experiences with panic attacks were outward, emotionally saturated expressions of anxiety. Sobbing. Hyperventilating. Shaking.

I went to therapy for stress management for a couple years in college, and felt I had gotten things under control. What I was beginning to experience, now, was different because I felt okay emotionally, but my body was tense, and shivering, and my heart was racing, and my stomach was sick. Eventually my body became so tense I was in pain all of the time.

I didn’t even notice that all this began about a year into my new (new at the time) relationship. I was infatuated. He was the first man to legitimize my beauty by western standards. He called me a “classic beauty” and it made me feel beautiful and validated by standards I had forgotten I had ever desired to meet.

Early on during that first year of dating, I remember telling him that I wasn’t ready to date, but then somehow we were dating. I remember telling him that I had always dreamed of doing study abroad in college, but after being told that idea was “stupid” for months, suddenly I kept forgetting to submit the applications and convinced myself I couldn’t figure out the money. Later he told me, he was afraid I would leave him. I probably would have.

I also remember telling him that the great love of my life is and will always be dance. That it makes me feel powerful and free. It makes me feel limitless, like I could fly. I was taking one-on-one pointe classes with a former prima ballerina from Beijing Ballet. We had big plans. She believed in me and I loved her like she was my own family. He hated the idea of me dancing professionally. He hated thinking of me dancing with other men, and hated the idea that if I were to pursue a career professionally, other men would touch my body. MY BODY. Suddenly I didn’t have the heart to figure out how to continue to pay for my pointe classes. Maybe, it was just a sign it wasn’t meant to be. Was I even that good of a dancer?

He made my world smaller. I was more comfortable in this tiny space than I had ever been elsewhere, as he also sung my praises when my behavior aligned with his rules and regulations and made me feel safe, but the smaller my world became the more uncomfortable I became with the complexities of reality.

The truth of any emotionally abusive relationship is that there are two injustices occurring. The first is that one person in the relationship treats the other in a way that makes them feel like they are nothing. The second injustice is that the victim allows this person to treat them in a way that is degrading to their dignity. I grew up in a volatile household. I know how to defend myself against loud, angry words, but I did not know how to defend myself against his honey.

I was pretty unconscious of the ways in which our relationship was unhealthy until we moved across the country together. Suddenly I was put down for trying to engage in our new community, for trying to make friends in a new place, for trying to get him to engage with me in this new and beautiful world we lived in. My hands stop writing poetry. They stopped creating worlds of my own. His poison had seeped into my heart and nothing grew there.

One time, I arrived home after spending hours in the park with a good friend, crying and trying to explain the ways in which I felt crushed and repressed by him, and he implied that I must have been cheating on him rather than meeting with a friend in the park. Eventually, this became a daily accusation. Every day he reminded me of the reasons why I had little value to others, other than what I could offer physically. He implied that I was a slut. He said that I was trying to lure men into cat calling me by the way that I dressed. He had rules about my body hair, about the clothes I wore. If a man expressed that he was attracted to me, it was my fault. It didn’t matter if I followed his rules that day or not.

And all the while the pain increased.

And my panic attacks returned.

He thought this was a pathetic demonstration of my weakness, an attempt to control his behavior with tears.

Our fights became volatile. I was afraid of his temper. I was afraid of him physically.

Eventually, after months of tip toeing around my own house, after months of filling my schedule with behaviors that would avoid his criticism, after months of begging him to accept that I must engage in self care or will self destruct, after months of him implying that I was a cheating whore, and after about a year after living together, I did cheat on him. I thought about the repercussions of my actions carefully that day. If I finally did cheat on him, I would have to break up with him. I felt trapped, and I felt like it was my one way out. I knew he would never be able to forgive me. I had tried to change his behavior for years by offering him all the love I had to give. There was none left.

But things only got worse from there. I had no idea, at the time, of how much I would come to fear him; how the fear would seep inside my skin and make me afraid of myself; how my body would completely collapse once it knew it was safe from him, how things would get much worse before they ever got better.

"My Mountain"

"My Mountain" is the name of a Spotify playlist I created to remind myself of the way that Michael makes me feel. I lived in CO when I first started working on it. I had just moved into my own apartment. It was the first time I had ever lived by myself and I enjoyed playing music loud enough to chase away my thoughts. I was making a lot of playlists for people I missed at home, trying to find comfort in the sound of their presence, but this was the only one that served its purpose. It's basically a time capsule of memories from over a decade of friendship. Our relationship has only had romantic intentions for a little over two years now.

The majority of the playlist reminds me of the laughter we have shared or lessons we have watched each other learn throughout the years. He was a hipster before the word existed. I was a hippy long after the word was still used frequently. The songs I've added since we started dating are new things that I learned about someone I've always known, or beautiful memories I want for us to remember.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs populate a few of the first spots. The summer that we met, I convinced my Granmom to drive Michael, my friend Kim and I to see them perform at Penn's Landing. It was the first show I ever attended without adult supervision. I remember using the logic, "I'm practically in high school already," when making the pitch to my grandparents. That night, standing on his parents' doorstep, Michael kissed me. My first kiss. I still think of that moment, just for second, each time I walk through the front door of his parents' house.

There's David Bowie for all the times I asked him to take a long walk in the park with me in high school while listening to "Ziggy Stardust". Katy Perry for that time we got an Air BNB in Breckenridge and ended up talking about life and family, eating smoked meats, homemade ice cream and dancing the night away in that beautiful ballroom with the wonderfully gracious couple that owned the house. Estas Tonne for our trip to Taos with Adam. In that moment, there was nothing more beautiful to me than the passion that man feels for Spanish guitar, and to hear it play as our eyes traced that indescribably beautiful landscape... I think a part of my heart never left the farm. Kendrick Lamar for our home space, where we dance, and we laugh, and we love, and we fight, and we talk about the world and the real ways in which we can affect change around us. So much soul.... Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, Sam Cooke, those songs you can't listen to without hitting the high notes.

Some of the music is "good", some of it is not, but each memory is so beautiful to me. I stopped adding to the playlist when we arrived here in FL. I keep having these moments, like the one in the video above where I am with Michael and Gracie, and we're somewhere by the water, and my heart feels so happy, and the sun fills any space not shaded by the Spanish Moss on the Live Oaks, and I couldn't put a song to it if I tried. I suppose I just enjoy the silence sometimes. The silence is beautiful here.

I have always had type a behavior patterns. My mother often tells family friends and boyfriends the story of the first time I did not receive full credit on a test in school. It was in elementary school. I came home and handed her a test paper with 98% written at the top, and when my mother smiled and congratulated me, I turned to her with shock and frustration and whispered, "I should have gotten 100%!"

I mention this story only because I think it gives you enough insight about my personality, that you might be able to guess how I reacted when she told me, some time around my 12th birthday, that she would be remarrying and we would be moving from Philly to the SOUTH.

I thought I would die,

Possibly from distress like some heart sick poet,

Possibly from being lynched by racists.

What did I know? I had never been there before...

But I did not. In fact my life became more simple in many ways. At my school in PA we had five minutes between each class. This barely ever seemed to be enough time for me to run to my locker to change my books and get to my next class. I felt rushed. I felt timed. But in the south, I swear to you, time moves slower. In middle school and later in high school I would stop to catch up with friends, I would pop in and say hi to my favorite teachers, maybe I would run over to the canteen and grab some snacks, and then I would casually meander over to class and sit down in my seat with time to spare.

My new school's campus was outdoors, so we walked outside from building to building between almost every class. The campus was covered in Azalea bushes and had a canopy of Spanish Moss draping old, Live Oaks. In high school, it was not unusual to find students laughing by the river and lounging on the lawns. It was a beautiful place and it made me feel lighter.

When it rains in Florida the world isn't usually dark and cold all day. It could be a beautiful sunny day, suddenly the clouds cover the sky and it DOWNPOURS. Rain so heavy you can hardly see your own hands. It usually only lasts for about a half an hour and the sun always returns shortly afterward. When this happened during school, we ran to class, and when I got there I was usually smiling. It's nice when you have an unexpected change to your schedule.

I say that the south saved me twice because learning to breathe, learning to insert those moments of peace into my life, to make room for gratitude among a busy schedule or intense pain, this is a lesson I have needed to learn again and again in my life. Everything about the south, to me, demands that I learn this lesson. Now as I learn to live a life that will allow my body to lower its cortisol production, this lesson can improve the quality and length of my life.

Coming back home to the south again, especially during this time of healing, has been good for me. It is nice to feel in tune with the pace of my environment. Of course society barrels forward at a particular pace, but if you step outside you can feel the stifling humidity and the heat of the sun forcing you to slow yourself. It feels nice to be surrounded by family and friends. It is nice to be able to share this world with the man that I love.

On Saturday Night, my mom, my sister and I were able to show Michael one of my favorite little pieces of Florida. Eating dinner, down by the river meant a lot to me. I am grateful to be able to spend this time with family, I am grateful we were all able to take time out of our schedules to connect, and I am always thankful to catch the sunset down by the water.

Kendrick Lamar is my favorite poet.

The morning that "To Pimp A Butterfly" was released, I had spent most of the night before experiencing panic attacks, sobbing and jolting up in bed to interupt what might have turned into a deep sleep each time my mind remembered how vunerable I was, alone, in my tiny apartment.

I was suffering from PTSD and was convinced that I was unsafe in my home, because my ex had shown up inside the security coded front door to my house several times after I had asked him to stop. A month before he raped me, I asked him to get my mail for me when I was out of town, and when he returned the key he said, "I didn't even copy it." Those words haunted my days and my nights. He had become unhinged, and submitted himself to the hospital for psychiatric treatment only days after he raped me. I was afraid that I might lose my life as a result of his instability. I was afraid all of the time. I locked doors with the same sense of necessity that I drew the air into my lungs; It was done without my awareness.

It was wintertime in Colorado and I lived in a restored victorian home that was dark and drafty. As I often did, I watched the sun rise from my bed. Vibrant skies like grapefruit flesh rose above snow covered tree and roof tops. The sun meant that I had made it through the night, and it was welcomed with a great sense of relief.

By the time the morning came, I was always so cold. It felt like I could never get warm in the winter there. To warm the eternal chill and also to my suppress my feelings of disgust surrounding the rape, I would take long, hot showers, scrubbing and scrubbing my skin, quietly hoping I could just rip it off and finally remove his touch.

Before I got into the shower that day, I put "To Pimp A Butterfly" on my shower speaker. A Facebook friend, who was somehow up earlier than I, recommended it and I was intrigued. I had really just started expanding my exposure to contemporary rap. I had never listened to his radio hits, and wanted to approach the album with the same care that I took the first time I played "The White Album" and "Led Zeppelin". I have always prayed to music, to deliver me from myself. In times of need, music has never refused to extend its help. So I started it from the beginning...

He spoke to the pain, the injustice that has been experienced in black and impoverished communities for generations, and the pain and injustice he understood from his own life experiences. I felt that the person who spoke these words could understand. He spoke to the very complicated relationship that I had with myself, one that allowed me to showboat my strengths and insist on proving to the world that I was perfectly more than okay, all while questioning my sense of value and blaming myself for everything my ex did to me in the same breath.

"I'm fucked up. Homie, you fucked up, but if God got us, then we gon' be alright." This moment (because music is more than words it IS a feeling) made me feel that it would be, for the first time after so many dark days and nights. I had prayed to music. Kendrick Lamar reconnected me to the world with his words that day, and I finally, no matter how briefly, saw a future in which I would be alright.

Anyway.... This morning I woke up to find he just released the "HUMBLE." video. I honestly haven't thought too hard about the meaning of the lyrics, but it felt GOOD and was a perfect start to my morning. If anything, I can say that the words, "sit down. be humble." did resonate with me. This is a season for me to sit down, be humble, to listen, and to put in the hard work to get where I am going. I am so excited about his new album. Check out the video below:

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