Sunday, September 23, 2018

T I R E D


According to Blogger, it has been one year (minus three months) since I last blogged. I would almost say shame on me except for the first time ever I have been passionately pursuing an element of my writing life I used to once neglect, and that element is poetry. See: https://www.amazon.com/Oceans-Flames-Lady-Narrator/dp/1547259256.

This morning I woke up early (and by early I mean 7:37 a.m.) to attend the first session of a 12-week poetry workshop that I chose to participate in as a means of healing and growth. It's cheaper than traditional therapy, and to be honest, not once have I left a poetic space (be it one where I performed or one where I did not) that I was not feeling elated in a manner no person has ever done for me. Because at the end of day, when men and friends have broken my heart, I swear to you, poetry has not.

I am swimming in the final months of my 30th year this year and this was the second year in my life where I allowed myself to be called a poet. Crazy, right? I published my first poetry book at the age of 19, as in TEN YEARS AGO, but it wasn't till 2017 before I rightfully claimed that title. Why had it taken me so long to embrace this identity? What takes us all so long to embrace our truest selves? It goes beyond self doubt.

As I sat beside a stranger tonight at the 19th Annual Interfaith Unity Banquet, she, an elderly woman, expressed to me the changes of time. The transition into a more individualistic society that has really provided a detrimental space for the emotional and mental health of too many people. No one will deny the influence of genetics and chemical imbalances, but many of the people who have privately reached out to me and expressed their mental and/or emotional distresses, even mine, is caused by the continuous friction life puts us through. We so much as utter a simple whimper as women and we're attacked. What an irony it is to be torn down when you're strong as a woman and then completely degraded when you show an ounce of exhaustion.

The banquet's theme was "I See You" and it hit me hard. How many of us feel unseen? In our work? In our emotions? In our pain? In our fights? In love? I can raise my hand for all those, especially recently where I've felt so invisible. This made preparing a poem on this theme all the more difficult.

The overwhelming responses that flowed to me after I got off stage tonight floored me though. I did not expect it. It took me almost two months to write this piece and I genuinely struggled. Twice I came to text my friend Jessica and tell her I was withdrawing from the performance, but I hate flaking. So I powered through and had faith that God would guide the words the way they need to come. The way they need to reflect my current pain, the survival, the healing. Then it happened.

Thursday afternoon I sat with my mom around the dining table and started crying. I told her it's been hard and it doesn't feel any easier and that the only reason I seem okay (a.k.a. not crying) is because I fear being an annoyance with my pain. The second man I ever fell in love with left 41 days ago and it was like the straw that broke the camel's back. I am the camel, carrying 30 years of weight from life. He is the straw. It was like everything I had tolerated and handled could no longer hold up.

Am I okay? Yes. Have I healed? No, but I would not have been able to answer that first question the way I just did had this week not happened. I told my mother, amidst streaming tears, that I feel worthless...unseen. How many jobs can continue to reject me? (Y'know, starving artist life!) PhD. programs? Men? Men? Men? How many friends can fade? How many more dead ends? It's a strange phenomena and yet it makes sense. There's a pattern that's pretty ugly (and it resonates with a lot of what I've written here on Lady Narrator) and in a good majority of my poems, and it is the fact that strong, loud and fighting women will often find themselves alone. It's our destiny and that's when my mom said, "You are strong and confident, and not everyone can accept that, but it's not your problem. It's theirs. Ma3 alf salameh!"

I chuckled in doubt of her affirmations. "Strong and confident? Ha! How? I'm breaking down." She looked at me with that motherly look I love of DON'T YOU EVER DOUBT YOURSELF WOMAN and said, "That has nothing to do with that. Strong, confident people can break down. You're human. It takes a toll. You get tired of dealing with the emotional turmoil. With the social issues. With everything you carry and work on. It's normal. You just need a break."

Why pay a therapist $300/hour when I can get that insight in less than seven minutes for free and accompanied with a hug?

[Please note that I am a HUGE proponent of therapy and constantly encourage people to seek it, but I personally have found, after repeated experiences, it does not work for me. Art therapy/Dance therapy provided far more structural healing. Find what fits your healing path.]

That was it. That was all my heart needed to recognize that first and foremost, the most important person to me sees me. As long as she can see me, I can find the means to see myself. I may not always be seen, but damn it I will see myself. I will call myself poet, author, survivor, feminist, proud, heartfelt, thoughtful, and fighter. And to every soul who feels unseen, carry no shame in your heart for wanting to be seen. You deserve to be seen. We will find you and see you. It's literally why I write and perform. I put into words what I heard no one else say because I never want someone else to go unheard and unseen.

Per the request of every beautiful person who asked me for it tonight, below is the poem I have decided to title T I R E D in honor of everyone who should be seen and accepted, especially when feeling tired. We are human. We break down. Things hurt us and we are allowed to grieve them. To find new ways to bring our pieces back together and grow. I have a new journey to embark on and it takes a long time to stop loving someone (although I don't think I ever fall "out" of love with those I have fallen in to so that means re-configuring this love into my forward movement) but I pray that new perspectives and new sights, come our way and help us see ourselves and see each other in these dark times.

Thank you to the remarkable team of the Unity Banquet for putting such a beautiful event together. Congratulations on 19 years and here's to many more!



T I R E D (September 20th 2018)

Mama calls me strong and confident.
I tell her unlikely
when I’ve suffered a detrimental breakdown for the last 36 days
                                                                     a n d   c o u n t i n g.
She tells me
those are not mutually exclusive.
The latter is only a byproduct—
exhaustion from fighting a society
eagerly trying to tear down the aforementioned.

Sometimes
I feel
invincible.
Like the continuous waves of life are not turbulent enough to rock me
overboard.
But I don’t know how to swim
and often
I question my survival.
Is it because I fear drowning
or is it because I’m strong enough
to survive?
And are those two
one in the same?

I question the contradiction
of writing words I wish empowered me
as often as I empower them.
The tides of life I guess—
we ebb and flow.
Some days are invincibility
and some days
are fighting to stay afloat.
Fighting to be seen.

When they said
Love is blind
they meant
One day
I’d love the world so much
I’d lose sight of myself.
And the harder I try to see me
the easier it is for people to leave me.
We’re shamed for wanting to be seen
so we remain hidden.
Hidden in our struggles.
Hidden in our efforts.
Hidden in our being.

Do you know how tiring it is
to be a walking irony?
A visible woman
so unseen.
Surrounded by blind souls
who know
she’s right here
but refuse to see her.

So I learned to love being invisible.
Makes every rare moment
beneath the spotlight
all the more prolific but
they like me least
when I am most human.
When I am most vulnerable.
Giving them truth
in its rawest form.
In female form.
In my form.
Rebellious.
Unapologetic.
Heartfelt.
Real.

The world didn’t see how we needed
decades
to build an army.
As in
decades
to build ourselves.
And with each destruction
we gather newly shaped pieces of ourselves
for the reconstruction.
Had they never broken us
we’d never
have cracked open.
Never have gotten those fractures—those spaces
to finally let all that needed to go
out
and all that we needed
to come in.
Glass only becomes finer art
when shattered and remade.
Its expansion
hidden in plain sight.
What magic it is
to see your resurrection
as growth.

So I’ve decided to close my eyes
and never open them again
until you see me
first.
Until you see the path I walk.
The friction I create.
I am not moving to keep myself alive.
I am alive to keep others moving.
To see others
in their movements.
After all
it takes someone so unseen
to recognize a vision when they see one.
We are visionaries.
Out working between the folds of our own darkness.
Lighting the candles that keep others moving—
that keep others seen—
and we
unseen heroes or unseen survivors
we deserve to be recognized.
We deserve to be seen.
We deserve to be told
I see you.

I see you.