the dispossession of self | vol 02

the beginnings of a self reclamation through introspection

“I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name

My name is my own my own my own

and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this

but I can tell you that from now on my resistance

my simple and daily and nightly self-determination

may very well cost you your life”

—-June Jordan 

When I was 14, I lost myself completely. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was a teenager with a self hatred that saddens the adult me to even think about. I existed in a space that was not my own for a while as the demon known as trauma invaded my every sense of being and robbed me of a sense of self. I was too young to be receiving such messages of disgust. I remember looking in mirrors and asking the gods to change the person who looked back at me. I hid myself behind the long braids that I braided into my own scalp, smelling of cocoa butter and the sweet pea perfume I purchased with my Christmas money.  I was not a small child. I was 5 '6 at 12 years old and bloomed so fast, my soil and leaves could not keep up. Never mind the fact that I went to a church with all yt folk preaching about a heaven with people who only looked like them. And we all know how this world treats young black girls. We are the criminalized, pushed out, demonized demographic. I say this not because you do not know but because I am asking for an Amen. After years of turmoil and pain and being misunderstood, I wanted to become myself. I never was myself. I was a budding seed that wanted to be herself but didnt know how. I wanted to become an enemy to the self hatred that had been built within me. I did not build that dark tower of self disgust…it was thrust onto me. Beat into my skin with each subliminal message society, media and the world told me. It was carved into the sinew of my vessel every time I had a crush on someone who would only crush on me in secret. I found myself at a loss for words, at a loss for worth, at a loss for….wholeness. I became silent. I let life pass me by the hour, by the day, by the year without question or joy without feeling. I became a shell.

This time period in my life was very pivotal for me to learn how to reclaim myself..my being. I spent years in a bondage that only I could break. A bondage that left me with years of traumatized thinking with the haunted memories of a person who had existed for eons. Sometimes I remind myself of these times to give myself a stepping stone towards new growth. Growing and maturing and doing better only happens when one realizes that the person of the past that used to be them would be in awe of the growing person they are today. So yea I got alot more healing to do and a lot more loving to do  but damn, I been a long way too. 

Reclaiming my time, as the saints used to say.