My thoughts are running wild.
About 65mph. Like, damn.
I just need to blog to breathe before getting some work done.
I had class this morning and didn’t expect after that I’d talk to a person who was an Artistic Director of a major ballet company. And the person who I’d taken classes with for the past three years is leaving as the teacher, who had been a Principal dancer with the company the person was director of.
So weird. I talked to this person for at least an hour and it was a great conversation. And I had shared my pride about my younger brother’s achievements who I have to know that mine will come in its own time, that I have to acknowledge people’s accomplishments and also keep on my journey because I am still walking it. And Godwilling, mine will come too, later, but they will come. (Thank you in advance.)
This person is going to go with me to try on new pointe shoes that aren’t Gaynor Minden. I know that I am the token Black girl in class, you know. That I have a lot of improvement to do. That’s why I’m in this company is what I know, another story another day.
People have been confusing me for Generation Z too.
But I wanted to quickly write this not because of the interesting morning I just had. What a blessing because it fits with building community. These two people, the accomplished ballet dancers who see me — a person who got serious at 23, not young like them. What?
So I wanted to simply say that I ask you God to please help me to talk our story. You know, my father sent me a text yesterday wishing me a Happy Birthday. July 9th. Two days ago, excuse me. And my birthday is next week on July 19th. He doesn’t know my actual birthday and I had several birthdays, like he didn’t really try to reach out in between the time I had to pull away to find my voice and strength after confronting him about abuse he did to me and my sister, trigger warning details: after touching my breast when I was 10. I look young I know because my trauma kind of mummified me, I’m stuck at 12 — this is my theory after praying to God to never grow up after the incident. I don’t know…
I’m not really mad that he doesn’t know my birthday. I had mourned a month ago on Father’s Day, and yes, it does hurt in the sense that my mourning is legitimate, that this validates the mourning of not having the father that I or my siblings deserve.
I know that some people basically cut people out of their lives and I don’t know, if that works for a person, that is their life.
But I think that for me, in having so many missing pieces, this gives me the chance to walk the path that I don’t think my father got the chance to walk. And the path that I don’t think my mother got the chance to walk either.
What does that mean?
It is time to hopefully rebuild from what is and know that I don’t have the capacity to really walk forward because of the max capacity that my lineage and trauma and whatever else have predestined for me I feel. How am I different if this is what I know? I’m not. This is the matrix.
So it is a chance to lean on a larger power and figure out what my conversations with him will now look like as I take stock of reality of what we have before us. You know, if God allows me to be fully honest and not in denial to self-protect.
But I will start talking to him now from this place. And I will have to write down things to ask him like if he knows:
- what high school I went to (I know he does)
- what awards I got in school (I don’t think he knows this)
- that I graduated first in my sixth grade class (a year after molesting me and carrying this shame, embarrassment, and pain as I spoke on the podium in my white turtle neck trying to hide my developing baby boobs/breasts, 11 yo)
- why we didn’t celebrate me graduating from Howard if he was the first in his family to attend college, and specifically as an educated girl/woman since his mother, my grandmother, had him as a baby at 14 and stopped going to school at 8 or 9 years old…
- why we didn’t do the same for my older sister (or brother, too, but the girl element I’m referring to I guess at this moment), why not a celebration, I was too young to really remember details but if everything tracks, I will assume we didn’t have a celebration, despite her being your step daughter, if I am her sister, she should be your daughter, right?
It is time to rewrite with the truth and something as simple as a text too early, but years too late, there is mourning but also a sense of a tiny seed of rebirth.
A mustard seed.
Last comment. After listening to a conversation after class today, before running into my now former teacher (previously Principal Dancer), and the Artistic Director (who helped affirm my alienness in a good way), well, I was promoted to see when humans first started appearing on Earth.
Which really, I have to question science in general because Africa is not included ever. And citing ancient Egypt at this point doesn’t count. It is marketing to take this continent out of the equation as contributing to today’s world. So my journey in many directions has begun.
So people have been on Earth for 5 to 7 million years as homo sapiens. Which you know, allegedly. And in Africa.
The thing is that being around an environment with White people, and White-adjacent POC in look and/or behavior, what voices are in the room? Europe, Asia, even Antarctica. But no Africa. So I have to listen to people talk while carrying a natural cynicism toward this inherent bias I see but nobody else will because “Africa hasn’t really done much” or what Africa has done doesn’t count or is inaccurate and White or Asian people actually did it first. The usual…yes I cannot discount others’ achievements but I feel that it rests on this default more than bias I will also carry.
Well, anyway, now I don’t feel like I’m “like a boy” for getting a notebook journal with dinosaurs on it yesterday. I have to know that it just fits me and my interests. And I saw an astronaut one too that I like, maybe next time. Sometimes it’s interesting to observe one’s self…healing God please let me get beyond my transgressions and grow and grow the empathy, strength, and proper boundaries to look at my family line too and be an ancestral detective for the feminine and masculine genetic lines.
Only toward good and strength, courage, and honesty in a way that shame of who I am, who we are, doesn’t dim the flame. Stand in the little and big, all of it equally. Amen.
Whoo, let’s get to work now.
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Hi. Thanks for reading and seeing my story. And those connected to it. I have a newsletter about my journey. If interested in being a part, I invite you to SIGN UP.I will try to keep things angled to you, too, a reciprocal type of vibe.
